The Epilogue

It is here in this dank space that the end will begin. They do not know it yet, but their time is nigh. Their age have been in reign too long while they do nothing to advance the spirit of themselves. They only concern themselves with the ‘now’ of things rather than the future.

The shaded figure sat in the middle of his space and felt the ebb and flow of a universe moving through her and beyond. There she saw the movement and birth of a new star. In another corner of the multiverse, on a slow and silent membrane, the last breath of life that was ever to be in existence was ready to be snuffed out.

With a thought, she focused on the brane as was her duty. She often felt the smallest of pangs when she was required to collect the energy that was used by an empty space, but there were others who needed it to expand and grow to their potential.

Still, she had to justify it. Was their time done?

She had the power to breathe life back into the brane, but it was not her position. Hers was about denouement not commencement. It was hers to collect and recycle. It was hers to witness the endings and record the history after the end had taken place.

Sometimes the ending was more bombastic than this. There were lights and energy and fuel that rippled across the eleven dimensions. These explosive effects punched through various branes in varying degrees. Quarks shifted. Stranges moved in even more unique ways. Quantum entanglements became more intrinsic and prolific.

Other times, like this one, the ending was somber. This one was quiet. The brane was tired and ancient. It had been in place long before she knew her destiny. It had been brought into existence through another ending. The entanglements moved and shoved against many membranes all at once.

As one brane touched another, the catalytic happened. The two came shifted and wrapped around each other in a micro-instant. It was the touch of creation. It was symmetry unbound in chaos. It was creation in effective mechanics.

There was no lover’s caress. There was no hint of lust. There was no wanting or heavy breathing. There was no anticipation of reaction. There was only the quantum mechanics of it all. Although the creation was lovely, there was no passion. The coupling was simply done and undone with no more feeling than driving home a nail with a hammer or turning a screw.

Even though it was a loveless creation, the brane moved and shifted quickly into creation. It was more than just an inherent existence for denizens to live, love, and lament. There was a subtle consciousness that was developed that reached out to it’s people.

The touch brought them not only closer to themselves, but also to each other. They called it ‘The Siring.’ It was their celebration of being in tune with their universe. It was their connection to the inherent power that was given to them by the membrane.

Sired individuals could manipulate the universe around them. They could defy the laws of known physics. They were the living embodiment of gods living amongst mortals. These dieforms flew through the air, held control over elements both known and unknown, displayed strength that was nearly immeasurable, and so much more.

They grew into factions and brotherhoods. Some, apollyon and demonic others were shepherds and protectors. These scions moved and shaped the universe to it’s greatest heights and most depraved lows. The Siring still moved and touched them. It lived through them. It fought and loved and killed and bore each of them in turn and simultaneously.

Some of the more powerful sired were able to punch holes into other membranes and see other vistas that were shared with few others. Many of these left long ago, before the first rattled cough that the brane itself uttered signaling it’s path towards the end.

She was one of them.

A tear welled up when she thought of her home. That tiny spark on the outer limb of a galaxy was a place of egregious beauty that was sacrificed for the greater good. The billions of souls moved from life to lifelessness to feed the hunger of another more powerful sired being.

The agreement was to satisfy and satiate a hunger with one world rather than tearing through the galaxy to make way to the hub where the super massive black holes sustained the galactic pull. It was one world or billions as the beast ingested bits of flotsam and jetsam on the way to the core where not only the shells of solar systems but also the gooey underpinnings that were stretched to infinity.

Her home had been sacrificed, but she and a few others survived to carry on. The beast that ate worlds moved on through the universe as the connection to the Siring dictated. It was in the brief instant when she sensed the last moment of her home membrane that she knew the beast was sufficiently overstuffed. The beast was finally sleeping and the membrane could send its last piece of power to send a message to the rest of the sired.

“My lovely ones, my special children. I will miss you as you will miss me. Use the gifts I have given you for your own means. Do not try to fight amongst yourselves, my loves. You are the last. Your brothers and sisters may not share your feelings, but do this for me.”

“I am not long for this wondrous existence we have shared. I am soon to be collected and redistributed where I am needed in the multiverse. Do not mourn, my loves, I exist in each one of you. As you carry on, so shall I.”

It was so much a mother’s touch and tender kiss. It was the warm smile and encompassing hug. It was the knowing she could never return home. 

She closed her eyes and let the tears fall. The salty taste reached through her quivering lips. Heart swelling, she savored the last words she would ever hear from the Siring and finally let her go.

mer·cu·ri·al

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Peter.”

“That’s not my name.”

“We’ve been through this. You need to adapt to your new life here. You and Wanda both.”

“That doesn’t mean reestablishing me or my heritage.”

“And what heritage is that? The one where your father, this Django, taught you to steal? The same heritage that was going to sell your sister?”

“You do not get to pass judgment. You do not understand. We are Rom.”

“No, you’re both adopted. The makeup of your DNA points to several things about your background, the X-factor being one of them, but having Romani blood? No.”

“It takes more than that to be bound.”

“Really? Let’s see. According to this Wanda, in a freak accident, seemed to set fire to a house causing you to be ostracized and chased out of —”

“It wasn’t her fault.”

“Who else could it have been.”

“It was my fault.”

“So, let’s start at the beginning. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You are too slow to understand.”

“What do you mean by that? I’m following along just fin —”

“I mean you are too slow. It is not that you are stupid or ignorant. It is that you do not move or think as fast as I do. You cannot begin to understand.”

“Help me to understand, Peter.”

“That is not my name. On top of being slow, you are making me repeat myself. These are qualities that are not endearing me to you. In fact, it’s getting you on the fast track to raising my ire.”

“Fast track, that’s funny.”

“It is not meant to be humorous. You understand I could kill you and be long gone before you would even hit the ground?”

“Yes, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is your acclimation to American in general and New York in specific. Let’s drill down to some of the troubles you’re having.”

“For starters, I’m being questioned by gadje shanglo and I really don’t want to talk about the ‘troubles’ you think I’m having adapting to your American way of life. I don’t have any ‘troubles.’ This is the water in which I learned to swim.”

“Tell me what you mean by that.”

“It is how I learned to deal with you gadje. You want answers that you do not understand.”

“Then help me.”

“There is no help for you. You are too slow.”

“What am I slow about?”

“Understanding.”

“So you do think I’m stupid.”

“No, gadje. I think that your synapses do not fire as fast as mine. I think that you experience the passing of time in what you think is a normal speed. You truly do not understand the length of an attosecond and what I can truly do with it. You move in air that is thick. It blocks you and yours.”

“Us gahdjay?”

“Gadje, and no. All of you who are not me.”

“Well, that seems to be quite a lot of people to be lumped together.”

“You all are the same. You walk and talk through the thickness around you. You wait in your miserable little lines taking too long to decide. You stand as still as sloths trying to even utter the simplest of syllables. It is maddening to wait for you.”

“Peter, you can’t —”

“Thatisnotmyname!”

“Pietro, you simply cannot expect others to keep up with you. It’s not possible. As far as we know, you’re the fastest person alive on the planet.”

“I know, gadje. I was waiting for you to catch up with me. You see, the trouble is yours.”

Cosmic Pull

New #MadVerse for 8/13 no.56 Dual Prompt option Please see pic for details #MadQueen #writingprompts pic.twitter.com/2aIdSGb77H

— Storm Benedict (@StormBenedict) August 13, 2014

As His Herald, I move feeling the cosmic pull. The Planet Eater follows, his belly never full. Bound by my honor, His to rule. #madverse

— Gary E. Weller (@entrebat) August 14, 2014

Responsibility

I'm tired.

The world needs you.

The world doesn't need me. The world got on just fine for millions of years with out me.

Humanity then.

And, that's worth saving?

I think it is.

You think it is? What makes your opinion so important? I am tired. Let the world, let humanity, save its self.

But...

But, what? I'm not a hero. I am one human being, gifted by circumstance, by chance, with great power. And, until recently, I chose to use that power for whatever I perceived the greater good to be. Today I choose to not use that power. I make that choice for the greater good. What, I, perceive the greater good to be.

I hate you.

Many will.

What will we do?

What did you do before me?

What will we do with out you?

What. Did you do. Before me?

Nothing will be the same.

Everything will be the same. In today's world, will I even be remembered a year, a decade, a century on? Honestly, am I all that likely to be the last... gifted?

You were the first.

Was I? Maybe, I was just the least smart. I sold my power cheaply. I flaunted it publicly. And, for what? Adulation? Groupies? A feel good sense of holier than thou martyrdom?

What... What will you do?

Nothing.

Grodd Complex

I see them.

They don’t think I notice their glares and pathetic grinning. They think I don’t notice their mockery and movements of curling their arms to scratch their arm pits or the beating on their chest.

I cannot help but notice them even if I look away. They smell horrible. They have no sense of what they smell like. So much perfume masking their musk and the fetid breath from eating the food that is served to them.

Oh and how they holler. Their voices carry.

“Mom, look at the monkey!”

I am not a monkey. I am an ape. Monkeys have tails. Monkeys chatter incessantly signifying their fears, their wants, all whilst flinging feces at each other in some sort of game of dominance. You are the monkey. A hairless, tailless monkey living in a cage you do not see.

“Hey, it looks like he’s thinking!”

I am capable of so much more than acting like I’m thinking. I’ve created more drafts of technology in my mind than your most applied scientists. The marvels I’ve seen outstrip what your race has created. If it weren’t for the constraints that I have put upon myself, I would show you what true thinking looks like. I would bring you to your knees with a thought, with less than a wink of an eye.

“Dad, make him move!”

Movement. You don’t even understand movement. This world spins at over 17 miles per second on it’s axis and nearly 1200 miles per second on it’s annual trip around the sun. I’ve seen countless duplicates in the multiverse and many other worlds that have movement that you cannot imagine, child.

Were it not for my own will, I would make you move. I would have you climb the safety wall and move into my enclosure. I would make you dance like a puppet as I have done with so many of your ilk on other worlds. You are all so pedestrian.

Until I know the time is right, I will sit here in disguise. I will not allow you to notice I am more than what you think of as an average ape. I am so much more. When the time is right, you hairless, tailless monkeys will know the truth.

Chaos is coming. Utter and complete destruction is in alignment and making way for this tiny unenlightened orb. Your greatest scientists cannot even fathom what is coming. They cannot stop it. They cannot conceive of what I have put in motion before breaking the barrier between worlds to arrive here.

Until then, I will sit and contemplate how I will tear their world apart. They will know the power that comes from within. They will know me when I reveal myself and it will be their undoing. Here, there is no league to stop me. There is no red robin, dark bat, or scarlet-clad clown. Here the populace has no alien citizens that will intervene.

Here, on this weaker duplicate, they will know the power of Grodd.

Unity

Hope.

Free will.

These are the things that hold us back.

That nagging sense of individualism is certainly a problem.

And, many people still labor under the mistaken belief that they crave such abstracts as “truth” and “freedom.”

Ladies, gentlemen, members of The Board, I have a solution. I call it Unity.

Back in the early twenty-first century scientists deduced that what we call, for lack of a better word, hope, was an evolutionary adaptation. Hope is what allows us to endure the deaths of loved ones, it is what keeps us getting up in the morning, it is what drives us to strive for bigger and better... profits.

Yes, its value to us as movers and shakers in this big old expanding world is probably incalculable. But, to the laborers? To the poor that still squat on our island making excuses for their presence, blaming us for their own lack of fore sight?

Well, hope leads to exercises – regrettable exercises – of free will. Really, on a practical level, its all just a fascinating soup of bio-chemistry. Hope for this, choices for that, will to change... They live too long and have the temerity to expect some kind of support after they can no longer contribute to the greater good; they become burdens to us and each other. Human Resources are – for now - an unfortunate necessity. Even in this golden day and age. But, what to do, you ask, in the mean time?

Unity. Unity deadens hope and suppresses free will. By itself, it leads to a malaise so pervasive that some of our test subjects literally starved themselves to death. Most though, when presented with the option work at nearly any repetitive task until they pass out form exhaustion. Coupled with our extensive media network?

We've experimented with covert subliminals for decades now to various degrees of success. We've tried overt propaganda, but individual rabble rousers are always asking inconvenient questions. Its tedious and requires constant maintenance. In a word, it's expensive. Both in terms of money and the talent of our creatives.

We can do better. Unity is the solution. People with out hope of their own, want to believe. People bereft of the desire to make decisions for themselves, want to be told what to believe. Subliminals have proven to be one-hundred percent more effective in the least successful of our test subjects. Propaganda that the most dead eyed citizen has been rolling their eyes at for a generation? Now, like new again.

Side effects?

Does it matter?

Well, there is the lethargy, but its rates are directly proportional to the age of the test subjects. Older subjects are more likely to cease day to day activity, or in extreme cases commit suicide. And, memory loss. There is a great deal of short term memory loss. However, being more amenable to repetitive tasks, test subjects experiencing memory loss are more than willing to do a task over and over again until it becomes rote and muscle memory. In some cases dry mouth, thirst, and diarrhea were reported. All of which are really of no concern to us. Hell, if we distribute it in the water, the latter problems are a boon!

Unity, ladies and gentlemen, is their future. And, ours.