by Lea Tassie
While Dart floated in space, wrestling with this question, he failed to notice Charger R/T approaching. A great hand reached out and grasped Dart’s shoulder firmly. He looked up to face Charger R/T. Then, with no warning, his father sent him far out into deep space, well beyond the combat zone.
***
The advancing army expected Charger R/T to try holding the gate, to prevent them from entering the fortress, but this was not what he had in mind. Instead of stopping the army from entering the fortress, he stood aside and let them all come in. Now he turned around and prevented them from escaping.
The black sphere was angered by Charger R/T's trickery, and commanded vast legions of giants to attack and destroy him as the rest of the army began devouring life on the remaining three worlds, looking for the child.
To Spyder, lurking in the shadows just behind the black sphere, Charger R/T appeared at the gate as a brilliant repeated flash of light, like a pulsar, as he annihilated millions of attacking giants with apparently little effort. The giants threw themselves at Charger R/T in a wild, desperate bid to force him to give ground, to leave the way open for their triumphant exit, but he remained unmoved. He even seemed to enjoy taking the lives of these once innocent creatures who were now controlled by the black sphere, now and then flashing a quick smile to reveal his trademark four vampire fangs.
The giants continued to fling themselves at Charger R/T en masse, sending mountains of their living flesh into the maw of a receptive beast. He devoured them all with glee. They were trapped and would never leave this place. As soon as only the black sphere remained, Charger R/T intended to finish this once and for all.
"I am not trapped in here with any of you!" Charger R/T roared. "You are all trapped in here with me!"
These giants, twisted monsters who had replaced the passive, peaceful giants, used no weapons but attacked only with their great height and weight. They attacked from the left, then the right, from above and below and, at every attempt, Charger R/T scattered their essence to the winds of space. It seemed impossible that a single being could prevent an entire desperate army from gaining an advantage, but Charger R/T never gave an inch.
When half the invading army was utterly destroyed, the black sphere finally decided it needed to intervene. "Who are you that you dare to stand and defy your God! Kneel or fear my wrath! Kneel!"
Charger R/T snorted, then motioned for the sphere to attack. But the black sphere was unwilling to confront him directly and so sent more legions of giants to distract and to draw Charger R/T's attention while it launched several smaller attacks from the rear. None gained any ground.
The black sphere erupted with rage at the failure of the giants and lashed out at them, whipping at them to fight harder. Charger R/T was amused by the frustration the sphere exuded and, when the opportunity arose, he sent a wave of energy directly at the sphere like a bolt of lightning, sending it tumbling backward in space.
The black sphere righted itself and spoke with less vigor and bluster, for it was beginning to find this demon a sizeable challenge. "Every living substance that I have made, I will destroy! I will start with you!"
Behind Charger R/T and outside the fortress, beyond the gate, a reserve army of giants waited in the blackness of space for their opportunity to fight. "Behold, thou art a dead man!" the sphere said, as it released the reserve to attack Charger R/T from behind. At the same time, it sent the whipped giants within the fortress headlong into the demon's grinning face.
Charger R/T was surprised by the tactic of the two attacking forces. He staggered and gave ground for the first time in the fight. For a moment, the black sphere thought that it might be winning, but from the depths of Charger R/T's black soul arose an anger so great, that when released, even nearby planets suffered. He lashed out with such violence that, for a moment, even space and time bent to his will. Drawing the giants into his fury, he crushed the life from every one of them.
The black sphere was insane with rage and frustration. It had never in all its existence confronted such a stubborn and unmovable force.
"Now shalt thou see what I can do to you, demon!" roared the black sphere, spitting vile hatred and anger directly at Charger R/T. Charger R/T responded with a quick smile. The black sphere had come to this fight intending to win and asked for reinforcements from the parent black sphere, locked at the center of the galaxy. It had complied by sending an enormous mass of itself toward the solar system.
This was the black mass that humanity had visited centuries before, and violated to retrieve the god fragment, the same mass that sent the first black sphere to punish humanity and which had been locked away with Charger R/T. This mass had a score to settle, and was now arriving behind the defending Charger R/T.
"I will utterly destroy the remembrance of Charger R/T under heaven!" the black sphere spat as it ordered the approaching mass to attack. Charger R/T was all at once hit from inside and outside the gate he held, both from the black sphere inside and the larger black mass outside. The attack compressed Charger R/T as if he were being squeezed out of existence, creating a blinding light and heat where he stood.
For the moment, Charger R/T was losing the fight, but he steeled himself and drew every ounce of power he had to repulse the attack. It was then that Spyder saw his opportunity. From the shadows, this wretched malevolence launched his own attack. Spyder was as much a master of deception as Abarth had ever been and he drew from the universe's dark energy, creating a blinding field that blanked Charger R/T's white eyes from sight. Now that Charger R/T was blind and helpless, Spyder laughed at the demon's predicament.
But Charger R/T had little use for his eyes. Part of the first Hyborg program he had endured was the loss of normal sight. The program used technology to return vision to him in a mechanical way by enhancing the light spectrum as seen by normal humans. The resurrected Charger R/T had been constructed much the same as his first incarnation, but the technology once employed to enhance Charger's vision had been replaced with the god-like powers he possessed now. Slowly, methodically, with a savage smile, Charger R/T raised his head to stare directly into Spyder's eyes. At first Spyder wasn't sure whether Charger R/T could actually see him.
Spyder moved his head from side to side and Charger R/T tracked his every motion. Spyder raised his hand toward Charger R/T's face and waved. Charger R/T's smile expanded to a wicked grin and he winked. In those blank, white, almost silver-colored eyes, Spyder saw his own reflection, a specter of fear and death. He realized now that Charger R/T could see him.
Charger R/T stretched his arms out from his shoulders, parallel to the ground, as if crucified. With his left hand, he began to draw toward himself the black mass from outside the gate. With his right hand, he drew the black sphere from inside the fortress. He pulled the spheres together, with Spyder crushed between them.
Frantic, the spheres struggled against being pulled closer to him, but it was futile. Charger R/T drew into himself all the forces that opposed him. Still at the gate, Charger R/T blended the two spheres into one, Spyder blended between and into them. He took his prize, which was unable to flee, like a fly caught and wrapped by a spider in a web, deep inside the fortress. A scream emanated from the black sphere as it struggled to escape, but it was held fast.
Charger R/T threw his prize into the flaming surface of the sun.
Then he slowly turned a full circle, looking at the solar system, at the sun and the remaining planets. Earth was gone, sent to a distant galaxy, so that Reader could birth a new breed of human, to give the experiment one more try. If the new humans survived, Reader and Dart could look after them. He was done.
He was sick of humans posturing, sick of their massive egos, their pride in the great and violent empires they'd created. Sick of their belief that they were the pinnacle of creation, perfection, the end point. They thought the universe had been made for them, that they deserved to live forever. Billions of them had blinked into space to escape the giants. They'd gone out, not i
n glory, but with a whimper. Yes, he was finished.
From the very center of Earth's solar system, encircled by a wall of impenetrable space debris, Charger R/T began warping and compressing time and space inside the fortress. The gravitational forces went off the chart. Even nearby galaxies felt the disturbance. The attraction to Earth’s realm was formidable. Temperatures blazed as Jupiter and Saturn both ignited and smashed into the compressed field. Finally, Pluto, though very far away, was drawn into the center of the collapsing solar system.
All around Charger R/T, space began to buckle and bend, as everything in the solar system, including the humans who had blinked into space, was drawn into a singularity, a point of infinite density.
Charger R/T now burned with the brilliance of a thousand suns, and from this place he made his final move. No god could hope to escape. In a final act of brutality, Charger R/T's mind reached out to find the home world of the giants and, with no regard for whether or not they were innocent, squashed the planet out of existence as if it were a bug on the pavement. The result of his violence dwarfed any super nova seen by man.
Then it was done.
Nothing remained but a black hole of unbelievably powerful gravity, hardly large enough to fit on the head of a pin, though the matter and energy it contained weighed billions of tons. In order to maintain itself, the black hole would need to feed on matter, to continue eating stars, but it was too small to do that. When it starved, it would become unstable and dematerialize, disintegrating out of existence.
Charger R/T stood in the black space where Earth’s sun once existed, contemplating the surrounding void as it cooled and returned to the stillness of time.
***
Lucas had blinked to empty space just outside the solar system. A technician and inventor, he was interested in the blink system even before college. One of the things he'd invented was a vastly powerful personal blink device and he'd had it surgically installed in his thigh.
Now he drifted. Alone.
He'd tried moving his arms and legs but that accomplished nothing, with no air or water to push against. Frustrated, he screamed.
And heard nothing. Then he remembered that sound can transmit only through a medium like air or water. He was voiceless.
Even if he had a companion, another human, they couldn't talk to each other. He was confined to a silent, helpless existence. Forever, because he was immortal.
Lucas saw Charger R/T blazing, imploding the solar system. He saw the void swept clean. Charger R/T had put the other drifting humans out of their misery, but had abandoned him, left him to "die" alone.
He had a sudden vivid memory of the fly paper hanging in his grandfather's cabin by the lake, of the flies stuck and struggling.
But the flies were lucky, very lucky. They died.
Lucas tried to remember why it was that he'd wanted to become immortal, why he'd had all the medical enhancements, but nothing came to mind.
He whimpered soundlessly as he floated in space. He didn't want to live forever and he didn't want to die. But what he wanted no longer mattered, for he had no voice, no power, and no choice.
Chapter 18 Dart on Planet B
Dart said to the small green creature at his side, "I wanted to stay and support my father." It responded like an Earth dog might, sitting attentively and watching Dart as he spoke. They sat in front of a large rock which glowed red hot and, but for the absence of crackling, snapping sounds, the scene was of two friends sitting before a campfire which pushed back the cold blackness of the night. All around were windswept plains of gray-blue grass-like growth, enclosing them in a private oasis of peace and tranquility. The sky above was filled with many small planets, close enough for the naked eye to see geographic details on their surfaces.
"I really can’t blame my father for sending me off like he did. I wouldn't have been much help in the fight." As Dart spoke, the small green life form oozed out a foul odor, perhaps because of its proximity to the red-hot rock. "Wow! You stink! No more squishy slug-like things for you before bedtime."
The small green creature reacted by clicking its disapproval.
"I was only kidding. I'll get you slugs before bedtime, but you have to stand further back from the heat because you really do stink."
The small green life form shuffled backward on its many limbs, as Dart had requested, hoping that obeying his command might reward him with more food.
Dart reached into a small bag at his side, pulled out several finger-sized slugs and offered them to his new friend. A growth shaped like an elephant’s trunk emerged from what might have been its face to slurp up the squirming slugs like a vacuum cleaner. "Blah! I hate watching you eat," Dart said under his breath.
The creature had no eyes; instead it used radar to locate its prey. It shuffled about on several stumpy little legs and its green surface was sticky, yet had sharp edges which cut Dart's fingers if he tried to pet it.
Dart had no idea where in the cosmos Charger R/T had thrown him. When it happened, he was considering Plan A, which was to stand by Charger R/T in the battle with the black spheres and the giants. What happened was apparently Plan B. All he remembered was his father sending him away from the battle in a blink of intense light and, when he landed on this planet, the first sight to greet him was his new green friend.
He stared up at the sky for a minute. "Okay, so I'll call this Planet B. Sometime I'll find out the name we had for it back on Earth. If we even knew about it."
Dart soon discovered that things were quite different here. His connection to the scientific knowledge humanity had used to care for the people of the four worlds was gone. The technology he possessed was useless, but he found it had been replaced with an amazing, incredible gift. He now had the same powers his father possessed; the powers of a god. He was able to manipulate and create anything his mind could conceive, along with the ability to see connections at the molecular level of all aspects of the universe.
"I don't know if you understand, but I'm not from this planet," Dart said to his small green companion.
The little life form stopped moving and reacted as if it were shocked at the revelation.
"Hey! Can you understand what I'm saying?" Dart asked the little creature. It had certainly reacted as if it understood. "Well, that will be handy." Dart smiled as he reached out to warm his hands at the heat of the radiant stone.
It occurred to him that a small enclosure to protect him while he slept would be good and, instantly, a small hut appeared next to the glowing rock. "Neat!" Dart thought. Testing his abilities, he envisioned a 1957 Chevy Bel Aire and instantly it appeared just meters from where he sat. Then he thought it should be blue, not red, and immediately it was blue. "It should have whitewall tires," he said and, almost before he finished the sentence, the tires were whitewalls.
Dart was finding there were no limits to what he could do, but had no idea how he was doing it. He focused his mind on the universe to try and discover his location, but his view was like that of someone staring through a telescope. He had a limited view of the stars and the immensity of space. He soon realized he might spend forever searching for a clue as to where he was. Not willing to face that prospect just yet, he decided that tomorrow he would explore the planet he stood on.
When Dart awoke, it was still dark outside. Night on this planet lasted for several twenty-four-hour periods, balancing the lengthy days he would ultimately face.
Undaunted, he struck out, with the little green creature at his side, to walk and observe the unusual beauty of this place, which was evident even in the darkness. It was only semi-darkness, however, like the dusk the northern regions of Earth had once experienced. That realization made him wonder where Earth had ended up. He hoped that the programmed trajectory of the planet had gone according to plan, and that it had settled in an area of space very similar to where it had come from. His newfound powers didn't tell him whether or not that had happened.
After walking for a while, he realized he
probably didn't really have to walk. By bending gravity to his will and adjusting the molecules of his feet, he levitated to a couple of yards above the surface of the planet. Unwilling to leave his new friend behind, he adapted the small green life form to levitate as well, and the two set off to explore the planet. The green creature seemed distraught about hovering above the ground and moving without intending to. It squirmed and jittered around for a while, but appeared to resign itself to hovering along behind Dart.
"What should I call you?" Dart asked his little friend. "Maybe I'll call you Snot." As he drifted along, he gasped in amazement at the scenery. The world they explored was radically different from any place he'd experienced before. The gray-blue grass-like growth that seemed to go on forever into the distance was interrupted only by small ponds of silver liquid, like pools of still mercury. Here and there, large boulders of ancient rock thrust upward from the ground. They apparently defied gravity as well, for they rested on small points anchored to the ground, looking like large mushrooms.
Dart was so busy thinking about the mushroom-like boulders that he didn't notice he'd left the grassy area. He hovered above a surface that looked like old volcanic lava, but was yellowish in color. He turned back to see where the grasses had stopped and then looked off into the distance to see if there were more oddities. That's when he noticed the nodules. These bumps seemed to have popped out of the volcanic lava in an organized way. Curious, Dart hovered toward the swellings.
He remembered how his father once used a blinding field to disguise his presence. Dart replicated the process and he, along with his small green friend, became invisible. However, they were invisible only in his imagination, apparently, for he saw that the nodules were small huts and inside them resided living beings which were alarmed at the sight of something floating above their dwellings. They jumped about, jabbering madly and pointing at Dart. He realized the blinding field was not working and turned it off. The small living beings immediately calmed down. Apparently, their eyes saw Dart only when the field was on. When it was off, he was invisible.
