Once the shadow-creature is gone, I look at the badly charred Rubbish. I go over and give it a hug. “Thank you, ” I say.
The Rubbish is mortally wounded, I realize. It’s dissolving item by item into the air. But it smiles and laughs. “Flesh is fun! I like to walk from there to here just like you, be flesh just like you! Besides, now there is no more now. ” With that, it’s gone and so is everything else. I hope that Maria and the others have a little more while of material existence yet ahead of them, that this is the end for me, but not quite yet for all of the world I’ve now left behind.
Now there is no more now. Not a bad summation. There was; there is not. Only judgment remains, perhaps.
* * *
MING XIAN
There are successes to go with the tragedies. I do not witness any souls ascending to the bosom of the Celestial Emperor, but I do see some free to gather in their own memory palaces and the other features of the realms where spirits wait for final judgment. Furthermore, here on earth, the northwest district of Urumqi begins to flourish and bloom, to nearly everyone’s surprise.
My fellow Chinese tend to stereotype the Uygurs for being at once very successful militarily, and also very lazy and indolent. It’s not true. All they’ve ever needed is direction, and I can provide that by reminding them of their own tradition of beautiful order together with some exhortations about how living well now blesses all who help make a good gathering possible, and about self-sufficiency as a key step toward independence. They may wonder why this Chinese servant of the government seems to speak against her own interests that way, but they pay attention.
And sure enough, it works.
The dry autumn winds come on unusually rapidly this year. The seasons are hastening into expression, I think, each hoping for at least one last pass at the world and its marvels. Every year, those winds mean drought and the risk of fire, inside the city as well as out because of insufficient irrigation and the absence of any effective windbreaks. This year our district gardens are ready for them. Two blacksmiths worked out an ingenious plan that turns half a dozen relocated pine trees into something close to a natural windmill, diffusing and cooling the breeze and letting the heat radiate away later. The streets are clean, so there’s little trash to blow. The cisterns are freshly cleaned and painted, and everyone knows that we have an entirely sufficient water reserve in place. We flourish.
Imitators spring up elsewhere in the city and the surrounding countryside, and I’m glad to advise all of them as best I can. I gain a reputation as the Chinese With the Answers, something that doesn’t always please my fellow Han. Some say I’ve gone native, or just crazy, but the quality of my district’s work provides a powerful counterargument: a weak-willed, slothful person simply could not accomplish all this. Results often speak for themselves, and so they do here.
I seldom speak to my neighbors and fellow workers of the growing madness beyond. It’s difficult to make much sense of the stories, to be honest. Zombies? A demon proclaiming himself king of the world? Fields of fungi that hunger for human blood? It doesn’t add up to anything. I remind myself that each strange thing is just one more sign of the world’s winding down, faster and faster.
When the moon starts going through a complete cycle every day, even the most illiterate farmers take notice, but they also take notice of my answer: All Under Heaven is in each under Heaven. We may properly pray for others in their time of trouble, but our responsibility is here. Till your own field, for it too is filled with wonders and terrors. It is of course not easy for any of us to ignore such things. We have friends and relatives out there, and varying measures of that curiosity which is one of the defining qualities of humanity. We yearn to help, and I reinforce the message that their decision to stay and work here is contributing, quite directly, by strengthening allegiance to the Way in all its virtue. Our work here is directly kin to all its counterparts everywhere.
Good works only take us so far, of course. It seems that the very end of the world is arranged so as to foster meditation, for our tools and the coherence of the world are lost long before we cease to live. First complex machines break down, dissolving into a general fog that grows thicker each day. The ground itself becomes soft, and some of us are lost sinking into it. At the same time, like things begin to merge. I first notice this with a litter of kittens who liked to prowl in our gardens, hunting the vermin. I actually see them all dissolve into the fog and reemerge as a single kitten. Then I see it happen with a row of tract houses. One day I spend all day treating terrified prostitutes who found their customers each merging into a single man.
When I wake up and find that my feet have merged, I decide that the time has come to emulate the Taoist sage who sailed on his back through the inland seas and rivers, admiring Heaven from below. Without a sound, the roof of my little house dissolves to let me do just that; the landscape is becoming more and more responsive to my wishes.
In the distance I can hear chimes. My last thought, before dissolution takes me as well, is that I did indeed succeed in building a little land of righteousness, in the face of all opposition. May Heaven be pleased with my offering.
This is the end.
* * *
* * *
WILLIAM
Every scientist and engineer knows about that moment of epiphany, when multiple subconscious thought processes come together in a single crystal realization to the effect of, “I’ve been very wrong, and here’s the right way out from here. ” Death proves such a moment for me.
In the first place, it’s something of a surprise for death to prove anything at all. My atheistic materialism has never been so complete as to deny the possibility of some survival of consciousness after physical death, but I’ve dealt with enough psionic manifestations to know that there’s a big difference between semi-autonomous functions in the noetic medium and anything like real personality. If you ram your face hard enough into the wall, it’ll leave an impression that future generations can see, but it’s not like being there yourself to greet them. This, however—whatever it is I’m experiencing now—this is precisely like being there myself.
At least there’s no long dark tunnel to happy relatives and white light. That really would be too much. Rather, my viewpoint remains right where it’s always been, in my head. I don’t have any physical sensations apart from sight, or at least I’m not aware of any if I do. My viewpoint just lies there, watching the Red Star. For the first few seconds I also get to see body parts and car parts flying around, the legacy of that terminal car crash, and then it’s just calm. A few minutes later, Nicolas leans into view, looking down at me... and dammit, this so the wrong moment for sentimentality! He closes my eyes! Now all I can see is the darkness inside my eyelids.
I have time to think about my last encounter. The creature addressed me as Ming Xian, who was, I think, the Chinese woman I met on Mars (always assuming that experience actually happened, but hey). Okay, I can safely assume that it was tracking some residue we were both exposed to on Mars; I’d be very unsurprised to learn that it went after the other guy (Robert was it? ) as well. As for just what it was... I could be here quite a while tallying known categories of entities it might belong to, and that’s assuming it is in fact something the Union’s tallied and studied properly. We on the front lines know just how iffy such an assumption is.
Meanwhile, I’ve still got this problem of continuing self-awareness. The things I saw before Nicolas closed my eyes did not suggest the sort of time compression that Ambrose Bierce popularized in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” way back when. This is not my brain constructing one final story to tell itself in the last few seconds of awareness. This is minutes and hours of thought going on in a brain that I know to be severed from its torso. This is upsetting, or it would be if I were capable of feeling any emotions. I gradually realize that I am, actually, despite the loss of attachment to my endocrine system along with the rest of my body. I sincerely hope this starts making some sense
soon, and I brace myself for an unpleasant cosmological shock.
* * *
Robert When I was a boy, I loved Dr. Seuss books. One of them had a story of creatures for whom “here is too near and there is too far, ” and who therefore spend all their time rushing back and forth. The shaman’s life is very much like that: we’re too close to the spirit world to be comfortable here, but so thoroughly part of the material world that we. cannot simply settle down there. It’s the same with our lives within the world, too, always driven to seek a community and always driven away from it because of the unique experiences granted to (and forced upon) us. As my body crumbles, I have a sense of... not returning home, because I have no lost home in that sense, but of advancing toward home.
Just as I expect, my soul moves out into the spirit world one final time. The Gauntlet that once separated matter and spirit is gone now, or at least a tattered mess, and I see things differently. To the best of my knowledge, no shaman has ever seen the “avatar storm” as anything but a vast field of sharp knives, or teeth, or broken glass or some other symbol of cutting. Now I see within it a sea of faces—men and women of all ages and races, all filled with a tremendous and desperate sadness, such as I’ve seen only in those about to die for what they feel is an unnecessary, avoidable reason. They glow to my inner eye with aged power. In the material world, I could see them only as an ominous fog or half-glimpsed faces. Now... the threat they pose to the living isn’t diminished. If anything, I see it more clearly, as I can see the wills behind them. But I see their suffering and their knowledge of the impending end. I can sympathize, even if I decline to condone what they’re doing.
As I leave matter behind me, the signs of the end are everywhere. On Earth, the Red Star is a discrete bright light. Here it's a pervasive glow. And there’s a new movement everywhere around me, as like hurries to reunite with like. Soon all the spirits of foxes, for instance, will be part of the single spirit of Fox, and I presume that in turn she’ll go on to fuse with the other totems into the essence of Animal, and so on up the great chain of being. It’s fascinating to watch, if somewhat disconcerting. It’s certainly easy to understand why the physical world is losing its coherence: things fall apart from the soul out, as Xoca used to tell me.
(Is Xoca still alive? Is he waiting for me to merge with him and others to become a sort of Shaman totem? )
There are good reasons that shamans are vague about what happens to most people when they die. None of it is very comforting. Either the soul is quickly reborn, passing along its essence while the last personality is lost, or the soul ends up stuck somewhere—a ghost, if it’s in or near the Gauntlet, one more of the infinite drifting knots of spirit if it’s farther away. Most cultures’ funeral rituals are something like anesthetic for both the living and the deceased, calming them enough (or channeling grief into acceptable enough outlets) for the next stage to get underway without too many complaints. Right now, though, it looks to me like both of the usual routes are broken pretty badly. I hear a growing clamor from souls looking for, well, anything at all to anchor to, and I worry about what it may all mean.
How long is this end time going to take? That’s one of a great many questions I didn’t get to ask back at Doissetep. I wonder how I might go about finding out now.
* * *
MING XIAN
It was the arrogant assertion of the later Ming and Qing emperors that there could be nothing worth knowing beyond China’s borders, because the world began in completion and any change must necessarily be loss. Since China was at the heart of things, less had been lost there than anywhere else, and so it was simply unthinkable that something could be both desirable and only found far away. I have perhaps lived too close to the opposite error, of feeling that whatever was of value must be lost, hidden, removed and far away. I’ve lived so much of my life in the search for these buried truths, and have dug through untold quantities of dross and waste as well as though rich veins of lore worth returning to the world. Now I emerge into this new realm and am seized with the sudden sense that there are no secrets.
The emperor’s throne sat at the north end of the throne room, facing south, because north is the direction of heaven and south the direction of earth. From his vantage, closest of all mortals to heaven, the emperor could see the whole world. That wasn’t just superstition, either: the emperor could indeed see a great deal when the rites were properly performed. I think about that now as my soul drifts free of the chaos that my body became, because I'm aware of a northward drift. The world spreads out beneath me, round only in geographical terms. Its meaning lies flat before me, its dense signs and busy movements waiting for me to understand them.
Not long after I form that thought, though, I’m reminded that danger doesn’t end with death. As my spirit rises, so do a trio of dark shapes. Not like the hungry ghost that followed me for so long, but like the shadows of great predator birds cast by unseen hunters in the swirling clouds of yang that border the heavens. They circle aimlessly off in the distance, then rush toward me faster and faster. Here my spirit is naked—certainly I have no armor or weapons ready—and I have to think faster than the hunters can fly.
And just like that, I have the thought I need, rising out of my own contemplation. I look at the world turning beneath me and the pole star far above (now mostly eclipsed by the Red Star, but still managing some pale shine of its own), tracing out the compass I need to orient myself. Then I turn away from the pole star, heading south. Here, moving south also means moving symbolically from a position of prominence to one of subordination, a more generic stance. The hunters have a harder time finding me here: from their point of view, I shrink and fade, blending into the swirl around me. They make slashing dives through the mists, but none of them manage to come anywhere close to me. (I do regret the hurt being done to the forces among which I hide. I must find some way to make amends to them when this episode is over. ) With frustrated shrieks, the predators turn away and go back to orbiting the area from which I emerged, perhaps expecting me to risk the return there.
But my retreat, it turns out, has its own logic. Once my fall has begun, I cannot quite manage to stop it. The light fades as I contract.
* * *
Robert As I study the movements all around me, night falls. I drift behind the Earth, watching the sun fade, casting complex coronas in its final moments... and I wonder, at least a little, if these really are its final moments, if I’m ever to see the sun rise again. As night deepens, the black sky stirs, that immense universe-filling body within which all stars and lesser lights find their place. Human souls flare like candles on the planet below me, and it’s as beautiful a sight as ever. From here the turmoil of the approaching end is hard to see. It’s only when I focus on any particular spot that I can make out the escalating chaos and transformation.
I continue to wonder just what those old dead magi meant by Judgment, and look for clues in what’s going on all through the universe now.
The Hermetic magus (Porthos, was it? ) would naturally think in terms of symbolism like that of the Tarot. I find that sort of thing annoying because it’s unnecessarily constricting, but I understand it and I’m not fundamentally threatened by it. Insofar as there’s real spirit behind it, there's something for me to talk to and work with.
The Chorister, now, she’s another matter. Her kind thinks in terms of an absolute sentence, passing from the ground of being (God, or however they care to define it) to every individual thing. There’s no room for discussion when God speaks, and their training makes them ready to obey God and command everything else. I fear the possibility of that sort of absolutism tainting the work now unfolding, because above all judgment must begin with understanding. The Choristers sometimes listen very well indeed, but too often that happens only if they think you’re somehow carrying the word of God. They're too ready for this, really—too eager to shed the world of individual things and merge with their image of the totality.
And the Ecsta
tic? Anyone’s guess. I’ve often thought that the Cult of Ecstasy isn’t so much a tradition or body of lore as it is a bunch of magi who like hanging out together. And I have even less sense of what consummation might mean to someone whose experience of the world is so thoroughly unlike mine. If anything, my recent encounters with reversed spirits leaves me even less confident that I can understand anyone who spends their life traveling back forth in time like Ecstatic masters.
What of me? How do I think of judgment, with or without the capital J? As night thickens—literally, that is, the power of darkness being tangible here in Earth’s shadow—I realize that I’m honestly not very sure. I have always thought of it on the small scale, I guess, as the force of accumulated moral consequence made manifest in the lives of individuals and communities. I don’t think of it as an ending, but as part of the cycle of life, as constantly present as breathing and dreaming. The thought of the same force acting on everything at once scares me, above all else, and confuses me. Judgment is, in my experience, part of preparing for the next generation. If there isn’t any, what can it mean?
I do not at first realize just how thick the darkness is growing, as I continue my introspection.
* * *
World of Darkness - [Time of Judgment 03] - Judgment Day Page 25
