The Cor Chronicles: Volume 04 - Gods and Steel

by Martin V. Parece II

  I knew I was in one of their Vaults, Garod’s probably due to his need to appear so grand, and as before I was keenly aware that this was only part of my consciousness. As I stood there, I considered my appearance versus theirs, and I decided to do some digging into the computers as to why I appeared as I did. Though I really don’t understand how the whole system works, it seemed to make sense to me that it was some sort of mental image. I wondered if I could learn to change it, to appear any way I wished.

  “Do you know why you have been brought here?” Garod’s voice boomed and echoed.

  “Do I know? No, but I can assume.”

  “Assume nothing,” he said sharply. “I will tell you why you have been brought here. You have stepped beyond your bounds, beyond your purpose, and We will have none of it. Cease your endeavors, and be only the Chronicler.”

  “No,” I replied calmly.

  “No?! You dare not speak to me so!” Garod boomed, and I covered my ears to shield them, though it did not help. “I rule here! You will do as I command!”

  “You may rule here in your Vault. You may even control some of what happens on this world,” I said, “but even you cannot control free will. You don’t command me. You don’t even command the people of this world.”

  “We created you, and We can destroy you,” Garod said quietly, dangerously, but I sensed uneasiness about his cohorts.

  “You may be gods here, but you are not omnipotent,” I said. “I’ve seen you do amazing things, but even still you are limited. But none of that is the point.”

  “What is the point?” Dahk bubbled.

  “The point is that what happened here is wrong. We don’t have the right to do these things to people, to control their lives, to experiment on them. You all know this. It’s wrong.”

  “Who are you to tell me what’s right and wrong?” Garod asked, leaning forward in his throne.

  “You won’t deny it because you know I’m right. You all know I’m right. That’s why you stopped being a party to Zheng’s plans,” I replied. Sensing a pause at the mention of the admiral’s name, I pressed my advantage, “I understand it was innocent enough science at first. Zheng gave you the chance to see something no one had seen before, and you wanted to be the scientists who solved the puzzle. You were too involved, got too deep. You realized where it was going and that it went too far. You refused to work for Zheng anymore.”

  “We no longer needed Zheng,” Garod rebuffed, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. “We are Gods. Zheng meant nothing anymore.”

  “You’re wrong,” I argued, and I could feel the wrath in Garod’s stare. Even still, I could still sense mixed emotions from the other gods. “You couldn’t undo it if you wanted to, because it’s this place, the physics of this system. You didn’t want Zheng imposing his will on your people. Maybe you cared for them, maybe you sensed the chance to be free of him, or maybe you knew it was wrong. Regardless, here we are.”

  “Why must you do this?” Garod asked, and that’s when I knew I had him.

  Looking directly at Dahk, I answered, “Because it’s the right thing to do. Zheng and his people must pay for their crimes, just as you have paid your penance.”

  “This is not the purpose for which you were created,” growled the bear in the darkness. “You should not do this.”

  “I’m going to, and you can’t stop me,” I replied defiantly. “Dare I use this analogy; God could not stop Satan from convincing Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Perhaps a better perspective would be that of Prometheus – he brought fire to mankind despite the will of Zeus and the other jealous gods.”

  “And Prometheus paid dearly,” Garod said, standing from his throne. He was suddenly on a raised marble dais. “Abandon this path and be the Chronicler, Paul Chen, or I promise that you will pay as dearly as Prometheus did in myth. I will cast you into the Pit as God did Satan.”

  “You’ll do what you must, but here you’ve chosen to reign in Hell rather than serve in Heaven,” I quoted.

  As I looked at the throng of “gods” arrayed before me, something suddenly dawned on me. It was like a lightning strike, and I closed my eyes, lowering my head for just a moment. When I lifted it again, the gods were gone, replaced by men and women. There was no circle of light, just a lit room without limits that I could see. There was no bear in the dark, but a huge Scandinavian. There was no throne, no puddle of blood and no flame.

  “Oh my God, I just figured it out,” I said.

  “What’s that?” asked Doc.

  “You can’t stop me, can you? You made me the Chronicler and integrated me into the system here, but you can’t control anything I do or don’t do. Can you, Jared?” I watched Garod’s, Jared’s, stalwartness wane, and I turned my gaze on Dahk, or rather Doc. “Can you, Doc?”

  “That’s true,” he confirmed. “It’s a failsafe we incorporated into the system.”

  “Goddammit, Doc!” shouted Garod, no – Jared Lance. “What the fuck would you tell him that for?! He had no fucking clue!”

  “He knew,” Doc replied evenly. “He’d reasoned it out. If we wanted to stop him, we just would have. Paul, you’re an extremely bright man, and I’m afraid we underestimated both your intelligence and your sense of morality. But you’re right – it’s the right thing to do.”

  I nodded once and turned to walk away. Behind me I heard Jared Lance shouting. He shouted my name, shouted at Doc and shouted profanities like an insane person. In my mind’s eye, I imagined him foaming at the mouth and going into convulsions as he screamed swearwords at the top of his lungs. No words from his fellows would calm him, and we were all suddenly flung from Garod’s Vault.

  24.

  There are other worlds besides this world, the world that we know as Rumedia. In fact when one looks into the night sky, one sees countless stars, and each one of these stars is in fact a sun not unlike our own. They vary in size and color, and as hard as it may be to believe, most of these have their own worlds. It is on one of these worlds – a world called Earth around a star named Sol – with which this Chronicle will begin.

  Earth was once a paradise much like Rumedia, lush with vast oceans and boasted a great civilization. The peoples of this world founded empires, built and grew them and warred with one another. Over millennia, their empires grew to cover all of the land and water of Earth as thousands of millions of people lived within them. They created wonderful inventions, well beyond that of swords and sails, and in the richest nations, even the poorest lived in luxury.

  However, the people of Earth had a problem, and many of them did not even realize it. The problem stemmed from the simple desire or need of different nations and people to control a limited amount of space, water, ore, minerals and other basic resources. These competing needs fed into the hatred caused by differing ideologies and religions. It was only a matter of time before these hatreds threatened all of the people of Earth. There were a few who knew what would one day come, when the ability to build and move their great and terrible machines would end, and the peoples of Earth would have no choice but to destroy their enemies and likely themselves.

  A man by the name of Curtis Stillwell knew this would one day come, and he resolved himself to the fact that his children would not live in such a world. He knew that one day soon, there would be nothing left, that Earth would become an empty husk of a world with a dying people fighting and killing each other to the end over nothing. Using great riches, he discovered a technology that would allow the people of Earth to travel the immense distances between the stars, to find new worlds on which they could live.

  The nations of Earth knew of his discovery, and he needed their help even with his great wealth. Stillwell lived in a country known as the United States, and it was to the United States that he owed his allegiance. Several of the United States’ closest allies – nations with names such as China, Japan and Korea to name a few – came together and after much discussion agreed to terms by which they would lead their peoples from Eart
h. They came to be collectively known as SACA or the Sino American Colonization Authority.

  SACA built steel vessels and launched them into the stars to find these new worlds on which they could live, while jealously guarding the secrets of their ships from their enemies. They found many worlds amongst the stars, only some of which could be used, but some was enough. They began to build great, wonderful ships that could carry thousands of people at once, and they sent these ships amongst the stars to these new worlds. The people built new homes, new cities and started new lives, knowing that they must live in such a way as to not overuse their new world.

  However, the other nations of Earth grew angry, and they accused SACA of leaving their peoples behind to die. The anger and hatred grew as more and more people fled Earth, and eventually, SACA’s enemies started the largest war ever seen. Millions died in flashes of light that obliterated whole cities, and plagues were unleashed that spread across the lands to kill yet more millions. SACA evacuated their nations as quickly as they could muster, eventually having no choice but to leave many behind. As they fled to the stars, they vowed to never again have any contact with Earth.

  They built cities on a number of worlds, and one of these was near a sun called Arcturus. This world was much like Earth as it once was with vast oceans and three large masses of land. Within only a few years, hundreds of thousands of people came to live on Arcturus, and as on the other worlds, they found ways to live in harmony with the world’s ability to provide so as not to extinguish its ability to support them.

  I cannot easily explain why, but time passes differently for those who traveled between worlds than for those living on the worlds themselves. If a thousand people left Earth, anyone they knew back home was long dead by the time they reached Arcturus or any of the other new worlds. However, the same was true for someone who left Arcturus and returned. To that person, perhaps only six months had past where a century or more had passed to those on Arcturus.

  As these relative centuries passed, generations died. Of course new ones were born, and it was in these new generations that abilities began to appear and develop. These abilities could only be described as magic, powers that allowed their wielders to do incredible things, but they were uncontrolled and dangerous. A small child, angry at her parents’ refusal of something, could suddenly burn down her house without warning. There were those who began to study these powers, but they could find little explanation.

  Then came a man named Zheng Huojin. For lack of a better word, I shall describe him as a lord of SACA, and many ship’s captains owed him their allegiance. He viewed the people’s powers a threat to both he and SACA, and he refused to allow it to go any further. He was powerful, nearly a god in his own right, and he beset a plague among the people of Arcturus that would virtually wipe them all out in mere years. He then commanded that no one ever visit Arcturus again and erased all knowledge of the world from his people’s memory.

  However, war again ignited on Earth, and this time it reached out across the stars to the other worlds as SACA’s enemies had unlocked the secrets of the great ships. Zheng saw an opportunity to strike his foes with something they could not expect, for the powers found on Arcturus had never been seen on Earth or the other worlds. He thought that they could be fostered and bent to his will. Zheng returned to Arcturus, finding that few had survived his plague, and those that remained were without civilization. He murdered the people he found and then seeded the world with several thousand of his own people. He traveled the stars for a time and returned when several hundred years had passed to find that the magic had returned.

  Zheng selected men and women to discover the source of this power and learn to control it, but he did not inform them as to his purpose. These people, scholars and people of learning shall we say, found the matter fascinating, and they did not question Zheng’s motives. He provided them with all manners of wealth necessary to unlock the secrets of these powers, and it came to be. Urso, the bear god of the Northmen, was the first to truly understand why the people of this world had powers. Dahk learned how the abilities could be passed down from parents to children through their blood. After a time, they learned that they could alter themselves using what they learned, to give themselves power beyond that of the people of Arcturus. However to do so, they traded their freedom, forever imprisoning themselves within Vaults.

  It wasn’t until after they used their new found knowledge to make themselves almost all powerful that they realized that Zheng Huojin had his own plans, plans to somehow use these powers to strengthen his hold on SACA. When they refused to listen to him any further, he set fire to the cities and people of Arcturus, and he would have done the same to the new gods as well if he could have reached them. They were so new to their abilities that they could not stop Zheng, but they vowed that it would not happen again. Zheng left, having decided to find new gods for the people of Arcturus, gods that would bend to his will.

  Zheng’s fire from the sky obliterated the cities, but he did not murder all of the people on Arcturus. These people that survived were strong in their powers, and after a few generations, they had forgotten the ways of travel between the stars, reverting to simpler times and methods of survival. The gods thought this good, for they wanted never again to see Zheng or his people, and eventually they used their powers to divide the remaining people into distinct groups, placing them in separate lands across Arcturus, now called Rumedia by some. They manipulated the abilities passed through the blood of their peoples to give them specific powers as suited their wills and desires.

  The gods chose one person from all of the peoples of Rumedia to record the history of everything that happened. They gave this man, whose name is lost in antiquity, the knowledge he needed to find the gods in their abode. He discovered their Vaults, and they revealed themselves to him. He then became one with their construct, the edifice in which they reside, and here he found all the power necessary to see, hear and even experience everything that occurred in Rumedia. He had limitless power to record these happenings and reach out to certain persons, scholars who would write these events in his name so they could be one day shared with all.

  I am not he. The Chronicler lives for ages, centuries at least, but he is not immortal. As such, I am not the first Chronicler, but a replacement of a replacement. I do not know how many there have been, for there are no Chronicles of the Chronicler. I know only that there have been both few and many, depending on your point of view.

  For a thousand years, the people of Rumedia lived and grew, and the name Arcturus faded completely from memory, even the gods’. Tribes came together and formed villages, and villages grew into towns and cities. The gods made their presence known, and the people of Rumedia worshipped them for the magic that was instilled within them. Never did the people, Westerners, Northmen, Tigoleans, any of them, suspect that they would have such magic with or without the gods. The gods only gave it specific form, structure as an architect lays out a floor plan.

  Then came the Loszians, or the Others as the gods know them. The gods hated and still hate the Others, for the Others remind them of Zheng and their task that once was. The Others owed their full loyalty to Zheng, and they used the knowledge that Zheng reaped from the gods to turn themselves into gods as well. The meteor that brought them was in fact a vessel, forced to crash to Rumedia to spread the plague that would create their own race, but even they failed Zheng. The Others were cold and calculated, completely without humanity or morality, and their new people inherited the same traits. The Loszians marauded across the West for another thousand years, raping what they would from the people and the land.

  Zheng Huojin misunderstood the basic nature of people. If you give a mortal man, or woman, ultimate power and immortality, they no longer care what you want of them. They become lost in that power forever, especially with the passage of a millennium. When Zheng returned to find his plans had failed yet again, he ended SACA’s contact with Rumedia forever – that is, until I disc
overed it by pure chance.

  Yes, I discovered Rumedia, for I was once the master of one of the great ships that crossed the distance between stars. I once owed my allegiance to SACA, and Zheng Huojin was my superior as well. But I have grown beyond the need for him and his commands. The gods selected me to be the Chronicler, as my people removed the Chronicler before me, and it is I, a man named Paul Chen, that brings you this Chronicle. I do it because all men and all women, everyone, has the basic right of knowing where they came from and why things are the way they are. You have the right to know that the history of your entire world has been manipulated from the start, controlled by those who would seek to control your freedom and your powers. I could not stand by and watch this happen, for it is an affront to my sensibilities and God – the supreme being of whose existence, in His infinite wisdom, I have been denied empirical proof.

  * * *

  Ja’Na, the white haired scholar, wasn’t prepared for the hand of the Chronicler to take hold of him this time as it had many times in his life. Usually, he knew when the Chronicler had a story to convey to him, as he would feel an odd tingling warm sensation in the back of his skull. It was as if warm water were being poured down the back of his head while his hair stood straight up on end. The Chronicler was immortal, patient, so he would routinely wait until Ja’Na was ready to receive whatever new Chronicle awaited. The aged scholar would generally make certain that he had adequate supplies of parchment or papyrus scrolls and ink, making a trip to the nearby town if necessary.

  This time was not the case. Ja’Na was outside, staring off over the sea’s rolling waves when he was supposed to be tending his vegetable garden. He had grown bored of weeding, had grown tired of the hard ground under his wrinkled hands and bony knees, and instead chose to just enjoy a beautiful spring day. As he lazed, he felt the Chronicler take hold without warning, and words burned his brain like hot candle wax. He couldn’t even hold off the urge so long as to make it inside, for he was sure that he had adequate writing materials inside. He produced a charcoal pencil and began to scratch hurriedly at the side of his tower. He started writing at eye level while standing erect, and he made his way downward until he had to kneel. He then stood and continued.