by R. E. Carr
“Well, there is that,” Kei said. They stood in silence for a while.
“May I at least walk you the rest of the way to the temple, my lord?” she finally asked.
Kei now looked up. He glared back at the eyes staring through the canopy. He released Winowa’s hand and put a respectable few paces between them. “Of course,” he said. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he stared at a different section of the foliage.
“My lord?” Winowa asked.
“Do you ever have the feeling that you are being watched?” he asked. He rubbed the back of his hand.
“The guards . . .”
Kei shook his head violently. He motioned toward the temple, and the pair began walking. Only once they were completely out in the open, in the barren ring that surrounded the single largest tree in all Gracow, did Kei dare to speak again.
“I felt like I was watched last night, even when I was sleeping, Winowa. I do not know what happened, but someone—no, something—was there when I awoke,” Kei said quickly. “I can feel it watching me even now, and, as shameful as it is to say, I am frightened.”
“Lord Kei—”
“Everything is wrong,” he hissed. “Please do not ask me to explain it any further, but I can feel eyes everywhere. Perhaps we are being spied upon—”
“Or perhaps it is merely the spirits watching us more closely, Young Zhanfos,” a scratchy voice interjected. “After all, it is the day of the Summoning.”
Both Kei and Winowa turned and immediately bowed deeply to a hunched form covered in bison pelts. The old man cackled, showing off the yellowed remains of his teeth. A younger man in black silk robes steadied the wizened visitor.
“Master Sorakare!” Kei said.
“You are late, boy,” the old man sighed. He sniffed the air. “Thank the Lost God that the first rite you must endure is a ritual bath. Grandson, would you mind attending to the others? I have a feeling that Young Zhanfos is going to be quite the handful today.”
Winowa took a few steps back. “I should go . . .”
Master Sorakare laughed. He poked at Kei with his gnarled staff and gave a wink. “You had better dare not leave without some words to your woman, boy,” the old shaman warned. He then turned to his counterpart in black. “Sotaka, why are you still here?”
The younger shaman nodded to Kei. “I will see you at the ceremony, my friend. Try not to make too much of a mess of things,” Sotaka sighed. He then gave a wink to Winowa. “Do not worry, Win, we will keep him out of as much trouble as we can.”
“Thank you,” she said, keeping her head bowed. “Great Shaman, I know I have no right to ask—”
The old man bopped her bottom with his cane. She bit her tongue and struggled to fight back a reply as her cheeks flushed pink. The old man then clocked Kei again before wandering toward one of the roots.
“You two have until an old man can finish a piss,” he called back to them. “Make it count.”
Kei tugged at his mask so that she could see a bit of his face. She took a timid step forward. Mercifully, the breeze kept them upwind from the shaman. Winowa pushed the hair out of her eyes as she struggled for words.
“Tonight, after the Summoning, I am letting go of this human skin until I can find a way to appease my spirit,” Kei said. “We both know how rarely the spirits listen anymore, but I have to try, Winowa. I have to—”
“Lord Kei, you don’t have to do this. The deep forest is dangerous. You could be killed—”
“I could be killed by an assassin while sleeping in my bed,” he countered. He took her hand. This time she didn’t pull away. “Winowa, my totem is a hunter. I cannot appease it by hiding like a rabbit. It is the only chance we will ever have of—”
“We promised not to talk about what could have been, remember?” she asked. “The laws are clear. As long as you are cursed, then we can’t . . . We can’t be together. But that doesn’t mean that you should throw your life away, Lord Kei.”
“Winowa, I have to do something,” he said slowly. “I know that it is dangerous, and I do not ask that you wait for me. I want you to find happiness—”
“I am happy to be your dear friend, Lord Kei,” she said. She straightened his cowl and brushed off his arm. Her fingertips lingered on his shoulder. “It has always been enough for me to be your friend. Your family took me in. I owe them everything, and ask for nothing more than what I already have.”
Kei leaned closer and whispered, “You are my dear friend, Winowa. Maybe I have driven myself mad with false hope, but tonight, as soon as the Summoning is over, Master Sorakare is cutting my last braid. I will let go this pretense to follow my spirit and pray—”
“You’re terrible at praying,” she interjected as a tear slipped down her cheek. “But I will pray tonight. I will pray to the Lost God—”
She trailed off as she saw the shaman lumbering their way. She stepped back and bowed her head again.
“Tonight is the holiest of nights. I shall pray for the Lost God’s return and for the safety of us all,” she said quickly before turning and running toward the tree line. Kei reached toward her, but remained frozen in place.
“She is right, you know,” Sorakare said.
Kei closed his eyes and dropped his arm. He then gave a sad laugh.
“Master, we prayed yesterday and we will pray tomorrow. Tonight is no different,” Kei spat.
“But it is the Summoning, my boy,” Sorakare said.
“The Summoning has not succeeded in five thousand seasons. Perhaps it keeps failing because we save all our faith for one night and forget ourselves for the rest of them,” he growled. “Perhaps it keeps failing because we rely on dreams and myth, and do not focus on following the path of saving ourselves.”
Sorakare burst into a hearty laugh, right before clocking Kei with his cane again. Kei remained unamused.
“Master! You laugh now, but why have me in some . . . some mockery of a ritual? You know very well what I believe. My father and brother know the truth as well. I am a half-blood mutt who feels that we should spend less time praying and more time building our defenses. The Lost God is exactly what it sounds like—a lost cause!”
“My dear boy, that is precisely why you are here,” the shaman said with a laugh. “Now come. There is work for you to do.”
“Master, are you even listening?”
The old shaman straightened his back and squared his shoulders. While he stood nearly a head shorter than his young companion, his stare made Kei shrink. His hooded, heavy brow furrowed and his dark eyes turned black.
“Boy, you asked to leave the tribe tonight. To appease your leopard spirit and to fight your curse, did you not?” he asked, his voice low and serious.
Kei nodded.
“Then you must do your duty by this tribe tonight,” Sorakare commanded. “You must be a part of the tribe once, so that there is any power in your leaving it. Now, cease your kittenish mewling and let us get you cleaned up!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jenn sighed as she pulled out the empty six-pack jacket left in the fridge. She settled for the remnants of cola in a two-liter and snagged some stale chips from the counter.
The lights flickered as she padded back into the living room. She glanced over her stack of National Geographic magazines and picked up one on the Maya, rather than the Globe splayed on the coffee table. She hadn’t made it past the table of contents when a strange buzz came from the hall. The hairs on Jenn’s neck stood on end. She glanced over at the window and shuddered.
Something shifted in the window as the lights flickered again. “Jesus Christ,” Jenn sighed as she tossed her magazine to the sofa. She took a deep breath before wandering toward the hall. Thunder echoed from over the Charles River.
“Hey, Sara!” she said as she knocked.
Blue light glowed under Sara’s door. The lights flickered again. Jenn pounded on the door and yelled, “Jorgenson
! Mrs. Bukowski will have our heads if we cause another power outage. Sara! Sara?”
The door creaked open, and Jenn’s jaw dropped. Both Will and Sara stared blankly at a trio of monitors balanced on the desk. Open carcasses of at least a dozen computers littered the floor, with cables snaking from circuit board to circuit board.
“Hey, that’s my fan . . . and my Nintendo,” Jenn said as she surveyed the carnage.
“I needed a sixty-four-bit processor, but I can put it back together,” Sara said, remaining focused on the star patterns on the first monitor. “I managed to string together five hundred gigs’ worth of hard drives, but the accessing speed is tanked because of the one-twenty-eight barrier—”
“Sara!” Jenn snapped. “What the hell?”
A whiff of smoke entered Jenn’s lungs. She raised a brow at a little brown rock tucked into a cradle in the middle of all the machines. A tangle of exposed wiring made the nest it rested upon. Jenn’s eyes widened when she saw a spark.
“I decided to take our project home,” Sara confessed. “It’s just an extension of SETI—”
“Sara, there is a rock hooked up to your computer and it’s making sparks,” Jenn said. “This is crazy, even by your special MIT scale.”
Sara pulled out a packet of arcane-looking notes. “I’m pretty sure the rock is just a prank, but, come on—we had to try it,” she said. The lights flickered, faster this time. Sara then turned back to the dazed surfer in the room. “Earth to Will! Did you hook up that UPS?”
“Sara!” Jenn barked as another round of sparks flew.
The girl in underwear and goggles tapped a few keys and the screen changed. She smiled blandly at Jenn.
“It’s the most amazing prank ever,” she said with a little laugh. “We’ve been following the clues and playing with the code all semester, but it was only when Will mentioned sixty-four-bit that I figured out a way to get enough storage—”
Lightning flashed outside. Jenn stared in horror at all the wires.
“Sara!”
“What?” she asked, completely oblivious to the absurdity of her situation.
The screen flickered wildly along with the lights. Sara ran over to Will and started fussing with surge protectors and some black, uninterrupted power supplies. Jenn, on the other hand, noticed a packet of papers in range of the sparking rock. Another puff of smoke came from middle of the mess.
“What the hell is it doing? Crashing?” Sara asked.
“Jorgenson, I think we should shut it down—” Will said as the thunder roared again, this time so close that the walls shook.
“Damn it!” Jenn snapped as she leaped into action. She just managed to snag the rogue papers when a strange, cloudlike symbol in a box flashed on screen. Jenn stopped a little too long to stare at the ancient writing mixed in with constellations.
Organic life-form detected, the screen read.
“Sara . . . ,” Jenn said slowly. Lightning crashed outside and Jenn stumbled, her hand just brushing against the stone.
Initiating download, Jenn read. Light filled the room, and then everything went black.
“Is this death?”
“Am I gone?”
“Is there nothing more? Is this the end?”
“Is that what you want, human?”
“Who are you?”
“I am something beyond your wildest imagination.”
“Are you . . . God?”
“That depends on your point of view.”
“Where am I?”
“Between.”
“Between what?”
“Between here and there.”
The darkness pulled away from Jenn MacDonald. She could barely see a light, a flashing cloud drifting in front of her. The other voice pulsed in time with that light.
“You are weak, human, but you are not lost yet.”
“What happened?”
The light surrounded her. She could see the faint outline of her hand, as if she was a half-drawn character in a comic book.
“Your original body was destroyed, human, but your consciousness was transferred here. Into the between space. Into my realm.”
“I was . . . destroyed?”
“Utterly. Only a genetic template remains.”
“The rock?”
“A conduit to the other side. However, it works both ways.”
A surge of life pulsed through Jenn. She reached for the light.
“Send me back!”
“The original conduit overloaded.”
Jenn stared at her hand. It flickered once before the light swirled around her.
“Do not fade from me, human consciousness. There is still a chance.”
“What?” Jenn thought weakly.
“Just like you, I have been taken from my home. I cannot return to the people who need me.”
“You’re human?”
“No. Their god.”
Kei sank beneath the sacred waters of the Life Spring. The warm, frothing liquid lifted the stains from his ashen skin. Sacred herbs flowed into the water and into his blood. The face of his old master, the shaman Sorakare, drifted farther and farther away from his limp form.
“Open your mind, boy,” the shaman commanded. “Hear the whispers of the spirits.”
Static filled Kei’s ears as he sunk under the surface.
“You just said—?”
“Not a god to you. I have never been a god on Earth.”
“There’s another place?”
“There are many places, if you listen.”
“I don’t understand. Am I dead? What’s happening to me? Is this all that is going to happen to me? Will I just fade away?” Jenn asked. Her voice echoed all around the darkness.
“Your pattern will degrade if you are not reconstituted soon.”
“Reconstituted?”
“I have the power to give you a new body, human consciousness.”
“Hey, I’ve got a name, other-place god.”
“What is it?”
“Jenn. It’s Jenn.”
“I need your assistance, Jenn.”
Kei continued to descend. The static hissed in his ears. “Ji-ann.”
“So, what do you want?”
“I cannot descend into fully corporeal form, but I can place a part of my being into someone else. I need a young soul, a malleable one, to go into the physical world and break the seals that bind me. I want you to be my instrument, Jenn.”
“But . . . What will happen to me?”
“You will assimilate a part of me, a mere fragment. With that fragment we will be able to communicate via any active conduits left in the universe. You will fulfill my quest so that I may return to my people, and then you will be released from my service.”
“Where will I be?”
“The land was called Planet 846-Hykeria when last I made contact with it. The details will only be known to those who exist there currently.”
“I’ll be on another planet?”
“You will be alive.”
“But—”
“Once you finish my quest, I will transport you back to your planet of origin.”
Jenn shivered. “I don’t want to die.”
“Then join with me, human consciousness, and your questions will be answered.”
Where once there had been darkness, now there was light. She looked down and saw crackling energy roughly in the shape of her human form. The energy coursed into a vaguely human pattern—a bubble of force straining under an electron shell.
“I transformed you into a functioning packet of data, Jenn.”
The creature’s voice now boomed from every direction. Its metallic twang sounded nothing like any voice on earth.
&nb
sp; “I guess I feel more solid,” she replied.
“I have combined your consciousness with your genetic information file and a containment subroutine of my own design. You should be stable enough to survive the next leg of your journey.”
“Who are you? What am I supposed to call you?”
“I was once known as Rheak. You may call me that.”
“What the hell just happened to me, Rheak?”
“You are in the remains of the oldest transport system in the universe. It existed even before I first became aware. Once physical forms were broken down, a genetic code and consciousness could be transported great distances over a network of energy transmission. A new body was then created at the destination and the soul was . . . downloaded, if you will, into its new host. Although dangerous, it was the only way to get rapidly from one habitable system to another. Unfortunately, when the Others attacked the Ancients, the system collapsed and planets were isolated. Creatures such as myself, defenders, were locked out of our homelands and left to decay in this prison. We cannot access the conduits and put them back online. We cannot even communicate with the people who look to us as their gods.”
“What you’re saying is impossible! People can’t just—”
“If you don’t believe me, then I can jettison you to the void,” Rheak said.
Her form shuddered uncontrollably. “No—No, I never ever want to feel that again.”
“By my calculations, you have a twenty-five percent chance of surviving reconstitution if timed appropriately. Failure means an instant and painless death.”
“Twenty-five percent? You’ve got to be fu—”
“Your chance of survival while drifting is zero percent, Jenn.”
“I just want to wake up. I want to wake up from this nightmare,” she muttered.
“Time is running short. I need to finish your retrovirus program before our window of opportunity passes.”
“Retro . . . what?”
“The only way you can survive and succeed in your mission is to have your physical and mental capabilities enhanced to live on a non-home planet. All modifications must be made post-reconstitution, so I must insert a code for a retrovirus to alter your DNA after you have reformed. The mind will not settle in an altered brain.”
