I look at her and see her compassion thrusting with the weight of a tsunami, ready to crush all in its path.
"It's too much, Solfeje. To end the world for your suffering? You can't make this choice for everyone."
She takes a step toward me. "I'm the only one who can. The aether will be kinder. Who else can offer that?"
I shake my head. I see new things now, the patterns in the flow of bonds all building toward something so beautiful. I tampered with those flows at the smallest scale, and still I poisoned them all. "You'll undo everything we've learned. With every loss, every love, every drop of suffering and slice of joy the aether's been learning, Solfeje. It's grown rich and vibrant, and I know you see this too. Our past pains as well as our joys inform every new Soul that is born. How could it be any other way? We're getting better, Solfeje. The aether is learning through us. Have faith in that."
Her sad smile fades. "Three thousand years ago there were massacres, Me. Today there are massacres. The only difference is scale. The aether is broken and a revolution is needed. We come from a world where all of us are victims, of each other, of circumstance, of those that came before and those that come after us. We are all prey in our time, even King Ruin. Nobody dies happy in their bed, satisfied with their life. For us all life is cruel and brutal and solitary, and I won't accept it any more, Me. Now take your shot. Anything you do, I will undo. I know you see that. Look at my army. You've come here as a token, so make your token gesture."
I look at her and see a lifetime of loneliness even deeper than Mr. Ruin's, with no single moment of respite. There was no sense of belonging for her; no Ven, no Heclan, no Loralena or Carrolla. She had only herself and the King. There was never anything worth living for but Solmiz, whose ground-down corpse she has carried with her ever since his death, a constant reminder of what she could never have.
Her life has been cruel, and I don't know how to argue with her. I don't know if I can even understand what she's lost. I have lost Doe and Ray and Far and the others, but I had them for so long. We were together for years. But if I'd never had them at all?
The abyss that would open is terrifying; to be so completely alone in a world. Perhaps I'd be just like her.
But I'm not like her. The aether admitted us both to this place, and maybe we will be twin pillars of the same world, if I can just find a way to build that final arching bridge between us.
"Look wider, Solfeje," I say. "Look at so many others who've lived well, who've loved, who've found belonging and added happiness to the world. You can't judge all of them. The wonders they brought have buoyed us all."
"It's not enough."
"It has to be! The world can also be kind, Solfeje. Don't let your anger blind you to the truth."
Her eyes blaze with passion. "And am I angry, Me? Do you see anger in me?"
I did. As a boy it was all she knew, but not now. Now I just see this perversion of love, this drive to protect us all by filing off every sharp edge and taking away any hurt so we can start over anew.
"It isn't anger," I say, "it's surrender. How will you remake us, like seaweed growing in sludge with enough sunlight for all? There will be no struggle, no growth, no betterment. How can that be better? Suffering is the road we have to walk."
"Massacres, Me. Cruelty. Seaweed would be better."
I look into her eyes and see they are set as though carved out of stone. She has become her pillar as I have become mine, built on a lifetime of choices and leading to this moment. I don't see any place where an arch could join us together, and I don't know how to defeat her.
"You can't, because you lack imagination," she says, smoothly reading my thoughts. "I said it then and I'll say it again. You speak of grand notions, of the glacial love of the far-off aether growing warmer, but it's yourself you're fighting for, the ties binding you alone. I only need say their names and you'll fall to your knees begging me to spare them. Ven, Art, Yena, Ray, and so on." She points her finger at me. "I watched how you spent your second chance, Me. You're here for the ones who loved you and you alone. You're not fighting for grand ideals but for the tiny corner of comfort you've carved out for yourself. What does that mean to me or anyone? It's nothing. It's selfishness wrapped up in a self-righteous flag, and that's all."
I can only nod along now, because she's right. A self-righteous flag. My own tiny corner of comfort. It's why I'm here, because I am selfish and I am fighting for myself. This is what I saw in my past. I saved Ven and the crew by destroying the hydrate mine, killing hundreds of others to save her and change the course of history, but by what right did I do it, and for whose benefit?
I did it for myself.
That realization hollows me out afresh. I must be more than just this rush to get enough love for myself, but what more am I? What about selflessness and sacrifice? What about real love given for nothing? What about the homeless man who shared his liquor with me on the Skulk, and showed me his family in the tent, and helped me find a way forward?
I have to be more, so I make the choice to become more. I am on the verge of godhood now, after all, and so I must act and think like a god. This is about the Souls of us all, and her words echo in my mind.
YOU LACK IMAGINATION.
It too is my fault. I can't let it be my fault any more.
"It's a mercy I'm bringing," Solfeje says, "the greatest mercy."
But she's wrong, and it falls to me to show her why. With what little strength I have left, I take my shot.
The aether bends. I plunge backward through space and time, through the heart of the Hollow Star all furious and burning and back to the world we've left behind and into the Soul of Solfeje as a helpless child.
Before she was the brood-King, before she became the bloody boy and back to the time when the researchers of her experimental Court were drilling into her again and again, searching for the bridge. She couldn't hide the way I once had, she had no Far to screen her, she could only scream out soundlessly for someone to help, but no help ever came.
So I come.
I do not save her because I can't try to undo the past again. I do not change her life or the path she must take, I merely stand within her while all the worst transgressions are done, and hold her battered Soul with my own and whisper simple words into her Solid Core:
not this
I say it as Far once said it for me.
not this
not only this
It does nothing for her. It does everything. She is no longer alone. She has a witness, though she can't understand how or from where. There is someone with her and within her, some being that loves her and tells her she deserves better and this is not how her life should be.
It changes her. I feel the fabric of her mind shifting the longer I stay, so I stay through it all. With me there watching she has someone to endure for and something to fight towards; she is no longer a victim, instead she becomes a survivor.
I am there as she kills the children in the Court, and I am there as she teaches her lessons in the King's school. I am there through every atrocity she commits all the way up to now, standing across the Hollow Star from me and staring back.
Tears well in her eyes.
"No," she says.
She sees what I've done. She feels it, she's lived it and now she is changed. This will be my sacrifice, giving all I have to help heal the wound in her Soul. I cross the nothing space of the Court and put my hands on her arms and look into her eyes.
"You were never alone," I say. "You were never unloved. I was always there."
"No!" she shouts now, and a torrent of power hurtles from her to flood across the aether with the stolen life of so many Souls.
"I'm here," I whisper to her through the maelstrom, understanding that this was always what I had to do. "I was always here. I love you, Solfeje, as I love my chord. We can make this better, sister. We can share this with others, daughter. We can hold them all close, mother mine."
She stares at me and tears roll do
wn her cheeks. Even gods cry. She screams. She vanishes.
T. PILLARS
I feel the first stab of her tsunami like a syringe in the head, but it is not what I thought it would be; not erasure but something different, something building up from the past and growing through my mind like a new memory, becoming part of what I am.
In flickers of new memory I see myself as a boy again, an infant in my EMR tray. My researcher parents are jacking into me once more for their endless experimentation, and all seven parts of my Soul are hiding behind Far's scar tissue wall, begging for it to end.
And she is there. Solfeje stands within me with her hand on my heart just as I did for her, whispering into my Soul.
I'm here
It doesn't take away the pain or the hurt, it doesn't change my parents or my past, but it changes me. I too become a survivor, not a victim. I am witnessed through this, and no longer so hopeless and alone.
The memory blooms deeper and now I'm lying in the blue-tarp park screaming, after Mr. Ruin has taken my children and wife from me, while he rapes and tortures them and I lie here helpless and trapped, and she is there in my Soul still, whispering in my mind.
I'm here
I sob to hear her voice, because even here in this worst moment of my life I am no longer alone. I feel myself changing, the bitterness lightening, the old angers spreading as the hurt is shared.
I'm here
I burst into tears too because I see now the pure beauty of what she is doing and has done, this bloody boy, this greatest of Soul jackers, this ruthless brood-King.
She has given this gift to everyone. Every single Soul from past to present and into the future, using the strength that she stole and now returns back like a gift. She has become the god in the heart of every person that ever lived, keeping them and holding them, being there for them forever.
We will never be alone again.
I drop to my knees, overcome with the vastness of it. She has taken the worst of all suffering on her shoulders to help them bear it. I love her for it. If I could I would pray in her name.
It makes me stronger; strong enough to do one more thing, one final act that will change us all going forward, that will add to the aether's endless calculation and truly make us two opposing pillars of this brave new world.
A final time, I open the bridge.
The inner ways of the aether have been a secret for too long, from too many, but the aether is the heart of us all. With Solfeje in my Soul I'm going to share it with them all.
I stretch myself across the aether, becoming so thin I can't stretch any further, until at some point Far joins me across the Disjunct veil of death and lends his mass to the vast skin I'm building. Ray and So join us too, and La and Ti, until finally Doe comes back from whatever far-off place she has been, and together we link arms around the aether.
We grow to dizzying depths across thought and reality, skimming the surface of life and death, encompassing all of history to offer up my own version of the bloody boy's flood.
It is not for the past, but the future. Solfeje has changed everything we ever did, raising us from prey to something new, raising even the lowliest Soul who was humiliated, tortured and murdered in a Court of King Ruin to something better, raising even the son of Don Zachary who died a meaningless death at Mr. Ruin's hands, making our survival conscious and known and returning our lost dignity.
Now I'm going to take that further still.
I stretch so far that I can scarcely remember what I'm doing, until I only see starlight and the Hollow Star and an endless stream of Chthonic Rocks shooting back and forth from countless firework Disjuncts, carrying Souls of the dead home to their source, carrying new Souls out to be born. I stretch until I become simply a mission, just a burning light in the darkness bringing this gift to us all.
It is the most beautiful thing I have ever conceived.
I stretch until the gossamer sheen of my consciousness bursts and I fall like rain across the aether, working changes that will carry all of us forward. I fall like rain over my wife and my children, on tyrants and madmen alike, on ex-marines and whores, on the loved and the lost and the brood and their prey, changing them all.
I give them the bonds. I give them the bridge. I give to all of them the aether, but what I give them more than anything is each other. They will always have a witness in their Souls, thanks to Solfeje. They will always have each other there too, thanks to me. We are two pillars of this new world, and in this new world no Soul will ever be alone or misunderstood again.
King Ruin believed hell was the needs of other people; now we have shared those needs with everyone, and I believe they will make of that connection something far better, stronger and more beautiful than he envisaged. It is a trial, perhaps, another step in the endless calculations as the aetheric Soul works itself to something bigger, bolder and greater.
Then I am falling and fading, a dying god at his limit, until in the last flickering moments as my consciousness ebbs I see all my beloveds again.
"Come," says Doe, and pulls me in. Ray beams at me with his arms spread wide, tooth-loops glinting, and Ti and La are holding hands, and So is waiting with a smile on her sweet, shy face, with Far in the midst of them grinning like I have never seen before. We are all together again, and we take hands and rejoin as a single whole, Ritry Goligh once more, passing together into the purple light of the Hollow Star at the heart of the aether and beyond…
CODA
Mem woke early, with the trails of a strange dream in her mind.
It was of her father, whom she hadn't seen for so long. Ritry Goligh was missing and nobody knew where he had gone. Mem remembered him as the man who used to tuck her in bed and tell her stories until she fell asleep, who danced with her atop the Candyland rollercoaster; the man who taught her how best to tease her little brother by putting fake spiders in his breakfast cereal, who used to swing her around by the arms like an airplane.
But in the dream he was so much more. In the dream he stood with a team of marines all dressed in black atop a subglacic on a burning lake of lava. They all had names like the tones of a chord; Doe and Ray, Me and Far, So and La and Ti, and they were looking up out of the dream toward her.
Waking from the dream, Mem felt as if she knew them.
She walked from her bedroom to find her mother and her brother standing bleary-eyed in the corridor, and at once understood that they had shared the same dream. The weight of that understanding stretched between them like lines sketched in invisible ink through the air.
And not only here. Mem gasped as she felt these new lines spreading everywhere; outward through the glass of their Calico Reach apartment and spreading for a thousand miles in every direction, linking to every Soul in existence.
I'm here
A new voice sounded within her, which she realized had always been there, holding her and buoying her, telling her she was loved. It meant everyone was loved.
I'm here
Mem's eyes welled with tears. Her mother's and brother's eyes filled with tears. It was nothing new. It had been like this all her life but somehow now it felt different. There was a new kind of hope, and an urgency to that hope that she didn't fully understand.
Things were going to be better. It felt like waking from a long nightmare she didn't even know she'd been having; of a cruel man who beat them and lied and wore her father's face, who did the same cruel things again and again, but now all that was finally over.
The sun peeked out through the gray clouds over the tsunami wall. The rain stopped and somewhere behind them a node began to ring. Mem looked at her mother, whose eyes brimmed with tears. She knew. They all knew, now.
Finally.
"Answer it," Loralena said, "it's for you."
Art ran. Mem followed.
EXTRAS
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael John Grist is a British/American writer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years and now lives in London, England. He writes science fiction and fantasy as Michael John Grist and real-world thrillers as Mike Grist.
In his Japan days he explored and photographed abandoned places in Japan, such as ruined theme parks, military bases and underground bunkers (see pictures on michaeljohngrist.com). These explorations provide ample inspiration for his fiction.
Christopher Wren (thrillers – as Mike Grist)
1. Saint Justice
2. Monsters
3. Reparation
Last Mayor (post-apocalypse)
1. The Last (available in audio)
2. The Lost
3. The Least
Soul Jacker Box Set Page 57
