Worthy of forging the chain, sealing the links of every life back to his distant, distant past, and proving that he deserved this destiny.
Deserved to be here, at the end of things.
The serpent-shape wound its way around the shimmering trunk, slithered patiently across and under golden branches and around glittering leaves. It shed scales or bark in its wake, loosing a storm of kaleidoscopic petals.
The twins were ahead and below, gorging on cosmic wisdom, filling their young bellies with the truth of the universe; and Raiden had a momentary stab of jealousy. For them, and these others — his compatriots on this quest who couldn’t wait for him. They were in the throes of godhood, already ahead of him on their path.
But he was their leader, and while the others had meditated and studied and honed their minds to this coming ordeal, he knew they could weather the onslaught of this ‘gift’ the serpent offered.
Adam partook of it and learned the hard truth of the world: that it wasn’t all rainbows and waterfalls and a lovely naked mate. There was more to the world, so much more than we humans thought we knew and understood. There was a world behind the world, quarks beneath the atoms, beauty behind the travesty.
The serpent, the vine greater than all the rest, with eyes of crimson and slavering jaws, completed its path, and as it lunged for him he thought about Caleb — who had his own part to play and was about to have his mind blown completely open.
Raiden yawned wide and breathed in the truth.
39
He saw Raiden’s astral body jerk with the impact. It spun and thrashed as if in the throes of electrocution, and Caleb’s first impulse was to reach out and pull him free of the offending vine. He saw now, clearly. The tree as a menacing Lovecraftian deity, absorbing its followers and annihilating them with callous disdain.
But it wasn’t that.
The vine — another offshoot of the serpent — coming toward him, hovering now just a foot away…
It had no motives, nothing but mindless fulfillment of its timeless purpose. Whatever it was: primordial sentience incarnate or data repository in some Matrix Overmind, its function was that of curator, teacher…
Library…
And Caleb, he was ever the student.
Despite the feeling — no, the certainty — that the others here were locked in a fight for their very souls and were likely never to return with any semblance to their true selves, he turned toward the serpent. Bowed his head, opened his mouth wide, and prepared to accept what he had spent his whole life searching for.
He always thought that maybe upon death, all the answers would come in the afterlife, if such a thing existed.
Now, this was a shortcut.
But only if you can come back, big brother. Only if you can come back.
He heard it and wasn’t sure if the voice was his sister’s or if it came from his own mind — the last remnants of it before the onslaught of eternity ripped his self and his paltry life experiences and knowledge to shreds.
He accepted the fruit.
And bit deep.
Orlando could see the twins. Right there, in his grasp almost, but for the golden cords encircling them, but for the onslaught of information cascading through his being.
He didn’t know whether it was the proximity to his children and his role as father to protect them at all costs, or if it had something to do with leftover vestiges of being a Custodian, but despite the flood of infinite-everything, he felt oddly detached. Unaffected.
There were glimpses of star systems distant and indescribable; worlds upon worlds full of races and lifeforms and complex thought-beings, such varied forms of intelligent life; some immense, and others microscopic, occupying their own universes so tiny they could fit in the merest cell of a granule under a blade of grass.
All these visions beckoned to him, demanded his attention, his awe and his wonder. And more… glimpses now of other rifts breaking through the space-time, shredding the backdrop of stars, planets and galaxies and nebulae. Dismantling the scene as if it were just a cardboard backdrop, and then tempting to reveal the truth of what lay beyond.
Orlando knew he had a glimpse of that already; he had peeked behind the proverbial curtain — and didn’t like, or fully understand, what he saw.
He shook it off. Ultimately, right here and right now, it doesn’t freaking matter.
He could compartmentalize the knowledge transfer, push it to one side, and focus. On what did really matter:
The two little beings right before him.
And one other soul outside this reality. Phoebe.
As if on cue, he heard it again…
Orlando…
Bring them home.
It was sweet, the voice. It was gentle and powerful, and just as alluring as the stream of visions and truth flooding into his soul.
And yet, it couldn’t be quenched or ignored. Especially not after the next words filtering through the billions and billions of bytes of data, overpowered everything else.
We haven’t had our life together, not even close. Come. Back. To. Me.
And that was all it took. He wriggled one arm free, then the other…
Caleb climbed the great Pharos Lighthouse and stood with the architect Sostratus at the apex below the dazzling flame and the mirror directing the light across the harbor. Only this time, here under a timeless night sky, under constellations that bore no resemblance to anything ever in this planet’s heavens, the beam wasn’t offering a beacon to weary travelers.
This time, it was devouring the world.
Snuffing out reality everywhere it touched, absorbing and vacuuming up every droplet of seawater, every cloud, every mountain, rock, and living thing; even spreading out to the sky and devouring the planets, stars and galaxies.
Caleb found himself before the mirror, directly in the path of the return beam. Absorbing it all, taking everything into his every pore. Consuming without pause, the very nature of every atom the light returned, even as it destroyed all it touched, out into infinity.
And beyond? he thought giddily. Was that Orlando’s voice, or his own or…?
Whose?
You know…
A thought appeared, trying to rise amidst the barrage of impressions and visions, amidst glimpses into the lives of beings struggling to survive on harsh, distant worlds in galaxies beyond the reach of the most powerful scope.
A young boy, looking more like his lovely mother than his duller father, running through a room full of books and comics and magazines, holding aloft a toy spaceship and gleefully shouting about soaring to infinity.
Alexander…
Another burst of information blasted into his consciousness, his self as it was now. Is my body still even back there somewhere? And where is here?
Thoughts came, and answers returned just as fast. He nodded and understood. It was all so obvious. Other familiar voices mingled with the billions already streaming in his cosmic thoughts: like the ultimate government surveillance program, he could hear each and every conversation.
Lydia, seeing her now in a shaft of sunlight: Caleb, you’re so close. Here, with me… A book in her hands, standing before a massive shelf of countless scrolls, in a sunbeam-highlighted chamber with countless packed shelves.