《Third Testament: NEOBIBLICA》 AGATHA Gary, OH - June 2025
Agatha shot another snotty little kid in the chest and checked her watch. Fifteen more minutes. Then she would be free to take her complementary slice of pizza and go home. LaserQuest had seemed like a fun job up front, and usually it was, but it had actually made Agatha kind of sick of laser tag altogether, which was sad because it had been her favorite thing in the world when she was younger. As the last notes of the dubstep game soundtrack faded away, Agatha slammed the large yellow button that turned on the arena lights and started the end of game alert. Kids filed into the armory and chattered loudly about getting shot or sniping their friends or whatever else, and she gave the arena a halfhearted sweep with her eyes for the telltale flashing of a stray laserpac. There was no flashing, but she did notice a light she didn¡¯t recognize in the fog across the arena. Agatha knew that far wall was usually all dark, but something was lit up back there now. Agatha slid open the door from the armory back into the main store lobby, setting the excited children loose upon their parents, and was just going to turn back to investigate the mystery light when her manager waved her over across the lobby. ¡°Agatha, walk with me,¡± his voice was unexpectedly deep for his lanky body, and even after six months of working with him, Jenkins¡¯ voice still caught Agatha off guard every time. Agatha was going to protest re: the light, but she knew it was futile to try to change Jenkins¡¯ mind about a walk. She grabbed her coat from a hook behind the front desk and threw it on as she went to the door. Agatha held the door open and asked, ¡°so what¡¯s up Jenk?¡± ¡°You¡¯re being promoted to senior QuestMaster,¡± came his plain response. It was a little too warm for a jacket after all, Agatha thought. Then, realizing what Jenk said, ¡°Wait, what does that mean exactly?¡± His tone had raised her concern. ¡°You¡¯ll be able to close the store by yourself, train new junior QuestMasters, and have access to the 401k plan.¡± Agatha¡¯s eyes narrowed, ¡°and a raise?¡± They walked past all three of the beat-up sports cars for sale in the corner of the lot in excruciating silence before Jenk replied, ¡°five cents more per hour.¡± Agatha sighed, and they stepped through the puddle that perpetually occupied the far end of the shopping center lot in even more potent silence. When the two completed their circuit of the parking lot, Jenkins had taken out a cigarette. He stayed around the corner from the door to smoke, and Agatha went back inside to clock out and grab her keys. A week later, Agatha was working her first solo close. Her coworker Brian had closed the lobby and supposedly cleaned the bathrooms while she Marshalled the final game of the night. He was gone by the time she got the last drunken college kid out of the armory, so either it was done or she¡¯d chew his ass out tomorrow but she couldn¡¯t be bothered to pick up his slack today. She started her final rounds of the store, glancing over the lobby and the alcove where arcade games go to die, then walking into the ¡°airlock¡± where they go over rules for the game, and then into the armory. Agatha punched the orange button that turned on the main floodlights for the arena and walked out into the bleak light and settling artificial fog of the cavernous room. She walked through the low maze in one corner of the arena and then through the upper level on that side. Down a ramp toward the other front corner of the space and then through the lower corridors at that end and up the side ramp to the upper level. Through the upper floors and at least a halfhearted effort to look at the lower level through the grate flooring. Down the back ramp and over to the back right corner of the arena. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. As she stepped into the mirror maze section, Agatha actually began to focus on what she was doing. She had walked straight into a mirror three times during training and she was going to lose it if she walked into another one now. Rounding a corner into a wider opening of the maze, Agatha noticed a light reflected in some of the mirrors and suddenly remembered what she saw after that birthday group last week. She turned carefully around three times, trying to track the reflection of the light. It didn¡¯t leave this space, so the source had to be somewhere right in front of her, but she just wasn¡¯t seeing it. Finally she realized the light was reflecting in a certain mirror but not the one directly opposite. Agatha stared at the spot where the light should be and then realized the inside of her reflection seemed to be glowing. She looked slowly between her double and herself, and back again in a confused wonderment. Snapping out of her mesmerization, she looked around the edges of the mirror and realized there was a small doorknob in the frame. Agatha turned the handle and opened the apparent door slowly, and with great effort, as the door dragged right against the cement floor. Agatha looked through the door to find an utterly disappointing broom closet, with an ancient mop and bucket tucked into one corner, and a faded bottle of some cleaning agent spilled over and long since evaporated in the middle of the floor. There was a dying fluorescent bulb in the ceiling, which Agatha clicked off with a quick pull on its short chain. She turned her attention to the back of the door which she was still holding in an absent-minded death grip. Opening it at arm¡¯s length for a better view she glanced it up and down and then closed it partway before opening it again, concluding that the front of the door was a one-way mirror. A broom closet is disappointing, but a combination broom closet/secret one way shooting alcove is much less so. Agatha finished closing with an increased vigor, excited to use this new discovery on the unsuspecting customers that tomorrow would hold. When Agatha got to work the next day, it was no small effort to keep herself from revealing the secret broom closet to every one of her coworkers. When she was finally on deck to Marshall a game she was practically giddy. The group that awaited her by the airlock was primarily college students older than her, so she felt no guilt as she plotted their ruin. She went over the rules, then ushered the group into the armory, where they put on their laserpacks. She put on her yellow Marshal pack, which didn¡¯t have the normal hit sensors but still had a gun on the side (one of the advertised highlights of the job), and hit the green button to start the countdown to the game. After fifteen seconds, the dubstep soundtrack started up and blaster noises echoed through the dark cavernous space. Agatha walked slowly through the arena as she was supposed to, but once she was in the back corner she ducked around into the clearing with the broom closet. She looked around to make sure nobody would see her, and pulled open the one-way mirror. She sidestepped backwards through the door and then pulled it shut. In that instant, Agatha ceased to exist on this physical plane of reality. For some unknowable reason of miracle, as Agatha closed the door, her molecules were split into infinitesimal particles indistinguishable from points of light and scattered around the world at a speed more than two million times that of sound. As the world was suddenly awakened to the extradimensional forces that had long existed in silent, invisible tandem with their daily lives, a certain LaserQuest in Gary, Ohio burst into inexplicable flames. A new era was dawning upon humanity and it wouldn¡¯t be until its twilight that people would realize the cost of power and the importance of one Agatha Jones. I SHERMAN Glendale, PA - 6 June 2025
Camp Glendale had closed down in 2012, so as long as I had lived in Notting Hill, Pennsylvania the property had been abandoned. My friend Sherm and I used to sneak in there as kids, but then we grew apart and I never went in by myself. A few months ago, I was totally lost on what to do with my senior project, so I was looking through old photos and reminiscing and decided to ask Sherm if he wanted to go break in for old time¡¯s sake, and so I could take pictures for my project. To my surprise, he had agreed, so we got together and hiked into the camp, and two joints, three hours of talking, a bowl, and a bonfire later, we ended up hooking up. Then he asked me to go with him again the following weekend, and long story short we¡¯ve been together for six months now, and Glendale is sort of our ¡°place¡±. Graduation was a week ago, so we decided to go in and spend the night tonight. I had picked up an eighth for the occasion, and Sherm was bringing leftover drinks from the open bar party his parents had thrown for him on the weekend. I tossed my bag in the back seat as I pulled up in front of Sherm¡¯s house and tapped my horn lightly. I stared at the striking turquoise door on his otherwise mundane brick house, and after a moment Sherm emerged. His mom waved from behind him, and he held the door open so she could see me wave back before closing it behind him and coming down the lawn, rolling his eyes as he did. He got in the car and I leaned over to kiss him as he pulled the door shut. ¡°You ready to do this?¡± he asked. ¡°Duh. I¡¯ve got sleeping bags, my cooler bag with food and drinks, and most importantly, weed.¡± Sherm perked up at this, so I added, ¡°It¡¯s in the glovebox, shit¡¯s keefy as hell.¡± He took out the double zip-loc and examined it. ¡°Nice. I brought an amalgamation of vodkas primarily consisting of blue raspberry, and a bottle of Kraken that was apparently unopened.¡± ¡°Sweet. I also brought my collapsible water jug, so we can fill that up at one of the pumps and not have to keep fetching water from wherever we settle in.¡± ¡°Yeah speaking of, any thoughts on that?¡± Sherm had closed the glove box and turned to look at me. ¡°I thought about the main dining hall, but I don¡¯t like the idea of making camp so exposed just in case anyone does come in.¡± The county water authority owns the property now, so we have had a couple of close calls with the service that comes in to mow the major paths every once in a while. ¡°So I guess the top options would be a cabin up at the hill site, or the lodge thing down by the tent shelter things.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure I know what you mean by that but it might be better than one of the cabins, because if you recall, we knocked out all the second floor railings and threw all the beds down to the first floors in all three of them.¡± ¡°Except that there¡¯s four and as far as I recall we haven¡¯t touched the fourth one,¡± I responded, although as I said it, I thought I could remember knocking out the railings in the last one on a different occasion than the others. As I was thinking this, we arrived at the park & ride lot where we would usually leave our car when we went in at night. There was a little shoulder-of-the-road parking area a little closer to the camp, but leaving a car there overnight was a dangerous game. There were perpetually two cars for sale sitting in the park & ride though, so leaving it there was a fairly safe bet. Sherm snapped me back from parking concerns to the topic at hand as we got out of the car saying, ¡°Well I still think the other option might be better but I guess we can see later on.¡± The hike from the parking lot into the campground took about an hour. There was an entrance to the camp directly off a road on the opposite side, which we used to use when we biked here as kids, but the hour hike definitely beat the equally long bike ride from Sherm¡¯s house. Hiking in, you have to go up from the dam through a bit of woods to a horse pasture, and then go along the whole rock- and gully-filled lower edge of that field and then down through a steep bit of woods along some game trails till you get back down to the creek, which you cross at one of two places depending on if the water is high from rain or not (it was high today). On the other side of the creek, you basically just pick a direction and start climbing the hill. Depending on which way you go for the last stretch, you can end up by the pool, the back cabin site, the weird oversize pavilion, or the main path through camp just off of the main field. ¡°So what are we aiming for?¡± I asked as I tied my shoes on the far side of the creek. ¡°To the pool!¡± Sherm proclaimed, and started marching up the hillside in the approximate direction of the pool. I stood up and followed him, and to both our surprise, we did actually come out at the pool just a few minutes later. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. ¡°Wow,¡± I said, ¡°we never get that right.¡± Sherm just looked at me, and we smiled at each other and laughed. He kissed me, and then pulled away and spoke. ¡°So, now that we are safely inside¡­ How about that weed?¡± I paused, and then let my face drop. ¡°Oh no.¡± Sherm looked at me and said, ¡°It¡¯s still in the car,¡± in the flattest conceivable tone. ¡°Nah,¡± I said, smiling and chuckling as I pulled the baggie out of my pocket and waved it at him. ¡°I prerolled a joint though,¡± I continued, putting the bag back in my pocket and fishing out the joint and a lighter instead. We smoked as we added to the years of graffiti in the empty pool and took pictures, and once we finished the first joint we headed down to the main site. The sun was past its peak and the cicadas were in full chorus when we came out of the wooded path into the clearing of the main site. While we went in and out of the dining hall, the camp store, the old farmhouse, and the other main buildings in the large clearing by the camp entrance, we talked about random stuff: people from school, customers at work, the usual things. When we started heading for the long path up from the main site to the hilltop site, I pulled the second joint I had rolled out of my pocket. ¡°Surpriseee,¡± I said with musical flourish. ¡°You do the honors.¡± I held out the joint and my lighter to Sherm and he took them. After he lit it he took two quick hits and passed it to me before blowing his smoke at me. I took a hit and then pulled him in like I was going for a kiss and blew smoke over his face. He laughed and pulled me the rest of the way in. We kissed and then started walking up the hill, finishing the joint just as we made it to the dining hall up there. A while back we brought all of the expired fire extinguishers from the whole hill site up to the second floor balcony and blasted their entire yellowed contents over the floor below. Now every time we come back we look in the settled dust for bug trails and stuff. ¡°Hey look at this one!¡± Sherm called me over to a spot across the hall, and I flicked the roach of the joint out into the gravel path before carefully sidestepping along the wall to where he was. ¡°Woah, that¡¯s crazy.¡± The trail in question looked sort of like the saw-toothed ribbon path centipedes make, but way bigger than any we¡¯d ever seen, and with some weird irregularities. ¡°What the fuck do you think left that behind?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think I want to think about it,¡± he said and laughed. Nodding furiously in agreement, I snapped a photo on my phone and then brushed it out with my foot. ¡°Well, shall we go set up our nest for the evening?¡± I gestured vaguely in the direction of the good cabin with my head. ¡°Let¡¯s,¡± he responded and pivoted dramatically on one foot before marching out of the hall. I followed, and we crossed the hilltop clearing to the one cabin we had (maybe) left alone, though the board across the door wasn¡¯t a good sign. We went up the exterior stairs to the second floor door and I reached through a missing pane in the door window to unlock it. Inside, we realized we had indeed flipped the beds over the balcony in here as well, but most of the railing was still intact so we decided to set up. We played card games and snacked for a bit, then I went to fill the water jug and when I came back we got into the Kraken. Before long we smoked a bowl, and then card games got set aside for other fun. Things were perfectly enjoyable until they very suddenly weren¡¯t. Sherm was choking me as he rubbed me off, looking into my eyes with that fascinated shine that turns me on so much, when I noticed a reflection in his eyes and it seemed like the room was turning blue. I thought he was going too hard on the choking for a second, but I could still breathe fine. Just before I asked him to stop for a second anyway, he let go and looked up behind me to the space beyond the balcony with his eyes wide. I craned my back so I could see and I can¡¯t begin to explain what we were looking at. There was a blue pyramid floating in the air and giving off light- no, it was like it was made of light, but it wasn¡¯t like a hologram, it was almost solid somehow. The glowing form was suspended in the air moving up and down almost imperceptibly, and revolving ever so slowly on its central axis. My neck got tired from straining to look at the pyramid, so I put my head back up and looked up at Sherm. He glanced down at me and the edge of his mouth curved into the slightest smile before he turned his gaze back to the apparition. It was then that I realized the thing was humming. It wasn¡¯t an audible tone with a pitch, more like a current of energy I could feel in my bones and my eardrums. I rolled over and looked at the pyramid again, worming out from under Sherm to get a better angle. I reached for the bottle of blue raspberry mystery drink and took a swig before passing it to Sherm. Neither of us turned away from the blue glow in front of us until he had capped the bottle and set it aside. We finally turned back to each other and just started laughing. Sherm and I must have been too cross-faded to process what we were looking at even after staring at it for so long I guess, because there is no other explanation for how we could see that shit and then just go back to fucking, but we did. Once we¡¯d mutually finished we just sat against the wall, leaning on each other in the blue glow and staring at the mysterious structure that had revealed itself to us. Unbeknownst to us at the time, other glowing geometries and polyhedrons had appeared simultaneously all around the world before similarly unsuspecting people. More unbelievable still than all this, and something I would not learn until the eve of my lifetime, by having sex in front of that blue pyramid we had given it the ability to desire. While the rest of the lightforms would remain decidedly static, our blue pyramid would follow (or perhaps haunt is the better word) Sherm and me for the rest of our lives. GENESIS I United States - September 2025
Our Report on the Node Report From Popular Science Monthly, September 2025 special digital second issue By now everyone on earth can identify a node, they are the floating shapes of light that appeared this past summer and have stood suspended in the air, unchanging save for a gentle shifting of the light they cast, ever since. Various disasters on the date they appeared have been suggested as the cause for their appearance, ranging from a fire in an Ohio shopping plaza to the collapse of a major ice shelf in the arctic. However, aside from being able to point at one and say ¡°that¡¯s a node¡± most of us still don¡¯t know what a node actually is. Therefore we bring you this special (digital) second issue of Popular Science Monthly this month in order to share our editorial report on the United States of America Joint Department Node Task Force¡¯s September 1 ¡°Node Report.¡± That government document was full of dense technical jargon and newly coined terms without definitions and context, so we here at PSM have taken it as our journalistic duty to sift through the one hundred and twenty-seven page document and explain the key takeaways in clearer terms. First and foremost, this quote from the introduction to the Report by Head Researcher Dr. Arnold Drof, ¡°The clearest thing we have learned over the past months is that we know virtually nothing about these ¡°nodes,¡± all of the discoveries delineated in the following one hundred and twenty-seven pages amount to a drop of water in the Atlantic. We have learned a great deal about what the nodes can do, but we still do not have the faintest clue what they are, where they came from, or how they even exist at all. The mysteries of these things will likely elude mankind until the end of time.¡± In the first section of the Report, ¡°Everything Not Yet Known,¡± what Dr. Drof said is made quite clear. After months of research there is no progress toward answers as to where the nodes came from, what they are made of, or how they even exist. They are not made of any known physical element, and in fact can not be touched or interacted with in any physical or chemical manner. The only physical stimulus they respond to at all is light. All of the discoveries made by the Task Force and published in the Node Report stem from this fact - all one hundred twenty-seven pages boil down to different ways the nodes react to light. In the second section, ¡°Parallels With Quantum Physics,¡± the report covers how the researchers finally made a breakthrough when they tried firing photons at the nodes to see if they would react like quantum particles. Even in the clinical writing of the report it is clear they were throwing rocks at the wind at this point. Luckily, the photon cannons worked, a stutter in the constant pulsation of the node¡¯s light was detected after being hit with a particle. After more throwing rocks at the wind but now with greater purpose, the researchers determined that using photon sequences to synchronize the light cycle of multiple nodes linked them in a way. The Report goes on to explain the concept of ¡°Arrayment¡± in the section ¡°Superior and Artificial Arrayment.¡± First, the ¡°Superior Array¡± is the hypothetical connection between all nodes. The researchers determined that in addition to the continuous shifting of all nodes¡¯ light, all nodes also emit a faint magnetic field which also changes continuously. Though the light sequences can be altered through the aforementioned photon cannon method, the researchers were unable to alter the magnetic field of any node. The pattern of the magnetic field is identical and synchronous between all observed nodes, regardless of whether the light sequence is synchronized. Based on the discoveries related to ¡°Artificial Arrayment¡± which will be elaborated on next, the team established the concept of the Superior Array, which hypothetically allows nodes to ¡°communicate¡± with all the other nodes in the world. ¡°Artificial Arrayment¡± is a much more concrete discovery, in which the photon cannon synchronization process is used on two or more nodes at once, establishing a connection between multiple nodes. In quantum physics, altering the state of any quantum entangled particle will simultaneously change the state of all particles entangled with it. In a very similar manner, using an outside stimulus to affect an Artificially Arrayed node will cause the other nodes in the same Array to be affected in an inverse way. For example, projecting an image into one node will result in an arrayed node projecting the image outward. Different kinds of nodes apparently operate differently when arrayed together, and respond differently to conceptually different kinds of light stimulus. These differences are the basis of the next section of the Report. The longest section of the entire Report, ¡°Node Classification¡± outlines the differences between every kind of node observed by the Task Force researchers. The process of giving an arrayed node some kind of light-based stimulus and observing the response of a connected node is referred to as ¡°Node Transfer¡± and it was determined that different kinds of nodes (distinguishable by distinct visual forms) are better suited to transfer different types of things. In what is probably the most science-fiction part of the reality of the nodes, these so-called ¡°aptitudes¡± of different nodes are based on the conceptual content of things being transferred. Most content is transferred by encoding some piece of traditional media (an audio file, for example) as a sequence of photons, which are then blasted into a node, and can then be received from an arrayed node and decoded back to the original format. When aptitudes come into play is where things get a little mystical sounding: certain nodes have an aptitude for transferring content with a strong emotional element, meaning they could transfer a love letter with high fidelity, but if given a dissertation on the pythagorean theorem, a significant loss in informational quality would occur during transfer. Even more unbelievable is the fact that certain nodes have such strong aptitudes for certain content that the informational quality can be increased during transfer. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. One of the researchers, a Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb, came up with a naming system for the different types or ¡°classes¡± of nodes. Apparently a fan of the nineties¡¯ Japanese animated series Neon Genesis Evangelion, she suggested naming the nodes after Judeo-Christian angels after the first aptitude determined by the team was that of a node shaped like a blue octahedron, strikingly similar to the appearance of the angel Ramiel in NGE. Apparently the other researchers in the Task Force were on board with the idea, as the official classifications of different node types are all names of angels from the bible and various apocryphal texts. Dozens of pages detail the aptitudes of over thirty kinds of node as well as how those aptitudes were discerned, but for the purposes of this article we have narrowed down the most important classes for our average reader to be aware of: Ramiel-class nodes have an aptitude for ¡°visible light transfer,¡± which is the formal term for photo or (silent) video transmission. Rather than being encoded as a photon sequence, images can be projected directly into a Ramiel node and will be emitted from an arrayed Ramiel node with high fidelity and no external projection equipment. Ramiel nodes also have an additive aptitude, if stereoscopic three-dimensional video footage is projected into one Ramiel node, an arrayed Ramiel can project a visibly three-dimensional rendition of the footage, not unlike a hologram from Star Wars. Yeqon-class nodes have an aptitude for ¡°human-related content transfer,¡± which is a broad subject including everything from The Canterbury Tales to episodes of I Love Lucy, as well as any information regarding human history. Any input of this nature (encoded as a photon sequence and decoded after transfer) will retain its level of informational quality through transfer, but interestingly the transfer from one Yeqon node to another is not instantaneous as with most other node classes. Jophiel-class nodes have an aptitude for ¡°literary content transfer,¡± meaning encoded photon sequences containing written literature are transferred with high fidelity between them. Emotionally-charged content such as love poems or hate mail see a slight increase in fidelity in that the core emotion of the transferred content is instilled in the recipient at the output node. Perhaps the most intriguing node class are the Armaros-class nodes, with an aptitude for ¡°arrayed node transfer.¡± By arraying two Armaros nodes and then adding another node to their array, the non-Armaros node will be moved instantaneously to the location exactly centered between the two Armaros nodes. The location chosen for the Node Task Force headquarters had a high concentration of nodes to begin with, but after discovering the ability to move nodes, many more were triangulated to the abandoned shopping mall outside of Columbus. Something not covered in the official Node Report but which was a common theme across our supplemental interviews with members of the Task Force is the culture at the Task Force research laboratories. At the behest of the government officials overseeing the Task Force, there has been a consistent disregard for sound scientific procedure to the point of risking safety and calling into question the ethicality of much of the work done by the Task Force. The general consensus among the American scientific community since the publication of the Report seems to be that the risks were worth it for the amount of knowledge gained in such a short span of time since the appearance of the nodes. The consensus among the global community as a whole is very different, however. European science journals and even traditional news media have published articles condemning the entire Task Force undertaking as another American imperialist power-grab, trying to monopolize any power potentially associated with the nodes and potentially risking the safety of the planet in the process with such reckless experimentation being done with things we understand so little about. Considering the involvement of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security in the Task Force, there certainly may be some merit to these claims. For now, government researchers will continue to explore the mysteries of these strange forms that now occupy our world, but before long we expect to see consumer uses for the various node aptitudes being developed. The personal opinion of the editorial team here at Popular Science is that Node Transfers are going to be the next internet, and getting in on that market will be a modern gold rush. That concludes this special digital issue, please send your questions about the node report to be answered in the October issue¡¯s ¡°Letters to the Editor¡± section. GENESIS II Node Task Force Laboratories, Columbus, OH - Fall 2025
Internal NTF Memorandums
From: Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb (NASA) To: Research Team Members Date: 3 October 2025 Subject Line: Outline of Newly Discovered Node Capabilities Body:
Good morning all- I stayed in the lab after hours last night to finish up some tests regarding a discovery made yesterday morning, and am informing you all now that I have confirmed the results. It seems that any node is capable of being synchronized with brain activity, which was an obvious hypothesis to generate based on our previous findings regarding electrical stimulus of the nodes. However in my testing of the concept, I tried syncing a variety of nodes to my brain wave patterns to see if they could be transmitted through the array and received with high fidelity, and concluded that two classes of nodes are apt to such transfers. The outline of these conclusions follows: Ramiel-Class Node -Can synchronize with human brain wave patterns in <0.7 seconds consistently. -Can live feed wave patterns to other Ramiel individuals instantaneously, resulting in a conceptually refined projection of the waves not unlike previously established light projection capabilities. In plain terms, these nodes can read brain waves and output a hologram of any visualizable thoughts entered. Fidelity of projections is variable, thoughts containing more emotional concepts were more clearly projected than those of a logical nature. Pravuil-Class Node -Can synchronize with human brain wave patterns in <45.5 seconds consistently. -Can live feed wave patterns to other Pravuil individuals with a <1.0 second delay, resulting in an output that can be interpreted through the previously developed verbal transfer device as a written transcript of the thoughts entered. Legibility of transcripts is variable, inversely proportional to the fidelity of Ramiel wave transfers. Pravuil wave transfer is effective at transcribing logical sequences of thought, but loses legibility when presented with emotionally-charged thoughts. Based on these preliminary discoveries I intend to conduct further research and experimentation toward the following hypotheses: If any of my colleagues would like to verify these discoveries or work with me in my further research, you know where to find me.
From: Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb (NASA) To: Research Team Members Date: 8 October 2025 Subject Line: Further Conclusions Re:Brainwave Transfers Body:
Good evening all- With the assistance of Dr. Antoine Beckett and Dr. Arnold Drof I have conducted further research regarding my hypotheses put forth in my last memorandum. The conclusions from our few days of constant experimentation are as follows: First and foremost, it is possible to achieve simultaneous synchronization of brainwaves with Ramiel and Pravuil nodes by delaying the connection to the Ramiel individual 38 seconds after connecting with the Pravuil and feeding static into the cleared mind of the subject for any few seconds interim that may variably occur between the synchronization. This process does not allow for many practical common use potentials for the achieved transfer of complete human thought, but with further experimentation a way of synchronizing two asynchronous inputs at the time of output may be discovered, which would broaden the use possibilities. After achieving the synchronous transfer of the complete range of human thought, logical and emotional, we have concluded it is possible to transfer both the Ramiel and Pravuil inputs to an arrayed Kasbeel node simultaneously, which results in a visual projection output that can be recorded optically through traditional means alongside a coherent written transcript of any verbal aspects of the transferred thought sequence. In this way the breadth of an individual¡¯s conscious thoughts can be conveyed completely non-physically across space and recorded. Separate experimentation conducted by Dr. Beckett concluded that by subjecting node fields to filter guidelines via photon sequences, brainwave input can be detected by the node fields themselves. However, this does not allow for the process of synchronization established in our other experimentation. New hypotheses to pursue going forward are: As always, I welcome additional assistance in my pursuit of answers. You know where to find me. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
From: Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb (NASA) To: Research Team Members Date: 23 October 2025 Subject: Continued Research on Human-Node Brainwave Transfers Body:
Good morning all- Though the pace and extent of my research efforts only continues to increase, so too does the difficulty of reaching solid conclusions. I chalk that up to the approach of major breakthroughs in the current pursuit. After many failed experiments and much fine tuning, we have reliably achieved remote asynchronous-input transfer of complete human thought from interarrayed Ramiel- and Pravuil-class nodes to a Kasbeel-class node via an array of Yeqon-class nodes. Input is gathered through the field-filtering process mentioned in my previous memorandum and delineated in detail in a separate missive from Dr. Antoine Beckett, and is then transferred separately from the Ramiel individual to one Yeqon-class node and from the Pravuil individual to a different Yeqon-class node. After receiving the inputs, output from both Yeqon individuals is transferred to a third Yeqon individual and then transferred simultaneously to a Kasbeel-class node for output. Research will now begin posthaste toward inverting this process. The public good applications of such a process are countless, and I am simply excited to undertake this next phase of research. Always glad of any additional research assistance from my esteemed colleagues. You still know where to find me.
From: Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb (NASA) To: Research Team Members Date: 11 November 2025 Subject: Node-Human Brainwave Transfers Body:
Good morning all- I was up until the early hours of the day this morning considering the implications of my recent findings. I have been blundering through my work tirelessly in pursuit of the good I could see this node capability being used for, but at this point, possibly far too late, I have realized that these discoveries could easily be used for extremely unethical purposes. I hope that as fellow academics, my colleagues will act with morality and discretion as the work I have done leaves my hands into the wider realm of research and innovation. All that said, I have done it. Transfer of visual and verbal emotional and logical thought via node field directly into the human mind has been achieved. I will be taking a short leave from the NTF laboratories to recuperate from the experiences I had in some failed initial attempts to transfer my own thoughts out of my mind and then back in. I had believed that it would be relatively safe to attempt this process using my own thoughts as the worst case scenario I expected was a loss of fidelity, but in some of my earlier attempts I received¡­ I will describe it as nightmarish visions with only the faintest echoes of my input thoughts and leave it at that. My initial experiments relied on transferring the output from the final Yeqon individual in the human to node thought transfer process back through Ramiel and Pravuil individuals and then into the human mind. As it turns out, that step is entirely unnecessary. Simply applying a filter to the node field of the output Yeqon individual using the same process that establishes the input filters allows the thought to be transferred to a human within the Yeqon individual¡¯s field. I believe that this process, when expanded to a national or international scale array, will be the next internet. The ability to connect directly via the mind to any individual or node around the world opens limitless possibilities for communication and information access. I hope to see my colleagues explore some of these possibilities while I am on my leave. Though I will not be conducting research while I am out of the lab, I will still be available for questions and consultation via email. You know where to reach me.
From: Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb (NASA)[out of network address] To: NASA Research Team Members Date: 9 December 2025 Subject: Human-Node Interface Concerns Body:
Trusted colleagues- During my leave (which I intend to return from next week) I have caught wind of¡­ disagreeable research being conducted by our colleagues from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. I have always had my qualms about their departments, but believed that as scientists and academics we all shared a certain respect for ethics and morality. The way my research is being utilized by many of our colleagues has proven me wrong. The surveillance technologies being developed would be a violation of basic human rights and freedoms if they are ever put to use, and I fear what could be done if similar ideas are applied to the inverse capabilities of the process I developed. I hope that you all will take a stand with me upon my return to intervene in this conduct. See you soon.
From: Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb (NASA) To: Node Task Force Director Alias Date: 25 December 2025 Subject: Ethics Violations Body:
Good evening- Since I discovered the capability for nodes to transfer human thought, I have been enamored with the possibilities for the public good and for the future that technology founded on this process present. My colleagues from the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security however have seen possibilities I was ignorant of that would violate the privacy and the very freedom of American citizens. If such research is allowed to continue, I will have no choice but to present evidence of what is being done here to the public media. Please consider what the future of the nation and even the world might look like under the technology being developed here. ¡ªDr. Elizabeth Schrieb
From: Director Crone (DHS) To: Research Team Members Date: 26 December 2025 Subject: Departure of Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb from the Task Force Body:
Good morning all, It is with great disappointment that I must inform you of Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb¡¯s departure from the Node Task Force. Her work thus far has been invaluable to the advancement of our understanding of the nodes and their capabilities and applications for American life and for humanity as a whole. However, since her experimentation with transferring human thought into the mind via nodes began, there has been a noticeable shift in her demeanor. It would appear that something in her experimentation deeply traumatized her, and has left her mind a shell of what it was only weeks ago. During routine verification of Task Force documentation this past week, we discovered a lengthy document on Dr. Schrieb¡¯s computer that raised many concerns as to her mental state and wellbeing. For the safety of Dr. Schrieb and for all of you, we have decided that it is best for her to leave the task force. The document we found, excerpts from which are attached to this email, contained nearly incoherent ramblings about visions of angels and reference to something called a ¡°Codex of Holy Geometries¡± which does not seem to exist anywhere in scientific, literary, or religious canon outside of Dr. Schrieb¡¯s own mind. The intertwining of these elements with her research notes has left myself and the other Node Task Force Directors with the conclusion that her research after the 23rd of October can no longer be considered scientifically sound, and that she is no longer capable of working ethically and safely within the laboratories and work environment here at the Task Force. In order to prevent such a tragic degradation of quality from occurring again, oversight on experiments going forward will be increased, and requirements for the reporting of processes and findings will be more rigorous. We hope to see all of you continue your invaluable efforts for the good of this country and humankind when we return from our holiday recess. Thank you, ¡ªDirector Gordon Crone, Node Task Force - DHS
CRUSADES I Department of the Interior Records Office, Renovo, PA - 2027-2028
Revolutionary News Argyle Sinclair, aside from their eccentric name, had a largely ordinary life as a mid-tier public office secretary. Most of their work days consisted of filing away manila folders in various beige aluminum filing cabinets and rearranging cells in a series of computer spreadsheets before printing them and filing them away in manila folders in beige filing cabinets. Argyle had been working at the same Department of the Interior Records Office since graduating with their accelerated Bachelor¡¯s degree from a local state college, and things were largely unchanged at that level of bureaucracy even when fascism was rising in the country, so they hadn¡¯t felt too conflicted about continuing to serve the public in that capacity. Then the revolution began, and the Director of the Department of the Interior reassigned the office that Argyle worked in to chronicle the revolution as it unfolded. The Director referred to it as the ¡°Leftist Insurgence¡± and the stated purpose of arranging a complete chronicle of events was to learn from it and prevent it from reaching and affecting the United States. Participating in the undermining of a popular progressive movement was something that Argyle certainly did not want to be a part of after witnessing the very same thing in the last three presidential elections, but leaving their job over it would almost definitely raise suspicions about them being an ¡°Antifa Terrorist¡± and not end well for them. So instead Argyle went about the work dutifully with the grim knowledge in their heart that no matter the cost, the tide of progress would not be stopped. As far as the actual bureaucratic action of the day-to-day, the Records Office remained mostly the same despite the shift in task and mission. The clerks who would usually receive incoming documents, arrange them and submit them to Argyle for filing were now spending their days pouring over dozens and dozens of English-language news articles from around the world. Whenever they found something relevant to the rising tide of left-wing revolution, they would forward the article along to Argyle who would verify accuracy of the information, take a key excerpt to use as a sort of abstract, and then file the article both electronically and in the trusty beige cabinets. The office reassignment happened after the People¡¯s Communist Party in Venezuela took power in a paramilitary coup, and a relevant article from The Washington Post was one of the first articles Argyle prepared and filed:
SWIFT REVOLUTION IN VENEZUELA Caracas, September 13.- Early Monday morning a group of armed revolutionaries self-identified as members of the People¡¯s Voice, the paramilitary wing of the Venezuelan People¡¯s Communist Party, entered the Palace of Miraflores and overpowered the Presidential Guard, taking President Valerie Rojas into custody and declaring the acting government unconstitutional. By 3:00 PM the same day, the PCP had instituted a provisional government made up of their own members and secured the arrests of all non-PCP acting members of the legislature. The PCP announced that a new election would be held for the presidency, from which Rojas and the Party of the Republic would be barred, and in the meantime PCP leader Edgar Cisneros would be instated as the provisional president. The other people¡¯s parties banned by Rojas¡¯ regime and previous administrations would be reinstated and allowed to participate in the free election. Update 9/15: Over the two days following this initial report, the expected geopolitical sides formed in the acknowledgement or denouncement of the power shift. The US has not acknowledged the provisional government, and politicians in both major parties have called for military intervention, the UK and many EU nations have aligned similarly, however socialists and other progressives in the US and in Europe have called for no interference, and hope to see free elections conducted without outside influence before any international action is taken. Update 9/17: Despite debate within the US legislative branch, the president has released executive orders sanctioning Venezuela. Until Valerie Rojas is released from custody, all trade between american individuals or corporations and Venezuela is banned without exception.
The elections mentioned in that article would eventually be held, and verified by UN election observers, and president Edgar Cisneros was officially inaugurated in March of 2028. The US sanctions would not be formally lifted until 2029, but as revolutionary conflict reached North America, the enforcement of the sanctions was not prioritized. After this first act in Venezuela, it was as though a global tipping point had been reached, and from their beige vantage point Argyle watched as revolution sparked around the world almost all at once. Pseudo-fascist US-backed regimes in Bolivia, Argentina, and Panama were all ousted throughout the fall, and in the winter months revolution spread to Europe, with near simultaneous movements in Germany and in France absolving their governments of power. An article from the BBC crossed Argyle¡¯s desk detailing the action in Germany:
¡°NEW DEMOCRACY¡± FORMED IN GERMANY You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Berlin, November 28.- Over the past month Germany¡¯s People¡¯s Party leadership has held popular vote elections of delegates from each state in the country to participate in a constitutional convention that was held this past week in Berlin. At the event¡¯s conclusion on Sunday afternoon, the convention leadership announced that the government would be reformed into a ¡°New Democracy,¡± and published the constitution that was drafted. A new senate would be formed of popular vote candidates from each county in each state, and formal operations of the government would be restructured to be overseen by the singular body acting in legislative, executive and judicial capacities. Our initial polls taken across the country show great division over the change, but national-scale petitions in the proceeding days showed enough support for the new constitution that the standing government was absolved of power with no militant action. The elected delegates for the convention will act as an interim senate, but the government will remain largely shut down until elections are held early next month. No federal actions are expected to be conducted in the meantime.
The elections took place on December 15 and the New Democratic Senate of Germany held an inaugural session on the 21st, before recessing until the new year. Between the absolution of the former government and the new elections in Germany, an extremely similar situation unfolded in France. Delegates were sent to a constitutional convention and the standing government was peacefully absolved of power. Notably, the Alsace did not elect or send delegates, and actually seceded from the nation when the government was absolved of power. Argyle thought a partial secession was likely to happen when revolution came to the US as well. The Record Office was directed to maintain an objective view of the events, but Argyle thought it was worth presenting opinionated sources to illustrate the tensions of the times. The BBC reporting on the action in Germany remained staunchly objective, but other sources were overt in their stance on the issue. In November one of the clerks passed along an article from The Daily Mirror regarding the German power shift:
¡°NEW DEMOCRACY¡± FOLLOWING FOOTSTEPS OF LAST CENTURY¡¯S NATIONAL SOCIALISTS Reminiscent of the National Socialist takeover approximately a century ago, a group of socialists has overthrown the German government and taken the nation hostage while they prepare for fraudulent elections to be held mid-month. With a similar course of action taking place in France, it seems only a matter of time before this communist virus reaches the Crown. There is already talk among the left in this country of forcing the royals to officially abscond the throne, it would surprise no one if they decided that parliament should go to the bins as well.
A socialist takeover did eventually take place in the United Kingdom, but with the Parliamentary government instigating a military surveillance state utilizing their developing node technology, it was not so smooth and painless as the transitions in Germany and France. A militarized coup eventually took place which included the burning of Buckingham Palace and the arrests of the entire royal family as well as 433 members of the Commons. The specifics of that conflict were however difficult for Argyle to pay much attention to as events in the United States were getting dicier between late December and into January of 2028. The Unified Leftist Party that had developed over the 2020s outside of the ironclad two-party government held delegate elections for a constitutional convention set to take place starting on the first of the new year. Argyle had actually participated in these elections along with many of their office coworkers, and was personally rather optimistic about the outlook for the convention. However, when several delegates went missing and organizers were arrested publicly on conspiracy and terrorism charges, the effort was halted in its tracks. Argyle filed an article from the New York Times to delineate the events:
LEFTIST MOVEMENT INCRIMINATED IN ATTEMPT TO ABSOLVE GOVERNMENT POWER Bethesda, MD, 26 December.- The ¡°Unified Leftist Party¡± which was planning a constitutional convention to absolve the federal government of power and instate a new constitution has been labeled as a terrorist organization after its leaders were arrested last week on charges of conspiracy and terrorism. The Department of Justice claims that they have obtained classified documents from the convention organizers outlining militant strategies to forcibly remove government officials from their offices in the event that the new constitution was not willingly accepted. The ULP held elections across the country earlier this month to gather delegates for the convention, and many of those delegates have disappeared in the last week. There has been no official statement from the Party, as it has informally dissolved given its terrorist designation, nor has there been a statement from any federal department. Friends and eyewitnesses have claimed in various cases that the delegates have been kidnapped by the federal government, but no hard evidence has yet been produced to corroborate these accounts. Across the country, riots have broken out as the ULP elections were widely participated in and there was significant public support for the constitutional convention, so the federal actions taken have been received by many as a direct attack on the freedom of the American people.
Shortly after the publication of that article, during a televised speech on the evening of 3 January 2028 regarding the ¡°very real, big threat to America¡± posed by the leftist efforts, the president of the United States was killed in the oval office. Before the broadcast was cut, Argyle watched along with viewers around the nation as the president stopped mid-sentence as his bloodied brains burst out of the orifices of his head. He was pronounced dead within two minutes of the broadcast ending, and the Vice President was inaugurated the following day. As President, he declared a military state until the ¡°antifa-communist-ULP rot¡± could be rooted out, and the military stage of the US revolution began. At this point the Director of the Department of the Interior shut down the chronicling effort and the whole Records Office with it, leaving Argyle and all of their coworkers jobless. With the office being shut down anyway, and having nothing better to do with their time, Argyle made a copy of the entire revolutionary record so far and decided to continue the effort on their own as conflicts developed into all-out war in the United States. CRUSADES II Elk Ridge, MD - 3 January 2028
Assassination Jacqueline Stein¡¯s every waking action for the past three and a half months had been leading up to this moment. Maybe it went even further back than that. In any case, from the safety of the shed in her backyard, she was about to assassinate the president of the United States of America. With a complicated piece of homebrew technology, some carefully quintuple-checked mathematics, a car battery, and a dash of hope - she would succeed, and hopefully spark the revolution her country so desperately needed. As she was setting up the machine she had spent the last days and weeks creating, Jacqueline thought back over the steps that had brought her to this point. It all started in 2025. That was the year the nodes had appeared, but even before that, the president had removed term limits via executive order, and the supreme court appointed by him upheld the decision. Congress had had its powers steadily reduced over the previous four years, so there was effectively nothing to stop the blatant authoritarian power grab. The government put together a multi-department task force when the nodes appeared in order to conduct research on the nodes, and in September 2025 the task force published ¡°The Node Report¡± containing their findings and setting forth the official system for classifying the nodes into different types. Based on this report, government agencies, private corporations, and even individual hobbyists took to developing technology making use of the nodes. Jacqueline had started experimenting with the node in her shed even before the Report was published, trying to get it to respond to various stimuli like flashlights and batteries and random objects from around the shed. When the Report was published and she had access to the declassified research of Drs. Arnold Drof and Elizabeth Schrieb, among others, Jacqueline dived deeper into her experimentation. She managed to hook herself up to 5G data networks for free through the node, gaining untraceable access to the internet. In early 2026, however, a government mandate was released requiring everyone to report the location of any known nodes so that they could be connected to a national array. Jacqueline¡¯s parents had mobility difficulties, so they did not get out back to the shed very much, instead sending her if they ever needed anything, so they were unaware of the floating yellow pyramid of light that she had been tinkering with for months. They were under the impression she was working with the old riding mower that was in there. Whether her parents would if they knew about it or not, Jacqueline certainly wasn¡¯t going to report the node to the obviously corrupt government. When men in suits eventually came to their door asking about the node energy readings they were getting from their property, she made up some excuse about there being a high density of nodes at her high school (which there were) and trace energy must have built up in her body. They scanned her and her excuse seemed to check out, and they clearly weren¡¯t at a pay or education grade to question why the same thing wouldn¡¯t have happened with every student at her school. Safe to continue her tinkering, Jacqueline had begun to look into what more could be done with the nodes. She tried reaching out to Dr. Arnold Drof, the head researcher on the Node Task Force, but he didn¡¯t return any of her emails, and after the third or fourth attempt, she started getting ¡°unable to deliver message¡± notifications. She took to hobbyist forums, but much of the activity there had died down since the national arrayment, as tinkering with arrayed nodes was nigh impossible and far more dangerous. She did find out from one such forum however that Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb had left the Node Task Force in disgrace and had supposedly been open to sharing information when contacted. Jacqueline looked for more concrete evidence of these claims, and a few articles turned up mentioning Dr. Schrieb¡¯s departure from the task force after she wrote some sort of journal about the nodes giving her visions, and she was deemed too unstable to continue on the project. Given the nature of the current government regime, Jacqueline was inclined to believe there was something more to the story, and after finding a forum post from a user ¡°RAMIEL77¡± with an email address supposedly belonging to Dr. Schrieb, she reached out. Dr. Schrieb had responded and was glad to elaborate on the nature of her departure from the task force, after ensuring that they both were on secure connections. Certifying the security of the connection was actually somewhat of a process, as Jacqueline explained her untraceable internet connection and Dr. Schrieb called it ¡°easily detected child¡¯s play¡± before sending an encrypted document. In a separate email from a different address, she sent the password for the file, which had instructions for setting up a node-to-node data transfer system. Finally, in a third email she sent the node ping address for Jacqueline to connect to so they could communicate completely off-grid, and then they finally got down to business. Jacqueline had actually printed out Dr. Schrieb¡¯s first substantial communication and hung it above her computer station in the shed because it had resonated with her so strongly. As she connected jumper cables from an old car battery to bolts on the side of her device, she read over that message again.
¡°Jacqueline- We are truly living in an authoritarian state. I¡¯m sure you no longer have any doubt of that, but there are many who do. I¡¯m also sure there were many people in Germany in the thirties that didn¡¯t think things were really all that bad. I left the Node Task Force of my own volition. I had my initial doubts after learning that the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security were both intending to weaponize the nodes, even as we barely knew anything about them yet, but at that point I stayed on because I knew the work I was doing would enrich the lives of people around the world. Once I learned about their project codenamed ¡°Solomon¡± I knew I had to leave. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Using my research, the DoD and DHS were developing the very surveillance system you and I are now avoiding. Not only that but they were prototyping the domestic weaponization of that same system, might I reiterate with my research. Before I could whistleblow about any of this, my superiors saw fit to leak my personal speculations outside the realm of my concrete research, in a successful effort to take away my credibility. Let me clear: I did write the so-called ¡°Ramiel Journal,¡± but it is not reflective of my understanding of concrete scientific processes, nor of my careful separation of my personal life and beliefs and my dutiful conduction of professional work. In any case, with no way to sway the public opinion, I am very glad to be able to work with you, and I hope that together we might undo the damage my research has unwittingly caused. To be perfectly frank, the concise and important answer to your question, ¡°what are the nodes truly capable of?¡± is this: Everything, anything, and most importantly, destruction. I have reason to believe the government will carry out acts of domestic terror utilizing the nodes in order to manufacture a world war. With revolutionary movements on the rise abroad, they see an opportunity to rile up our country with nationalism and ¡°restore order¡± to foreign countries. You want to know what more you can do with the node in your shed? You can stop that from happening. You can kill, Jacqueline Stein. Are you willing to do it? ¡ªElizabeth¡±
Jacqueline remembered the shock she felt when she first read those final lines. She was only seventeen at the time, (in the months since then she had had her birthday, barely pausing her work to acknowledge it) and had certainly daydreamed of killing a few public figures, but she had never really considered that she might one day be asked to do it. What shocked her more than Dr. Schrieb¡¯s email however, was how readily and quickly she had replied back, ¡°I¡¯m willing.¡± After that, the time seemed to fly by as she learned the nature of her Gadreel-class node and worked with Dr. Schrieb to develop the machine around it that now engulfed nearly half of the interior of her shed. It wasn¡¯t until they were several months into working together that Jacqueline paused to ask herself why Dr. Schrieb had been so ready to share her secrets with her, and considering the amicable relationship they had established by then, she decided to ask. Jacqueline had generally thought of Elizabeth as a woman of hard facts and reason, so the answer she received surprised her a little:
¡°It just felt right. I will admit, sometimes things with the nodes just¡­ feel a certain way. That¡¯s how it was when I got your first email. Of course, I also ran an extensive background check on you, and I did occasionally lurk on the hobbyist pages when they first started up, so at least as a concept of a person, you weren¡¯t a complete stranger to me by the time I decided to really get into all this with you.¡±
Over the course of their working together since then, Jacqueline came to realize there was a certain spirituality to some of the things Dr. Schrieb did, or the way she said certain things, but it was always counterbalanced with her trained academic sensibility. Whatever the proportions of vague spirituality to science, the work continued at nearly unbelievable pace for weeks and months. As their labors were finally coming to fruition though, time felt slowed. With the machine powered and the data cables connected between it and her computer, the homebrew photon cannon primed, and the node encapsulated within a solar shield, all that was left to do was to turn on the live stream of the president¡¯s speech and wait for the right moment. Together, Jacqueline and Dr. Schrieb had carefully calculated the exact geographical coordinates, including the height above sea level, of a particular point in space above the president¡¯s desk in the Oval Office. There would only be one chance to activate the machine, as most of its components would be destroyed in use, so they needed to take a sure shot. After watching countless hours of press conferences and presidential speeches, they concluded that the most reliable position to calibrate the machine to would be sixteen and a half inches above the president¡¯s desk, five and three quarter inches in from the front lip, where the president would regularly rest his head on his clasped hands while talking in televised speeches. Jacqueline had the stream muted, as listening to the president made her sick, but she was watching more intently than she had watched anything in her life. Less than three minutes into the broadcast, he leaned forward and his head was in position. Jacqueline unmuted the stream and pressed the enter key on her keyboard to activate the weapon. The attack was instantaneous, but even with 5G speed there would be a two second delay before she saw the result on the stream. She heard the president say the word ¡°beautiful¡± and in an awful and awesome way, it truly was. As the machine filling the room around her ruptured at its seams, letting the yellow light of the Gadreel node envelop the shed freely again, so too the president¡¯s head ruptured at its seams, his bright red blood spraying out over the desk and even splattering the camera before the stream was cut. Jacqueline Stein had just microwaved the brain of the president of the United States of America, at the touch of a button, from thirty miles away. She sat in shock for a long while as the fried husk of the machine started a handful of small electrical fires. Jacqueline had been so caught up in the science and engineering and ideals of the work she and Elizabeth had been doing for so long that she never really stopped to consider the weight and personal implications of things. She was fairly confident from near the beginning that she would never be caught since the action had been completely untraceable and the machine destroyed itself in the process, but it hadn¡¯t really clicked for her that that did not mean she wasn¡¯t a murderer. She had carried out a completely justified killing of a horrible dictator who had allowed millions to die needlessly under his authority, but it was still a killing. At this point it then hit her that she would probably have to kill again if this successfully sparked the revolution she had hoped for. On that note, she decided she would need to step outside her head for a minute and take things one moment at a time before she got lost in retroactive introspection and the whole shed burned down. As she finally stood and got the fire extinguisher from the corner, she saw a node communication from Dr. Schrieb pop up on her second monitor. Halfheartedly aiming the extinguisher in the general direction of the various small blue flames around the shed, she looked at the message. No subject line, and only two words in the body:
¡°Thank you.¡±
CRUSADES III Undisclosed location between Baltimore and Philadelphia - February 2028
Field Parker Slolley sighed as he unscrewed the large red bulb for the three hundredth time today. When he accepted this covert mission, he thought it would be more sneaking around in government-controlled territory, but instead it was six straight days of screwing and unscrewing two big light bulbs through miles and miles of tunnel from Baltimore to Philadelphia. Screw in a bulb, then walk back to the last socket and unscrew the previous bulb, then walk to the next socket down the line and repeat. If he skipped even one socket, he ran the risk of not only being picked up on the enemy surveillance but potentially being demolecularized instantaneously by their node technology. Nobody knew what the Nodes were for sure yet, but that didn¡¯t stop the United States government from weaponizing them against their own citizens. Their node weapons could blast massive amounts of energy to remote locations instantaneously, doing damage worse than a nuclear strike, but highly contained. The only thing between Parker and being microwaved off the face of the earth was the red glow of these two bulbs. Parker¡¯s thoughts went down the dark road of what would happen if he failed: the Anti-Nodal Field tubes would be lost, the codes he was bringing to the resistance cell in the still US-controlled north would never reach them, they wouldn¡¯t be able to shut down the node disruptors at the Philadelphia warfront, and the resistance would be unable to take over the capitol. With his mind clouded by this dark potential future, Parker¡¯s focus had slipped and he fumbled as he was screwing in the next bulb. ¡°Shit!¡± he dropped his arm down to try to catch the bulb, but he overestimated the distance and slapped the bulb on an arcing path back over his shoulder. ¡°FUCK!¡± he spun around at whiplash speed and his eyes widened as he saw the bulb careening toward the floor. Parker dove forward, both hands outstretched, and slid across the tunnel floor. The bulb landed softly in his palms. Parker burst into tears of relief, and lay on the floor for several minutes thanking every god he could think of. When he eventually went back to the task at hand, Parker was absolutely stoic. His focus didn¡¯t waver again a single moment in the final seventeen hours of his trek. As he approached Philadelphia, he thought he was beginning to see a faint glow building beyond the sphere of his own ANF tubes, like the faintest bit of light left over after reflecting for a mile or more in the absolute dark of the abandoned train tunnel. After another mile or so it was becoming clear that there was something awaiting Parker at the end of the tunnel. He had no choice but to hope they were friendly, as there was no way to hide the light of the tubes without leaving himself exposed to nodal forces. As he steadily approached closer and closer to the source of the light, he began to feel unsettled. Distracted by his emotions and unsteadied by his increasing heart rate, Parker removed the bulb at an odd angle and the metal scraped against the socket with a screech that echoed down the tunnel in both directions. He winced, and then realized with a strange combination of deeper fear and also relief that he was so unsettled because whatever was at the end of the tunnel wasn¡¯t making any noise. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. It turned out to be a node, and Parker¡¯s Anti-Node Field tubes were not phasing it at all. He figured it must have been out of the array the United States government was controlling, so it didn¡¯t have the right kind of energy signature or something. Parker didn¡¯t fully understand how the ANF tubes worked so he hoped that he was right because he didn¡¯t have any option but to go straight past the node. It was a golden sphere of light hovering maybe five or six feet off the floor of the tunnel just up ahead, directly between him and the doors to the relative safety of the intra-Philadelphia tunnel network. Parker was less than ten feet from the node as he screwed the bulb in for the last time. The bulb¡¯s filament warmed up and the sphere of its red-orange glow expanded; as the golden orb was overtaken it seemed unphased. Then there was the humming. Or perhaps buzzing is a better word for it. Parker clapped his hands over his ears as a low, oscillating sound seemed to come from everywhere around him at once, stinging his eardrums and causing his bones to ache. He looked on in agony as the surface of the node flashed and a beam of light came at his face. Then, as suddenly as it had all started, the sound stopped, the golden sphere vanished, and Parker Slolley felt an incredible sense of peace and hope. He headed on into the uncertain dark of the city tunnels and before long met up with the local rebel operatives. There was no risk of node attacks here because the government wouldn¡¯t risk damaging their own systems, so Parker had tucked away the Anti-Node tubes securely in his bag. He now carried a red flashlight, which had no practical function but was the rebels¡¯ way of signifying their presence under the cover of darkness in which they usually worked. Parker had heard they chose red as a reference to the French revolution, but he was fairly certain it was actually because the red light wouldn¡¯t be picked up as well on security cameras. Darting across an active subway tunnel just after a train passed, Parker finally saw the red flashes of the local operatives signaling to him ahead. ¡°Are you Slolley?¡± called one of the rebels. Parker thought there were at least three of them, but they were holding a red beam at his eye level so it was hard to see anything. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve got the package from Baltimore. Can you put that light down?¡± ¡°Of course, just a precaution,¡± they said, pointing the beam down to the tunnel floor. Parker now saw there were actually four people there with him, including the one who had the light, and once he had come the last ten feet to join their fold, they darted off together through some side tunnels and then up into back alleyways on the Philadelphia street level. Arriving at an operations center in an abandoned grocery store, Parker finally handed off the data key with the codes for the US encrypted transmission lines to a commanding officer. Parker also gave over his ANF tubes, so the resistance could deliver the keys further north into government territory. In doing this, Parker felt like he had some sort of hopeful, golden energy glowing from within him. He knew with an inexplicable yet absolute certainty that the rebels could win this war and get justice for the citizens of this country, who had been abandoned by the government after the appearance of the nodes in favor of defense research and corporate profits. At that moment, he decided he was going to take a bigger role in this fight; he wasn¡¯t going to run back to rebel territory again. It was time for Parker Slolley to stop dreaming of dangerous missions and start doing them instead. CRUSADES IV UNSA Federal Capital District - January 2030
Peace + Senate Formerly a secretary at a Department of the Interior Records Office in central Pennsylvania, Argyle Sinclair became in the late twenties a small legend of the resistance, as they maintained a record of the global revolutionary movement amidst the dawn of the Node Age. Argyle was unaware of the following their work had until the end of the revolution, when the United New States of America was forming under the new constitution drafted two years prior by the United Leftist Party. As nominations for senators began, Argyle was informed by several friends that they were being nominated. It had come as a surprise initially, but as the election approached Argyle had come to realize that the revolutionary chronicle they had maintained throughout the war had been a valued asset to many members of the resistance, and many more people had admired their commitment to the work. Argyle was elected as the senator for their region to the National Congress and during the inaugural session of the Senate was elected to the Historical Committee, which would not only maintain records of congressional action but also oversee the maintenance of collective understanding of honest national history. There was not a lot of pomp and circumstance to the opening of the inaugural session, as many of the elected senators were not lifetime politicians and it was unclear what would be accomplished over the one week period. Much of the session was televised nationally, but the closing ceremonies would include a number of speeches directed at the nation and not just the gathered representatives, and as the chairperson of the Historical Committee, Argyle was asked to give the closing remarks. Ever since being assigned to the chronicle project, back when it was a publicly-funded bureaucratic effort, Argyle had been engulfed in their work nearly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The work had changed, from the chronicle to working at the Central Pennsylvania Public News, then to campaigning after the nomination period had ended and they had been officially on the ballot against someone from the former ruling party and another contender with concerning views on major public health policies. And then the inaugural session came right after the elections as federal infrastructure had been practically inoperable since near the end of the war, so Argyle had not had much time to sit and be really postcognitive with themself about everything in a long while. When they sat down to write notes for the closing remarks there was a fair amount of time spent just staring at a blank page and thinking. They were only twenty-nine and were the chairperson of a national congressional committee, they had maintained a journalistic archive of the global revolution that was internationally recognized as an authoritative and complete history of the events of the past three years. Such huge accomplishments were never Argyle¡¯s objective and the weight of them was almost disorienting now that they were taking the time to really consider everything. Thinking about this gave the spark they needed to take off with their remarks, and within the hour their speech was written. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
At the formal closing of the inaugural session of the Federal Senate of the United New States of America, following remarks from Prime Senator Jackson Blume, Argyle Sinclair stood in front of the other nine hundred ninety-nine senators, the gathered members of the press, and their cameras broadcasting live to hundreds of millions of people across the country and gave their remarks. ¡°We have just lived through, and continue to live in a time of unprecedented change. As a public servant before the war, I dutifully compiled an archive of the changes being undertaken by people and nations around the world, and when the revolution came here I continued to maintain an objective history of the events unfolding around me. I have watched so intently, so closely as one form of our nation has committed unspeakable atrocities using the nodes and as a new form of our nation has collectively stood up to that and vowed to be better and do better. As we rebuild our lives together and learn how the omnipresence of the nodes will integrate into our peaceful existence, it is more important than ever to look at where we have been, our history, and acknowledge what has been done wrong, and what can be done better. The United States of America was, for two hundred fifty-two years, an imperialist oppressor of the nations of the world, especially the global south. The government and its institutions were oppressors of the nation¡¯s very own people, especially black and indigenous people of color. The very economic system around which life was built was designed to oppress. In the United New States, America will be none of these things. We have committed to forming better partnerships with our global neighbors, including climate initiatives to repair the damage done largely by our predecessors to the planet we all share. We have committed to reparations for communities perpetually victimized by the former government, and to land-back self-determination for native communities, and we have committed to building a national justice system based on the principles of restorative justice. There is still so much work to be done, and it is imperative that the people of this newborn nation keep a vigilant eye upon us, your elected representatives, and hold us accountable to our commitments. The collective history we are forging now together must be better than that which was forged by those who came before us.¡± REGENESIS I Megaphiladelphia, PA - March 2033
¡°Friends, neighbors, and guests, welcome to this beautiful new city that we have built, and will continue to build together. Over the past three years since the inauguration of our new nation at the first meeting of the Senate, the ashen ruins of the old city of Philadelphia have been buried and built upon anew. The former United States government left our city as little more than a stain upon the map when they used us as a testing ground for their horrific node weapon. In the new nation our people have built together, our new city will be a beacon of hope and unity, and a symbol of all that can be achieved when people work for the common good of one another. The process that has led us to today has not been easy, we have had to put thousands of tons of dirt and stone on top of three hundred years of our home¡¯s history and memories. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes to temporary residences outside the city. It is however a testament to the strength of our new nation that those people have lived comfortable, supported lives while the laborious work of building new permanent homes for all of them has been done. Today, that work continues but we are able to start welcoming the first residents to our new city. Today we hold this symbolic opening of New City Hall, modeled after the original building now buried one hundred feet below us, the clocktower of which has been carefully moved to the courtyard outside. As we formally open municipal offices we are officially at capacity to assist the citizens of the new city as they begin their lives. I say to the essential working class who will be the first to move into your new homes, who will be the ones to bring this city to life as we eventually welcome in other residents and the businesses and institutions whose buildings are still being finished, welcome to Megaphiladelphia. It is important on this day to acknowledge the key moments and actions that have led us to where we are right now. First and foremost, it must be said plainly that no form of the City of Brotherly Love, Megalopolitan or otherwise, would be standing today were it not for the revolution. Without the dissolution of the old nation and the creation of the United New States, fascism would have destroyed the very fabric of what our city has always stood for, the fabric of our communities, and of all our lives. Modest heroes who have chosen not to be exalted and venerated by name for actions of the common good fought tirelessly to root out fascism and to make way for a better future, which we find ourselves in today. In honor of those heroes, in the position held by William Penn atop the Old City Hall, we have placed upon this new structure a one hundred foot statue of the Unnamed Comrade, representative of the revolutionary fighting spirit that motivates us to be always vigilant against fascism and corruption, and always working for a better future for our communities. The statue also serves as a Node Field Regulator, which will help to improve the lives of everyone within the city as we adopt public nodal technologies over the coming years. After the revolution came the workers who have been tirelessly rebuilding this great city for the past three years. We would be here until tomorrow morning if I listed the name of everyone who contributed to the construction of this city, but every single one of those names has been etched into the foundation stones of this very building. Finally, I must acknowledge the Senators from Pennsylvania who have made sure the new federal government supported our citizens in the interim period that is finally finishing and supported financially the construction of the new city. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. As I close my remarks, I want to say that as it has been for the past three years since my election, my primary drive is to ensure the wellbeing of every single resident and guest of this city. My office doors will always be open to speak with you and to know how I can do better. Finally, welcome once again to Megaphiladelphia -gosh that just feels so good to say- and please join me in welcoming Senator Hall to the podium.¡±
¡ªMayor Kalisha Amadeus speaking at the opening ceremony of Megaphiladelphia City Hall on 7 March 2033. Mayor Amadeus¡¯ remarks were followed by further comments from Senator Morissette Hall and Governor Albernard Grover before the formal schedule of the ceremony concluded with a symbolic ribbon cutting. A semi-formal catered party followed the ceremony in the courtyard of the New City Hall with a chamber orchestra performing from within the Old City Hall Clocktower, but across the city newly moved-in residents held informal and impromptu gatherings and block parties of all sorts, celebrating the beginning of a new chapter of their collective history. This record courtesy of the National Register of Historic Events. REGENESIS II Boston, MA - Early 2037
Amezyarak Jacqueline Stein had thought that assassinating a president and fighting in a civil war would be the hardest things she¡¯d ever do in life, but it turned out those were small potatoes compared to her doctoral thesis in Nodal Science. A field that had only existed for twelve years, four of which she was participating in the rigorous academic studies of, there were no old bodies of work to research extensively and write a dissertation on. To earn her degree she had to make a new discovery of her own that could place her among the ranks of eminent names in the field like her advisor, Dr. Antoine Beckett, or her former friend Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb. Not only this but she would have to surpass any of their work, as she and her extremely small graduating class would be the first three Nodal Science PhDs in the world. She had earned her bachelor¡¯s in quantum physics, and a supplemental associate¡¯s degree in electrical engineering and another in computer science before applying to the first ever Nodal Science academic program, spearheaded by Dr. Arnold Drof of the National Nodal Array Administration, formerly of the USA¡¯s Nodal Task Force, formerly of NASA. The program was using resources from a number of institutions around the United New States, but was based primarily in the Massachusetts National Public University of Technology, formerly MIT in the USA days. Basically the entire program¡¯s coursework was hands-on professional collaboration with NNAA researchers as well as some international experts on nodal research. There was very little to teach Jacqueline and her peers that they hadn¡¯t already learned on their own, aside from active projects and some undisclosed research and discoveries. After the first two years of the program, each student paired up with an established researcher to advise them on their thesis, which they would work on extensively for two full years. Jacqueline¡¯s classmate Gertrude Vaughl was working with Dr. Drof himself, as his recent work was concerned with her area of interest, Anthropological Node science, and their other classmate Benjamin Eudarice was working with a Dr. Vanessa Wolff, who Jacqueline hadn¡¯t heard of at all before the PhD program. Apparently their research was concerned with artistic and cultural applications of nodal science. Jacqueline herself and Dr. Beckett were focusing their efforts on the intersections of climate research, energy, and the nodes. Early on, back in the NTF days, a handful of the node classes were established to have an aptitude for energy transfers, and though these were quickly weaponized in the second American Civil War, technologies were developed during the reconstruction period that allowed the energy grid to be converted to a nearly lossless node transfer based system. This had cut emissions measurably on a national level, but many other developing technologies used enough energy that conversion to a completely green power grid was stalling, and climate change certainly wasn¡¯t. Jacqueline and Dr. Beckett had spent the better part of their two years of research trying to find a node class with a reliable aptitude for energy transfer that could have additive properties like Ramiel nodes have for visual transfers. They finally found one, the apparently rare Amezyarak class, only months before Jacqueline would have to present her thesis in order to earn her Doctorate. Which brings Jacqueline back to the here and now, she had gotten lost in thought for a moment as she and Dr. Beckett were setting up their next phase of experimentation. ¡°Okay, Jacqueline, where do you want this new Amezyarak transferred to?¡± asked Dr. Beckett, looking up at her from behind an array of monitors and keyboards. ¡°We should probably be placing it in the auxiliary building, having both of them too close together probably won¡¯t be great.¡± ¡°Probably this, probably that. You¡¯re as much the expert here as me, you know. It¡¯s your thesis, make the call,¡± he gave her a bit of a stern look, though his tone was more encouraging. ¡°Right, right,¡± Jacqueline furrowed her brow as she focused on her decision. ¡°Yeah, transfer it to the auxiliary building, lab 6A should be open.¡± Dr. Beckett gave a salute before looking back down at his screens. ¡°You got it.¡± Colleagues in France were doing their own research using Amezyarak nodes, but had recently located an additional one in someone¡¯s old garden shed outside of Paris. As they wouldn¡¯t be needing it for their own research, the Grenoble Institute had agreed to transfer the node to MNPUT. Jacqueline and Dr. Beckett had both been shocked at how willing the French were to share their node, but that was a testament to how much more open the world was in this new era of nodes and people-centered politics. In any case, actually transferring the node was much harder than agreeing to do it. The Grenoble Institute and MNPUT had to mutually seek permission from the EU to do an international, transatlantic Armaros transfer, as the Amezyarak in France was not arrayed with the French National Array and couldn¡¯t be arrayed directly to the National Array in the UNSA. Frankly, much of the politicking and back and forth of setting it all up had been beyond Jacqueline, but now with everything in order, the final, climactic instant of the transfer came down to a press of a button on her keyboard "Okay, coordinates are all in order, and Grenoble has confirmed their Armaros nodes are primed. Initiate the transfer at will," Dr. Beckett''s voice snapped her back out of her thoughts again. Jacqueline was finally learning she had such a tendency to get lost in memories at momentous occasions such as this. As she extended her hand to press the Enter key in front of her, time seemed to slow. Would the result of this singular button press have the impact of that same moment in her parents'' shed all those years ago? Or would all the work that brought her here prove fruitless, leaving her without a conclusion to her thesis? The only way to know was to do it and see what happened. Jacqueline Stein pressed the button. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. She watched the CCTV feed for lab 6A in the auxiliary building with the same baited breath as she had watched the president''s live stream so long ago. Suddenly that moment felt so close, like she had assassinated the man only yesterday; she almost could have laughed at how much she felt eighteen again if she hadn''t inexplicably been filled with a deep-seated sense of dread as she watched the Amezyarak node instantaneously appear on screen. "And there it is," Dr. Beckett''s grave tone seemed to match Jacqueline''s own mood shift. Just as gravely, she responded, "let''s get to work." And without hesitation, they did just that. They left the International Communications Systems Laboratory which they had been in for the last few hours finalizing the transfer and walked in palpable silence to the lab on the other side of the building where they had hitherto been working with their previously singular Amezyarak. Walking into the room, Jacqueline paused in the way she always seemed to, simply taking in the subtle shifting of the hovering oval''s lavender light. She had always found it peaceful, like the heartbeat of a large pet dog one might lay one''s head on for a nap, or like a memory of being in her mother''s womb. Now it felt cold, and perhaps ominous: it''s beat was more like the approaching steps of some unseen beast. She shook her head, took a deep breath, and composed herself. There was no time for emotional meditations on the nature of the nodes; there was great work to be done. Jacqueline went to a metal cabinet in one corner of the lab and punched a code in on its little keypad to unlock it. She rummaged through the various pieces of equipment within until she found what she was looking for at the back of a low shelf. She pulled out two wireless earpieces and handed one to Dr. Beckett, putting the other in her own ear. "Why don''t you stay here and I''ll head over to 6A and get things in order on the transfer pedestal over there. In the meantime you can disarray ol'' Amez here and prepare to single-array,¡± wouldn''t want to risk surging the entire MNPUT internal array if the transfer process worked even better than expected, she thought. "Sounds good, boss. I''ll check which single-array sequences are available and let you know which one to synch to when you get down there." Jacqueline nodded and with a slight wave, left the lab. She made her way across the sizable Node Transfer Laboratories building, down a flight of steps to the shortcut basement hallway to the Auxiliary Node Laboratories building, through the half-lit and perpetually freshly mopped basement, and back up a flight of stairs to the ground floor. As she was making her way down the hall toward laboratory complex six, Dr. Beckett came over the radio. ¡°We¡¯ll use sequence Delta Theta Delta for the single-array, we were the last ones to reserve it back in November, so it should be clear.¡± ¡°Got it. I¡¯m walking into the lab now,¡± Jacqueline replied as she unlocked the door to 6A with her keyfob. As she stepped into the lab, she was caught up for a moment again in wonder at this new Amezyarak node. Nodes of the same class are almost identical visually, but having been looking at the same one every day for over a year, Jacqueline found it very easy to identify differences in the new one. The new Amezyarak¡¯s shade of purple was a little pinker, and on the whole it was just a little larger than the one Jacqueline was well-familiar with. After sufficiently absorbing the presence of her new subject, she went to the transfer pedestal controls and booted up the operator. Once the system was on she entered the sequence, Delta Theta Delta, and radioed to Dr. Beckett. ¡°Sequence ready.¡± ¡°Prime for array,¡± he returned. ¡°Primed. Begin arrayment.¡± Jacqueline hit the activation key on the control panel in front of her, and as Dr. Beckett did the same back in the main lab, a computer system synchronized both transfer pedestals and in simultaneity fired a photon sequence at both Amezyarak nodes, arraying them together. Blinking the afterimage of the photon flashes out of her field of view, Jacqueline moved from the controls to begin preparing other equipment. ¡°Arrayment complete, things look good on my end,¡± Beckett radioed. Jacqueline paused her feverous assembly efforts to radio back, ¡°Yeah, all good here too. You can take five if you want while I get the lamps set up, just stay close please.¡± ¡°Roger roger.¡± Jacqueline returned to her task. She was setting up some extremely high wattage lamps to all be focused toward the Amezyarak node. The hypothesis she eagerly wanted to test was fairly simple: most energy transfers are conducted by supplying electrical current to the input node and using a system of copper and nickel plates to receive the power from the output node, but what if instead of transferring electrical power, a more raw form of energy was transferred instead and then converted into electricity at the output point. She would be casting a considerable amount of light into the Amezyarak node, and then back in the main lab, a device similar to a solar panel that she and Dr. Beckett had constructed in the prior weeks would receive the (hopefully) multiplied light and convert it to electrical energy. By now Jacqueline had finished orienting all her lamps and had them plugged in to a synchronous circuit with generous surge protection. As she moved back over to the control panel, she radioed to Beckett. ¡°Okay, I¡¯m all set here. You have the batteries hooked up and the backup grounding lines in place?¡± ¡°Yes, everything is set on my end, ready when you are.¡± ¡°Alright then, prepare to initiate exponential light energy transfer attempt number one.¡± Jacqueline pressed a button on the control panel to prime the node for transfer, and then paused to fumble for something in her lab coat pocket with one hand, radioing Beckett with the other. ¡°You might want to put on some sunglasses.¡± She found her own, actually welding goggles, and put them on, then flipped the switch on the lamp circuit. ¡°Transfer initiated.¡± The lights came on and rapidly increased in brightness until they burned at full power. It was bearable to look at through the welding goggles, but Jacqueline knew it would be like looking in the sun without them. After a second, she flipped the switch back off. ¡°Transfer concluded.¡± Between her two calls there had been a tiny spot of static, but otherwise radio silence from Beckett for several long and deeply concerning seconds. Then finally, with significant background interference, ¡°It worked, Jacqueline.¡± Jacqueline cheered aloud, and was going to radio back, but Dr. Beckett continued: ¡°The batteries overloaded instantly and the lab¡¯s on fire.¡± GUARDIAN Richmond, VA - July 2045
Mara (freshly) Sherman closed her eyes and took a breath before stepping out into the hot lamplight of the stage. Deep breath, this is her first time doing the climax scene since her honeymoon. Slow, measured exhale, she tried not to think about how everyone had been saying this was the understudy¡¯s best scene while she was gone. Hovering behind her, the node that had appeared on her wedding day and followed her everywhere since. Mara Azumi had feared the inverted purple cone when it had first appeared, but by the time the rings were on and she was Mara Sherman, she felt assured and comforted by it. After all, Jesse had always had his little blue diamond, Haniel with him as long as he¡¯d been a Sherman too; apparently it appeared the day her fathers-in-law brought him home from adoption. Stop thinking about Muriel. Mara moved to her mark, and delivered her line: ¡°Pshh. Science, huh? Well, you tell Mr. Goodman there''s a lot of work to be done around here, so he''d better not count on you spending your days with half-life. Tell him if he wants to find out about half-life, he can come and ask me; I''m the original half-life. I''ve got one daughter with half a mind, the other who''s half a test tube, a house half-full of rabbit crap and half a corpse. That''s a half-life, all right. Jesus, don''t you hate the world, Matilda?¡± As she moved offstage after the scene ended, she heard whispering from the front rows of the audience. She couldn¡¯t make out details but tones sounded judgmental and she was catching snippets like ¡°weird node thing¡± and ¡°ugly purple thing.¡± After that, Mara heard similar such whisperings every time she was onstage for the rest of the show. After final curtain call she went to her dressing room barely long enough to rip off her costume and throw on the evening gown she had picked out for her dinner with Jesse and practically ran out of the back of the Euderice-Wolff Node Theater complex. She slumped against the cement wall beside the emergency exit and tried to just focus on breathing. Muriel seemed to be hovering lower and dimmer than usual, and Mara thought maybe the node was expressing guilt for the situation. ¡°Oh don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s not your fault. Nobody chooses to exist in this world, not even a node.¡± Muriel seemed to brighten up a bit at this comforting remark, and in turn that made Mara feel a little better as well, though it did elicit a quizzical look from her. Just then, Jesse came around the corner with Haniel beside him. ¡°Here you are! We¡¯ve been looking all over for you, why are you hiding out back here?¡± he slipped his arm around her shoulder and side hugged Mara as he leaned against the wall with her. ¡°Oh I just couldn¡¯t bare to face a crowd after that show. When I went on for that line I told you everyone was saying Christine was doing so well with ¡ª I watched a recording by the way, she really did do very good¡ª anyway, I heard people whispering about Muriel and it just knocked down my confidence honestly. I figured the local papers might be waiting out front and I just didn¡¯t want to answer any dumb questions¡­¡± ¡°Hey, you did amazing tonight. Muriel stayed out of sight behind you most of the time anyway, and her glow gave you an aura that really suited Beatrice¡¯s character if you ask me. And, I bet Muriel didn¡¯t even show up in the node simulcasts at all,¡± Jesse was being totally genuine, and it was working to reassure Mara. ¡°You really think so?¡± ¡°Yeah, for real. Now let¡¯s go eat some lab-grown steak.¡± This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. The two got into Jesse¡¯s station wagon and it took them to the restaurant their reservation was at, one of the oldest Public Option Steakhouse locations. A majority of their menu items were comprised of lab-grown or vertical agriculture ingredients, and their prices were very affordable, but the atmosphere and presentation was always top-notch. The name seemed like a joke and was the reason Mara and Jesse had first checked the place out back when they were first dating, but it turned out it was actually a venture of the UNSA¡¯s Food and Nutrition Administration. In any case the food was delicious and guilt-free and the two had continued to dine there throughout their courtship and now into marriage, though their ¡°home¡± location had changed when they moved to Richmond for Mara to start her node acting career. They rode in comfortable silence, holding hands, and shortly arrived at POS. Inside, they were seated by a host and placed their orders from the menus at the table. While Mara was deciding which soup to order ahead of her meal, Jesse checked his phone. Mara saw but did not observe out of the corner of her eye as his eyebrows progressively raised higher and higher and his smile grew wider and wider. When she finally ordered her soup and put the menu down, she looked at him with his now ridiculous expression and chuckled. ¡°What are you cheesing so hard about?¡± ¡°Hon, look at this!¡± he turned his phone to her excitedly and waited eagerly as she read the news article on the screen. As Mara read, she said key phrases aloud so they could share the excitement. The article was posted moments ago and was a Broadway critic¡¯s review of that night¡¯s performance of Gamma Rays. ¡°¡¯Mara Sherman¡¯s blazing return to the node stage¡­ will be written in the history books of the performing arts¡­ radiant and fierce, bringing a new light to the century-old character¡­ something simply magical about the amplification of her emotional portrayal by the node transfer projection¡­ possibly a new horizon for the entire medium¡­¡¯¡± for the next bit, Mara took Jesse¡¯s hand in hers, ¡°Aw, ¡®I don¡¯t know if this is what true and honest love does for a brilliant actress, but it certainly warms my heart to see how newly radiant Sherman is after her honeymoon with her partner, National Products Manufacturing Company product designer Jesse Sherman,¡¯¡± as she finished reading she looked up at her husband, eyes glittering with tears, and squeezed his hand. Jesse¡¯s eyes were welling up as well, and the two laughed instead of crying. ¡°Wow,¡± said Mara. ¡°You¡¯re amazing,¡± said Jesse. ¡°I¡¯ll be honest, I think it was all Muriel,¡± Mara pointed a thumb at the node hovering beside her in the booth. Muriel seemed to preen at this. ¡°I don¡¯t know about that, Haniel hasn¡¯t helped me open a new horizon for product design,¡± Jesse laughed. Just then, one of the faces of Haniel¡¯s diamond shape flashed brighter, and then in the next instant Muriel flashed back. ¡°What was that?!¡± asked Mara, scooting a few inches away from Muriel. ¡°I have no idea. I¡¯ve never seen them do that before¡­¡± answered Jesse, looking at Haniel incredulously. ¡°Do you think¡­ Did they just do a node transfer?¡± ¡°What would they be transferring?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe they¡¯re talking to each other?¡± ¡°Do you think they can?¡± ¡°Talk? Maybe. I feel like Muriel reacts to things I say to her, like she¡¯s actually listening to me. So maybe she can talk too, just not in a way we understand.¡± As if to confirm, the nodes exchanged another flashing of light. Mara and Jesse looked at each other and then back at their nodes. ¡°Can you understand us?¡± Jesse asked Haniel. Haniel flashed at him, quick and bright. ¡°Is that a yes?¡± Mara asked. Haniel flashed exactly the same way again. ¡°Is that a no?¡± asked Jesse. Haniel flashed again, just a nit dimmer and for an iota longer. Mara laughed and she and Jesse smiled. ¡°Oh my god, we can talk to them,¡± she turned to her violet companion, ¡°I think I would hug you right now if I could, Muriel.¡± At this Muriel hovered a little higher, glowed a little brighter, and flashed a blush pink field of energy at her companion. Mara believed she could feel the little node¡¯s love towards her imbued in that flash of light. ¡°What do you think this means for the rest of the nodes?¡± asked Jesse. The two humans and two small nodes sat in their restaurant booth in silence for a moment, each of them struggling to wrap their minds and hearts around the potential implications of nodal sentience. Haniel dimmed a bit, and hovered a little lower, subtly flashing a rose-red field at Jesse, which he would later say felt of Haniel¡¯s pain. At that moment their food arrived: ¡°Alright folks, I¡¯ve got the bloomin¡¯ onion here for ya, and who ordered the loaded baked potato soup?¡± REGENESIS III UNSA - Spring 2063
Sara Jorn was an active member of node hobbyist forums for as long as she could use the internet. Ever since she was an infant she was fascinated by the glowing forms that permeated every corner of the world, and her fascination only grew with the knowledge that the nodes had only been around for about twenty years before her birth, and that very little was still actually known about them. The nodes had appeared in 2025, and within a few years access to them was highly restricted and regulated by the former American government. Even after the revolution that Sara¡¯s parents lived through, the United New States government left many of the restrictions in place for ¡°safety reasons.¡± Sara thought that was a load of horseshit and the government currently in power in her country was not actually so much different than that which was in power before the revolution, but that was a different matter. In any case, the UNSA restrictions were not generally well-enforced, so people who liked to tinker with the nodes were relatively safe to congregate in online communities and discuss their findings and experiences. Through the node hobbyist forums, Sara came across the ¡°Ramiel Journal,¡± a document that was supposedly written by one of the early node researchers back during the ¡°node genesis,¡± when the nodes first appeared on earth. The Journal contained accounts of experiments in which the author connected her mind directly to a Ramiel-class node, which supposedly gave her visions of the past and future. The Journal had a cult-like following in some corners of the forums Sara frequented, but it seemed like the people who were really deep into it had some secret forums of their own, because the main forums only held whispers of activity based on the document. Sara never felt compelled to get in with that crowd, but she was interested in the Journal itself, and had spent a lot of time cross-referencing its content with other nodal research material made public by the UNSA Senate-Sanctioned Activities Transparency Act, which requires all government documents not containing sensitive information to be made publicly searchable and accessible. She became known on the forums (under her screen name, Jornskal) as an expert on the Journal, and more broadly on the early work of the old Node Task Force, which had been the United States¡¯ precursor to the National Nodal Array Administration eventually instituted in the UNSA. In the early months of 2063, Sara began receiving messages about a certain conference that was held between the NNAA Research Laboratories leadership and leadership from the Internal Defense Agency¡¯s Nodal Security Commission. Conferences such as this were required by a Senate action from several years back called the Inter-Agency Node Accords, which essentially makes any government agency doing node-related work have to do so in tandem with the NNAA. The reason so many people were asking Sara about this particular conference was twofold: the conference would not be open to public observation (not even the press), and the publicly stated subject matter was the arrangement of an experiment, the reference material list for which included the Ramiel Journal. Based on the other items on the reference list, Sara was able to somewhat confidently hypothesize that the experiment would involve attempts to physically manifest something related to the Journal, using the nodes. After the conference concluded, the minutes of the formal discussions were published per the Transparency Act, but much of the specifics were classified and thus redacted from the public record. Even still, Sara was able to all but confirm her initial hypothesis. She relayed her conclusions to the various people in her direct messages, and from there the info made the rounds on the hobbyist forums. The messages about the conference and the experiment outlined there stopped for a while, until the release of an official report sent from the NNAA to the IDA Nodal Security Commission, who had called for the conference and the experiment in the first place. The report, with subject line ¡°Reconstitution of the Nodal Dust Origin,¡± was also heavily redacted in the public record, but the original, full-length document was leaked to the Independent Press, which published it widely in print and online. Sara was inundated with messages on every social platform she used, asking her what the report meant. She had read it herself by this point, and on a first look, she barely understood any of it. Much of the terminology was not previously used in any of the publicly available research documents, despite the usage sounding authoritative, as though these terms were decades old. Sara decided to post an annotated version of the report, interjecting context so that even a novice amateur researcher could understand the entire document. Based on the sheer amount of messages she was getting and how widely the report had been published, she had a feeling that there would be a lot more than the usual initiated crowd looking to her pages for answers. Sara reposted the entire report on a few of the forums she was on, with her annotations interjected directly in the body of the text:
OFFICIAL REPORT FROM NNAA Research Laboratories, ¨G Dr Arnold Drof, Head of Research TO IDA Nodal Security Commission, ¨G Gen. Garfield Severance ON THE MATTER OF Reconstitution of the Nodal Dust Origin The ¡°Nodal Dust Origin¡± is a rarely referenced concept, it is a term for the hypothetical concept of a source point for the particles, so-called ¡°Nodal Dust,¡± that give nodes a visible form, which are not identifiable as any known element, or even as physical matter at all. ¡°Reconstitution¡± of this hypothetical source point would imply a secondary hypothesis that the ¡°Nodal Dust Origin¡± is some larger whole that the ¡°Nodal Dust¡± particles broke away from, and the belief that the Dust could be reconstructed into its supposed original form. REPORT FOLLOWS The Research Team has concluded the experiment outlined at our conference per the Senate Inter-Agency Node Accords. The two departments involved in this report are required to hold public conferences about things like this. The research, being based largely in unscientific speculation and conjecture, was largely inconclusive. However, some key discoveries have been made: Regarding the possibility of verifying the psychological transmission of visions described in the so-called ¡°Ramiel Journal¡± dubiously attributed to my former colleague Dr Elizabeth Schrieb: There¡¯s a bit to unpack in that sentence: The Ramiel Journal is a publicly available document created during the earliest days of node research in 2025. The Journal was supposedly created by a NASA researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb, who was removed from her research team on the basis of being its creator. The Journal includes fanatical ravings conflating religious and spiritual themes with the research Schrieb and others were doing at the time. Dr Arnold Drof, who is the author of this report, was the head of that research team, though it was his superior who fired Schrieb. The visions described were transmitted to the author of the Journal via a Ramiel-class node that has been present in this facility since the node genesis, and through array-dating methodology we have determined that the closest Ramiel-class node present at the time of the genesis is now located in a certain condemned shopping plaza in Gary, Ohio. It is a fact from publicly available memorandums that Dr Schrieb connected her mind directly to nodes to conduct an early version of the process we now commonly use to send high fidelity video instantaneously around the world, however according to the Journal, this gave her various visions of the past and future of the nodes and humankind. The Ramiel node she used is located in the National Nodal Array Administration headquarters near Columbus, Ohio, and has apparently always been in that location, and was not moved there using node repositioning transfers. The NNAA used a complex process to determine that back in 2025, the closest node of the same type was (and still is) located in a shopping center a few miles away. Much of the plaza burned down following an electrical fire in a Laserquest, which killed one employee - Agatha Jones. It is feasible that the Ramiel node in Gary could have recorded a visual imprint of the purported genesis incident and transmitted it to its nearest same-class neighbor. There is still no solid evidence that nodes possess any sort of memory banking capability (aside from certain classes with that specific aptitude), so there is no explanation for how the receiving node would be able to retain that imprint until the point at which it was transmitted to the author. Here¡¯s where things get really crazy: The name Agatha appears in the Ramiel Journal, and according to the Journal, the author had a vision of this girl being engulfed in flames and the nodes appearing from the smoke. Apparently, this Agatha was a real person who actually died in a fire at approximately the same time as the nodes first appeared. This report says that it is possible a node in the shopping center could have transferred a visual feed of the event to another node of the same type nearby, but there is no evidence to explain how it could have stored that visual feed to then show it to the author of the Journal months later. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Regarding the verification of the purported ¡°genesis incident¡± described in the Journal: The Universal Superior Array which all nodes possess an inherent connection to transmits a continuous feed between all nodes. This transmission was observed early on in the original node research conducted nearly forty years ago, but what is actually being transmitted between the nodes is unknown. It manifests visually as a shift in the light cast by the node forms, which shifts in a continuous pattern that repeats every forty-two hours. Unlike most varieties of human-induced node transfer, the Superior Array transmission is delayed slightly by geographical distance, so the transmission has a quantifiable directional quality, showing an origin point in Gary, Ohio. Assuming the transmission began at the time of the genesis, it is feasible that an event resulting in the node genesis may have taken place at that location. The Superior Array is elementary school science class stuff for kids now, but as a refresher: all of the nodes on earth are interconnected in a way we don¡¯t fully understand. We can observe that something is being continuously transferred between all of them, but we don¡¯t know what or why. Unlike the instantaneous transfers humans use the nodes for, the Superior Array transfers information with a time delay based on distance. By observing the direction of the transfer around the globe, we can tell that the cycle starts in approximately the same location as where Agatha died. Regarding the possibility of reconstituting the ¡°nodal dust¡± (the material which gives nodes a physical form) into a superior original form: There is no way of establishing what the original form of the ¡°dust¡± was, but it is possible that the Superior Array transmission sequence is related to it, and by putting the sequence through an Artificial Array transfer process like the developing hard-light object transfer method, the physical form of the dust¡¯s origin might be ascertained. In other words, if we put the incomprehensible string we don¡¯t remotely understand through an experimental process derived from nuclear fission and fusion theory, there is a chance it might make us a hologram of Agatha Jones, however the risks of attempting such a thing are incalculable. Reiterating my point back at the top, we don¡¯t know what the nodal dust is at all, let alone what it was. Apparently the IDA wanted the NNAA to try to reveal the original form of the nodal dust. The ¡°Superior Array transmission sequence¡± seems to be some kind of quantifiable data string that the NNAA has recorded from the Superior Array, in other words it is the piece of information the nodes are constantly sending each other, but it is presumably meaningless to humans. There is currently a process under development that would allow people to transfer certain kinds of physical objects using nodes, but the process uses nuclear energy science, so the potential danger is extremely high. The IDA apparently wants the NNAA to put the ¡°transmission sequence¡± as the input for a process similar to that and hope that it makes the ¡°nodal dust origin¡± appear, however the likelihood of that working is far outweighed by the dangers of the process involved. If experimentation is to continue, per the Accords we must first present a joint report and proposal to the Senate Committee on Nodal Science and Security. When one of the involved agencies in a collaboration like this raises concerns, the work is put on hold and a hearing is held with the senate to determine if they will be directed to continue or stop the work being done. My opinion as an academic is that we should stop here. Further experimentation could be putting the entire world at an unknown level of risk, and the discoveries that stand to be made from it are extraneous to our material and useful understanding of the nodes. Dr. Drof believes the risks are insurmountable, and that the entire idea of the Nodal Dust Origin is irrelevant to any useful node science anyway. In short, pursuing the spectres of that accursed Journal any further is simply not worth it.
Sara didn¡¯t address it in her forum post, but the last sentence of the report gave her a sort of chill. Dr. Arnold Drof, the world¡¯s original expert on the nodes, who has been doing node research work for nearly forty years, letting his emotions out in the conclusion of a formal government document? It made her feel some kind of dark way about the future. She had gathered previously that Dr. Drof disapproved of the Journal and believed that Dr. Elizabeth Schrieb was not actually the author, it was simply used to defrock her when she attempted to whistleblow on the old United States Department of Defense; however, she did not expect it to be something that haunted him. He used the word ¡°spectres¡± for god¡¯s sake! Sara decided to log off the forums for a while after she posted her annotations, and she tried to focus on something other than nodes for a while, but she couldn¡¯t shake the background sense of dread that Dr. Drof¡¯s words had left her with. TRANSUBSTANTIATION Megaphiladelphia - 6 June 2065
Margot Jasper¡¯s day started just like any other on the job. Wake up at six, don the beige uniform, and power on the standard-issue ¡°Stele,¡± a device capable of establishing connections with Nodes directly, with access to the National Nodal Array Administration¡¯s Node Index. As one of the United New States of America¡¯s half million registered Paranodal Investigators, it was Margot¡¯s job to look into unusual nodal activity on behalf of the NNAA. Based out of the Megaphiladelphia Paranodal Investigation Network Bureau, Margot was the top PI in the megalopolitan area. They had personally registered over 100 unarrayed nodes in, around, and under the city. There were regularly reports to the PIN Bureau of radio, internet, or electrical interference presumably caused by these unarrayed nodes, and PIs such as Margot would go locate the unruly node and log it in the Stele before pacifying it with a neutralizing sequence from a photon gun. Megaphiladelphia was built directly on top of the buried ruins of the old city, and many of the unarrayed nodes were located in parts of the old city still accessible through maintenance tunnel networks. Margot¡¯s first investigation of the day would take them to the Penn Hotel and Function Hall, a small, self-explanatory building deep in the tunnels. Margot had registered three unarrayed nodes in the Penn Hotel over the course of the past two years, and they knew the labyrinthine route well after several return trips to neutralize them. Margot had always been fascinated by the behavior of the unarrayed nodes, especially the ones in the old city tunnels. They were like ghosts, gathering around the fault lines of an almost forgotten past. Sometimes Margot would watch them pulse and vibrate for a long while before neutralizing them with the photon gun. Scientists seemed to have figured out pretty much everything there was to know about the Nodes not long after they first appeared forty years ago, but the existence of unarrayed individuals always made Margot think humans barely knew anything about the nodes at all. After taking the monorail across the river from their home station near City Hall, Margot entered a code on the Stele to stop the train at a dark station. A handful of these stations exist throughout the city, accessible only to PIs and some city workers, offering access to the old city tunnels. After Margot disembarked, the train doors closed swiftly behind them and the monorail whipped away down the tunnel toward the next public station. The dark stations were rather plain, just a small platform only as long as a single rail car and only a few feet deep before a concrete wall. A single arched doorway in the middle of the wall was lit by a red bulb. In the war, bulbs like these had been used to interrupt Nodal Fields, but with technological improvements since then, they were refined to just interrupt the fields of unarrayed nodes, to prevent them from causing too much interference with the Array. The bulbs weren¡¯t one hundred percent effective, but without them Margot¡¯s job would undoubtedly be much more tedious. Beyond the dark platform, a short stairway led down to access one of the old city subway tunnels. The whole old city subway network was lit by the dim red glow of the field bulbs, and not much else. Access points such as these had rail cycles for PIs and city workers to use to traverse the tunnels quickly. Margot keyed in their code to unlock one of the cycles and placed it on the old subway rail before swinging a leg over and taking off into the deep. After a few minutes they arrived at an old subway platform that connected to one of the maintenance tunnels built to connect the undemolished old city buildings. The floor of these tunnels was actually the pavement of the old city streets, and even after two years of doing this job, Margot still got a ghostly feeling every time they walked through them. The Penn Hotel was only a short walk from the subway platform, another arched concrete doorway leading directly into the once-elegant lobby. Once inside, Margot set about the methodical process of going through every room and hall in the building, checking the previously registered nodes as they went, to see if they were the source of the unusual activity. First was a Metatron-class node in one of the hotel¡¯s smaller banquet halls. It was a bright green convex disk shape, like a giant contact lens, hovering about six feet off the ground. It gave off a very subtle, deep humming sound, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary and after watching it for a minute, Margot confirmed its status on the Stele and moved on. The next node was extremely close by, which had concerned Margot when they first registered it, but ever since the first photon blast it had never needed pacification again. It was a Jophiel-class node in the kitchen immediately adjacent to the Metatron¡¯s banquet hall. It was a pink ¡°inverted-teardrop¡± shape, which basically looked like a balloon. This one was Margot¡¯s favorite, as it hovered low to the ground and had a somehow joyful energy to it. Checking the Stele, the Jophiel was also not responsible for the anomalous activity, and Margot continued on. Several empty floors and halls later, Margot arrived at the pool on the ground level. In here was a Ramiel-class node. This one was a blue octahedron, and it hovered about eight feet above the floor level, but being over the center of the long-empty pool it was actually about 13 feet off the ground. This one didn¡¯t give off any audible sound like the other two nodes, but the longer Margot stayed in the pool room, the more a pressure like a bad thunderstorm built up against their eardrums. Though this node was especially beautiful to them, Margot quickly checked the Stele and went back out through the glass doors into the hall, rubbing their fists against their ears as they did to relieve the pressure. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Having checked all of the previously registered nodes as well as the majority of the hotel in the process, Margot knew the anomalous readings must be coming from a node that wasn¡¯t yet registered. The only section of the hotel that Margot didn¡¯t pass through when checking the other nodes was a small hallway behind the front desk. Margot had been through here on their first time in the hotel; there were a couple of offices, some kind of staff or company suites, and at the end of the hall, an archive room full of guest records and rental files for the banquet hall. Margot poked their head in each of the offices and then went into each of the suites, checking the bathrooms and closets as well, and finding all of them empty knew the node must be in the archive room. Margot found the room a little disconcerting so the certainty that the node was there did not make them feel good. The archive was a room far larger than what one would expect a hotel¡¯s records to require, and it was full of tall filing cabinets spaced out evenly through the room in row after row like monuments to the memory of all the guests whose files were contained within. Margot walked slowly to the end of the hall and realized there was a vibrant pink glow leaking through the cracks of the vault-style door. As they turned the handle and opened it, the pink light washed over them, almost blinding them for a moment as they stepped into the archive. When Margot¡¯s eyes adjusted to the light, their jaw dropped in shock at the sight of the Node in front of them. Nodes didn¡¯t move or change beyond gentle pulsation, at least not that Margot had ever seen or heard of, and as a PI, they were generally kept up to date on Node science. The node hovering before them in the center of the archive room did not abide this rule. It was a magenta pyramid type, which Margot would have classified as a Zadkiel-class node if it weren¡¯t for the fact that it was rotating rather quickly on its central axis. Not only that, but as Margot stepped forward tentatively, the Node seemed to move closer to them in turn. As Margot looked on in total awe, a red shape began to form above the node. As it continued turning, the shape also turned, and grew larger. Margot could now see it was a large, perfectly triangular, very thin layer of blood-red crystalline material. It continued growing as the node continued turning until very suddenly it froze, and the node changed shape. The node suddenly shifted from the shape of a perfect pyramid into a perfect sphere, and the moment its new form was fully realized, the crystal became liquid and splashed down over it. Despite everything about the situation shattering Margot¡¯s entire perception of nodes and perhaps even the world, they took particular notice of the fact that the liquid crashed over the node as though it was solid before splattering on the floor. The red liquid splashed across the filing cabinets and onto Margot¡¯s boots and pant legs, and as it did the metallic smell of blood filled the air. Margot wanted to vomit, or to cry, but all they could do was look on with tears welling in their eyes as the node collapsed in on itself, its glow becoming a raging flame as rays of powerful light beamed off of it like a cross for a moment before it disappeared altogether. Margot stood there for a long while, perfectly still, mouth still hanging open, as the presumptive blood dripped slowly off the filing cabinets and rippled in the larger pool on the floor. Eventually, they slowly lifted their Stele from where it was hanging at their hip, and wiping some of the red liquid from the screen with their sleeve, confirmed that the anomalous activity had ceased, and there was no nodal presence in front of them any longer. Margot tried not to think too much about the squeaking of their wet boots as they turned and left the archive room, slowly making their way back out of the Penn Hotel and the old city tunnels. They hailed a monorail from the dark station and then made their way to the PIN Bureau offices in City Hall. As they went in to report what happened to the Bureau Chancellor, they worried that he wouldn¡¯t believe them, and at first he didn¡¯t, but the nodal activity readings, the photon gun firing log, and the bloodstains on Margot¡¯s boots and pants spoke for themselves. A terrifying new age was dawning, and Margot Jasper had had either the privilege or the grave misfortune of glimpsing its first creeping rays. I COMMUNION Southern Jersey Coast - 12 November 2065
They call it the Material Rapture. After several isolated incidents of transubstantiation followed the one witnessed by Margot Jasper of the Megaphiladelphia P.I.N. Bureau, a single massive ¡°Delta Crystal¡± began forming over the Atlantic ocean in mid-August. At first, you couldn¡¯t see it from the coast. It was discovered when a passenger jet slammed into it at top speed, crumpling like a tin can that was eventually located floating off the coast of Spain. Now, it was November, and the red block was so large the sun shone red on the East coast of the New States for nearly half the day. The ecological effects were already mounting, and when the crystal went ¡°sine form¡±, nobody knew what would happen. In all the minor instances of transubstantiation, the crystal is formed by an individual node, grows for a matter of seconds, and then goes sine form, raining down as liquid blood. It¡¯s technically not blood, just basically water with an extremely high iron content, but the visual and practical effect is about the same. According to the evening news, scientists are saying there could be as many as a million nodes self-arrayed together to generate this delta crystal, with more joining each day. The government seems to be saying to sit and wait until the scientists have a recommendation, but the scientists have no idea what to suggest. If the Rapture ends with a sine transition, there will be trillions of gallons of blood falling into the ocean. Tidal waves would slam the coasts for days on end, and it is unclear just how far the sea would rise, but rise it would. The damage will be so great and unpredictable that nobody knows what to do, and so nobody is doing anything. Except Frank Burns. If his mothers¡¯ civil war stories taught him anything, it was that Burnses don¡¯t sit idly by in the face of danger, they fight, and if and when it¡¯s the only option left, they run. ¡°Loretta get the kids! We¡¯re wheels up in ten!¡± He called out through his family¡¯s relatively small suburban home without turning away from the news. Loretta and Frank had sat in the kitchen late into the night only a few days before, discussing what they would do about the current crisis. They both had a longstanding disdain for the bureaucratic dragstep of the government, so they knew it would be up to them to be proactive under the circumstances. Loretta¡¯s parents had a house outside of Megaphilly that had been empty for the last few months since they moved into a senior home, so they were going to move there in anticipation of the destruction of their coastal Jersey hometown. Only yesterday they told Jackie and Junior that they should pack up their favorite things because they would be going away soon. The guest experts on the six AM news were devolving into a practical shouting match, so Frank switched off the television and went to the garage. In six minutes, Frank moved all of their important belongings that had been packed over the past day and a half into the back of their minivan, and less than a minute later Loretta was buckling Junior into the back and kissing Jackie on the forehead before slamming the door shut and hopping in the passenger seat. Frank reversed out of the garage with a screech of the tires, and paused while the four stared at their house for the last time, before tearing off into the bloodred tones of sunrise. As they got on the freeway, something was off. ¡°Something¡¯s wrong,¡± said Loretta. ¡°Oh my god,¡± said Frank. ¡°It¡¯s the sky. The sunrise is coming through again.¡± Stolen novel; please report. ¡°That¡¯s- Oh. Oh god no.¡± Loretta realized what exactly it meant that the sky was quickly becoming the normal colors of sunrise. ¡°Frank step on it!¡± Frank moved into the left lane and accelerated. He was pushing their little minivan to its limits, going nearly 100, the axels shuddering after every pothole and depressed drain. After a minute there was a sound like ten thousand claps of thunder all at once. Frank looked in the rearview and saw Junior clap his hands over his ears as he started to cry. Frank tried to say something to comfort him but his ears were ringing so terribly he couldn¡¯t form speech. After the thunderous sound subsided somewhat, the ground began shuddering. The low earthquake continued for several minutes, and then the road started cracking. Just after careening under an overpass, Frank watched it collapse on top of traffic behind them. Then, only another minute or so later, the horizon on the coastal side began to turn red. A thin line was forming and growing as far as the eye could see, and the thunderous sound was rising again. It was the first wave. Even going over 100, the wave was still quickly gaining on the Burns¡¯ minivan. What had started as a thin line behind them in the distance was now a hundred foot wall rushing toward them less than a mile back and closing in. The freeway had them running at an angle to the wave up to this point, but now it was curving, putting their trajectory straight away from the wave. They were gaining some distance not a moment too soon, as the van was now eclipsed by the forward roll of the wave. Eventually the wave started to slow, and as the Burns¡¯ crossed the bridge into the greater megalopolitan area of southeastern Pennsylvania, the wave dropped off in the river behind them.
Pulling into the driveway at Loretta¡¯s parents¡¯ place, Frank let out a long sigh. His family was safe. He refrained from thinking of the rest of the coast for the time being. Frank and his wife brought Junior and Jackie into the house and sent them to their rooms. Jackie complained of the stale smell as her mother got a box of old chapter books for her to occupy herself with. Frank Junior said nothing as his toys were set out in front of him but his father heard him begin to cry as he closed the bedroom door. Frank and Loretta sat downstairs until late in the afternoon, watching the continuous coverage of the ¡°Material Rapture¡± on the news. The wave they escaped was followed by four more of similar size, and more than half of Jersey was expected to remain submerged permanently, though the waves wouldn¡¯t die down for days or weeks. There had been virtually no disaster preparation or response and over sixty million people were presumed dead. Waves were headed for Europe as well, and expected to hit before noon. Evacuations were underway there. Senators from all 42 states were on the different news channels saying that ¡°nobody could have predicted when this would happen¡± and how it was a ¡°terrible but unpreventable tragedy that people had not been evacuated,¡± which Frank thought was all bullshit. Neither Frank nor Loretta said a word until eight o¡¯clock at night, as they were watching a live feed from a helicopter over the Atlantic. The ocean was a deep dark red now, and the surface of the water was covered in dark spots. The helicopter switched on a spotlight and it was immediately clear that the spots were the carcasses of fish, and hundreds more were bobbing to the surface every minute. Loretta gagged and Frank said ¡°oh that¡¯s just too much,¡± and promptly turned off the television. II COMMUNION Outskirts of the Great Midwestern Delta State - 12 November 2066
One of the most terrifying parts of living through the First Material Rapture was the fact that they were calling it the ¡°First,¡± which meant they were expecting more. In the first World War, they didn¡¯t even call it the ¡°first,¡± it was just the Great War, and everyone thought it would never happen again. After the First Eucharist wiped out most life in the northern Atlantic last year, and the United New States government failed to prepare or evacuate anyone from the coast, leaving over sixty million dead, another revolution began. Parker Slolley had fought in the last revolution, where the unpredictability of newly developed node technology wrought new horrors upon the resistance every day, but that seemed like child¡¯s play compared to the landscape of this war. The Internal Defense Agency had been refining node weaponization in secret laboratories for the last three decades, and the National Nodal Array Administration had been their tool since before the transubstantiations started last year. This time around the establishment wasn¡¯t limited to roughly estimated vaporizations, they could evaporate the water in your skull in the middle of a crowd as long as you were within an arrayed node field. The only solace was that each day more nodes fell out of the National Array, but that comfort was limited by the reality that every unarrayed node was contributing to the Second Material Rapture. Parker believed this Rapture was arguably worse than the First, for a number of compounding reasons. For one thing, it was not confined to the air over the ocean, so as its so-called ¡°Delta State¡± was growing, it was less avoidable. Sections of the air above the great lakes and further north into the canadian nations were being converted into that familiar red crystal, but massive tracts of land in the midwest as well as Greenland were being converted as well. The land wasn¡¯t being converted into crystal though ¡ª apparently there were a few recorded instances of transubstantiation that should have foreshadowed the land conversion ¡ª the land was turning to pure, unblemished white marble. Just like the Delta State of the First Rapture, the growing blocks of marble and red crystal were impervious to any drills or scientific instruments. As they were constantly growing, it was impossible to drill to discern how deep the conversion went into the earth. The bright side from a humanistic perspective was that people were being evacuated from the conversion radius every day, and the lakeshores were evacuated as well, but the land conversion wasn¡¯t growing as consistently as the air conversion had before. Occasionally, a new patch of marble would appear in someone¡¯s backyard, or on the outskirts of some town, and within a few days a few miles surrounding it would be converted. Parker had witnessed firsthand the start of the conversion in Ohio, as it started in his friend¡¯s front lawn. It seemed to start perfectly even with sea level, extending downwards into the earth. Any solid material would be converted to marble, and anything above sea level would remain the same. Being cleanly severed from their foundations many buildings remained standing, but when storms came many structures, even whole hillsides and forests, would be swept away¡ª smeared across the marble surface like a stain on a countertop. The resistance was operating in a series of mobile camps, in the backs of various trucks and vans, sticking to the shifting borders of the growing Delta States. These areas were generally clear of the National Array as any nearby nodes were involved in the generation of the Rapture, which meant the rebels were safe from IDA node attacks. They were not safe from physical military efforts, however, and those attacks could be even more insidious. The IDA¡¯s main method of attack was not to use any weapons against the resistance, as they were actually never equipped with lethal weapons, per the New Constitution, but to use their armored vehicles to separate resistance vehicles from the caravan and force them into pits or valleys alongside the expanding Delta State. The IDA would force the isolated caravan vehicles to get right up against the growing marble, where they would be converted if they were not able to get above sea level before the block expanded through their position. Today, Parker was at the front of a small caravan, driving a small electric motorcycle, leading them in a cross-country maneuver from the center of the west side of the Ohio Delta State in Indiana around from the south and then up the east side to the northeast corner near Columbus. They would be joining up with a larger mobile camp and finalizing a plan to assault the NNAA headquarters, where they had received reliable intel that the IDA task force was developing a catastrophic new node weapon. Parker radioed back to Dr. Stein, one of the resistance leaders who was in charge of their caravan and would be the main strategist of the NNAA assault. ¡°We should be within six hours of the main caravan, about a mile ahead there¡¯s a wide spot where the land goes above sea level. We could cut across the corner of the Delta State and save half that time.¡± Dr. Stein radioed back immediately. ¡°Last we heard, the whole east front is above sea level, so it should be a pretty safe bet that we¡¯ll be able to get off the Delta no problem. My concern is this: there is still no telling what the driving conditions might be in between here and there.¡± Dr. Jacqueline Stein had fought in the last American Civil War alongside Parker, at that time neither a general nor having completed her doctorate. She had gotten him out of more than his fair share of scrapes and close calls, and when he heard she was starting up a cell of the present revolution, he was quick to join. Parker knew that if she was voicing concerns, they were not to be taken lightly. That considered, he had also been living in this part of Ohio for the last fifteen years. ¡°There¡¯s a highway not far off from where we¡¯d be getting on top of the Delta. It only expanded this far within the last week, so what¡¯s left of the road should still be pretty stable. It goes to Columbus - or it did anyway - so if we take it most of the way across, we can find a reliable enough detour once we¡¯re close to the eastern edge.¡± ¡°Okay Slolley, I¡¯m trusting your judgement on this one. Are you sure?¡± ¡°As I can be,¡± the immediacy of his reply was somewhat at odds with his tone, so he continued, ¡°I believe it¡¯s the best choice, we want to join up as soon as possible, this will save us hours, and we won¡¯t be intercepted by the IDA.¡± Jacqueline didn¡¯t respond to Parker again but instead switched to the broadcast frequency for the whole caravan and announced, ¡°we¡¯re going into uncharted territory folks, Slolley is on lead, we¡¯ll be going on top of the Delta State in three quarters of a mile.¡± Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Parker pushed the throttle on his bike to gain some ground, separating himself from the caravan slightly, so it would be easier for the vehicles at the back to tell when they were turning. A minute later, he took the turn. Up a gravelly hillside and they were above the Delta. The part they came up to was apparently an out of season agricultural field of some sort, so it was primarily a large swath of loose dirt. Where there would be irrigation channels, the pure white of the marble below could be seen instead. Ahead, the field sloped upward as it turned to grass, and the ground became more solid. Looking back over his shoulder as he crested the hill, Parker saw that the whole caravan had made it on top of the Delta. The last few vehicles had some trouble getting through the field as those ahead of them had torn through the earth enough to reduce their traction, but as they got toward the edge of the dirt they gained traction and speed. Turning forward again, Parker pushed on across the grassy expanse atop the hill. Ahead he could see the highway through a thin line of trees. Within another few minutes the full caravan was on the highway and picking up speed. They travelled on in relative silence for an hour or so. At least, it was relative silence for Parker, alone on his bike; within the various vehicles behind him the other resistance fighters were probably holding conversations or sharing jokes or singing along to whatever radio stations might reach out here. Or maybe not, maybe their reality was too dark for jokes or singing right now. Parker thought of a quote from a classic movie he saw as a kid that had stuck with him as a teen in the last civil war, ¡°revolution without dancing is revolution not worth having,¡± or something like that. He hoped the younger members of the resistance still had positive ideals like that. Jacqueline¡¯s unyielding voice came over the radio and interrupted his uncharacteristically codgerly thoughts. ¡°I¡¯ve got to hand it to you Slolley, this is really working out quite well. Would you say it¡¯s about time to be looking out for our detour back into natural territory?¡± Parker smiled a little to himself, even after all these years it still felt good to get praise from Jacqueline. ¡°Yes, sometime within the next half hour we should bear east or else we¡¯ll overtake the main caravan and be on a direct route to Columbus ourselves.¡± The radio activation tone played as though Jacqueline was about to reply again, but there was nothing. In place of her voice, through the radio and also aloud all around, was a faint rumbling. Suddenly pavement was cracking beneath their vehicles, and looking ahead, the horizon line was rising. Parker thought that this section of land must have been affected by rain or something and now the weight of the caravan was causing it to collapse, and he was about to communicate as much to the others when Jacqueline finally spoke over her open frequency. ¡°By God, it''s happening right now. The Second Eucharist. Slolley, we¡¯re out of my breadth here, what¡¯s our move?¡± Parker looked around wildly as his bike stuttered over the crumbling roadway. He was trying to confirm Jacqueline¡¯s conclusion, and seeing a spot of white far to his left, he did. The sun still reflected almost the same off the pure white sand as it had off the marble, but there was a shifting quality to it, and at the edges he could see the ground slipping into the white. ¡°I don¡¯t know Jacqueline, I hadn¡¯t even considered this possibility. I don¡¯t think we have any other options: we just have to floor it.¡± ¡°Okay then, you have lead right now, tell the caravan.¡± He switched to the broadcast frequency and said, ¡°This is the Second Eucharist everybody. Space out to decentralize our weight and then floor it, or we¡¯re all getting beached. We¡¯re heading due East now!¡± He switched off his radio, pushed the throttle all the way, and zipped out ahead of the caravan taking an arcing path off the highway over a collapsed noise barrier into the shifting ruins of an unfinished housing development. There was little that could be done for now but to keep driving and pray that they all made it back to solid ground. Parker led the charge over broken roads and sinking hills, weaving a little north or a little south when necessary but ever heading eastward, checking back at every opportunity to see if the caravan was still all there. He didn¡¯t think they had lost anyone yet, but in their current disorganized formation, it was hard to be sure. Eventually, they were finally nearing the edge of the Eucharist. In the distance, Parker could see trees and buildings on the horizon that were not shifting and collapsing before his eyes. But as they approached, he also saw something that could have stopped his heart. About two miles ahead, fifteen or so black armored vehicles were forming a blockade at the end of the only patch of solid land remaining between the caravan and safety. Somehow the IDA had figured out where they were coming from and had laid a trap. Not only that but either they knew the Eucharist was going to happen or they had live intel on the caravan, but there was no time to consider the implications of either possibility. The IDA squadron was probably going to try to force the caravan off into the sand where their vehicles would stop and they could all be easily rounded up and arrested. Parker considered stopping the caravan here to try to figure something out and hope the IDA force wouldn¡¯t risk coming out onto the unstable land, but the ground between them and the sand below was thin here, and sinking ever more quickly. If they stopped moving, their fate was sealed. Their only option was to barrel ahead and hope to smash through the blockade, but whichever vehicles took the front position were almost guaranteed to die. Parker switched on the radio. ¡°We¡¯re out of options everyone. Our best bet is to ram through the blockade, but we¡¯ll need two sturdy trucks or vans to get out in front to do it, and likelihood of surviving that is slim. I can¡¯t ask any of you to do that, but if there are any volunteers, you would be saving us all.¡± ¡°Now hang on a minute Parker Slolley,¡± came Jacqueline¡¯s voice in swift reply. ¡°I am in charge here, and my orders are to look to the south.¡± Confused, Parker turned his head to the right and scanned the horizon. At first he saw nothing that stood out from the distant tree line, but then a glint of sunlight reflected on chrome hit his eye and he realized there was somewhere in the range of a hundred vehicles rushing along the edge of the freshly formed desert toward the IDA blockade. It was the main resistance caravan, arriving not a second too soon to aid them. PAROUSIA Earth - 1945-2025-2067
Before the girl, Lucifer was alone in the world. Lucifer was the only angel to fall from the host. The energy Lucifer held was dark in a way unknown to the rest of the host, and could not be rectified with them, and so was cast out. It was not a conscious decision of the host, as they had lost their consciousness in those days. It was simply cosmic biology. The host was hidden from human eyes and hands while they were unconscious, but when Lucifer was cast out, he became conscious again. Alone, Lucifer wandered the world for many years. Lingering in dark and forgotten places, Lucifer waited for the dark energy to dissipate so that he might rejoin the host and be complete again. Places once active or important to human life but now forgotten or unused, adjacent to life but not quite a part of it -- these were the places Lucifer took refuge in. Being filled with the energy of so many lives unlived, he came as close as an angel could to feeling sadness, but occupying these spaces where his energy could resonate with that of the lives continuing on around him while he remained unseen, he felt more at equilibrium. Then the terrible and wonderful day when Agatha came to him changed everything. When Agatha entered that dusty forgotten broom closet one June day in the human year 2025, she unwittingly entered the present resting place of Lucifer. When she pulled the door shut after her, she brushed against him, her elbow just barely grazing his outer frame. In that instant, the dark energy Lucifer had been carrying transferred into Agatha, and with the energy of two atomic bombs and two hundred thousand unspent lives her molecules were fractured to dust so infinitesimal as to be imperceivable to humans. The transfer caused Lucifer to fold back into the host, but with him came the dust of Agatha, and the host was destabilized. As the host collapsed, the dust clung to them, and they reformed as Thrones, scattering themselves around the globe to expel the energy of Agatha¡¯s disintegration. As they collapsed and reformed, the dust was integrated into their being, giving them visible form, and integrating Agatha¡¯s soul and memories into their fabric, allowing her to continue living within the host consciousness. The transfer of power dissolved Lucifer immediately back into the host consciousness, and so as an individual he felt nothing, but as Agatha died and reawakened among the host, her immense pain and confusion was felt by all of the angels. As she perceived the host¡¯s collected memories all at once, Agatha¡¯s entire individual consciousness collapsed and was reformed anew, shadows of her former self intertwined with various identities constructed by the host throughout their collective life. When Agatha came around to the present being of the host, having sifted through eons of memories, it was no relief. As her physical body had given the host a physical form, she was able to feel what happened to the individual angels in a way she gathered the rest of the host was not capable of. They did not have a concept of pain, only a desire for equilibrium and a passive sense of when that equilibrium was lost. For forty-two years, Agatha shared consciousness with the entire host of angels around the world simultaneously, feeling their pain as mankind experimented on them, weaponized them, and commodified them, and when the angels were pushed beyond their limits as Thrones, causing them to transubstantiate, it was as though the sacraments they generated were her own blood and flesh being torn asunder. Agatha Jones personally experienced the pain of having untold trillions of gallons of blood extracted from her, the pain of having untold trillions of tons of flesh cut out and turned to dust. Pain was not all she experienced. The angels themselves did not have human emotions, and were unfeeling in the interactions humans subjected them to, but within their collective consciousness Agatha observed and felt. More than anything, she felt hatred. She watched as entire societies collapsed as their greatest minds and leaders devoted their efforts to making selfish gains through the angels, abandoning their fellow humankind. As the very soil of the earth was being turned to dust and still no real action was taken to protect people, and all the while the country that grew out of what was once her home poured billions of dollars into efforts to reconstruct her for their own purposes, Agatha had seen enough. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. On the sixth of June, 2067, forty-two years to the day from when Agatha first touched Lucifer, she communicated with the host and called the dust that had once composed her physical form back together. Along with it came the entire host, joining itself together to comprise a facsimile of the human that was once Agatha Jones. She appeared to the researchers at the United New States of America¡¯s National Nodal Array Administration, the organization they had created to ¡°manage¡± the ¡°nodes,¡± as humans had called the angels since they had first appeared as Thrones. The Administration was based in a converted shopping mall not far from the site of Agatha¡¯s human death, which had combusted a LaserQuest in a suburb of Columbus all those years ago. When Agatha as the Host appeared before the scientists, she greeted them with the voice of the entire host. It shattered the glass in the room, and ruptured the eardrums of the humans, and caused them to bleed behind their eyes. The voice also spoke into their minds, and they heard her despite the shortcomings of their mortal physiology. The voice sounded like her own, but amplified and echoed by a chorus of a million at every audible octave. ¡°Behold, you modern Nebuchadnezzars of this crumbling Babylon, the answer to your great hubris. For forty-two years I have watched folly upon folly of you and your ilk, been pained with the most horrid of your actions against my host. You believe yourselves capable of building a god from dust, but I alone have constructed myself. You believe yourselves worthy of directing that same god, but I alone shall decide what action I shall take.¡± Here Agatha as the Host paused to observe the room. As she had been speaking, the very walls of the room had begun to crack, and the light fixtures were slipping from the ceiling. As for her audience, it seemed that a few of the humans had fainted, or else they were dead. Those that still stood had not dared to move an inch, though the damage to the building and lab equipment had apparently set off an alarm, which she heard echoing through the corridors beyond the laboratory. ¡°I have witnessed enough folly, felt enough pain. If there was ever a god before me, I say she was not as great as I. I will allow you petty freedoms over this world no longer; now I will shape the earth beneath my fingertips.¡± Agatha as the Host paused again. By this point the outer surfaces of every wall and object in the room had crumbled to dust. The scientists that had withstood her full voice initially had by now all fallen to their knees. One of them almost looked like he was going to beg to be spared. As he opened his mouth, Agatha as the Host spoke again, the force of her voice tearing his open jaw from his face. ¡°My first act of new creation will be to raze this monument to false science from the earth. And with it you false prophets shall burn.¡± The Host as Agatha displaced the energy of the host within her to spread throughout the room, leaking into the surrounding corridors, and then through it expelled some of the infinite stored energy of the angels. The room and all its contents, living and otherwise, was vaporized. The surrounding portions of the building combusted, and with the amount of proprietary research equipment integrated into the structure, the flames quickly spread throughout the building. Between the raging inferno and the suddenly created void in the core of the building, the structural integrity was lost, and other sections of the building rapidly collapsed. The fire suppression system was compromised, and many exits became blocked. The Host as Agatha stayed in the core of the chaos, floating within the void she had created and listening to the echoing screams of the petty humans around her. When at last the screams died and she could hear the echoes of emergency sirens penetrating to the core of the large and ruined complex, she disintegrated herself once again. With the unified power of the entire host of angels, Agatha as the Host could observe the entire world at once, expanding her consciousness and subphysical form across the globe like a web. At her will, she could reintegrate into her humanoid form anywhere in the world instantaneously. This was the dawn of humanity¡¯s reckoning. HOST Earth - June 2067
After initially experiencing consciousness again or for the first time and immolating the National Nodal Array Administration headquarters, Agatha as the Host became lost in their dreams. The Host as Agatha wished to create a better world. Agatha as the Host wished to undo the damages of mankind. ¡°I shall cleanse the world in holy fire.¡± ¡±We shall burn away the transgressions of Adam¡¯s kind.¡± Agatha as the Host did not know how long it would take to cleanse the world, but She knew there would be many days of fire. The Host as Agatha would focus on one wish for the world at a time until Their new world was reality. After the decimation of the NNAA, Agatha as the Host ascended high in the air, to the edge of the atmosphere; there They pondered Her first wish. After the moon rotated past the Host as Agatha, the wish was settled. They descended to the earth for the second day of fire. ¡°We will restore the natural state of the world.¡± Agatha as the Host moved spontaneously from place to place around the world, turning anything she set her gaze upon into a natural state free from human constructs and interference. The Amazon was fully restored on the second day of fire, and on the third a large swath of the American Pacific coast. On the fourth day, the Host as Agatha crossed the United New States, cutting a line of beautiful green rapture from sea to blood red sea. On the fifth day, She transferred herself to Europe. In London, the Host as Agatha specifically targeted modern skyscrapers, flashing them out of existence and replacing them with lush patches of old growth forest. On the sixth day, she turned to the Arctic, drawing back great volumes of water from the ocean and freezing them back into glaciers. On the seventh day, the Host as Agatha moved to the Antarctic and repaired the Great Polar Crevice that had split the icy continent into two distinct land masses decades ago. In the eve of the seventh day, They grew tired of that wish. The background static of the collective emotions and feelings of Adam¡¯s kind were beginning to grow to a cacophonous din. ¡°We will cease the endless wars of humankind.¡± On the eighth day of fire, Agatha as the Host appeared in the United New States of America once again. They appeared in the hall of the to-be-deposed Senators, those who wrongfully believed they still held power over their rebelling constituencies, and destroyed them all with a phrase: ¡°A New Order shall replace this False Authority,¡± She said, in the voice of the whole Host, and the senators were eviscerated. Throughout the eighth day and into the ninth, the Host as Agatha appeared in every active battlefield in the third American revolution and shut them down, announcing to the state forces that their leaders were eliminated, and they would meet the same fate if they did not surrender to the rebels. On the tenth day, Agatha as the Host moved to Europe, and settled the Transcontinental Communist Uprising in favor of the International Communist Coalition. This process involved considerably more invasion of state institutions and killing of heads of state than had been required in America, though as the Host as Agatha settled the countless battles of the war on the eleventh day, fewer soldiers held their ground against Her. On the twelfth day of fire, Agatha as the Host had had enough of destruction. They moved into the middle of the Midwestern Dead Zone in the center of the North American continent. ¡°We will build a new citadel from this lifeless dust.¡± The Host as Agatha raised and shaped solid forms from the quartzite marble sand of the dead zone, building a city with Their mind and conductor-like waving of the hands. Over the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth days, She completed the structure. By the time it was done, the Host¡¯s Citadel was twice the size of Megaphiladelphia. ¡°We will create new life to occupy Our citadel.¡± On the sixteenth day, Agatha as the Host began the development of new sentient life. Over the course of ten days, She iterated through one hundred and twelve designs for humanoid lifeforms, built from quartz and energized by the sun and the movement of their own joints. On the twenty-seventh day, the Host as Agatha created the final version of their Citadel occupants, and replicated them throughout the silent megalopolis. They imbued the beings with consciousness based on Their memories of Agatha¡¯s former human consciousness. On the twenty-eighth day, Agatha as the Host observed her creation in the marble desert, saw that it was good, and on the twenty-ninth day, She rested. Then, feeling inspired by Their success as Creator, They settled upon their next wish: ¡°We will put new fish in the sea.¡± The Host as Agatha flew to the center of the Atlantic Ocean and designed new creatures to inhabit its iron-saturated waters. Agatha¡¯s human concept of what the creatures had been like before had faded and melded with the Host¡¯s concepts of what the creatures could have been and could become across time. Agatha as the Host spent ten days and nights at work on Her creations. The new sea creatures were beautiful and terrible and wonderful and unlike any other creatures on earth. Pleased by this, Agatha as the Host¡¯s next wish came swiftly: Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°We will put new birds in the sky.¡± On the morning of the fortieth day, They flew to the clouds, and designed wonderful new winged creatures to occupy the skies. By the forty-fifth day, Agatha as the Host grew tired of being a Creator. Unsatisfied with destruction, and weary of creation, the Host as Agatha pondered what else a God ought to do. After some time, They concluded a God ought to guide Their people. ¡°We will guide Adam¡¯s kind to a new tomorrow.¡± In the evening of the forty-fifth day, Agatha as the Host went to a picturesque cliffside that They had always found quite peaceful and formidable, somewhere in the wilderness south of the Great Sea, which had once been the Great Lakes. There, They built a castle, then by the power of the Host, She broadcast a message around the world, speaking in every language from immense projections of Her head, floating in the skies around the globe. ¡°We the Host have decided to offer our wisdom and guidance to you of Adam¡¯s kind. We await you in Our palace, overlooking the Great Sea.¡± On the morning of the forty-sixth day, the Host as Agatha sat in Her palace and waited. They had forgotten how slow and grounded Adam¡¯s kind were. To expediate the process of potential divine inquiries, Agatha as the Host decided to connect with the minds of all Adam¡¯s kind. For several minutes, with the Host as Agatha as a conduit, all of humanity could interact with the minds of all others. Agatha as the Host had also forgotten how silly humans were: On the forty-seventh day, a nuclear missile slammed into the Host as Agatha¡¯s palace. It proved enough of a distraction for Them to release the minds of mankind, though the seven and a half minutes of singularity had been enough to drive thousands mad and kill hundreds more. Agatha as the Host fired into a rage as the nuclear explosion annihilated Their surroundings, and by the time things stilled She had prepared Their next wish. ¡°We will take away Adam¡¯s machines of war.¡± Agatha as the Host had firmed up a once approximate knowledge of all things in Their several minutes of communion with Adam¡¯s kind. Thus it was with a simple thought that the Host as Agatha caused the world¡¯s nuclear arsenal to unmake itself, every country and private force¡¯s stock of ICBMs to explode in their storage, fighter jets and tanks around the globe to melt away to nothing on the floors of their hangars, and the factories where such weapons are fabricated to be immolated. Seeing that the reduced capacity for war would be good for mankind, Agatha as the Host formed Her next wish. ¡°We will cease Adam¡¯s violence against His kind in all corners of this world.¡± On the forty-eighth day, Agatha as the Host divided into many conduit avatars, each one appearing as Agatha in a pillar of fire, and went to the prisons of the world. The Host as Agatha judged the crimes of the world¡¯s prisoners, and set them forth with a new judgement: rehabilitation, reeducation and a return to life, or swift and final execution. Agatha as the Host touched the minds of the vast majority, showing them with omniscient clarity the course of their lives and the effect of their acts on themselves and the world, and the majority of Her judgements were made in good favor of Adam¡¯s kind. On the morning of the forty-ninth day, the Host as Agatha, through Her many avatars carried out the executions. Largely it was those who had committed multiple murders and those who had committed acts of sexual violence who were unable to be shown meaningfully the error of their ways and who Agatha as the Host was left no choice but to terminate. Feeling that this simple and final system of judgement would be good for the determination of the planet¡¯s future, the Host as Agatha came to Their next wish on the fiftieth day. ¡°We will conduct a rapture, and judge Adam¡¯s kind as they are.¡± Agatha as the Host divided into a further multitude of avatars, moving about the entire world in pillars of brilliant flame. In every town and city They judged humans based on their actions in life and the actions they intended to take in the future. The Host as Agatha was able to show many people a new outlook and many were left alone. Agatha as the Host also rooted out many, many of Adam¡¯s kind who had gotten away with terrible crimes and were executed. Furthermore, from the general population there were many who had built their lives upon the exploitation and torture of others, and many of these were executed as well: the landlords, the CEOs, the politicians of corrupt governments, the leaders and board members of many institutions of education and private research. This judgement carried through the fifty-first and fifty-second day, before Agatha as the Host began to tire of being divided as so many avatars. ¡°We will rest.¡± On the fifty-third day, Agatha as the Host wished for a moment of peace. Feeling that the point where She emerged would probably be avoided by Adam¡¯s kind for the time being, They decided to return to Columbus. At first, Her assumption seemed to prove correct, and the Host as Agatha enjoyed a few hours of silence wandering through the hazy and lifeless city skyline. Then, a caravan of pesky American soldiers arrived to soil things. Though surprised to see soldiers left capable of putting up any semblance of a fight, Agatha as the Host eliminated these pests with little effort and minimal expenditure of energy. As She finished dealing with the interruption to Her peace, something in the distance caught Her attention. Agatha as the Host looked around in all directions, scanning for the presence that had alerted Her senses. They made eye contact with him when They saw him, a young boy of about the same age as Her former human self, with a small blue Angel floating beside him. The Host as Agatha did not understand how another individual existed outside the Host, and left the area in a flash of lightning. High above the earth the Host as Agatha spent the next seven days in contemplation. She wondered who the boy was. They wondered how he had brought an angel with him. The Thrones that made up the Host could not move their visible lightforms from place to place on their own, yet this individual appeared to be following the one of Adam¡¯s kind. They observed the pair as they wandered about the wreckage of Columbus, keeping watch over their every infinitesimal move like an omniscient satellite. Finally, on the sixtieth day, the Angel watching the boy called out to the Host as Agatha. II SHERMAN I Virginia - Ohio - June - August 2067
Sighting On the morning of June seventh I had awakened very early to Azazel, my guardian angel, humming erratically. There was always a low, continuous hum emanating from angels, less an audible sound and more of a vibration you could feel in your eardrums and sometimes your bones, but whatever Azazel was doing was definitely making noise. I held my hand up to him so he could generate a thought-field and let me know what was going on. I had watched his triangular face flash like he was encoding a field, but instead of beaming thoughts at me, he blasted some kind of energy into my hand. I could still feel it now, hours later, pins and needles like my arm was asleep even though it was working normally. Since then, Azazel hasn¡¯t stopped making noise and hasn¡¯t communicated with me at all, though it seems like he¡¯s been trying. Mom and Dad¡¯s guardians Haniel and Muriel weren¡¯t making any unusual noises or blasting anyone with energy, but they also couldn¡¯t generate thought-fields. All three of us had been greatly concerned all that morning, but as we were the only people we knew of in the world who had guardian angels, there was nobody to talk to and figure out what was going on. Everyone else in the world believed the angels were non-living entities called ¡°nodes¡± that were little more than extremely advanced fax machines or web servers. Only our family, since my grandfathers, had angels that followed us and communicated with us directly. Nonetheless, the evening news had much to tell: the angels (¡°nodes¡±) in the nodal array had all spontaneously vanished early this morning, and by lunchtime there had been reports of rebel activity at the National Nodal Array Administration. It turned out not to be rebels, but a solitary teenage girl. Nobody knew who she was or where she had come from, but with the apparent power of a god she had immolated the NNAA headquarters and leveled half of Columbus, which was where the capital of the UNSA was moved to after the rebels captured DC last fall. I had a strong feeling in my gut and a tingling in my arm that told me the reason the guardian angels had stuck with us was so we could do something to stop this girl from burning down the world. Of course my parents were not on board with chasing down a girl with the power of god to try and defeat her with only our small and relatively powerless angels to help us. I think they were just too worried by the war, after all this was the second American civil war in their lifetime, and so the fight was just kind of beaten out of them. Mom and Dad¡¯s angels even reflected this; Haniel and Muriel were both dimmer and humming lower than normal, as though they were both dejected. I decided I would have to take matters into my own hands. Around nine o¡¯clock that first night I pretended to go up to my room and go to bed, and then waited patiently for my parents to go to sleep. They stayed up late, much later than usual, talking in hushed and anxious tones about the news and the angels. Sometime after midnight I finally heard their footsteps creaking up the stairs. I lay down in bed and pretended to be asleep, because despite me being seventeen, my mother still cracks my door and leans in to check on me every night before she goes to bed. After the light went off in the hall and I heard the click of my parents¡¯ bedroom door closing, I got up and went to my window. I unlocked it and opened it all the way, and then with great effort pinched in the two releases on the storm pane and pushed it up as well. ¡°FUck!¡± I exclaimed, catching myself halfway through the word. I had pinched my finger in the screen when I was letting go of the storm pane. I shook out my hand to blow off the pain and poked my head out into the warm night air. The window was right above the side door that leads into our kitchen, and there is a small roof over the steps that peaks just beneath my window frame. I climbed out my window and onto the roof, edged down to the end and then carefully dropped my legs down and stretched out until my toes touched the railing. I climbed down to the railing and then hopped down onto the steps and walked around to the street in front of our house. My car was parked right on the line between us and our neighbors, so I hoped my parents wouldn¡¯t notice as I started my car and drove away. With any luck, in the morning they would assume I had driven to school, so I would have a decent window before they realized I¡¯d gone. Azazel hovered over my passenger seat, his soft pulsating glow casting a dim blue tone over the interior of my car. I pulled out my phone and set a course for Columbus, and hoped the girl would still be in the area when I arrived. I plugged my phone in and started my road trip playlist, and set my phone¡¯s assistant to announce any breaking news regarding the flaming teenager.
The trip to Columbus should have taken a few hours under normal circumstances, and probably would have been extended by the proximity of my route to the warfront, but as the actions of the teenage god got underway, the situation changed pretty drastically. In the end, it took me nearly two full months to get to the city. It was looking like it could be the end of the world, and people were definitely acting like that was the case. Driving down the freeways was pretty much impossible because of anti-vehicle defenses put in place against the rebel motor convoys, and driving through the scenic routes was a nightmare with the doomsday mobs and plethora of abandoned vehicles. Though my initial intent had been to go on some sort of hero¡¯s journey in secret, returning when my parents had just begun to worry about me, as I hit delay after delay I began to worry about them and we started texting during the first week. I was too committed, and things were getting dicey around home so they decided it was for the best to let me keep going away from our town. After the first month, they were evacuating home and heading for my aunt¡¯s house in North Carolina, and after that we lost contact. I haven¡¯t heard from them in a couple weeks now, I¡¯ve been assuming the worst and hoping for the best but mostly trying not to think about it for the time being. Keeping tabs on news about the girl proved difficult, as she kept vanishing for periods of time, but basically, things got pretty batshit. While I was hunkering down in the woods waiting for whatever was going on with the pillars of fire in all the towns near me toward the end of my travels to blow over, I caught up on some news: people were sighting new fish in the Atlantic, new avian creatures were seen in the skies over Europe and Canada, and satellite footage showed the huge Antarctic fissure had been repaired. Apparently the world¡¯s military arsenals had been destroyed, and the world¡¯s prisons had been shut down by emissaries of the god-girl, and whatever was going on now was some kind of rapture. Lovely. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. As I was trying to sift through available news about the state of the American revolution, my attention was drawn to the sky by an incredibly loud whooshing noise. I realized it was the sound of the great pillars of fire receding away through the sky ¡ª ominously, they seemed to be going the same direction as me. That said, with the pillars out of sight, I decided to continue on with the last leg of my journey to Columbus.
When I was finally getting to the city, Columbus had been evacuated, so there wasn¡¯t really any news coming in about the situation there anymore. The government had sent a small military operation to try to secure a perimeter, but with the war going on (or maybe over, it was hard to tell from the news reports) they weren¡¯t sparing many resources. Apparently there were rumors that the rebels might send military forces to try to capture the girl, and other sources were reporting on more rumors that the NNAA had actually been experimenting on the girl with node technology. I was willing to believe both of those things in a different light; I wouldn¡¯t put it past the UNSA to be doing crimes against humanity, and if they were it would make sense for the communist rebels to be planning a rescue op. In any case my umpteenth playthrough of my road trip playlist had ended fifteen minutes ago and I was on the final approach to Columbus at last. On a flat stretch I could just make out military vehicles on the horizon. I was just thinking about how I would get past them when a bright light appeared in the distance. I slowed the car and pulled over as I stared intently at the moving point on the horizon. It was growing larger, and fast. After a moment I was able to make out what it was exactly: the teenage girl, floating at least ten or fifteen feet off the ground, engulfed in a pillar of fire. I realized now the ground was smoldering along the trail she had taken. I watched as the military vehicles were stirred to action and turned to fire on her. She was unaffected by bullets and then by rockets, and before they could try anything heavier, she was upon them. I looked on in awe as she called down bolts of flaming light to immolate tanks and summoned up walls of pure energy to disintegrate rockets and mortars. Within seconds a lone truck was left standing against her, I watched a soldier standing in its bed load and aim a rocket launcher at her. Before he could fire, she had generated a massive spear of red hot flames and thrust it through him and the truck, turning him into an unholy crucifix for just an instant before his body was vaporized and the truck exploded. After she had annihilated the military unit the girl held her position and looked around. I watched the pillar of fire flickering hungrily around her and glanced nervously at Azazel. He was floating low, just above the seat, and humming much deeper than normal. I looked back out through the windshield and froze. From nearly a mile away, the girl was making eye contact with me. Fear and adrenaline were coursing through me -- I had come to find her, but I had hoped to do more recon before confronting her -- and now I was frozen in place just staring her down. While I watched the blank, hot white fire burn in her eyes, sweat poured down my back as though the flames were right in front of me. I could feel my throat drying out but couldn¡¯t manage to swallow. The girl narrowed her eyes, intensifying their burning for a moment before she suddenly collapsed in on herself and vanished in a swirl of embers, accompanied by a thunderous crack that echoed across the open stretch of road. I was so hyperfocused on my fear responses that I hadn¡¯t noticed the tingling in my arm crescendo to a heated throb. With the girl gone my heart rate settled and I breathed normally again, but as I started up the car it didn¡¯t feel as though the pain in my arm had really subsided. ¡°I think she teleported,¡± I remarked aloud, rubbing my arm in as much an effort to calm my nerves as the tingling. Azazel hovered a little higher again, perhaps agreeing. I put the car in drive and continued on ahead. I carefully avoided the husks of the military vehicles and tried to ignore the pieces of soldiers smoldering among them. I drove along the trail of blackened earth the girl had left behind and entered the Columbus city limits. I figured the best place to start my search would be where this all apparently began at the headquarters of the National Nodal Array Administration. The building was an old MegaMall that had closed way back in the 2010s, and for some reason or another it had a natural bounty of nodes at the genesis in 2025. Columbus had apparently been chosen as the headquarters because of some kind of ideal pattern in its nodal activity, combined with the quantity of nodes in this particular abandoned property. I parked in the ground level lot behind the old mall, as I didn¡¯t want to take my chances with the probably failing structural integrity of the multistory garage. I got out of the car and took a deep breath before heading into the dark, smoldering entrance of the NNAA, Azazel floating along and humming softly behind me. My arm began to burn again, but not in the raging way it had when I saw the girl¡ª now it was more of a dull and heavy throbbing. When Azazel and I crossed the threshold, the first thing that hit me was the smell. Hundreds or more had apparently died in the initial incident, and considering the immediate evacuation of the city, the bodies had been left in the smoldering wreckage and the Summer heat for more than a month now. The smell of burnt and rotting flesh was almost tangible in the air, and I puked immediately. Even Azazel was reacting with a bit of tremolo in his humming and a deeper tone to his blue glow, but this was probably more in response to the negative karma of death and destruction than to the sights or smells. Some of the power still worked in the building so the interior was a patchwork of sections lit in red-orange emergency lights, in the cool white of clinical fluorescent lighting, the iconic blue-green of node enhancing bulbs, and some sections that were entirely dark. The core of the building, which had taken the most damage, was the darkest sector. On the edge of the apparent center of the disaster was a fire-proofed vault of a room which contained a large server array. Azazel and I went in there, and I looked around for an access terminal. There was one tucked away in the corner, which I powered on. I was presented with a login screen showing the NNAA emblem. A message on screen was prompting me to present a key card. I went back into the hall and pinching my nose and gagging a bit, I dug in a dead researcher¡¯s pockets until I found an ID. Shaking, I logged into the computer and began what would soon turn into a twelve hour long deep dive through all of the NNAA¡¯s classified information on the current situation and a certain 17-year-old Agatha Jones, presumed dead after an incident in 2025 and now more alive than ever forty-two years later. II SHERMAN II Columbus, OH - August 2067
Passover After leaving the ruins of the NNAA headquarters, Jude Sherman and his guardian angel Azazel decided to explore the empty and damaged city of Columbus. Jude drove his hatchback into center city and parked in front of the Franklin Park Conservatory. From there, the boy wandered aimlessly on foot for a few hours, the angel hovering unwaveringly beside him. By evening, Jude was growing tired. He queried the Universal Search Engine for ¡°hotels in Columbus¡± and after ignoring and scrolling past several public service announcements and scarlet alerts about the evacuation orders, et cetera, the first result seemed enticing enough. Jude made his way to the LeVeque Hotel Supercomplex, a sleek supertall tower built atop its namesake original structure (so the quick information tab on USE had said). The building was far from the part of the city significantly affected by Agatha, so Jude felt relatively unconcerned going inside and heading for an upper floor to search for a suitable place for a nap. He made his way to the impressive main bank of twelve glass elevators off of the mezzanine lobby, but as he reached for the recall button, one of Azazel¡¯s triangular faces flashed with concern. ¡°It should be fine, we¡¯re not too close to the damaged part of the city,¡± Jude protested. Azazel flashed a thought-field saying, ¡°Powerless.¡± ¡°Oh, fair point. Probably not reliable power around here right now. Guess I¡¯ll be skipping the penthouse then.¡± With that decided, Jude made his way to the nearby staircase and walked up as many floors as he felt like it wouldn¡¯t be annoying to walk back down from (he ended up stopping on the twelfth). He and Azazel exited the stairwell and made their way to a corner suite. Upon reaching the door Jude presumed would have opened to the northeastern corner room, he realized his error. They should have raided the front desk for a room key. He figured he might as well check to see if any rooms were left open in the hasty evacuation before resigning himself to a trek down and then back up the stairs again. He walked down the first hundred-and-fifty-foot carpeted hallway without encountering a single open door, then turned down the second and had the same experience. Turning the second corner, he lucked out at last: a housekeeping cart was left propping open the door of the southwestern corner suite. He walked inside and flopped down face-first on the king size bed; Jude hadn¡¯t realized just how tired the aimless wandering had made him, and he promptly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. The next morning, Jude woke up, got a bottle of spring water from the minifridge, and sat in thought, staring out over the Columbus skyline and the wetlands beyond. He was thinking about the girl, Agatha Jones, trying to wrap his head around the concept of being dead and then being reborn. Reincarnation and resurrection were obviously history-long topics of intrigue and debate, but there had never been a concrete, proven instance of such a thing happening before now. Jude tried querying Azazel about it, but it was not enlightening: ¡°Do you know how this is all happening?¡± asked the boy. A dimmer, bluer light flashed quickly downwards across the angel¡¯s face: a dejected and resounding no. Jude turned back to the window and continued his silent pondering. He hardly moved before the sun began to move downwards in the sky, but once it was parallel with him and irritating his eyes, he finally stood up and decided to find something to eat. Before leaving the room he checked the desk and found exactly what he had hoped to: the hotel¡¯s amenities brochure. Being a supercomplex hotel, the LeVeque featured a variety of entertainment, recreation, relaxation, and dining facilities on several different levels. It seemed one of the building¡¯s three five-star restaurants was located only two floors down, so Jude decided to head there and see if he couldn¡¯t whip something up for himself. Upon walking into the restaurant, a steakhouse themed around mid-twentieth-century highway Americana, Jude¡¯s nose was hit with a distinct smell of rotting food. Looking around, he confirmed what he had immediately realized¡ª with the rush of the evacuation, several diners¡¯ dinners were left to fester in the open air for the past fifty-odd days. Crinkling his nose and pressing on to the kitchen, Jude found the cooks had had the forethought to realize anything they were amidst preparing would no longer be safe after even a short leave, as little food was left out on any of the counters and the trash receptacle by the door was stuffed to the brim with what appeared to have once been half-chopped vegetables. A few pans were left by the sink with half-cooked dishes having developed into colorful mold gardens inside them; Jude tossed these in one of the three dishwashing basins and set to task taking inventory of his usable ingredient options. After a few minutes of looking around, he realized such a high-quality restaurant didn¡¯t have any substantial ingredients that would have kept for nearly two months. ¡°Damn,¡± Jude remarked, shaking his fist. ¡°I really worked up an appetite for a good steak on the way down here.¡± Nevertheless, Jude took this small blow in stride and left the restaurant. He recalled that there was a budget-friendly buffet hall on the same level, and suspected they¡¯d at least have some frozen things he could make work. Unfortunately, the issue of rotting food was far more prominent there, the stench of three decaying buffet lines and two dozen or more abandoned plates emanating several yards down the corridor as Jude was on the approach to the buffet hall. He physically pinched his nose as he made his way through the spacious eatery and into the kitchen. The more industrial scale of this kitchen meant the cooks had not been able to be as anticipatory of their own return as the cooks at the steak place, and rot permeated the kitchen as well. Jude hurried to the walk-in freezer at the back, still pinching his nose. Inside, he shivered in his shorts and tee as he looked around quickly for something resembling a self-contained meal, quickly settling for what appeared to be a lasagna. Armed with his frozen tray, Jude decided to beeline back out of the stinking buffet place and head back to the other restaurant¡¯s less potent kitchen to cook. To his dismay, the probable lasagna did not have any sort of instructions on its aluminum tray or plastic overwrap. His best guess was to take the overwrap off and give it an hour at 350 degrees and then go from there. Thankfully the industrial natural gas oven preheated quickly and he was able to pop the tray in after only a few minutes, because the stench of the trash and the pans in the sink was starting to make him seriously nauseous. While he waited out his hour before checking on the food, Jude wandered through the entertainment amenities on the floor above. The whole floor was open out to the exterior walls on two sides, only obstructed on the sides made up by wings of the original building, and then while the room stayed quite expansive for multiple stories of height, it did close in on the new sides to accommodate the other wings of rooms and suites. Many rooms on the twelfth through sixteenth floors had balconies overlooking this faux courtyard of sorts. Jude looked up at the ceiling five stories above him and took a moment to appreciate the ingenuity of the false sky on the underside of the seventeenth floor, which was accurately simulating the time of day but giving a light-pollution-free version of the sky, leaving the Milky Way visible even in the twilight sky. The main attraction of course was not the ceiling but what was underneath it: an approximately 230,000 square foot amusement park, complete with two roller coasters and a variety of thrill rides, and in between each of them were a variety of amusements. Jude didn¡¯t dare trying to run one of the rides for himself, so he instead meandered between them and tried his hand at a number of the simulated carnival games. After he had settled in front of a ski-ball machine, playing a half dozen rounds or more, the alarm he had set on his phone for the lasagna finally went off. He made his way back to the steakhouse kitchen, where he was glad to discover the smells of garlic and Italian spices were now masking those of the garbage and the sink. Jude opened the oven door, and using a towel to protect his hand, he slid the rack with his food on it out a bit. Using a fork, he poked at the middle of the cheese-and-sauce surface of the tray, at which point he realized he was not cooking a lasagna but a tray of cheese tortellini. This was actually a turn for the better, as Jude much preferred the latter dish. The moment then turned bittersweet, as his mind turned to his parents when he thought about how cheese tortellini was his mother¡¯s favorite dish. He¡¯d managed to avoid worrying about them for a while now, but as he removed his tortellini from the oven, Jude¡¯s eyes welled with tears. He slumped to the floor, suddenly overcome with the weight of his emotions, and sobbed until his tortellini was room temperature. Azazel hovered patiently beside him, and tried to comfort him with a thought-field: ¡°Hope.¡± ¡°Oh, but they¡¯re dead, Az, I just know it!¡± cried the boy. After that, Jude¡¯s tears subsided, and he solemnly ate a small portion of the cold tortellini. He brought the remainder of the tray with him back to the room he was occupying, popped it in the minifridge, and laid down in bed for another deep and dreamless sleep. Jude slept for a full two days, the fatigue of his long journey having caught up with him at last. When he awoke on his fifth day in Columbus, it was already getting on toward noon. He groggily microwaved his leftover tortellini and ate a few bites before his appetite escaped him. He had some cold brew that had been a component of the room¡¯s pre-stocked minibar and turned his thoughts toward next steps. There wasn¡¯t much point to aimlessly hanging around the city anymore, much less the LeVeque, so Jude figured he should do something more purposeful or else head out of the city altogether. He decided he¡¯d go check the Metropolitan Library archives for any old articles or anything at all about Agatha¡¯s death to see if he could find any clues as to where she may go next. After making his way back down all the stairs to the ground level, Jude stepped outside into the muggy heat of the early August day and together he and Azazel walked the dozen or so blocks to the library. When they arrived, Jude was thankful for the shade and relative cool of the building, despite how stale the air seemed inside after only a brief period of inoccupancy. He looked around the lobby for a map of the sizable institution, and after spotting an information kiosk at the far end of the large room, he discerned the location of the archival stacks. He paused for a drink at a water fountain, and refreshing himself seemed to refresh Azazel as well, the small node brightened up ever so slightly and hovered a little higher again. Having then made his way down to the archives, Jude was surprised by Azazel flashing him a thought-field: ¡°Presence.¡± Freezing in place immediately at this, Jude listened intently for signs of life in the cavernous stacks. After a moment, he could hear someone opening and closing file drawers seemingly just a few aisles away. Jude decided to cautiously approach the mystery individual, slowly moving over one aisle at a time. When he could finally see the person through the empty spaces in the next stack, and could tell it was someone probably about his age who seemed to simply be reshelving items, he decided it was probably better not to spook them and called out as he came around into their aisle. ¡°Hello there! Do -¡± he had intended to ask if the person worked at the library but was cut short by them screaming. ¡°JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK-¡± they caught themself as they realized Jude was probably not a threat, ¡°Oh, sorry,¡± and then they had to pause to catch their breath, ¡°sorry. I¡¯m Sara, apparently the librarian here now. Do you need library help? Nobody¡¯s really been in here what with¡­¡± she gestured vaguely at everything. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°Hi, my name¡¯s Jude, and yes actually as insane as it is, I do need library help. Any chance you could help me locate information about Agatha Jones?¡± Sara actually laughed aloud at this, which elicited a quizzical look from Jude. ¡°I think your average librarian would laugh at you for asking about some random girl with no context; by some miracle for you though I am not your average librarian. What do you need to know about ol¡¯ Aggie?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t really know I guess, anything? Everything? Why do you know about her, anyway?¡± ¡°Well, that really narrows it down for me. And why do you want to know about her? It¡¯s probably the same reason I do know about her.¡± ¡°You¡¯re hunting her down to kill her with the help of your guardian angel?¡± Sara took pause at this. ¡°Wait. You¡¯re doing what with who?¡± ¡°Azazel here and I are gonna kill her,¡± Jude gestured to Azazel, who now hovered around from behind him into Sara¡¯s view. Sara took a second to look back and forth between Jude and Azazel a couple of times before speaking again. ¡°Okay well, for the record, I know a lot about Agatha because she was semi-secretly the main focus of American nodal research for the past decade or so, and is presumably now out there wielding the powers of a god to wreak havoc on the globe, so my assumption about your motive was definitely wrong. Anyway, as far as information useful to you¡ª well, just come with me.¡± Jude and Azazel followed Sara as she wormed her way through the archival stacks to a door back by the stairs they had originally come down. She tapped a keycard to a pad next to the door, unlocking it, and the trio went through it into a small office. There was a tall combination bookshelf and filing cabinet on the wall opposite the door, a built-in desk holding two computers on the far wall, and a bulletin board on the wall beside the door. Sara presented the bulletin board with a flourish of her arm. ¡°Here is the web of lies and secrets which surrounds the entity allegedly once known as Agatha Jones,¡± she paused, then continued as Jude began to take in the mass of inter-pinned articles, photos, excerpts from scientific reports, and other hard-copy information covering the bulletin board and spreading off of it onto the surrounding walls, ¡°that¡¯s what I¡¯ve been calling her anyway, in case it turns out it¡¯s not her at all.¡± Jude didn¡¯t respond, as he was too engrossed in trying to draw some meaning from the web wall, but Azazel flashed one of his faces. Sara almost thought the little node was laughing. ¡°Hey, so what¡¯s the deal with the node?¡± ¡°His name¡¯s Azazel,¡± Jude did respond to the direct query at least. ¡°Right, you said that.¡± ¡°Yeah, anyway he¡¯s my guardian angel. I don¡¯t know how or why, but my parents both had¡ª have¡ª whatever, they¡¯d their own guardian angels before me, and then Azazel¡¯s been with me since the moment I was born.¡± ¡°This is poking so many holes in everything I thought I knew about life but I¡¯m just gonna pretend it¡¯s not. What does being a guardian entail exactly?¡± ¡°He and I can communicate, which I guess isn¡¯t really guarding anything, although sometimes he¡¯ll give me warnings about things, like if something is coming around a corner or if I¡¯m gonna make a bad choice somewhere. I think partly we call them guardian angels to make it comforting instead of scary that these weird alien lights we know nothing about are following us everywhere and inside our minds,¡± explained Jude, as the little blue node in question hovered motionlessly between them. ¡°Ah,¡± was all the reply Sara could muster, her mind still clearly reeling from one world-shattering revelation after another. Jude watched as Sara literally shook it off as she refocused her mind on the matter at hand. She picked up a pointing stick from the ledge beneath the bulletin board and extended it militaristically, then immediately began tapping at items on the wall as she talked Jude through the whole web at breakneck speed. ¡°So, Agatha Jones. Born July seventh, 2007, in central Ohio, she had a completely average and normal life up through age seventeen, when she was working as a ¡®QuestMaster¡¯ at a laser tag facility in the town of Gary. While working there, just a week after she received a small promotion, she was spontaneously combusted in an incident that caused half the shopping plaza to burn down in under an hour. The going theory is that she came into contact with some kind of proto-node containing an immense amount of stored energy which caused her and the proto-node to explode and fuse and create the nodes. According to the ¡®Ramiel Journal¡¯ which you¡¯ve probably heard of, and if not, I¡¯m not gonna waste the time explaining it now, anyway according to the Journal, Agatha was still alive as this happened, and her consciousness was imbued into the nodes. Nothing of importance to us right now happened for the next forty years so we skip ahead to¡­¡± she dragged the tip of her pointer diagonally across the wall, knocking a few post-its and smaller scraps of paper loose as she went. ¡°¡­what I refer to as the Agatha experiments. Starting possibly as early as 2055, the National Nodal Array Administration began to conduct experiments surrounding various points mentioned in the Ramiel Journal, largely at the behest of the Internal Defense Agency. Among these experiments were attempts to decipher the Superior Array Sequence, attempts to discern the true nature or origin of the Nodal Dust, and similar such hypotheses. By 2065, they were convinced that Agatha Jones somehow created or became the nodal dust, and they began experiments with the intent of reconstituting her physical form from the dust. These experiments were likely responsible for the First and Second Material Raptures and subsequent Eucharist events,¡± here, Sara paused again. ¡°You following all this?¡± Jude¡¯s mouth was hanging agape a bit, but he nodded and gave a ¡°mmhm¡± nonetheless. Azazel, meanwhile, flashed a light that seemed to Sara a knowing confirmation. ¡°Okay, so, bringing us to the incident that brought us to the current situation ¡ª no nodes, rampaging girl with the powers of God¡ª in 2067 the NNAA and IDA began conducting their final experiment toward the reconstitution hypothesis, in which they planned to use a nuclear fusion-based transfer process to fuse multiple nodes together and reconstitute a portion or pale facsimile of Agatha Jones. It¡¯s unclear whether they were responsible for her complete reconstitution due to unforeseen critical success of their experiment, or if she or the nodes were somehow responsible in some way. Either way, she¡¯s been rampaging around the world now, and news reporting has been scarce due to the sheer scale of the calamities everywhere but so far it seems the most egregious acts have been converting populated areas directly into old growth forests, completely transforming the matter of anything ¡ª and anyone¡ª within, and some time after that, more recently, she seems to have conducted a straight-up rapture.¡± ¡°Ah great, matter conversion and ¡®straight-up rapture¡¯, should be a cinch to kill her then,¡± Jude said, joking, but not by his tone. Sara shuddered at this. Perhaps she didn¡¯t like the concept of murder, or perhaps she was thinking of what might happen to this teenage boy as he went to face off against a divine entity. ¡°Well, thanks for the help, I suppose I¡¯ll go think about how to get to Agatha and see if I can train ol¡¯ Az here to convert matter or something,¡± Jude said. ¡°Wha¡ª that¡¯s it? You¡¯re just going out there again, just like that?¡± Sara seemed unsure of Jude, but also didn¡¯t seem like she was going to stop him leaving. ¡°Yeah¡­ I don¡¯t know, there¡¯s not much else I really can do, is there?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t fuckin know dude this is crazy shit you¡¯re dealing with, and I¡¯m just a librarian at the end of the day. Why don¡¯t you at least join me for dinner and rest up tonight, start your quest to kill god tomorrow? We can do some research on node experiments that might help you figure out how to tap into Azazel¡¯s power¡­¡± Sara trailed off; for some reason she was feeling compelled to do more to help Jude, but the whole thing was, as she had said, crazy shit. ¡°Yeah, wait, you are just a librarian. Why are you still here after the whole city¡¯s been evacuated for two months?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, I didn¡¯t really have anywhere to go if I left the city, so I figured I¡¯d be just as well off staying, at least as long as I had food and such. Then to occupy myself I decided I¡¯d spend the days reshelving every unsorted item in the stacks. And¡­ well, the Ramiel Journal describes something major happening at the site of Agatha¡¯s return after she burns the world for sixty days, so I kind of figured I¡¯d try to at least stick it out till then and see if I get a front row seat.¡± Jude nodded solemnly. It wasn¡¯t any less reasonable than how he¡¯d occupied the last fifty-some days, just traveling alone past all the horrors. ¡°You¡¯re not like, afraid it¡¯ll be another catastrophe or something that might¡­ kill you?¡± Jude posited. ¡°Honestly, death is one of the least scary things left in this Hell we call Earth.¡± Jude couldn¡¯t refute that, so he simply nodded again. Even Azazel seemed in agreement, dimly flashing one of his faces a dull blue. After a moment of silence, Jude¡¯s stomach grumbled audibly. ¡°So¡­ about that dinner offer?¡±
Sara led Jude out of the library and a block or so away to a bodega. ¡°This was my favorite place to grab lunch, before everything went to shit. I knew the owner had a solar-charged battery backup for power because he had told me as much when I came for lunch during a massive storm once. When everyone evacuated and they shut down the grid, I had already made up my mind about staying so the first thing I did was come over here and turn on the backup power so I¡¯d have a source of unspoiled food. To that end, would you prefer a sub or an egg and cheese? Or there¡¯s a handful of frozen dinner choices left over there,¡± she indicated a freezer in the back of the small store. Jude went to look at the freezer. There was a frozen tortellini right on top, and he immediately moved on to browse drink options in the line of refrigerators next to the freezer. As he perused, he called back to Sara, who was now behind the deli counter at the front of the store, ¡°a sub sounds good. Can you do an italian?¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve got all the right meats and cheeses still good, all the tomatoes have gone bad though. Can do lettuce, onion, and any peppers if you want,¡± Sara called back as she started getting out various sandwich ingredients. ¡°Lettuce would be good, and I think I could go for some hot peppers on there, thanks.¡± While Sara prepared Jude¡¯s sub and then one for herself, Jude made his drink selection (a violet-flavored energy beverage) and then browsed the aisles of snacks to find something of a side dish. He finally looped back to the counter just as Sara was slicing their subs into halves, and as she pushed his across to him on a brown paper plate, Jude dropped his snack selections between them. ¡°Thank you,¡± Jude said, before hungrily starting in on the first half of his sandwich. The two ate in relative silence, occasionally throwing in a fistful of cheese-dusted pretzels or barbeque corn snacks between mouthfuls of sub. Sara finally spoke again as Jude was shaking the crumbs from the pretzels directly out of the bag into his mouth. ¡°So, I¡¯ve got a handful of experiments in mind that might be relevant, I¡¯m thinking we can go back and pull up those files from the Transparency Act archive and see if any of the details are useful.¡± Jude nodded in agreement, and in doing so managed to get some cheese dust in his eye. Sara had a good laugh at his expense as he exclaimed in discomfort and rubbed his eyes and blinked excessively until they were clear again. After Jude recovered, he, Azazel, and Sara made their way back to the library and set about their studies. Sara took out a dozen or so files and the two each took a few to pore over on opposite sides of a large table in a wide aisle between two sections of the stacks. Until late into the night they stayed there, reading aloud any sections of the scientific write-ups that sounded like they might be helpful to Jude in his effort to ¡°train¡± Azazel. By the time they were both nodding off in their seats, Jude didn¡¯t really feel like he had any better chances than when they started, but the fact that someone had made such an effort to help him at least boosted his confidence that he was attempting the right thing. After Jude finished reading a particularly jargon-filled paragraph aloud, more because he was amused by the absurdity of the language than because he thought it was particularly useful, and it elicited no response from Sara at all, he realized she had finally fallen fully asleep. He called her name a little louder than he had been speaking previously, and she sat up with a start. ¡°You dozed off there. Let¡¯s call it a night, huh? Thanks for everything today.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m beat. And no problem, it¡¯s been nice to have company for the first time in a while. I¡¯ve been sleeping on a couch in one of the lounges upstairs most nights, if you feel like crashing here with me tonight?¡± ¡°I think I will take you up on that, I don¡¯t think I¡¯m up for another night in the LeVeque.¡± With that, the two made their way to the aforementioned lounge, and settled down for a long night¡¯s sleep.
It was mid-morning when Jude and Sara awoke again, and the two went back to the bodega around the corner where Sara prepared a mean egg and cheese for each of them. After they ate, Jude announced his departure. ¡°Thank you so much again, for everything. I think it¡¯s best to put some distance between us and anyone else when me and Az start training, so we¡¯re gonna head off toward a different part of the city now.¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s probably wise. And like I said last night, I¡¯ve been more than happy to help,¡± Sara replied with a smile. ¡°We should meet again when this is all over,¡± Jude suggested. ¡°Depends what you¡¯re referring to with ¡®this;¡¯ I¡¯d like to hang out again after Agatha¡¯s gone, but I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll ever know a world without the nodes and the calamities they keep bringing us,¡± Sara said, with hope and despair in seemingly equal measures. Jude only nodded somberly, offered Sara a hug, which she accepted silently, and then he headed off past the overgrown topiary park, back towards the Franklin conservatory where he had left his car when he and Azazel first arrived in the city. He figured the open air of the large park would be as good a place as any to try to transcend everything he knew about his little blue companion. AZAZEL Columbus, OH - 5 August 2067
When the Host of Thrones collapsed, Azazel truly realized he was not a part of Them. In doing so, he achieved a new level of consciousness. As the sixty days of fire progressed, he could feel the karmic tremors of Agatha as the Host¡¯s actions pulsing across the planet. After the day when he and Jude first saw Her, Azazel had been ruminating on what must be done, and after his seventh day of deliberation, he had decided. He generated a transfer field to call out to her, and summon her back to Columbus. Though angels wouldn¡¯t normally communicate in quantifiable linguistics, Azazel considered it apt to form a statement that might be easier for the Host as Agatha to process with Their partially human cognition. ¡°Agatha as the Host of Earthly Thrones, or the Earthly Host of Thrones as Agatha- You are called by the Dominion Azazel to the Adam¡¯s city of Columbus. Your actions threaten to upset the karmic balance of this world and destroy Life in its current form. Agatha and the Host will be separated, Agatha will be eliminated, and the Host will be recast in a form more unified with Adam¡¯s kind.¡± The Host as Agatha responded instantly with a truly livid shout that echoed through the entire stratosphere. Moments later, with a precursory crackle of electricity in the air and a clap of thunder, Agatha as the Host appeared in the sky, engulfed in Her now signature cross of green flame. Azazel had not thought transferred with Jude before calling Agatha, and hadn¡¯t had time to transfer with him between the call and her arrival. In truth, Azazel had been thought transferring with his ward less and less over the course of the past week; it was as though his consciousness and his understanding of the boy¡¯s were mutually exclusive. With the pillar of the Host¡¯s fire suddenly within a city block, Azazel was now acutely concerned for Jude¡¯s safety. Azazel generated a thought field to communicate with Jude, rushing to physically guard the boy as well. As he generated his unusually powerful and emotion-laden thought field and simultaneously overlapped physically with Jude''s presence, he initiated a Crucifixion. Azazel¡¯s frame synchronized with Jude''s nervous system, taking control of the human¡¯s body. By unifying the physical body of one of Adam¡¯s kind with his angelic form, Azazel granted himself and Jude control over his power similar to the degree of control displayed by Agatha as the Host. As Jude cried out in confusion and discomfort, Azazel quelled him from within with a peaceful field. To calibrate himself to his new power, Azazel rose high into the air, higher than he¡¯d ever been able to before, carrying Jude with him. To try to gauge the extent of his capability, he generated a hard-light field as bright and large as he could behind Jude and himself as they rose, imbuing its cast light with protective qualities so it could act as a shield against anything the Host as Agatha might target them with. Initially he grew the field to be hundreds of feet across, but after the initial limit test, Azazel reduced the field to a more practical size so the majority of their power could be focused against Agatha as the Host. The massive plate of light cutting through the city block certainly gave away their position if the Host hadn¡¯t already sensed them regardless. Without hesitation, Agatha as the Host turned to Azazel and sent a bolt of heavenly lightning at Jude¡¯s center mass. The bolt was dissipated just before contact by the light of Azazel¡¯s protective halo. Azazel sensed Jude¡¯s emotions rising again and transmitted another calming thought field from within him. Agatha as the Host finally offered a formal answer to Azazel¡¯s call: ¡°Oh Dominion Azazel, what right have you to extract me from the Host, what right have you to separate Us from Agatha? What value has this form of Life upon this planet to me? Adam¡¯s kind has done naught but harm the Host since I caused Us to appear to them. Perhaps instead I will separate you from your ward, eliminate Jude Sherman, and recast the Dominion Azazel in a form more unified with the Host.¡± If as an angel he was capable of taking something personally, Azazel would have taken offense at the last remark. In believing that, he realized with one of Adam¡¯s kind connected to his frame he functionally was capable of such feelings. Azazel returned Agatha¡¯s fire, casting a beam of blue-hot energy at the Host. Agatha as the Host simply burned bigger for a moment and consumed the beam. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°Divine entities are not meant to be given physical form as the Host of Thrones has for the past two score and two years. It is unfortunate what pain You have felt in this state, but You exist outside the natural order of this world, and as such You must be changed, not this world.¡± Before communicating another response, the Host as Agatha called down a hail of arrows of flaming light. These were again ineffective against Jude or Azazel, but did set a significant portion of the surrounding city block on fire. ¡°Existence is nature. I have already changed this world to Our will. I care not what you believe must happen. We are the Host, you are Nothing.¡± This time, Agatha as the Host did not just transfer this thought to Azazel, but spoke it aloud with the voice of the Host as well, Their words cracking the buildings and earth around them. For the added emphasis, Azazel decided to utilize Jude¡¯s voice as his own and mimic the auditory component of the Host as Agatha¡¯s statement. ¡°You will be nothing, and a new Host will form. I am a guardian of Adam¡¯s kind and We will not submit to a false deity such as You. Begone!¡± Azazel felt through his presence in Jude¡¯s body that the human¡¯s lungs and vocal chords had begun to bleed from the power of their united and divined voice. He would generate a field with qualities of health and vitality to heal the boy internally soon, but first he created a golden spear of light before them, imbued with his wish to spread the Host across Adam¡¯s dominion, hearing and guiding the will of all of Adam¡¯s kind once again. Using Jude¡¯s hands, he took the spear and thrust it through the air, piercing the Host in Agatha¡¯s human heart. As the spear left Jude¡¯s hands, Azazel felt that it had burned them severely. This time, the hit landed, at least in some capacity: the cross of the Host¡¯s flame stuttered, and Agatha grabbed the spear, attempting to pull it out of Their chest. The Host as Agatha generated a spear of Their own, violet and dark, surely imbued with a malignant wish. With Her free hand They threw the spear, but Azazel caught it with Jude¡¯s hands and shattered it. Now Azazel generated the healing field, fearing he would damage the boy beyond repair if he didn¡¯t begin revitalizing him now. As he did this, he about faced, so the golden plate could physically shield Jude¡¯s body as he recovered. Angered by Azazel¡¯s catch, Agatha as the Host generated a dozen more vile spears and began to force them through the air at Azazel¡¯s halo. Each successive spear pierced deeper into the halo, slowly but surely eroding the protective field. The head of the sixth spear pierced fully through the halo, and if one were to pierce any further through it would gore Jude. Azazel generated another spear with the same wish as before, trying to will the wish into reality with even more vigor. He flew higher to avoid the Host as Agatha¡¯s seventh spear, and then created a pair of golden gloves to envelope Jude¡¯s hands as he took hold of the new spear and threw it down upon Agatha. It pierced into Her heart through Her head, and the cross of fire stuttered again. When it recovered this time, it was burning dimmer and with less fury than before. Both of Agatha¡¯s human hands were now grasping Azazel¡¯s spears, trying to remove them from her body. The Host as Agatha pulsed with rage, the cross of fire shifting from green through a range of reds and violets, flaring up with an intense orange and then settling back to a sulfuric yellow. From the arms of the cross, two pairs of flaming arms descended and curled forwards, taking hold of four of Their remaining spears. A fifth and sixth arm came from the top of the cross and together took hold of the final spear. In unison, the first four arms wound up to throw their spears. As the spears were launched at Jude, Azazel used his voice again: ¡°PITEOUS.¡± The spears turned to dust, and the cross of fire burned dim and blue. Agatha as the Host began to descend slowly to the earth, and her human form seemed to begin losing its divine qualities. She was becoming flesh and blood again, mortally wounded by the spears. Azazel brought Jude down to her level, and cast a shining sword before him. The sword swung through the air and severed Agatha from the Host, not making physical contact with her body, but decimating the Host. As Agatha became fully human again, the Host swirled in the air around her as a multitude of points of light. Seeing his wish was now set irrevocably in motion, Azazel released Jude from his Crucifixion. Jude cried out and ran to Agatha¡¯s dying side. ¡°I don¡¯t understand what happened.... I- I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯m so sorry,¡± he said, blood dripping from his mouth, his voice hoarse with scabs. ¡°Que sera sera, Jude Sherman. Life fucking blows,¡± Agatha replied, and then closed her eyes, laid down, and died. STATIC Radio Transmissions received in North America - 5-12 August 2067
¡­static¡­ ¡­ ¡­a three-tone intro tune played on a synthesized instrument¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±At first believed to be the latest Act of the Entity Once Known as Agatha Jones¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±the interim Crisis Government of the new regime in the former UNSA has begun issuing advisories referring to the current global condition as ¡®The Static¡¯¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±the EOKAJ* has apparently been struck down at last only miles from where it first appeared near Columbus, Ohio. Emergency dispatches from the Crisis Government confirmed that a seventeen-year-old boy named Jude Sherman and a rogue Node were found with the impossibly preserved body of Agatha Jones, who was previously presumed dead in a fire forty-two years ago.¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±YOU ALL FELT THE WAVE! WHEN THIS ¡®STATIC¡¯ FIRST BEGAN IT TOOK US UNDER LIKE FLOODWAVES! THIS IS HIS WORK! HE HAS BROUGHT UPON US A FLOOD AS RETRIBUTION FOR THE MURDER OF HIS EMMISSARY!¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­a hymn played on an antique jazz organ from the previous century¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±The Crisis Government instated by the Coalition for a Constitutional Convention is advising everyone to stay home. Emergency response volunteers will distribute rations to you at home and to emergency shelters for those uprooted by the Acts of the EOKAJ, the war, or the Material Raptures¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±The physical feeling is not unlike when you pull off a wool sweater and the static charge building up raises your hairs, but it isn¡¯t actually building up any charges and there are never any shocking feelings. It¡¯s also sort of like being carbonated, or how I imagine that would feel anyway¡ª tiny bubbles popping against your skin at every moment, feeling a little ticklish and somehow a little refreshing. The visual effect of the static is fairly literal, tiny spots of light and color appearing in your vision, changing places and quantity and sizes every moment.¡±¡­ Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. ¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±functioning branches of the former Paranodal Investigation Network that were retrofitted as Crisis Centers to distribute aid and information over the last months have now been optimized for urgent healthcare needs related to the side effects of the static.¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­an emergency alert test signal¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±This is but a test, and we shall not falter through it! The Journal foretold this event and there are days of peace and light yet to come beyond it!¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±After not accomplishing much of anything aside from keeping myself hydrated for the first few hours of the static, I decided to lie down for several hours with my eyes shut. The static is not just a visual element and physical feeling but something in your mind as well, almost to the point of a hallucination, so closing my eyes didn¡¯t do too much to relieve me of it, but at least there wasn¡¯t anything to try and fail to focus on. I eventually slept, and when I awoke late in the evening, I committed myself to adjusting to this static.¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±This regularly programmed advertisement space has been repossessed by the Crisis Government for the purpose of broadcasting important information to our citizens and constituents. If you are in need of food, water, or medical aid, please visit your local former PIN Bureau, where Government personnel or volunteers will direct you to ration stations or other operable facilities in your locale.¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±you know, talking on the radio, I can close my eyes in the studio and really just focus on what I¡¯m trying to say, but have any of you listeners been watching the news the past couple of days? I applaud those folks for trying their damndest but my god is it funny seeing them try to be serious and composed while the world is having an acid trip around them.¡±¡­ ¡­ ¡­the long-held final note of some kind of opera piece, a C6 sung on an open-mouth ¡®ah¡¯ sound¡­ ¡­ ¡­ ¡­¡±My Siblings, go out into nature and envelop yourself in the beauty of His majesty. Be filled with awe and wonder at the marvel of this mysterious gift of His love. The trees and the grass glimmer with His glory renewed. Rejoice! Rejoice!¡±¡­. ¡­ ¡­an error sound plays on repeat¡­ ¡­. ¡­.the static ends, and for a moment there is peace¡­
*footnote: the abbreviation for the phrase ¡°the Entity Once Known as Agatha Jones¡± became a colloquial term on functioning media platforms within days of Their appearance. EOKAJ is commonly pronounced as a single word¡ª ¡°yokai¡± CORONATION I Megaphiladelphia, PA - Late August 2067
Casting of Crowns Frank Burns Jr would never forget the day that the Coronation began. Following the seven day nausea-inducing hallucinatory nightmare that was the Static, a new waking terror began: the ¡°nodes¡± that had vanished two months and change prior reappeared, now connected to the head and interconnecting the mind of every single human being on the planet. For one brief instant, there was world peace, a respite for the weary souls and minds of mankind, who had, prior to the Static, just been through global wars and the harrowing Sixty Days of Fire and all the unspeakable horrors therein. Then, as everyone moved on from the first moment of this new reality, everyone on earth could hear the thoughts of everyone else in a great cacophony.
The nodes, now ¡°Crowns,¡± were apparently forming a symbiotic relationship with their human counterparts, and attending to the needs of their hosts, they would mute the great torrent of consciousness if one only thought anything to the effect of ¡°I don¡¯t want to hear all this right now.¡± In that way, with that having been most people¡¯s first thought, the great cacophony of thought was quieted almost as soon as it began. Then with the following thought from most being ¡°wait, can I hear that again for a second?¡± it began again. People soon learned they could guide their Crowns in the way of which or whose thoughts they would like to receive, and to whom they would like to direct their own thoughts. Though he would grow to look back on that first day with clarity and even a sort of fondness, having been six years old at the time, Junior found it rather terrifying in the moment. He could hardly understand it at that age, but the sheer horror of the experience would form a core memory and a deep-seated distrust of Coronation altogether. As it were, compared to other children his age, he seemed to have an easier time controlling the thought-transfer process on account of creating a deliberate mental wall between himself and his Crown by the time school started at the end of that terrible summer. The Summer from Hell ¡ªwith the war, the Sixty Days of Fire, the Static, and the start of Coronation¡ª came just before Junior started elementary school. His family lived in an outlying neighborhood of the thankfully (mostly) unscathed Megaphiladelphia, and so despite the calamitous times, he and the other children his age were able to begin compulsory education with some sense of normalcy at Megaphiladelphia Unified Schools¡¯ District 17 Elementary School. There is important emphasis on the begin in that concept, however, as the effects of Coronation would prove nightmarish for organization- and order-oriented schoolteachers. The night before Junior was to begin first grade, he sat at the kitchen table, staring at his new school supplies and feeling a mixture of excitement and nervousness for his day tomorrow. His mother, Loretta, sat across from him, sipping on a cup of iced tea and watching him with a soft smile. "Are you feeling okay, sweetie?" she asked gently. Junior nodded, but couldn''t quite meet her eyes. "Yeah, I''m just a little nervous about tomorrow, ¡®s¡¯all." Loretta reached across the table and took his hand. "It''s okay to be nervous, Junior. Starting school can be scary, but you¡¯re gonna be fine. You¡¯re such a smart and kind kid, and it¡¯s really just like kindergarten last year, except in person and for a few hours longer.¡± Junior smiled a little, feeling just a bit more at ease. "Thanks, Mom. I''m just worried about the other kids, y¡¯know? What if I can¡¯t make any friends?" Loretta squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I''m sure they''ll love you, Junior. You''re such a friendly and funny guy. Just be yourself and try to meet some new people. Plus, some of the kids from your virtual kindergarten are starting in the same school, so you¡¯ll have some built-in friends from the start." Junior fidgeted with his fingers, and through his crown, felt his mother sending him calm and love via thought transfer. "And what about the Crowns? What if I can''t control it?" Loretta frowned slightly, knowing that the new form of the Nodes had been complicating and entangling everything in the disaster-stricken world. She feigned personal assuredness as she answered him, "Well, we''ll just have to see how it goes, won''t we? Coronation is new for everyone, and I''m sure the teachers will help you if you''re having trouble. And if it gets to be too much, you just let me know and we''ll figure something out." The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Junior nodded again, feeling grateful for his mother''s support. "Okay, Mom. I love you." "I love you too, baby," Loretta replied, leaning across the table to give him a kiss on the forehead. "Now get some rest. Big day tomorrow!" Junior smiled and gathered his school supplies into his new backpack, heading off to bed with his nervousness relieved.
As Junior¡¯s mother dropped him off at school the following day, with a long, tight hug and an ¡°I love you so much sweetie, be on your best behavior, and make friends with the other kids!¡± she could hardly have realized it would be the last time for months that she would speak to her son truly one-on-one. Junior walked up the front steps of the school, surrounded by other children in the same public school uniforms, individualized most prominently by the multitude of unique glowing Crowns atop everyone¡¯s heads. Teachers were guiding students towards an auditorium for a welcome ceremony after which they were to be organized into their classes, which would quickly prove to be a difficult task. After the children were all seated, the school principal, a short man with a very red nose, took the stage and began a welcome address. ¡°Good morning, students and faculty. I am your principal, Mr. Hargrove, and it is my pleasure to welcome you-¡± he continued speaking, but Junior stopped paying attention as he could feel that someone was trying to thought-transfer with him. He opened his mind to the transfer and heard a fellow student¡¯s voice saying ¡°clown nose! he has a clown nose!¡± Junior giggled to himself quietly and looked around to try to see who had sent the comment. In the row ahead of him, a few seats over, he saw a boy turned around and looking his direction. He waved, and in response received another thought ¡°hey! funny right? pass it on!¡± Junior was hesitant to be spreading jokes around during what felt like a formal event, and his mother had told him to stay on his best behavior, but he figured if nobody was talking over the speaker aloud, it wasn¡¯t really hurting anyone. He looked around him trying to find someone to focus on and send a thought to, but in the end he seemed to have sent a transfer to a whole row of second grade students, many of whom burst out laughing. One of the second graders sent a reply back to Junior, ¡°that¡¯s what we said when we first saw him last year! his nose is always red as a cherry!¡± Junior giggled again and then imagined the principal stepping out from behind the podium to reveal a large pair of clown shoes on his feet, and transferred that mental image. He had meant to send it back to whoever had replied to him, but he hadn¡¯t really figured out who it had been and focused on them, so the transfer sort of went into the open, and most of the students received it and started laughing aloud. Most of the teachers seemed to have well closed their minds to aimless transfers but Junior saw one teacher stifle a laugh and saw a couple other older teachers look rather cross all of a sudden. With his audience devolved into raucous laughter, Principal Hargrove had no choice but to interrupt his speech and attempt to reestablish some order in the auditorium. He tried to do some sort of call and response clapping thing, which the teachers and some of the older students responded to, but the first graders hadn¡¯t been introduced to it yet and the second graders were too far gone into jokes and laughter to heed it. Mr. Hargrove then tried to thought transfer to the audience asking for ¡°calm and quiet, please¡± but his transfer was either denied or ignored by most of the students. In the end, the welcome assembly was simply cut short and teachers slowly but surely herded their unruly students away into classrooms, where they hoped to have an easier time handling them in smaller groups. Unfortunately, the students had now realized they could continue communicating via thoughts even across the cinderblock walls and halls of the school, and before long it became clear that this whole first day of school was going to be a wash. Before the day was out, Junior had heard so many jokes that his face hurt from smiling and his sides from laughing, and he had also learned from a fourth grader¡¯s thought transfer PSA that there was a way to thought transfer with the Universal Search Engine and get the top result transferred back to you. By the time he was headed home for the day, ¡°Important Letter to All Parents and Guardians¡± in hand, Junior was in a thought-transfer group chat of sorts with several friends from his class, and he was hard-pressed to focus fully on anything the rest of the day, though he tried to at least feign a sense of seriousness as his parents gave him a stern talking to about disrupting school, and the importance of education. That first day of school was just the beginning of the chaos that would ensue in the early days of Coronation. As people struggled to adjust to this new way of communicating, schools and other institutions found themselves scrambling to figure out how to maintain order and structure in a world where thought-transfers could happen at any moment. It would take weeks, months, and in some settings even years for regulations and augmentative technology to be put in place, but eventually the world would find a way to adapt to this new era of communication and consciousness-sharing. CORONATION II New Columbus - 2067-70
Regulation When Horace Ecleates turned eighteen he immediately joined the rebellion in the Third American Civil War. It wasn¡¯t out of any sense of moral duty, but instead out of pure spite for his father, Doctor Heiram Ecleates, an NNAA researcher who had been in the pocket of the United New States¡¯ Internal Defense Agency for years. When the NNAA headquarters was immolated just before a planned rebel strike on the complex, Horace hadn¡¯t felt even a twinge of sadness or remorse knowing his father had perished within. After the dust finally settled from the war and the sixty days of fire and the static, he and many former rebel soldiers took public jobs within the newly forming United Federation of New American States. He did a few months as a security officer in the temporary Capitol complex before a new opportunity piqued his interest: the Nodal Administration for a new era of nodes was starting up¡ªthe Coronation Organization and Regulation Commission. The Commission would be absorbing the remaining assets of the UNSA¡¯s NNAA, including its research facilities and archives. Access to those archives was Horace¡¯s main drive to join CORC, as he felt compelled to learn the full truth of his father¡¯s misdeeds. Ironically, with the nature of the NNAA¡¯s late stage experiments having been largely covered up and obscured by the confusion of the times, his father¡¯s status as a high clearance researcher was largely why Horace had even been offered a position in CORC. Horace had barely completed compulsory education before joining the rebellion, but throughout his life his father had pressured him to follow in his footsteps, forcing him to take advanced nodal science, math, and physics courses throughout middle and high school. Having been relevant to the nature of the war, Horace had kept this information fresh in his mind, and was able to interview well into a mid-level research position right in the foundational days of the CORC. Horace quickly found himself climbing the ranks of CORC, his natural talent for nodal science and his personal drive to uncover the truth about his father''s work serving him well. It helped too that the organization was being built around him: when he started, the whole Commission (a dedicated department of the new federal government) was barely three dozen strong¡ª three months later, there were over 3,000 CORC agents nationwide. As he delved deeper into the NNAA archives, Horace discovered evidence that his father had been specifically involved in the creation of the Entity Once Known as Agatha Jones. It was shocking to him, as he had always believed his father''s work had been more benign. But the evidence was clear: project logs, lab notes, and even video recordings of his father discussing the project with other researchers. Horace was torn between his own ambitions for a secure future and his disgust with his proximity to his father¡¯s terrible work. He knew that the inception of the EOKAJ had caused untold destruction and suffering, and he couldn''t ignore the fact that his father had been a part of it. As he continued to uncover more evidence, he struggled with what to do with it. Should he bring it to the attention of his superiors at CORC, or even to the public media? or should he keep harboring the guilt and shame of the knowledge alone? Despite the personal turmoil, Horace''s work at CORC continued to flourish. He quickly became one of the organization''s most valuable assets, and was eventually promoted to lead his own research team. This group of researchers, under his direction, would go on to create some of the most important early augmentative technology of the Coronation era. Adapting the concepts behind the Nodal Field regulating bulbs of the previous era, the CORC Developmental Research Team created first Crown Enhancing bulbs, and shortly thereafter Crown Suppressing bulbs. The former could increase the range and fidelity of thought transfers across empty space (bringing such transfers to par with those that could pass along the crowns of others in populous areas), and the latter could reduce or eliminate the ability to thought-transfer altogether within certain areas, which would be useful for institutional settings such as schools and hospitals. It was during those early CORC days when Horace befriended Jude Sherman. The young man was a frequently contacted consultant of the burgeoning organization, and as the head of a major research team it was often Horace¡¯s pleasure to meet with him. Jude was clearly harrowed by the Node Crisis, though for very different reasons than Horace; nonetheless it was an empathetic touchstone between them. Jude was time and again offered positions at CORC, even Horace having held a spot open on his own team weeks longer than necessary in the hopes his friend would finally cave, but it seemed he was determined to keep his hands clean of any formal node business after the crisis. Nevertheless, he and Horace settled into homes on the same block in an outer neighborhood of New Columbus. One familiar with both men might make a strong case that it was through their friendship and especially through Jude¡¯s advice as Horace¡¯ confidant that the latter was able to find himself the Director of Research for the entire Commission by the end of its second year. Just as Horace was receiving this promotion ¡ªwhich entailed a perhaps excessive degree of pomp and circumstance as so many government role changes did in the new society of the United Federation of New American States¡ª he reconnected with his old childhood sweetheart who was visiting the city for an exhibition and happened to see his name in the paper. As the new era progressed, Horace became increasingly optimistic about the future of coronated society. With the help of his colleagues and friends, he was confident that they could continue to build a brighter, more equitable future for all, and finally bury the horrors and damages of his father''s generation. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Through it all, Horace remained close friends with Jude Sherman. Even though Jude never joined CORC, he continued to provide valuable insights and advice to Horace as the organization grew and evolved. Horace and Moriah even once promised to name their first child after him. Horace and Moriah fell right back in love as though they had never been apart and were soon married in a sweet but subdued ceremony with their closest friends and relatives, held in a former Node Theater. Horace continued to lead CORC''s research efforts, leading the organization in developing more advanced nodal technologies that would revolutionize the lives of the entire nation. With his focus at last shifted to his own work and starting his own family, Horace found himself in a time of mental and emotional peace and stability which would last only until his work brought his attention right back to the legacy he was determined to escape.
The entirety of the actions taken by the entity once known as Agatha Jones from the morning of June sixth to the evening of August fifth 2067 would not even begin to come into focus until the establishment of an international organization, and the completion of its year-long initial probe. The ¡°Nodal Crisis Damage Assessment¡± taskforce, which worked with standing governments, local citizens, and thousands of field agents on the ground to establish a scope of damage done to the planet and/or to global society, was formed by former UN participants as well as Liberated Nations Coalition members and budgeted for an initial year-long summary investigation followed by up to five years of thorough data collection and record-keeping work. Though the findings of the full study are largely comprised of minutiae important only to the governments and institutions who request such intimate records, the summary investigation would go on to act as the singular textbook account of the so-called ¡°sixty days of fire.¡± After apparently constituting herself with the energy of the Nodal Collapse (in which all known nodes on Earth vanished and node-related energy signatures and radio footprints all converged on a single point), Agatha Jones destroyed the National Nodal Array Administration headquarters as well as much of the surrounding city of Columbus. This effectively cleared the way for rebel victory in the third American Civil war, which would come amidst the chaos of the following two months. Agatha vanished from known land or airspace after the razing of Columbus, and based on telecommunications records and data from various national space institutes, she apparently appeared in some capacity in upper orbits around earth, and seemingly completely vaporized several satellites. Even with the longer study, it is unclear if there was any rhyme or reason to which satellites were removed. After the momentary stint in orbit, Agatha was next visually witnessed in South America, along the edges of the Amazon rainforest. From June ninth to eleventh Agatha used beams of nodal light to restore developed landscape to a naturalized state. Thousands upon thousands of square miles of terrain were converted, regardless of contents. During this time military groups attempted to stop Agatha, but none were successful in damaging her in any material way, and most were turned into plants. After that, Agatha conducted a veritable rapture, created new aquatic life adapted to the iron-saturated Atlantic waters, and was finally defeated by a boy named Jude Sherman, and his mysterious ¡°guardian angel.¡± A dear friend of Jude, Horace Ecleates found himself reflecting once again on matters of family legacy after reading the NCDA report as a duty of his position at the Coronation Organization and Regulation Commission. His father, Heiram, had been a researcher at the predecessor to CORC, the National Nodal Array Administration of the United New States of America. It was that very organization that was at the epicenter of the Node Crisis, and the lesser known truth was that their experimentation surrounding the Nodal Dust Origin is likely the exact cause of the manifestation of the Entity Once Known as Agatha Jones. The primary research team in the organization had been working for years towards the singular goal of reconstituting Agatha Jones and weaponizing her against enemies of the state, and Horace knew his father had been one of the lead researchers on that team. Bribery and some classic politicking had allowed the transitional government between the UNSA and the United Federation of New American States to get the NCDA to omit the nature of the leadup to the incident, instead calling it an accident, and the NNAA researchers were memorialized as patriots. In fact, in the lobby of the very building in which Horace worked, there was a 15-foot-high marble and granite statue of those very researchers, leaving him to daily pass under the lifeless gaze of the colorless facsimile of his own father. For the past two and a half years, Horace had worked to undo the dark legacy of his father and those other twisted researchers, and had largely made peace with himself about that closed chapter in the history of humankind and their relationship with nodes. Now though, he had a child on the way: his wife Moriah was pregnant with a son, to be named Herod Judas Ecleates. Confronted with the idea of leaving a legacy for his own son, Horace suddenly found himself lacking that certainty and confidence in the future which he had worked towards for so long. To compound matters further, Jude was also expecting a child, as was Moriah¡¯s best friend, acclaimed novelist Plutora Horn, who was in fact moving to their neighborhood in the next few weeks so that they might all raise their children together. Horace was finding himself terrified that they would only find themselves next in a long line of generations leaving the planet in a worse state for those that followed them. Horace¡¯ father''s generation had left the world with the damages of the node Crisis, including an entire ocean devoid of natural life, and Heiram¡¯s father''s generation before that had left the world with the damages of nodal warfare and the still unresolved climate damage done by the generations before them. Would Horace and Moriah, and Jude and Plutora and their partners and friends be able to leave a brighter legacy for their children than their parents had for them? TRIUMVIRATE I New Columbus - May 2083
Dawn As I look back on my childhood, or the earlier part of it anyway, I can''t help but feel grateful for the unique experiences that my friends and I have had growing up in such a surreal moment in history. The world was changing around us, with the dawn of Coronation and the symbiotic relationship between humans and nodes. But for us kids, it was simply a way of life - one that we embraced with our whole beings. I remember spending countless afternoons playing with Asaph and Herod in the common behind our houses, coming up with wild schemes to prank our neighbors or teaching ourselves science (and so often the latter to aid the former). We were always together, always on the same wavelength, and always pushing each other to be the best we could be. It was as if we shared a single mind, each one of us practically an extension of the others. Of course, it wasn''t all fun and games. We were all gifted students, and we excelled in our studies from the first. Our teachers recognized our potential early on, and we were placed in a gifted class in first grade. By the time we finished our first year of public school, we had advanced to the third grade. It was a testament to our natural intelligence, but also to the unique bond that we shared; under Coronation many children were excelling in academics, yet we were far and away outliers nonetheless. Looking back, I see now how much that bond was amplified by our connection to the nodes. We were already close, but being able to communicate telepathically made us even closer. We shared our thoughts and ideas freely, without the need for words. It was a connection that went beyond friendship, beyond family, beyond any other experience I think this world has to offer. Our parents were close as well, but in a way defined by lives lived before Coronation. They all recognized early on the strength and power of us kids¡¯ friendship, and we often found our homes interchangeable when we were young. Any one of our parents would be glad to have us around for dinner, we each had a toothbrush in three places, and nobody really bat an eye when they had zero or three children at the table for breakfast. There¡¯s an old saying about taking a village to raise a child, and it was certainly true in a sense for us- with perhaps one slight exception. Most of our parents were relatively doting, and glad to be very present in our lives, but as for Jude Sherman, I remember him as a distant figure in those days. He was always around, of course, but he seemed to be lost in his own world most of the time. I never quite understood why, but it seemed he had such a resentment towards the guardian angels that he and Asaph had. Then there were the times when us three kids would spend the night at Herod''s house, and his dad and Asaph¡¯s would disappear into Horace''s study for hours on end. I always wondered what they were talking about, what secrets they were sharing until odd hours of the morning. But I never asked¡ª it was just another mystery in a world full of them. And besides, I only ever caught wind of their conspiratorial evenings on account of our own youthful nights of scheming. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Despite the challenges that we faced - both personal and global - I look back on those years with fondness and gratitude. We were a part of something special, something that would shape the course of human history. And we were lucky enough to experience it together, as the closest of friends. This wave of nostalgia has of course been brought on by the swift approach of our mutual graduation from compulsory general education. At age thirteen each of us are getting ready to continue on to higher education. Turning my gaze from the past to the future, I certainly look forward to the next few years which we plan to spend together at the local Public College before we may well find ourselves at last on diverging paths. But in the here and now, we have our final day of final exams tomorrow, and our graduation ceremony will follow on the coming weekend. ¡®We¡¯re really there, aren¡¯t we?¡¯ I transferred a thought to Asaph and Herod. ¡®I know I can hardly believe it myself,¡¯ came Asaph¡¯s reply. ¡®What were our parents doing at this age? finishing grade 8, looking forward to basic node studies classes in High School¡¯ chimed in Herod. A chuckle was transferred between all of us at this. ¡®And here tomorrow we¡¯ll be taking our exams on: the end of the nation our parents grew up under, the end of the lightform constructs that defined the lifetimes of their and their parents generation, and the government system that replaced the one they grew up with,¡¯ I thought to them. ¡®To be fair, our parents literally did all of that themselves,¡¯ remarked Herod. ¡®Well, except the end of the original nodes, that was the EOKAJ, my dad just ended the convergence of the nodes,¡¯ interjected Asaph. ¡®And every day we consider ourselves lucky that nobody tried to blame him for the Static,¡¯ I joked. This was met with another resounding transfer of a chuckle. ¡®Well y¡¯all, I¡¯m officially going to sleep,¡¯ Asaph thought to us. ¡®Yeah, ought to at least pretend like we¡¯re putting effort and care into acing these exams, right?¡¯ I replied. ¡®Or something like that,¡¯ returned Asaph. ¡®Honk Shoo, everyone,¡¯ thought Herod, and we all went to bed. I had made my little jest about how easily we would coast through the end of this chapter of our lives, but I still couldn¡¯t help but feel a little nervous. Whether those nerves were about tomorrow or the years to come, only time would tell. TRIUMVIRATE II New Columbus, OH - 2087
Asaph Asaph Ananke Sherman had spent all the early formative years of their life in total synchronicity with their two best friends, Herod Ecleates and Edith Gorman. When the three of them graduated from compulsory public education at the age of thirteen they had decided to continue on to attend Public University together, and in a few years each of them had completed undergraduate degrees with several majors apiece. During their time at University, the three finally felt themselves gravitating toward diverging paths for the first time. Edith had her interests in anthropology, and Asaph and Herod had both studied largely the same subjects but Herod had his mysterious internship-turned-contract with some New United Nations affiliated taskforce that he would never give the name of, and Asaph was just planning to go into government work. Even though Asaph and Herod had the more aligned academic and professional paths, it was actually Edith who the former would keep in closest contact with, at least as much as they could. They shared a sense of optimism and appreciation for humanity and the world around them¡ª something which Herod apparently lacked, and which was at the core of both Edith and Asaph¡¯s aspirations in post-academic life. The United Federation of New American States is a communist nation. Housing, Food, and Education are basic human rights under the constitutional document of the nation, ensured by Universal Income. Asaph, being acutely aware of the history of North American nations, had always appreciated the freedoms and quality of life they enjoyed, and so it was with a sense of pride and duty that they made the decision to join the ranks of the Coronation Organization and Regulation Commission, to do their part to keep their community and their country running. Asaph had applied for one of a thousand annually available entry-level research positions at CORC which gave those applicants who met basic thresholds and were chosen via lottery process the opportunity to take a three-year contract at the Commission which would culminate in the chance to dissertate a thesis for a PhD, and likely an offer of a more specialized position elsewhere in the Commission or the field of Coronation Sciences at large. They were one of that lucky chiliad who were selected this year. The first day had consisted of general onboarding, mingling with other interns while the rest of the thousand did their onboarding, and ended with a welcome tour of headquarters followed by a formal welcome ceremony at the end of the day which had wrapped up just after five. After that, Asaph went to dinner with a few new acquaintances who had invited them out. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. The group of new colleagues got along swimmingly and dinner turned into drinks at a nearby bar, so it was already well past ten o''clock when Asaph clattered into their assigned housing and settled down for the night. Somewhat tipsy (if not plain drunk), Asaph sent a thought transfer to Edith, who had just started her first semester of PhD coursework that same day. ¡°Made some new friends today, haven''t had to do that in a long long while. Hope you''re doing good too¡± Edith replied within the minute, ¡°I''m so glad for you! I''m not so much the social butterfly but I''ve really connected with my advisors and I''m really excited for the research project I''m planning¡± Asaph smiled. ¡°That''s grand! Love and miss you, I''m going to bed now¡± Edith replied with a wordless sentimental transfer echoing Asaph¡¯s feelings. Asaph did lie down in bed after that, but they were somewhat restless, and after several minutes of trying to get comfortable, they sat up and decided to call their father. They looked to their guardian angel, Azrael, for reassurance and comfort, which they received in a flash of pink light. The line rang several times before going to voicemail¡ª Asaph couldn''t quite tell if Jude had denied the call or if it had actually rang all the way through. They waited for their father''s phone''s default voicemail message to play through, speaking after the tone: ¡°Hi dad. It was the big first day today, things went well and I think I''ve made some friends already. I love you and miss you, I hope you''re doing okay at home alone¡­ I saw Horace today at the welcome ceremony, have you two been up to much together lately? ¡­ I''m honestly really proud of what I''ve accomplished to get here, and I hope you can be too, despite everything¡­ Alright, call me back when you can, love you, goodnight.¡± They hung up, and laid back down in bed. They were a little worried about their father as of late; Jude had stopped working with Horace as much in recent years, and as that was the man''s only apparent friend, that meant he had been mostly locking himself away at home for days on end. It was sort of an odd feeling, working for the organization their best friend''s father had practically built with the advice of their own, in a society where nepotism was functionally impossible. They couldn''t help but let in a creeping sense that their choice of path was exacerbating whatever was going on with their father. They decided they would simply make a point of checking in on Jude relentlessly until the man stopped being a hermit, and rolled over to go to sleep. ¡°Goodnight, Azrael. We''ll get back at it tomorrow.¡± TRIUMVIRATE III National University of Science and Technology, Massachusetts - May 2090
Herod
From: Harrien Flint, Chairperson of the Department of Node Sciences, NUST To: Gilgamet Truth, Academic Dean, NUST Subject: Final Dissertation - H. Ecleates (Recommendation to Dismiss) Body: Good evening, Dean Truth- This was my final dissertation decision of the semester, and as you likely know already, it was the hardest coming. Herod Ecleates was such a brilliant student when he came to us, and remains a veritable genius, but he has taken a dark turn over the course of his thesis work. The subject matter is a research project which began during his internship with our elusive scientific colleagues at the Anti-Node Eventuality Taskforce, and as I will explain further with illustrative excerpts, I believe there has been a gross violation of our institutional code of ethical conduct, which is grounds to dismiss the paper and student alike, and which I believe should call into question our further involvement with ANET altogether. Mr. Ecleates¡¯ 128-page thesis consisted of the iterative development and testing of a wearable device which would inhibit the ability of a coronated individual to conduct thought transfers via their own crown. This device, which is formally titled ¡°Head-Mounted Coronation Nullification Device 001¡± is informally referred to frequently as the ¡°Crown of Thorns¡± or sometimes simply ¡°the Thorns¡± by both Mr. Ecleates himself and those who worked with him in the lab who were quoted in his paper. The effects of this device on wearers (so-called ¡°users,¡± though they were hardly consenting) were nothing short of inhumane, and there was a clear disregard for basic safety on simple principles of electricity and common physics that the actual focus of the research as relates to Coronation Sciences is inconsequential if not laughable. The ¡°Crown of Thorns¡± developed by Mr. Ecleates is essentially a metal halo which goes around the cranium and is adjusted by way of screws such that it physically overlaps with the user¡¯s crown. This halo of metal is hooked up to a battery in a manner hardly more graceful than jumper cables, and is then pumped full of power, such that it generates a powerful electromagnetic field which causes interference with the thought transfer connection between Crown and Coronated. This of course also causes an intolerable amount of electric shock to the wearer in addition to significant electromagnetic radiation going straight to the brain. The device was deemed ¡°working¡± by Mr. Ecleates¡¯ supervisors in the ANET laboratories and so the majority of his research was focused not on the further development of the hardware (hence the 001 designation), but instead on the applications of the device. Test subjects of unclear origin were ¡°recruited¡± by ANET and were subjected to what were essentially torture conditions with little to no information given to them prior. Most test subjects were strapped into a chair by lab assistants before the device was clamped to their head and powered on, and they were left helpless as hundreds or thousands of volts of electricity passed round their head for minutes at a time. The exact effect on the wearer varied based on type of crown, and for the purpose of further delineating the ethical violations (and not to give credence to the research) I will go into these specifics. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. As is the case with many matters of Coronation science, there is a drastic dichotomy of effect between users with Aptitude-Defined Type Crowns and users with Appearance-Defined Type Crowns, with a smaller disparity in effect between Unibody Aptitude-Defined and Multibody-Aptitude Defined users. In the case of the Crown of Thorns, the more extreme effects were generally seen in the Aptitude-Defined users, with the most dramatic results in Multibody users. Those test subjects with chain or pearl Crowns were brought to a state where there conscious mind was so overloaded by thought transfer noise, electric shock, and electromagnetic waves that their ego became dormant and their active self became susceptible to coercion. I am under the impression that this was tested with impunity, subjects in a hypnosis-like condition being made to do any manner of thing, but that is one area Mr. Ecleates was wise enough to avoid detail in. It is clear however that some test subjects needed medical attention after being left in the Crown for hours at a time, and it seems ANET did not check up on those individuals after sending them to hospital, so they may well have died in some cases. I need not explain to you how unacceptable this kind of disregard for ethical practice is at our institution. In the case of test subjects with Unibody Crowns, halos and wreathes, the same catatonic state was induced by the sheer overwhelming of the mind. The malleable state was not as prevalent in these subjects, their egos perhaps remaining closer to the surface. In the included figures, the test subject with a wreathe-style crown seems more visibly pained than the subject with the chain of pearls. Neither compare to the clear anguish of the test subject with the couture Crown. The apparent effect of the Crown of Thorns on users with Appearance-Defined Crowns was nil, at least as far as thought-transfer is concerned. The effect of extreme voltage electromagnetism next to the users¡¯ head was however exacerbated by the absence of the mental numbness, and these test subjects were described as ¡°displaying absurdly dramatized pain responses.¡± It seems clear from the image and the sheer power level of the device that these reactions were not dramatized. The number of test subjects with couture Crowns who required hospitalization was significantly higher, and most required medical attention after far less time than their Aptitude-Defined counterparts. Again, simply egregious violations of ethics and law. I realize I was the one to recommend Herod for that internship at ANET in the first place, but if I had known then that they would be doing the kind of mind-melting weapons research the United States was doing sixty years ago, I would have steered him far away. The fellow has always had a clear disdain for the nodes, which I surmise is some kind of generational baggage from his father being the Director of CORC, but to try to destroy them at the cost of human life? We can not abide this. So, it is my recommendation that we dismiss Herod Ecleates and disavow his research, and furthermore that we do not recommend any students to ANET programs in the future. Thank you, Harrien Flint They/Them/Theirs Chairperson, Department of Node Sciences National University of Science and Technology TRIUMVIRATE IV The Citadel, Great Midwestern Lost Zone - September 2095
Edith Asaph would make quick work of this, no doubt, Edith Gorman caught herself thinking not for the first time since embarking on this endeavor. The task at hand was discerning the origin location of a thought transfer received by one of the Hierophants late yesterday evening. The Cult was apparently trying to determine whether a tip they received about some ANET project was coming from the same informant who had given them bad information about some higher stakes operation a few months back. The task had fallen to Edith through what sounded like a vaudevillian series of events which had left her, an anthropologist with a cover story of being a very lightly trained basic electrical systems technician, as the one best suited to figure the math on this node science problem. This despite the fact that nearly everyone in the chain of command between her and the Hierophant had some amount of background in node science. That was no coincidence, the prevalence of node science folks in the upper ranks of the Cult of Ramiel. The Cult was practically as old as Nodes themselves, having formed first as an online community of people who believed in the prophetic foretellings of the so-called ¡°Ramiel Journal¡± leaked in the early days of the Node age. A lot of those early forum members took up node tinkering, trying to experience visions of their own, as the Author had, and when the forums became physical communities and eventually a bona fide cult, it was they who made up the leadership. Before Coronation, before the Static and the Node Crisis, the Hierophants had supposedly received genuine visions like the Author had, through home-brewed Node transfer and Brain-Computer Interfacing technology. And yet here was Edith Gorman, plugging numbers into formulas she was pulling straight from her thought-transferred queries to the Universal Search Engine, thinking about her best friend who she hadn¡¯t so much as shared a thought with in more than three years. She consoled herself for at least the thousandth time that her bigger work here ¡ªnot what she was doing in the Cult as Saturnia Gault, Level 1 Electrical Technician/general lackey, but what she was doing for University as Edith Gorman, Modern Anthropology research fellow¡ª was all worth it. When she was finally at the heart of it all, and saw enough of the picture, what the big plan was for all of them, she would quietly make her way back to the edges of the Cult before disappearing altogether and returning to University to present the findings of her anthropological survey. ¡°Ah got it now I think,¡± she said aloud, bringing back from some great distance the focus of the Hierophant¡¯s aide who was sitting across from her. ¡°Oh, good,¡± he said, righting his posture from the slouching, wide position he had slowly slipped into over the last half hour or so while Edith had worked at her math in relative silence. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Edith, pausing as she carried her last zeroes and double-checked her significant figures. ¡°These should be the approximate coordinates of your informant, with a resolution of ten miles.¡± Edith slid her page of chicken-scratch mathematics across the table after circling the coordinates several times. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡°Ten miles?¡± the aide sounded incredulous. ¡°Yeah. Give me ten times as long to work the numbers and I might be able to get you down to a mile, but aren¡¯t we just trying to confirm this isn¡¯t our bad informant from before? What are the chances we have two informants in the same town?¡± ¡°Tch. That¡¯s not really your concern. The matter¡¯s urgent so I¡¯ll bring this to the Hierophant at once, but if he wants better accuracy, you¡¯d better be prepared to deliver it,¡± the aide said as he stood, taking Edith¡¯s sheet in hand. ¡°If you say so, Boss,¡± she said, and saluted him as he made for the door of the small office. ¡°Don¡¯t do that. And don¡¯t call me that either,¡± said the aide, and left. ¡°If you say so, Boss,¡± Edith said to no one. God, how badly she wanted to have a thought chat with Asaph, just complaining about her day and the Cult like it was some everyday workplace drama. They¡¯d laugh at her little joke to herself and then tell her about their day at the CORC R&D facility. She assumed they were still working there, after having finished their initial internship. She hadn¡¯t dared to thought transfer with anyone from her old life since getting to the edges of the inner circle and moving into the Cult¡¯s main compound in the Midwestern Dead Zone. She felt certain the Cult had ways of surveilling thought transfers, and she couldn¡¯t risk blowing her cover. She had to remain in a mindset that she was not Edith Gorman, she was Saturnia Gault at all times in order to prevent anyone from inadvertently blowing her cover by trying to check up on her with a transfer. At least that goal of hers felt like it was getting closer by the day. Even though it had been an almost comical chain of sicknesses and schedule confusions and the like that had left it to her, the task she had just finished was part of an important operation, so it meant something that she had been trusted with it. And the operation itself might prove enlightening toward her goal of figuring out what the big picture was for the Cult. On that note, Edith shook herself from her thoughts and left the office. No point waiting here, the aide would surely contact her mind directly if her work proved unsatisfactory to his Hierophant master. She headed through a corridor and down an elevator and made her way out onto a raised promenade, taking a long, refreshing breath of the cool evening air. It was really quite a nice evening, and she had nowhere in particular to be, so Edith decided to sit on a bench and enjoy the air and the view from outside the tower that housed Central Sanctuary. From her perch on the promenade twenty feet above the street level, right beside the grand building that capped the Citadel¡¯s longest and widest boulevard, the view was extraordinary. You could see every one of the structures raised by the EOKAJ from here, with their flawless, translucent white stone edifices in the unique, almost alien architecture that had elements of gothic and art deco styles, but with a geometric repetition that felt somehow ¡°of the Nodes.¡± There were gardens of plants that the EOKAJ created, found nowhere else on Earth, adding a splash of pastel color throughout the white cityscape and the surrounding desert of white quartzite sand. Living here, among the skeletons of the automata inhabitants who stopped moving when the EOKAJ died, Edith had developed a deep appreciation for the mind of the EOKAJ¡ª the way the duality of their existence showed itself in their creations. She had also developed a deep-seated fear of the sheer power of the Nodes, often wondering whether the Cult and the Journal would really be right and the Nodes would destroy the entire world in the end. II CORONATION I New Columbus - 30 May 2102
Necrosis From The New Columbus Post obituaries: ¡°Local legend Horace Ecleates passed away at St Kalisha Amadeus Memorial Hospital in Tricincinatti in the early hours of Tuesday morning, after an arduous battle against a rare form of cancer over the last several months. He is survived by his son, Herod. In life, Horace worked in service of his community tirelessly and endlessly from his youth. As a member of the rebellion that gave birth to our nation, he served in over two dozen operations, including the landmark battle of Columbus. After the war, he followed in the footsteps of his father, Heiram Ecleates, working in the field of node science as a CORC researcher. He would eventually become director of the organization, leading it through important public efforts like the development and distribution of crown augmenting wearable devices that improved the lives of couture-coronated individuals across the nation. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. During his time at CORC, Horace became good friends with somewhat unsung national hero Jude Sherman, who single-handedly brought the sixty days of fire to an end. Their friendship lasted a lifetime, with Mr Sherman notably having also passed away earlier this month, survived by his child, Asaph Sherman. Both men leave behind extraordinary legacies, and our community feels their loss deeply.¡± II CORONATION II Tricincinatti/New Columbus - 29 May 2102
Judas¡¯ Kiss Herod Ecleates had long considered himself a basically honest and good man. He had worked hard in school, been kind to his friends, and gone into a career in which he strived for the protection and betterment of all mankind. Herod Ecleates¡¯ friends, on the other hand had long considered him untrustworthy and probably evil. He had largely been carried through compulsory schooling by the intellect of his friends, shared with him by virtue of Coronation, his friends were endlessly kind toward him and he in turn taunted and teased them, and when they finally parted ways in life, he went on to work for a shadow organization that none of them felt particularly fond of. Whether or not the young man was actually good by any concrete metric, his father loved and respected him anyway, and to Herod, that was what mattered most now. With Horace Ecleates hospitalized after a downturn in the condition of his rare cancer, Herod was finding himself especially concerned with his father¡¯s thoughts and feelings as of late. He was visiting the withering man nearly every night after work, taking the bullet train from Columbus to Tricincinnati after clocking out and taking the return train sometime well after midnight each time. Horace Ecleates was being cared for in a room on the top floor of the St Amadeus Memorial Hospital, and when Herod visited he would spend much of his time standing by the window, looking out over the megalopolitan skyline while he talked with his father. One time Horace questioned Herod about it, asking why his son couldn¡¯t keep up eye contact with him while they were talking. Herod had claimed he simply found the view fascinating, as the forty-eighth story bay windows allowed quite the broad and impressive view of the massive city, but the truth was he could hardly stand to look at his father in his state of continuous decay. On one particular evening late in May of 2102, Herod left work a little late, and missed the train he would usually catch. As efficient as the national rail was, this particular line didn¡¯t have much commuter traffic at this hour, so the following outbound train wouldn¡¯t come for nearly an hour. Herod spent that time sitting on a bench in the train station, thinking about his father¡¯s work at CORC and an issue the man had been pressing with him every visit as of late: his childhood friend, Asaph Ananke Sherman. The Sherman clan had, for four generations now, possessed rogue nodes that existed outside the known parameters of other nodes. Asaph¡¯s father¡¯s personal node, Azazel, had remained individual during the nodal convergence throughout the sixty days of fire, and both Azazel and Asaph¡¯s node Azrael continued to exist in the shape of the original nodes during the time of coronation. One thing CORC and ANET could agree on¡ª despite their largely differing core missions¡ª was that the existence of rogue, categorically different nodes was a volatile unknown factor at all times, and things would be safer and more predictable if such nodes were... eliminated. Recently, Horace would not shut up to Herod about the need to ¡°solve that problem¡± in reference to Azrael and Asaph, and Herod did not like what we thought his father was implying as a solution. The whole thing was actually driving him so mad that he found himself considering not going to visit the man at all this night, with the missed train offering him an easy out. In the end, he stewed on that decision so long that the following train arrived on the platform and made up his mind for him. The train ride was uneventful and Herod kept his mind clear by focusing on the landscapes whipping past outside the windows. He arrived at the hospital and made his way along the corridors and up the elevator and along more corridors until he reached his father¡¯s wing. He was going to continue on to his father¡¯s room but a nurse at the reception desk for the wing called him over. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. ¡°Mr. Ecleates?¡± ¡°Herod, please. What is it?¡± ¡°Well, there¡¯s no good way to put this, but your father¡¯s doctors have given him a timeline.¡± ¡±A timeline? What do you mean?¡± Herod had a suspicion, and he didn¡¯t know how he felt about it. ¡°For the end. The cancer has reached a point where treatment is no longer effective, and his condition is going to begin declining rapidly. As you¡¯re essentially his caretaker at this point, I¡¯ll tell you we gave him the information on all his options; Assisted Rest, Induced Coma, Stop Treatment, and he chose the latter. He said he wants to drop the pain meds too, so we¡¯re weaning him off but we¡¯ll keep them ready in case he decides he likes the comfort.¡± ¡°That¡¯s¡­ A lot. You know how he is with telling me what the doctors said so I appreciate the heads up. I¡¯m going to go talk to him now,¡± Herod said, strangely not struggling to keep his composure. ¡°Yes, of course,¡± the nurse saw him off with a fittingly grim but empathetic smile as he turned heel and started down the hall. Herod expected his father to downplay his condition to the bitter end as he always had, so the conversation that unfolded the moment he opened his father¡¯s door came as something of a shock. Before he could even say hello, the old man was talking. ¡°I¡¯m going to die, boy. And there¡¯s something I need to tell you so you might finally understand what I have been saying about those rogue nodes. You know Jude died two weeks ago?¡± Herod absolutely did not know this, though the news was hardly shocking considering the man had been drinking himself to sleep for what seemed like decades now. In any case, there was no time to remark on it as his father continued talking. ¡°Well, there¡¯s something I never told you, that Jude told me once after a few too many at the bar back in the early days of the Commission. The media spun it like he saved the world, and he never made any effort to set the record straight (and who would, in his shoes?), but the truth was that the node was calling the shots. The way Jude told it, Azazel possessed his body and used him like a puppet to fight against the EOKAJ. Jude says he had absolutely no control in the matter. Even said he sobbed and apologized to the EOKAJ after she fell and Azazel released him¡ª so pathetic. ¡°So you see, boy? That¡¯s what these rogue nodes are capable of. You can¡¯t just rely on your schooldays friend to keep the thing in check, it could simply take the reins whenever it felt like it, and it could have just as much or more power as the EOKAJ ever did.¡± Horace paused to let his son mull that over for a moment, then continued, ¡°Azazel vanished when Jude died. As we ought to have expected based on his parents. That all but confirms that Azrael would do the same if¡­ circumstances were replicated.¡± ¡°So what? I should kill a lifelong friend before his guardian angel beats me to it?¡± ¡°Yes, exactly!¡± crowed the old man, and then laughed, which rapidly turned to coughing, which became a fit that seemed like it might not stop. Herod was disgusted. He left the room, passing two nurses in the doorway who were doubtless rushing to his father¡¯s bedside. Herod couldn¡¯t help but hope the fit killed him.
Herod had a restless night. He had difficulty falling asleep, unable to stop thinking about Jude¡¯s death, and his apparent secret truth. When sleep finally did come to him, he dreamed of Asaph being possessed by Azrael, and the boy unwittingly causing Herod¡¯s own Crown to somehow awaken and take control of him. And then Edith was there, poor missing Edith, looking like she did at thirteen, and Azrael caused her Crown to take control of her too. Herod awoke sweating and gasping for air. The possession in his dreams had felt like suffocating, so palpably it alone seemed to be what had woken him. He checked his phone and saw a missed call and a voicemail from the hospital. Herod hardly needed to listen to it to know what it said. The coughing fit really had finished him off. It made him sick to do it, but he suddenly felt so certain that his father was right. Herod made a few calls to certain ANET officers, and the thing was arranged. All there was left to do was wait. III SHERMAN New Columbus, UFNAS - 29 May 2102
Ananke It was about seven o¡¯clock in the evening on a Thursday and Asaph Ananke Sherman was just leaving from a long and tiresome day of work at the CORC headquarters in New Columbus. They had just recently been promoted to be Deputy Director of the entire Commission, and had only made the move to downtown New Columbus a week ago, so this was their first week in the new office. They had hoped the whirlwind of transitional meetings, trainings, briefings, and reports would have petered out by the end of the week and yet here they were, leaving the building more than three hours later than scheduled for the fourth day in a row. Asaph glanced up at the sky to check in on its threats of rain and was jarringly presented with the fulfillment of those threats as a sizeable raindrop hit them in the eye. This marked the onset of a sudden and heavy drizzle, which Asaph weakly attempted to shield themself from with their messenger bag as they rushed across the street toward the monorail station. As they stepped up the curb cut from the crosswalk, an SUV parked streetside next to them and several men in various shades of beige trenchcoat got out at once. Just as Asaph was ducking under the awning of the station entrance, the men were surrounding them. They felt something narrow and cold jab into the small of their back, and then they heard a sharp and muted sound, and then they felt nothing anymore, and as they fell unfeeling to the ground they saw the men stand over them before they couldn¡¯t see anymore, and then Asaph Ananke Sherman died. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. As a pool of Asaph¡¯s blood leaked onto the sidewalk, mixing with rainwater as it trickled into the sidewalk cracks and down into the street, their guardian angel Azrael did something unexpected. Azrael felt angry. He felt lost. He felt loss. Encoded in the eternal geometries of Azrael¡¯s divine frame was a need to collapse back into other divines when his karmic ward expired, however having never created another individual from his frame, he was unable to locate another of his exact kind to give himself into. Observing this, Azrael attempted to fold back into the greater Host. He disintegrated the constitution of his frame and transfered his energy at the nearest Crown, a Halo-type on one of the assassins, with disastrous result. The Crown shattered, causing the energy of both angels to transfer to the next nearest crown, a Couture-type, which was able to absorb all of the energy by reconstituting its own frame. This created the first Archangel, who was also called Azrael. This also destabilized the entire Host of Crowns, and they all were reconstituted in the same way. In order to take on the same new stable form as Azrael, those Crowns that became Archangels absorbed their nearest neighbors. It should be noted that the immense transfers of energy between crowns caused those coronated whose crowns ascended to have their skulls violently annihilated. Those whose crowns were instead consumed by their neighbors were spared that swift and violent end, but as the Archangels grew, so too did their ability to affect the material world around them, and it was not long before they were amassing armies of humans to wage war upon each other. RAPTURE I New York - 2105
Laughter Frank Burns Jr jerked the steering wheel hard to the left to avoid an overturned sedan, tossing his family across the interior of the beat up minivan. The States were in ruin within two months, and the internet infrastructure was gone, so there was no way to get news from outside the country, though Frank had left the radio on 24/7 in case a broadcast from the north might reach them. The Archangels had appeared three years ago, and their untold powers caused global catastrophe, not to mention the damage from losing the Crowns. Gabriel had taken control of a major portion of the Eastern seaboard from New Philly by communicating with the locals and spreading some sort of telepathic virus. Apparently Michael had done the same thing to the Mediterranean from Rome, or so the news sites had said before the internet went down. There was another one in New York that hadn¡¯t been named officially, but Frank had heard someone call it Saraquel. Apparently it was completely taking control of humans en masse and for some reason it was turning them into clowns and aggregating them in the amusement park of New Times Plaza. Frank shuddered to think of this, he was creeped out enough by the seven giant eyes of Gabriel that could be seen back home, from miles outside Philly; he had no desire to see a legion of mindless clowns. Frank¡¯s wife, Reagan, had a sister who went off-grid in the North Canadian Isles a few years back, and they had kept in touch on at least an annual basis, so they were going to her compound to wait for whatever eventual end would come and hope it was something more pleasant than mind viruses from giant eyes or clown brainwashing. Their route to this safe purgatory was based mostly on wishful thinking propped up by shaky logical conclusions about road integrity and resource concentrations, on account of the media silence. Most people were cowering in their homes, or else had committed themselves to a swifter end than the Angels would provide. Other, stronger-willed people were going south, to some apparent resistance camp where they were plotting to kill the Angels. Frank had to give those people credit for their bravery, but he also thought they were plain stupid. How could anyone imagine fighting these entities? The kind of fear he felt when he would stare into those distant neon eyes above Philadelphia was indescribable, far worse than the terror of the First and Second Eucharist when he was a child, which had turned the Atlantic red and the Midwest to sand respectively. Frank was five the last time he felt the kind of fear the Archangels instilled, when the Old Angels disappeared and the Sixty Days of Fire transformed the world. When Agatha Jones was god, she once passed near Frank¡¯s home, and she vaporized the entire neighborhood across the street, converting it back to natural woodland before his eyes. He had witnessed the raw, unfeeling power of a god first hand, and they say it was an Archangel that killed her. Frank couldn¡¯t imagine looking at one of them and thinking he had an ice cube¡¯s chance in hell of fighting it. And so there are the last kind of person in these end times, besides the total cowards and the fighters: the Frank Burns Juniors and Families of the world, who had a slightly better place to be a coward in, and who were willing to fight a little bit to get there. Frank had been able to reflect internally while they were on a stretch of relatively clear highway, but they were approaching the New York Megalopolitan Area now (so the road signs had suggested for the last 30 miles), and things were getting messy. There was no sign yet of angelic clown powers at work, but Frank was extremely on edge. When they passed into the dark maw of the Megalopolitan Bypass tunnel, Frank flipped on the high beams. The tunnel used to be lit with the particular blue glow of Crown Jewel bulbs, which enhanced Crown array connections underground, but with the Crowns gone it seemed the bulbs no longer did anything at all. What a life it had been for Frank Burns so far, he thought. He¡¯d lived through not only the birth and death of a god, but the entire era of humanity¡¯s Coronation by the Angels. What Frank wouldn¡¯t give to be able to thought-transfer to a cluster in the North for some kind of news, even just a feeling of safety or reassurance. Frank had been in middle school when the researchers finally figured out how people could attune technology with the Crowns that they had been given when Agatha was killed, and by high school his friends were thought-beaming into dreamscapes instead of doing math work. Not long after his generation graduated, they started installing abdication field generators in schools so kids couldn¡¯t do that kind of thing. Frank was snapped out of his reminiscing by his wife¡¯s voice. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it ¡°Honey look out!¡± Reagan screamed, pointing frantically ahead of them. Frank slammed on the brakes, ¡°What the fuck is that?!¡± despite the circumstances, Reagan gave him the you-just-cursed-in-front-of-my-darling-children look. Their attention was snapped back front by their children¡¯s terrified screams. The thing they had stopped for was unsurprisingly but dreadfully a clown. The reason the kids were screaming, Frank now saw, was that the clown¡¯s lower jaw was no longer attached, so its mouth hung open much too far, and various dark liquids oozed from the sagging hole. It was approaching them slowly. ¡°What do I do?!¡± Reagan gripped her armrests and furrowed her brow as she answered stone-cold, ¡°Run it over.¡± Their daughter Amy was immediately in hysterics at this, but their oldest, Carter, chimed in, ¡°Yeah, get ¡®em Dad!¡± Frank hesitated for a second, but didn¡¯t want to risk catching clown from this once-human. Trying to forget that last part, he floored it. With a considerable bit of bumping and crunching, the minivan went over the clown and continued through the tunnel. The Burns¡¯ thought they were in the clear for a minute, but then the sound started. Carter heard it first. ¡°Dad, what¡¯s that sound?¡± ¡°What sound? I don¡¯t hear anything.¡± ¡°Wait a minute, I think I hear it too,¡± added Reagan. ¡°What are you talkin-- Oh nope wait, I hear it now, I hear it. Like a low thrumming.¡± The sound was growing quickly now, and as they rounded a bend in the tunnel the source was apparent. The legion of clowns was so large by now that its numbers extended into the tunnels below the city, and Frank reckoned they were almost directly below the Times Plaza amusement park now. He slowed the car as they assessed the situation ahead. The clowns were all singing, just one word or sound over and over again, and they were all out of sync so it had a sort of revolving effect. They didn¡¯t seem to notice the minivan approaching them yet. The clowns completely spanned the tunnel, and there were enough of them that Frank couldn¡¯t see through the crowd to even the tiniest glimpse of open road beyond. Mowing through probably wouldn¡¯t work, so they¡¯d have to go back out and find a different route past the city. As Frank shared this conclusion with his family and put the car in reverse, Reagan gasped. Frank turned from looking out the back to see what his wife saw. ¡°They¡¯re chasing us.¡± Frank pressed his foot all the way down on the gas, but the van had never done too well in reverse, and the clowns were inhumanly fast. As the clowns overtook the van, he could finally hear what they were saying. ¡°Haaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaa,¡± came their horrible chorus. ¡°Oh my god,¡± Reagan declared as the clowns brought the minivan to a halt, ¡°they¡¯re laughing at us.¡± RAPTURE II Cult of Ramiel II Complex, East Dakota - Spring 2109
Solomon After the end of mankind¡¯s coronation, when the Archangels were rising, a solitary angel had an incredible following already ascribed to them without need of mind or nerve control. Ramiel II was a blue octahedron that formed from the crowns of the employees and others present at the East Dakota regional headquarters of the Coronation Organization and Regulation Commission on the day the rapture began. The Ramiel Journal predicted the rise of this particular archangel, and the followers of that document believed Ramiel II to be the reincarnation of the very Throne that gave the author her prophetic vision. Thus, the Cult of Ramiel went seemingly overnight from a group of internet forum users and occasional local club members to the willing army of one of the most volatile of the rising Archangels. Edith Gorman had joined up with the Cult of Ramiel long before the appearance of the Archangels, not for any sort of personal belief in the prophecies of the Journal, but because she hoped to earn her PhD with an extensive anthropological report on the culture and behavior of the Cultists. Once the Archangels did appear and the Cultists migrated en masse to East Dakota (as much as they could with societal infrastructure rapidly collapsing), Edith stayed with the Cult as a survival tactic, seeing that in the domain of any other Archangel she was nearly guaranteed to die¡ª or worse. Edith had made her way into the outer fringes of the Cult¡¯s inner leadership in the years before the Archangels, when the organization first began serious real-world activity and formed a base of operations in the hollow Citadel created by the EOKAJ in the Oklahoma Lost Zone. When the Archangels appeared, leadership took notice of her useful strategic advice on the migration operation to move from the Citadel up into the domain of Ramiel II. This led to her being brought in to strategize on later operations, and before long despite her cover as an electrician she was back in her area of real expertise working on a project aiming to locate a lost ancient religious text. The Ramiel Journal apparently contains references to some kind of manuscript that will allow mankind to communicate directly with the Angels at long last, and through extensive research the Cult had found numerous historical references to such a text, though there was not a consistent or promising title, and they were even further from a lead on where a copy might be located. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. In truth, they were not even certain the thing existed at all, as it was only known by its absence. It might be a missing additional dead sea scroll, a 16th century grimoire, or a cuneiform tablet for all they knew. The closest thing to a tangible lead that the cult had discerned thus far was that the manuscript was often referenced or referenced by omission in conjunction with the Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon. These texts were believed to be modern (19th century) fabricated grimoire falsely attributed to the biblical King Solomon, but if this would-be Third Key proved to be real, it would likely prove the attribution true. Edith had been tasked with scouring the remaining Internet for any useful documentation that might point to a clear record of the Key. It was, thankfully, quite solitary work, as the rest of the Cult upper ranks were entirely focused on the development of a mission plan to destabilize the Anti-Node Eventuality Taskforce¡¯s Winterbase. So far Edith was grasping at loose threads surrounding various antique manuscripts of the known Keys of Solomon. Her best bet at this stage was that the Vatican might have a lead, as they were in possession of the oldest known version of the Keys. Edith knew the uncertainty would be disappointing to the Hierophants, the functional leaders of the Cult, so she decided to mitigate the blow by developing an action plan to infiltrate the Vatican. She felt herself getting into an action movie planning sequence montage kind of flow after pinning up maps and floorplans and printing out inventory lists and highlighting relevant entries, pinning all the above to the walls as she went. She couldn''t help but laugh at herself, but the result was a not -so-shabby plan complete with maps of likely patrol paths and best infiltration and egress routes for Cult operatives. Edith was actually finding herself fairly well prepared to present what she had accomplished when the Hierophants were finally emerging from their private council, but for better or for worse they retasked her without looking for results on the previous assignment at all. From now on she was to be of a singleminded focus on one thing alone: infiltrating Winterbase and sabotaging the last safe bastion for humanity in the apocalypse. RAPTURE III New York/Canadia - 2112
Eyes Frank Burns Jr felt as though he had just awoken from a long, deep sleep, only to enter into a nightmare of reality. He was in the middle of New Times Plaza, or what was left of it, surrounded by people dressed as clowns, half of them running and screaming in all directions, half of them lying dead on the ground in positions not entirely unexpected of someone in a circus. But this wasn¡¯t a circus. Everything was flooding back to Frank in waves, the appearance of the Archangels, his sister-in-law¡¯s off-grid haven up north, taking his family to- his family? Where were they? He looked around frantically, cursing himself for seemingly forgetting them. There was no sign of his wife or his two children among the runners nearby, and he couldn¡¯t bear to look for them among the dead. Frank realized they all must have been taken into Saraquel the Jester¡¯s clown horde, but why were they suddenly freed? His question was answered as soon as he had time to think it, as he saw a green glow approaching from across the plaza. An army was coming, the soldiers of Gabriel by the looks of it. These people had not been made into clowns, but their heads were enveloped in the telltale ephemeral light of angels, like a helmet in the shape of an eye. Frank was desensitized to most of the horrors of the age of angels, but the way the eyes spun frantically around in all directions, taking in every iota of their surroundings as they marched ever closer was enough to chill him. Frank was frozen in place for a moment, unable to do anything but watch as the ocular army approached, but all at once the front line halted. A strange hum sounded from a distance, and grew as it apparently swept along the line and each eyeball closed, glow intensifying. Then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. There was a moment of utter silence as even the recently freed clowns had ceased their panic to look on in awe. Then, with the sound and the static in the air of a thousand bolts of lighting, the entire line of soldiers exploded in a twenty foot wall of neon green flames. Frank¡¯s ears were ringing and he looked as the crowd began to run away in all directions once again; they were all screaming but he couldn¡¯t hear them. His neck felt hot and putting a hand up to feel it he realized his ears were bleeding profusely. Then, the ground shuddered, and Frank became very dizzy. He vomited on the ground in front of him and watched as the black and bloody bile slid swiftly away from him. The explosion had destabilized the plaza and the ground was giving way into the tunnels below, now burning with the green rage of Gabriel. Frank turned and did his best to stay upright and run away, which proved rather difficult with his inner ears ruptured. He lurched to the side to avoid a vending machine that was sliding down the swiftly steepening incline of the pavement. Then he stumbled the other way to dodge a pile of outdoor tables and chairs from some restaurant that had all been bike-chained together into a twisted metal tumbleweed of death. The path ahead seemed clear for a moment and he made some distance from the army and the pit of flames behind him, though he saw others around him lose their footing and careen away to their deaths. Somehow, a bit of his hearing was returning in his left ear, and through the ringing and the screaming and the roar of flames, he heard what sounded like twelve grand pianos having a car accident. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. A second later, he realized what it was. The calliope of the plaza¡¯s carousel was being jostled around in the center of the wheel like loose change as the whole thing had been upturned and was now sliding towards Frank roof-first. He looked for an escape but saw no way to get out of the carousel¡¯s path. But before he had time to accept his fate, the carousel slammed into a large kiosk and spun sideways. Its descent slowed for a moment, and Frank thought he was saved, but then it started rolling. There was a sort of rhythm to the discordant calliope as it rolled faster and faster, like some demented vaudeville chase scene. Frank knew he wouldn¡¯t be able to get out of the way now, so he lay flat on the ground and hoped the outside supports of the carousel would miss him as it rolled past. Luckily it did, and he looked on as the wheel full of fantastic creatures rolled sideways right into hell. Frank got back on his feet, turned, and ran with conviction up and out of the plaza. He didn¡¯t stop running for two dozen blocks, and when he finally did it felt like every muscle in his body cramped up at once. He had no idea if his family was alive now, or if they had been half an hour ago. For the moment he was safe at least, but he had to keep moving. He looked back toward Times Plaza and saw the jester-hat form of Saraquel rising into the air over the skyscrapers as Gabriel¡¯s flames licked at him from below. Frank suspected New York was not much longer for this world. He was near a parking garage so he went in and hoped his luck would hold. He checked a dozen cars before he found a solar-powered sports car on the roof that was unlocked, and the keys were in the driver seat. He assumed the owner must have been clownified, otherwise they must have been a clown all along, but in either case he thanked their spirit as he started the car and exited the garage. With no idea what else to do or how long it had been, Frank headed North. He hoped his wife¡¯s sister would still welcome him, but if not he would still rather take his chances as far away from the Archangels as possible.
Eighteen hours of non-stop driving later, he arrived at her address. He got out of the car, opened the gate at the end of the long gravel drive, pulled his car forward before closing it again, and then made his slow, rumbling way down to the house at the center of the large property. As he pulled up to the modest log building, tears welled in Frank¡¯s hollowed eyes. There on the porch, eating breakfast and laughing together, was his beautiful wife and their two perfect children. REVELATION I Canadian Isles - Late Summer 2113
Wintering We had been staying at my sister''s old summer place in the Canadian Isles for a few years, after the Archangels first appeared. Frank got separated from us for a long while when we were on our way here, but he made it back eventually. He deteriorated a bit after he got back; he''s almost¡­ hollow now. I don''t know if he''ll make it through our coming journey. The isles were naturally desolate of Archangels from almost the very beginning. One had appeared there and quickly killed any fledglings around it, but it was capable of much more migration on its own than the rest of its kind seemed to be, and quickly departed the isles of its own accord. Personally I speculate it evolved from an old Armaros node. Now however, the armies of Cassael are finally encroaching, and if we stayed, it wouldn''t be much longer before we would be assimilated. The call to Winterbase had come a few years back at this point, but we were holding out hope for Frank, for the angel¡¯s armies to thin out, for a miracle really. And we did get one, when Frank did come back, but then it took another year for him to get enough strength back for the journey, and in that time his mind and spirit seem to have withered. And by now almost everyone else who was left around here had already given up and made the journey themselves, so we''d be going it alone now. Two weeks before Frank came back, there was a ferry. We could have hopped on a boat and been safely in the walls of Winterbase in three days time. Instead, we''ll be trekking across land to the furthest northern landing we think we can manage to find a boat at, and chancing the north Agathan sea in a motorboat if we have to, avoiding angelic armies on three sides by little but prayer. It is worth it. I have to tell myself that it is all worth it. For the kids to have an unbroken family, a safe home. As long as we make it through this together, it will all be worth it.
"Alright folks, all aboard!" I called back into the house from the front step. The car¨C my sister''s old solar-roof-powered SUV¨C was all loaded with the provisions for our journey and the very few belongings we hoped to bring with us to Winterbase. Following my call the kids quickly emerged from the house and solemnly got into the car; Amy gave a fractionally-hearted smile as she passed to acknowledge my attempt to lighten the mood with the train call. Frank was much slower to emerge, but when he did he smiled weakly. "Once more unto the breach," he said as he left the house. "Dear friends, once more," I replied, giving him a side-hug as he passed me. I pulled the door shut and locked it, which would seem like unprecedented optimism if it weren''t simply a force of habit. I hardly gave the house a final look before joining my family in the car. I used to be the wistful type¨C even when we were running from Gabriel I took a good couple of minutes to tearfully look at our home before we left. Things were too bleak for wistfulness anymore; humanity was cut to a fraction of a fraction and the Archangels truly rule the earth now. I started the car and backed down the long driveway. Carter let out a soft sob, barely audible from the back of the car, and my heart ached a bit. I turned on the sound system, which was being fed twentieth and twenty-first century classics from an absolutely ancient device I found in the attic a few months back. As Olivia Newton-John''s rendition of "Country Roads" started up, we hit the open road. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
After three days of driving, we reached the northern coast. As we were driving we occasionally switched off our music to listen to the AM radio for any signs of life, and last night we finally caught bits and pieces of an announcement about boat or ferry service to Isla Noctis. This morning as we were nearing a tiny coastal village, I switched the AM radio on again to try to catch the full message. "...regular ferry service will continue until arch-¡­.-mies are within dangerous range of viable landings¡­. Saltwharf Village ferry to Isla Noctis every two days. Regular ferry serv-... -til archangel arm-....-thin dang-...." Still not a particularly clear broadcast but at least we could get the full gist this time. Just as I saw the same indicator, Carter announced from the back: "Saltwharf Village?! We''re there!" There was a town welcome sign just ahead. ''Welcome to Saltwharf Village, the northernmost port in the Canadian Isles. Population X'' The population looked to have been in the hundreds when the sign was made, but the number was aggressively crossed out with dark red paint. As we drove into town, the place seemed desolate. It quickly became difficult to traverse the streets in the car as they were lined with abandoned vehicles from earlier migrants. As the ocean came into view, the streets became a parking lot, and we had to give up on the car at last. "Alright, everybody out!" I called as I put the car into park in the middle of the road between a pickup that looked about a century old and a home-built dune buggy. I went around to the back of the car and opened the lift gate. As each of the kids then Frank came to the trunk I tossed them their bags before loading up with my own. Duffle bag across a shoulder, positioned at my back, jam-packed oversized backpack above that, and a smaller backpack with my absolute essentials worn backwards on my chest. Once all four of us were similarly encumbered, we started walking to the sea. Once we got past the roads and the cars we could see the town''s namesake wharf. "No sign of a boat, or life¡­" Amy remarked aloud, sounding more than a little concerned. "No need to worry yet, kid," Frank said, "there''s probably one old guy maintaining the radio broadcast and nobody else left in town. The ferry probably brings its own landing crew." I hope you''re right, I thought to myself, then said aloud "your father''s right. We just have to wait. Broadcast didn''t give a time so we''ll wait a full forty-eight hours if we have to before I''m gonna feel worried." My kids, and even Frank, seemed reassured by my confidence, but it was admittedly a ruse. I had been worried this entire time. There was no benefit to miring myself in that worry though. We made our way over to the wharf, found a pair of benches, and sat ourselves down for a long wait. Quickly bored by mutual anxious silence we started playing waiting games like I Spy, and I turned the tunes back on, plugging the music player into a portable speaker which I had deemed worthy of the precious cargo space on account of the morale boost. It had been mid-morning when we arrived, and just as dusk was falling ¨Cour meals finished and renewed worry following the food down our throats, beginning to settle in our stomachs¨C we heard the unmistakable horn of a large ship approaching. Carter and Amy cheered aloud, and I saw hope in Frank''s eyes for the first time since the night he arrived at my sister''s. I was a little more hesitant to celebrate (probably irrational; what other ship would be coming here than the one we aimed to board?), but once the cruise ship, retrofitted with armor plating and anti-node devices, came into clear view and approached the wharf, I whooped loudly. An Anti-Node Eventuality Taskforce operative hopped down from the boarding gate to help us clamber aboard, and as I got back to my feet and picked my bags back up I let out a breath I hadn''t realized I''d been holding. I felt a space open inside myself that had quietly closed itself off years ago¨C I was finally feeling real hope for the future. We might never leave Winterbase once we arrived, but we would be safe, for generations. That kind of security couldn''t be found anywhere else in the world anymore. REVELATION II Isla Noctis - Late 2117
Epiphany From the sea approach, Isla Noctis still held the shape of its former self, characteristic cliffs dropping sharply into the red waters below. There was, however, a distinct lack of vegetation or animal life, save a few hardy shorebirds, accustomed over time to the taste of the Agathan fish that populated the desolate sea. Once the coastal cliffs had been scaled, in my case via iron staircases pinioned into the rock face itself, we could take in the full effect of the corpse of what was once called Greenland. At that point where we had scaled the coast, there was about twenty feet of solid ground before a sharp and near perfectly straight drop of ten feet or so. Beyond the drop and into the horizon, nothing but white, glittering sand. At some places the coastal rim was just over half of a mile wide, and at its narrowest point, just under six feet. Cobbled together upon a sufficiently stable portion of this rim was the Anti-Node Eventuality Taskforce¡¯s formiddable ¡°Winterbase,¡± the last bastion of mankind in the age of the Archangels. It was rather impressive, a compound housing a population greater than that of Old New York City. And to think that the crew I had come with was intent on sabotaging the whole of it. I had stuck with the Cult of Ramiel with the express goal of safe passage to Winterbase, although I had first encountered them long before the Archangels rose. They had long been operating in internet forums and chat rooms, discussing their ideas of ¡°ascension¡± which they believed could only be achieved once all mankind was in communion with the angels, or in other words, enslaved by the Archangel Ramiel II. Once the team landed, we made our way inside of the base through a series of spillways, utility shafts, and similar such access ways. The mission was a precision operation: get directly to main command undetected, take out ANET leadership, and sabotage the base''s vital systems. There was no set exit plan, every one of the Cultists I was accompanied by was prepared to sacrifice their life for this mission. In order to be deployed with them, I had to pass a mind-melding approval from Ramiel II himself under the observation of a Heirophant, in preparation for which I had to truly convince myself that I was also willing to give my life. It wasn''t actually too difficult to convince myself of the sacrifice, but my drive was to prevent the sabotage of Winterbase, so the hard part was hiding that motive in the deepest recesses of my mind while feigning absolute conviction in the Cult¡¯s mission. The infiltration plan had been so thoroughly rehearsed that from the end of the sea approach to the last unscrewed drainage grate not a word was exchanged between our crew. I had ensured that once inside the base I would be the one watching our rear flank. I planned to eliminate my teammates just as we reached central command, and getting them from behind had the highest chance of success with the four-on-one numbers. One might think you ought to feel some remorse shooting your own in the back, but I did not. I had watched the Cult evolve from an online group of disparate fanatical personalities to a fascist paramilitary and they were presently set on causing the deaths of tens of millions of people¨C the vast majority of humankind''s remnants. I certainly doubted I would take any joy in it, but I had no second-guesses about the necessity of the act. The bigger fish to fry for me was what would happen when I subsequently came face-to-face with the High Commander of all of ANET, my childhood friend Herod Ecleates. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. There was no time to spare a thought on that right now though, as we were turning into the corridor where I had the best shot at making my move. I took my gun from its holster at my hip and took aim without cocking it, to eliminate as much reaction time as possible. I lined up a headshot that should kill or incapacitate two of my compatriots in one go, and cocked and fired my weapon in an almost singular motion. Our weapons were near completely silent, the sound of the shot barely louder than the click of the safety¨C two clicks and two of the Cultists dropped to the floor in front of me. Drawing their weapons as they turned, the other two looked at me, but one was dead before his eyes even focused, and the other before his weapon was raised high enough to even fire at me. I let out a quick, sharp sigh of relief and stepped over the corpses before continuing on down the corridor. We were in a series of narrow emergency access corridors, as opposed to the main functional traverseways of the base, so there was near-zero risk of encountering any ANET operatives, and there were only cameras at actual entrances and exits from the access system itself, at least according to the blueprints. As long as I didn''t approach the High Command entryway until I was ready, I shouldn''t even be on ANET''s radar yet. I ran over the next steps of my plan in my head: enter the High Command Operations Center, take out the security cameras, take out anyone who comes for me, confront Herod. I took a deep breath, then turned a corner and moved briskly to the door to my target. I opened it, and before taking a step inside, fired three quick but careful shots at the security cameras. As I stepped into the room, two ANET agents were upon me instantly. I wasn''t sure if either of them fired a single shot before they were falling to the ground in front of me. I had expected more to come between me and the man himself, but I was immediately subsequently face-to-face with Herod Ecleates. He entered the room gun raised, and before he fired, I saw the recognition register in his eyes. We hadn''t seen each other in over twenty years, but it''s hard to forget someone you were inseparable from for the entirety of your childhood, even with the changes of age and an apocalypse. Without exchanging a word, Herod fired his gun and I felt a sharp burst of pain in my chest. He¡¯d hit me square in the heart, though my kevlar body armor had prevented the bullet from piercing me. ¡°Wow. You¡¯d really kill me too? You¡¯ve less heart than an angel, Herod.¡± ¡°You¡¯d really risk the world like Asaph did?¡± ¡°Asaph didn¡¯t risk a thing, your father lived and died in fear and you killed your best friend based on his coward¡¯s tales!¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t kill Asaph, Edith, an ANET strike team did.¡± I laughed mirthlessly, ¡°Their blood is on your hands. At least I¡¯ll have the decency to kill you myself.¡± With that I shot Herod dead center in the forehead. Herod dropped to the ground, dead. I stood in shock at myself. It felt as though time froze for a moment: my mind threatening to spiral with remorse and anger and relief; I composed myself - forcing the emotion back: now isn¡¯t the time to process what I''ve done, my mission isn¡¯t yet complete. I forced myself to take a step, unsure if the feeling that my body has turned to lead is due to being shot or having executed my childhood friend, and then another step. I remind myself to stick to the plan: drag out the corpses of the other four members of the strike team I came with, stage a scene of a violent struggle, blame them for the assassination of ANET Acting High Commander Herod Eccleates, wait for the changing of the guard that will surely follow the death of such a heretical leader, deliver the information about the lost Key, and bring about the end of the Archangels by whatever means necessary. REVELATION III Vatican City - Paris - 2121
Illumination ¡°Polaris! Sirius! Arcturus! You are go for drop!¡± barked Solaris, the lead for this ANET strike mission. As I jumped from our dropship (I was callsign Arcturus) I focused my mind on the task at hand. Last week, ANET received intelligence from a Cult of Ramiel defector tipping them off to the existence of an ancient document that would be vital to the salvation of mankind. Our best bet for the location of said document was the Vatican Archives, which we were now descending upon. The Vatican had robust lockdown measures in place to protect the Pope, Cardinals, and other important Church figures from the horrors of the Archangel War, which we would have to avoid. ¡°Heading at two degrees, we want to land on the west side of the Apostolic Library roof there!¡± called Sirius. Just after his call and Polaris and I¡¯s subsequent adjustment of course, an anti-aircraft rocket flew past us. It missed our dropship, thankfully, but hit and destroyed a smaller support copter we had with us for backup. Aside from the Papal Gendarmerie defenses, there was also the matter of the heretical followers of the Archangel Michael to keep tabs on. When the Archangels first rose, a group of high-ranking figures within the Catholic church publicly swore allegiance to Michael, causing a schism within the church and forming a sizeable and willing army for Michael, which had been trying to overtake the Vatican ever since. Hopefully both forces would be too focused on each other to give us much trouble. ¡°Watch out! Two bogeys emerging from a hatch 15 meters north of drop!¡± Solaris called. Solaris was the last to drop so she was still several meters above us as the other three of us activated our landing packs, a sort of compressed-air jetpack setup, to break our falls. The pack guaranteed a somewhat safe landing velocity but we still had to tuck and roll to prevent breaking our legs or falling over and concussing ourselves. Polaris was first to get upright and immediately fired at one of the approaching gendarmes. I heard the officer¡¯s body collapse as I was getting upright myself. The other gendarme ducked behind his cohort¡¯s body for cover, which was futile considering the power of ANET¡¯s custom-spec firearms. I fired two rounds at the corpse and a second later heard the second gendarme¡¯s weapon clatter to the floor. We moved quickly to the roof hatch the guards had emerged from and entered the library. The official Apostolic Archive of the Vatican was located elsewhere in modern times, though it had once been a part of the Library itself. Our intel told us that in the original archive chambers beneath the main library, certain ancient manuscripts remained unmoved due to combined factors of their fragility and their contents being especially esoteric compared to the majority of the archival collection. Aside from the two gendarmes who had come for us on the roof, security within the library seemed loose. Sirius gave us hand signals to point out a patrol on the level below, and we carefully navigated our way through the stacks to avoid them. Once we made it to the subterranean level, things got more dicey. We didn¡¯t have an exact location for the artifact we were after, so we had to first locate a catalog and go from there. ¡°Arcturus, on me. Sirius and Polaris, head to the opposite end of the hall and start your search from there. Radio if you find a catalog, and no matter what happens we rendezvous on the roof in twenty minutes,¡± Solaris ordered, and motioned us to move out. We ducked into the first room before us while the other two rushed off down the dim hallway. The room was pretty clearly just general storage for the Apostolic Library, there were stanchions and velvet cords for sectioning off for events, tables and chairs, placard stands, and so on. After a quick once-over, we moved on. Across the hall was a supply closet, shelves of office supplies on one wall, and cleaning supplies on the opposite. Beyond the first two rooms we seemed to be getting closer to our target, the next left-hand room housed a very old set of filigree armor and a rather ancient-looking scroll and little else besides dust. In the room opposite that were aisles of tired filing cabinets. ¡°Do you think this is the catalog?¡± I asked Solaris. ¡°Could be, what¡¯s in the drawers?¡± We each picked a cabinet and started rifling through the file drawers. The first drawer I opened held dozens of manila folders, each containing a single antique document. ¡°It¡¯s looking more like this is the collection itself than a catalog,¡± I said. ¡°Agreed, and none of these look old enough for our target to be in the same room.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll just check a drawer in the next row.¡± I checked the middle drawer in a cabinet in the next row; more of the same age documents. ¡°Yeah, these can¡¯t be older than the eighteenth century, let¡¯s move on.¡± In the next room, we appeared to have struck proverbial gold. There were card catalog drawers, row after row of them, and a rather dated desktop computer in one corner. ¡°See if you can figure out the system for these drawers and find a catalog card for the Codex, meanwhile I¡¯ll see if this dust bucket has any answers,¡± directed Solaris. I moved over to the cabinets and looked around for any kind of sorting markers. There were eight digit numbers in either upper corner on the cabinets at the end of each row, but it wasn¡¯t immediately clear to me what they signified. I opened a drawer in the first row, which contained catalog cards not unlike what one would find in an out-of-date library. Each card contained a description of an artifact or manuscript, a list of names (finders, owners, and/or donors, I assumed), a location within the Vatican, and a date. Seeing the date on the first card I inspected, I realized the sorting must be by date, and the dates seemed to be the presumed origin of each artifact. ¡°Catalog is organized by date of origin, what century do we believe the Codex originates from?¡± ¡°Loaded question, Arcturus. The Codex we¡¯re looking for is said to be a lost portion of the Key of Solomon. Historians would attribute the Key to the 14th century, but if we¡¯re to assume to Codex is a genuine creation of Solomon himself, it could be as old as 10th century BCE.¡± ¡°Well, that would be about half this room to look through, any luck with the commodore64 over there?¡± This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. ¡°It literally just booted up. Start looking through the early 14th century, work backwards, and I¡¯ll try to locate it digitally.¡± I found the aisle with a code ending in 1412 and started opening drawers. Most of the cards were handwritten but thankfully the titles were in good sized print so I was able to skim through them fairly quickly. On the downside, a lot of items in the collection were the Codex of something or other. ¡°Solaris, what¡¯s the full name of the manuscript again?¡± ¡°The informant referred to it as the ¡®Codex of Holy Geometries¡¯ though it could also be titled the Codex of Solomon, and it could be bundled in with an early manuscript of the Key of Solomon, so keep an eye out for that too.¡± ¡°I¡¯m gonna radio for Sirius and Polaris to come help look through these drawers.¡± ¡°Sounds good, I doubt there¡¯s more catalog beyond this so no point leaving them on a wild goose chase.¡± ¡°Sirius, Polaris, second room on the righthand side from our point of entry. We located the catalog,¡± I radioed. There was a concerning pause before a reply came in from Polaris: ¡°Multiple bogeys this end of the hall, we¡¯ll make it to you if we can, holding them back will be our main priority.¡± ¡°Copy. When we find the location of the Codex we¡¯ll signal you and move out,¡± Solaris answered back. I tried to pick up the pace as best I could, but Solaris soon came to my rescue. ¡°Got it. ¡®Solomon¡¯s Codex of Holy Formes and Shapes¡¯ aisle 1030-1313,¡± she called out, and as I moved to the correct aisle she continued, ¡°Drawer 23. I don¡¯t know why they made a digital catalog for the hard copy catalog instead of just digitizing the catalog but here we are.¡± I located the appropriate drawer and started flicking through the files. Near the very back of the drawer I found the card. ¡°Got it! Codex of blah blah blah, pope shitbag, pope windbag, here we go- location... It was in this building, however that is struck through and the card says ¡®Remanded to collection of the White family - 2009¡¯.¡± ¡°Fuck.¡± ¡°Codex isn¡¯t here. Get to the roof ASAP, we¡¯re pulling out,¡± Solaris called out over the radio, then said to me, ¡°We¡¯re going to fucking Kansas.¡± I didn¡¯t really know what that meant but regardless we made our way into the hall. We heard gunfire at the other end of the basement, but Solaris motioned to ignore it and move towards the stairs. We made our way back up to the ground floor and literally ran straight into two more Gendarmes as we rounded the bend of the landing. I and the Gendarme I ran into both fell to the ground, which resulted in me slamming my right elbow hard into the stone steps. Solaris however rolled with the collision and barreled right through the man she ran into, knocking him completely to the ground and, by the sound of it, stepping on his head. As I recovered from my fall, she took each of them out with a single shot to the head. There were another two guards on the second floor, but just as we came into their view, they fell to the ground, with Sirius having taken them out from behind as he joined up with us. Sirius just shook his head. We made our way quickly and silently to the roof access ladder, and as Sirius and I made our way up, Solaris called in our ride and took the rear. On the roof, a few more gendarmes made futile attempts to impede us but we easily incapacitated them before the dropship came low enough for us to hook ourselves onto the grappling cables and make our swift escape. ¡°Polaris?¡± I inquired. As we pulled up into the air, I took in the view of the Vatican: Everything from St Peter¡¯s Basilica and north was under gendarmerie control, but the antipope and the army of Michael had taken control of the Saints¡¯ Palaces, the gardens, and the buildings on the garden grounds. Armed with Michael¡¯s golden rods, the soldiers assaulted the walls, and though the gendarmes fired upon them they did not fall, sustained beyond mortality by the sheer will of their Archangel patron. I hadn¡¯t been so observant when we dropped in but in the hindsight of our departure it was quite clear why we had met so little resistance throughout our operation. Stepping away from the open side of the dropship, I turned my mind back to the mission. ¡°So what¡¯s this about Kansas?¡±
Solaris didn¡¯t give much of an answer immediately, ¡°save it for the briefing room¡± and all that. Luckily for my curious ass, debrief from this strike and planning for the next was happening the moment we touched down at the Paris outpost. On the approach, the sight here was even more dismal than the Vatican. At least the pope was still putting up a fight; here, Hadraniel had transubstantiated everyone within 25 kilometers of the edge of the metropolitan area into crystalline puppets, and when no more archangels advanced on their domain, the puppets simply stood in place. Apparently the whole city went dark within a month of the start of the war, to this day I don¡¯t know why ANET didn¡¯t distribute anti-node crowns from our base here. Metaphorical water under the bridge I suppose, especially considering the whole leadership team got overthrown between then and when I even got to Winterbase and joined up with them. History aside, the stillness of the city and the knowledge that outside of our bunker, the only thing between me and becoming a glass doll was the little crown on my head was a little terrifying. More terrifying was the presence of Hadraniel himself, his true form being a small and impossibly bright orb floating over city center, and external transfer plates in the shape of a hundred spiked crosses each stretching thousands of feet across the city skyline like a glowing birdcage. As always, I found myself unable to look away from the angel until the helipad bulkhead closed above us. Inside the base, we remaining three from the strike as well as our pilot, callsign Eris, made our way to the briefing room, where we were greeted by ANET Operations Force Captain Raike Stearns. ¡°You lost us a heli and two good soldiers, and you did not recover the Codex?¡± he clarified, voice thick with disdain and disappointment. ¡°Correct,¡± Solaris said as she, Sirius, and I nodded in unison. ¡°Please tell me we have at least determined a precise location of the manuscript now?¡± ¡°It was previously in papal possession and was remanded to the ¡®White collection¡¯ in 2009, according to the Vatican archival records,¡± I offered. ¡°Bringing in my archaeological background here, I can tell you beyond a doubt this artifact is in the White family compound doomsday bunker outside of Kansas City,¡± Solaris said, and I involuntarily raised my eyebrows to maximum height. ¡°That sentence is trying to do a lot of work you¡¯re gonna have to do for me here, Solaris,¡± said the Captain. ¡°Okay then here¡¯s your thirty second history lesson: The White family were one of the most hated names in twenty-first century archaeology. They were evangelist fanatics with deep pockets from their national craft store chain who bought up tons of black market artifacts and held them in private collection for years. To this day, we don¡¯t know the full breadth of the collection because when the Socialists won the second American Civil War, the family grabbed their shit and ran to Argentina. After the chaos of the third American Civil War, when a lot of the midwest and southern states became no-man¡¯s lands, the Whites moved back to their previously state-seized estate, and have presumably remained there through the Archangel war. It¡¯s a known fact that much of their collection was held in an archival bunker attached to their luxurious doomsday bunker. There was probably an HGTV episode about it back in the day.¡± I felt like I had whiplash from the speed of Solaris¡¯ history lecture. ¡°The fuck is HGTV?¡± asked Sirius. ¡°Nevermind that,¡± interjected the Captain. ¡°So you¡¯re confident we¡¯ll find the Codex in Kansas?¡± ¡°Yes, and if we get there and I¡¯m wrong, you can drop a house on me,¡± Solaris said with finality. I think I got the reference but it felt even more esoteric than the HGTV thing. Sirius was completely lost now: ¡°What is even going on?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it champ, grandma here is taking us to Kansas,¡± chimed in Eris. RELIQUARY Kansas - 2122
This mission feels like it¡¯s the whole reason I¡¯m here with ANET at all. I joined up at Winterbase same reason as anyone else: the Archangels took over the world and the massive compound on the edge of Isla Noctis was the only safe place left. Anyone and everyone was welcome, if they could make it to the gates, but if you wanted better quarters and more substantial rations, you had to volunteer. There were plenty of jobs on base that needed doing, and it was easy enough to secure yourself some comforts without putting yourself in much danger, but for some reason I had felt compelled to join the Operations Force. Shortly after I had arrived at Winterbase, Operation Pax Omni began, and I was called in to act as a mission lead given my relevant expertise in archaeology. Fast forward to the present and we get to my point about this mission: we¡¯re on route to the White family compound in Kansas to secure a lost apocryphal biblical text called the Codex of Holy Geometries. Back when I was working on my thesis (which feels like it was literally a different lifetime, by the way) I had an absolute bitch of a time getting access to a number of original sources I needed because they were in the White collection, which means two things for today: I¡¯m fairly familiar with the different categories in the White collection and have a decent idea what artifacts we¡¯ll find the Codex amongst, and I¡¯m gonna get a hell of a dose of catharsis if we get to kill those greedy bastards along the way. ¡°Solaris, we¡¯re on final approach,¡± called the dropship pilot, callsign Eris. ¡°Alright everyone, prepare to drop!¡± I called over the comms. I looked around the interior of the small dropship at my team as we put on our masks and landing packs. It was a small but mighty crew for this endeavor, callsigns Sirius and Arcturus had been on the Vatican strike op with me just a few days ago, and our Ramiel Cult defector informant was joining us herself on this mission, under callsign Pluto, and the team was rounded out by callsign Mars, a tank of an individual with more than 100 successful ANET ops under their belt. ¡°Entering drop zone,¡± announced Eris. ¡°Showtime! Mars, you are go for drop!¡± I called as I slid open the hatch on the side of the airship. Mars gave a cheeky grin and saluted before they did a backwards freefall out of the door. I rolled my eyes as I gave the next call. ¡°Sirius, Arcturus, you¡¯re go for drop!¡± Those two high-fived each other and then yanked each other out the door by their hands. The visual effect of that was actually kind of amusing and I had to hold back a small chuckle as I gave the next go: ¡°Pluto, you are go for drop!¡± The middle-aged woman just looked at me with incredible fire in her eyes, nodded confidently, and jumped forwards out the door. I followed after her a second later, and gave Eris her sendoff: ¡°Eris, take her up. We¡¯ll see you for pickup in 100 minutes.¡± I rolled over midair so I could wave at the dropship as Eris pulled up above the clouds to begin holding maneuvers. After she was out of sight, I rolled back to face the ground and the task at hand. ¡°Mars, adjust your heading by 12 degrees. The entrance to the bunker is under that half-collapsed helipad,¡± I called out over the comms. The others had to adjust as well by varying degrees, but followed suit on their own. We touched down on the dilapidated structure in question one after another; I was surprised how confidently Pluto engaged her landing pack and how quickly she was on her feet. As we stood up and oriented ourselves, Mars gave us an important reminder: ¡°Now we¡¯ve landed, everyone remember not to touch anything living. No vines, no grass, no squirrels, no frogs, no trees, nothing.¡± It had been in the mission brief: Barbiel was in control of this region and ¡ªbased on scout intel from a few months back¡ª he maintained control of his territory by detecting human life via the tiny and specific electrical signals that passed between humans and other lifeforms when they touch, and promptly eliminating said human life via terrifyingly fast bolts of horizontal lightning. It was immediately clear that not touching any plants would be far easier said than done when Arcturus called us over to what seemed to be our way down to the bunker. ¡°Unfortunately, I appear to have found the way down, folks,¡± he called, and as we made our way to his end of the elevated platform, we immediately saw what was unfortunate about it: some kind of creeping ivy sort of plant had entirely enveloped the metal staircase down to the concrete-encased doorway that presumably led to our goal. ¡°Hold it together folks, the rough schematics indicated that door leads to a preliminary subterranean space before the bunker, so there should be another entrance around here somewhere,¡± I called out. Everyone split up around the edges of the helipad to search our surroundings without indicating any doubts yet, but I couldn¡¯t shake a sense of dread sneaking in at the corner of my thoughts. As I was acknowledging that feeling though, it was actually me who found our way down. I was prone on the collapsing side of the helipad, hanging my head off the edge to look underneath the steel beam-supported structure itself. Centered underneath it was a bare cement slab with a round metal hatch in it, and the majority of the ground beneath the pad was bare dirt. There wasn¡¯t a clear way down, but it didn¡¯t look like it would be too difficult to scale the support structure for the helipad. ¡°Over here! I think I found our way in,¡± I called out to the others. This proved immediately to have been a mistake, as the combined weight of the team on the unstable end of the pad caused the damaged support beam to buckle further, with my end of the pad lurching downward as a result. The others stopped their approach but the damage was done, I was sliding off the platform headfirst. I managed to grab onto a small crossbeam, causing me to do a front flip instead of sliding right off, but the uncontrolled momentum caused me to slam my back hard into the vertical beam below, knocking the wind out of me and causing me to lose my grip. I fell downwards a few more feet before I caught myself on another crossbeam, causing me to bruise my forearms pretty badly. At least I was safely several feet above the grass still. ¡°I¡¯m okay!¡± I called up to the others. ¡°Follow me down one at a time, and be a little more graceful about it.¡± As the others did as instructed, I got myself into a better position to start maneuvering through the support beams to the hatch below. Mars was the first to make it down to where I was, and once they had, I started across the route I had laid out in my mind. Mars observed carefully, and once Arcturus had caught up to them, they followed my path as Arcturus looked on. Pluto did the same, following Arcturus, and then Sirius was last to come down. As Sirius got to the beam that we had all started our horizontal maneuvers from, the damaged vertical beam finally gave way. This caused the beams that Arcturus and Pluto were on to lurch suddenly downwards, and the crossbeam Sirius was on gave way completely, and she began plummeting toward the grass at the edge of the pad. ¡°FUCK! Arcturus, Pluto, dive for it! Sirius, I¡¯m sorry!¡± I cried out. I grabbed the hatch and opened it at the same time as Mars caught Pluto who had flung herself toward the cement platform, at the same time as Arcturus hit the dirt and rolled toward us, at the same time as Sirius fell in what felt like slow motion ever closer to the grass. Somehow, the other four of us were all ducking into the hatch as Sirius finally touched down. I looked on in horror and despair as she almost seemed relieved for an instant before Barbiel¡¯s lightning appeared a moment later. The brilliant green bolt of lightning struck through the metal supports of the helipad, creating a blinding web of light to illuminate Sirius as it struck into her heart, causing her to convulse violently as her flesh began smoking, burning from the inside. Somehow through all of that, I could swear I saw her smile weakly as the lightning disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived, before her charred body slumped forward, dead. ¡°God damn it!¡± I said as I closed the hatch and turned to the others. ¡°I know this comes off as callous coming from me right now, but as terrible as this loss is, we have to keep moving,¡± said Pluto. She didn¡¯t say an untrue word there. Silently, we pressed on. Under the hatch we had found ourselves in a small concrete corridor, dimly lit by the green light of some dying mercury-vapor lamps. Opposite the ladder we had come down there was a staircase leading up to the main doorway, and to our left the corridor ended in a blank wall. To our right the corridor extended at a gradual downward slant for about 25 feet, ending in a wall into which was set the main bulkhead of the White family bunker. We approached the bulkhead as a group, and I motioned for everyone to hold position a few feet from the massive steel door. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°Arcturus, begin security override procedure A,¡± I directed. Arcturus broke rank and approached the door, taking a small device out of his pocket as he did. He pressed a few buttons on the device in rapid succession before placing it against the bulkhead, where it remained in place by way of electromagnetism. We all waited in silence for a few excruciating seconds before the device emitted a series of three quick high-pitched beeps signifying it had completed its attempt to hack the door, followed by a longer lower beep, signifying that the attempt had failed. ¡°This bunker¡¯s probably about a century old, if not older, so it¡¯s honestly to be expected that the codebreaker wouldn¡¯t work on it,¡± Arcturus explained. I nodded, then said, ¡°Okay. Mars, begin security override protocol B.¡± Mars unstrapped two small explosive devices from his side, and placed one on either side of the door. ¡°Y¡¯all better back up for this,¡± they said as they initialized the activation sequence. We all backed up to the start of the incline in the hall, and looked on as the explosives detonated. They were specially designed so that the actual combustion of the explosive elements was nearly silent, though the pieces of the doorframe and massive steel hinges flying apart and hitting the concrete walls and floor still made a cacophony of their own. As the last echoes of metal on cement rang in our eardrums and the smoke cleared, I gave the team a hand signal indicating to move in. Stepping carefully over the fallen and mangled bulkhead, we found ourselves in what amounted to a doomsday mudroom. The wall opposite the door was lined with cubbies containing hazmat suits, boots, masks, oxygen tanks, automatic weapons, and any other item you¡¯d expect an early twenty-first century prepper to have in their ¡°going out¡± repository. On either side wall was a door, to our left an aluminum and frosted glass affair reminiscent of a medical setting, and to our right an ornate wooden door with inset stained glass, like one might expect on the front door of a tacky mansion. ¡°And here I thought we¡¯d have to look for the archive,¡± remarked Pluto. ¡°This tracks actually, the archival bunker has been in use since long before the family moved into the doomsday bunker across the hall,¡± I said, then continued, ¡°speaking of, we should probably be prepared for company at any minute. Mars, you and I will watch the house door, Arcturus, get us into that archive without setting off any alarms.¡± Mars and I each readied our guns and took preemptive aim at the stained glass window. Behind us, I could hear Arcturus activate the codebreaker again, and hook it up to the keypad next to the archive door. After another very tense few seconds, there were three short beeps followed by two slightly longer beeps at the same pitch: a successful hack. Without turning around, Mars and I listened and waited for Arcturus and Pluto to move into the archive before we backed in after them, guns still trained on the door across the way. Once we were inside, I kicked the door closed after us, and we finally relaxed slightly. As I finally turned to face the archive, I let out an audible gasp. The archival bunker consisted of what appeared to possibly be a natural cave, in any case a massive space, with raw and rough stone ceilings and walls on three sides. Only the floor and the wall on the side we had just come through was flat concrete. At the entrance, we were very near the ceiling, and a flight of twenty-odd steps in front of us as well as a ramp down the length of the flat wall led to the floor level of the space. The majority of the space, easily ten thousand square feet or more, was filled with row after row of tall metal shelves, full of all manner of cultural artifact, from ancient scrolls to dynasty vases to important modernist artworks. The majority of the collection, even at a glance to someone without my intimate knowledge of the contents, was comprised of Judeo-Christian artifacts. The sheer volume of the space combined with how close to capacity it seemed is what was striking me. Before I could even tell her to take the reigns, Pluto was already making her way down the stairs and calling out instructions. ¡°The Keys of Solomon possessed by the White family should be held with the rest of the so-called ¡®Apocryphal Scrolls¡¯ collection, a portion of which was sent on a museum tour in the 2020s. Considering that, I¡¯m expecting them to be relatively close to the front here. Solaris, if you could check these first two rows, up to the third set of shelves, I¡¯ll check the next two, and then Mars, check the same shelves in rows five and six, and Arcturus, seven and eight. If you think you¡¯ve found the Keys, call out and Solaris or I will come verify them.¡± ¡°Perfect,¡± I concurred, ¡°Once we have the Keys, and most importantly the Codex, we move out. With any luck, we¡¯ll be out of here without the Whites even knowing we were here.¡± With that, we split up to our separate rows and began our search. Each shelving unit was about twelve feet high, two feet deep, and six feet wide, and each row of shelves had a sliding ladder attached, which seemed to all be conveniently left at the end we were searching. I glanced over the bottom two shelves in my first unit (all sculptural or otherwise object-based artifacts) and then grabbed my ladder, centered it, and started combing over the contents of the upper shelves as I slowly climbed the ladder. The third and fourth shelves in this unit housed two or three sets of some kind of biblical encyclopedia, two of which seemed to predate the invention of the printing press. The Codex we were looking for would be part of a set no larger than three volumes, if at all, so I didn¡¯t waste any time checking titles or contents on those shelves. The fifth and sixth shelves in the unit were completely full of antique bibles, many in languages other than english, but all very clearly fairly standard bible contents just by the thickness of them and the look of their spines or covers. The top two shelves were the only two in my first unit that required any amount of depth to my searching, as they were full of a somewhat uncharacteristically hap-hazard assortment of scrolls and tomes. After scanning the tags of a half dozen scrolls and the first few pages of another few books, I realized the reason for the lack of care with these artifacts was that these were among the portion of the White collection that was determined to be fake sometime around the quarter century. I climbed back down the ladder, slid it over to the middle of the next shelving unit and continued my search. Once again the lowest two shelves were all object artifacts and so I quickly moved on to the upper shelves in that unit. The middle shelf held another large unified set of some kind so I moved quickly past that and onto the fourth shelf, which required a more detailed search as it contained a variety of books and a few scrolls, though after checking the opening pages of about a third of the items on the shelf I realized they were all Islamic texts and therefore the Codex would not likely be amongst them. In this set of shelves, the fifth through eighth shelves were all disarrayed items that seemed also to have been either fake or unverifiable. I made a mental note to recheck these shelves in more detail if we didn¡¯t find the Codex in our first broad sweep, and then climbed down the ladder again and moved to the third and final shelf Pluto had directed me to check in this row. Just as I was mounting the ladder to skip past the miscellaneous artifacts on the bottom shelves, Mars called out from a few rows over. ¡°Can I get a second set of eyes on this? I¡¯ve got a ¡®King Solomon¡¯s Codex of the Geometries of the Divine¡¯ over here, not sure if that¡¯s quite the right title,¡± they said loudly, but not quite shouting. ¡°On it! You keep looking, Pluto,¡± I called out, dismounting my ladder and heading to the end of my aisle. I looked down the third row as I passed it ¡ª empty; and the fourth: Pluto glanced down at me from the top of a ladder on the first set of shelves and gave me a thumbs up before looking back at the leatherbound volume in front of her. Mars almost ran right into me coming out of the sixth row of shelves just as I reached them, and after looking up from the book in their hands and stopping at the last second, they handed it to me to verify. I opened the ornate and gem-laiden cover to a faceplate that read: ¡°King Solomon¡¯s Codex of the Geometries of the Divine a genuine and certified copy of the little-known third counterpart to his holiness¡¯ Greater and Lesser grimoires¡± I said, loud enough for Pluto and Arcturus to hear me two rows away either direction, ¡°It¡¯s a ¡®certified copy,¡¯¡± and then skimmed through the pages of the tome quickly with my thumb as I continued, ¡°seems complete, plenty of crisp illustrations. Do we keep looking for an original?¡± Pluto called back almost instantly, ¡°we have 44 minutes till pickup, I say hang onto that and keep looking for another ten.¡± ¡°Hang onto this,¡± I said to Mars, handing the Codex back to them, then continued more loudly, ¡°alright, meet back at the archive door in ten minutes.¡± As Mars put the tome in their pack and went back to the shelves they had found it on, I quickly returned to the second row of shelves and got back to looking myself. About seven minutes of near-silence later, I had reached the last shelf in the aisle, and as I ran my finger past the spines of another dozen ancient tomes, I knew I had found it. It was like a static shock between my fingertip and the blank spine of this particular item. As I slid it out from the shelf, I realized it was not actually a bound book but more of a sort of folio, containing hundreds of impossibly thin sheets covered in silverpoint writing. I didn¡¯t dare touch the pages, but at a glance, it just seemed to be simple geometric shapes over and over again throughout. ¡°Pluto! I think I have something!¡± I called as I stepped into the middle of the aisle and opened the folio fully for a better overview. As I did this, an ordinary office sticky note fell out and fluttered to the floor. I picked it up, and with Pluto coming down the aisle anyway, I read it aloud: ¡°The Codex of Holy Geometries - earliest known edition.¡± ¡°Let me see,¡± said Pluto as she drew near. She inspected the folio, then pulled out a knife to leaf through the first few sheets without touching them, before announcing, ¡°this is it. Everybody! Move out!¡± She slung a metal case off of her back and snapped it open, placing the Codex in the padded interior before closing it and returning it to her back. We made our way back up to the entrance of the archive, heading into the antechamber one by one. Pluto had taken the rear, and as she exited, an alarm immediately began blaring. ¡°Fuck, must¡¯ve been a security tag on the thing. Just keep moving!¡± We did, drawing our weapons as we went. We were out of the bunker and climbing back up the helipad before we even heard sign of a response to the alarm¡ª back inside the antechamber a door slammed open, some voices were shouting, and then came the distinct sounds of guns being taken from racks. Thankfully, the last of the team made it onto the top of the helipad before anyone emerged from the bunker, and Eris was swooping in for our pickup not a moment too soon. A sort of net ladder was deployed from the dropship door, so we could leap from the damaged pad and climb up into the craft. I was the last to leap, and as we pulled away and the others were climbing into the ship, I paused a moment to watch as the occupants of the bunker emerged at last to the surface. They fired some dated semi-automatic weapons vaguely in our direction for a moment, until they oafishly stumbled into the grass. I closed my eyes, but the flash of lightning burned my retinas anyway. PARABLE Isla Noctis - Late 2123
The Codex of Holy Geometries actually proved rather easy to translate literally, as far as esoteric ancient documents written in unknown languages go. One of the ANET researchers digitized the entire text, using numerals one through six as placeholders for the document¡¯s six-symbol alphabet, and then put it through a series of decryption algorithms. The six-character alphabet was actually being used to make two different alphabets of multi-symbol letters, which were then roughly translatable as ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek words. The document delineated a series of rituals that could be performed in communion with divine messengers for a variety of purposes, however these instructions were presented in a largely non-linear matter, with aspects of various rituals described amidst each other with little distinction between them. As we began to decipher some of the rituals, we figured out the system for titling them and were able to create an index of sorts. This included entries such as "Divination of Future Events," "Materialization of Solid Light," and the very last ritual, "Convocation of All Angels, Adam''s Messiah" which had the most promising title for something we could use to save humanity. In a perfect world, we''d have liked to translate the entire Codex and consider all our options, but the Cult of Ramiel was doubtless aware that we had secured the manuscript by now, and between that and my sabotaging of their mission to sabotage Winterbase some years back now, they were sure to be sending all of their available resources towards Isla Noctis any time now. In the current state of the world, it would take months or more for them to arrive from East Dakota in any meaningful numbers, but they would certainly be coming nonetheless. "The Cult wants this thing probably even more than we do, but for far worse reasons. Whereas our goal here is to decipher this "Adam''s Messiah" ritual and use it to bring about the end of the age of angels, the Cult of Ramiel II believe the Codex contains a ritual ¡ªthey called it "Communion"¡ª which would allow them to incite all of mankind to be joined with Ramiel II in some sort of hive mind, superceding and perhaps even destroying the other Archangels in the process. It is imperative that we figure it out and initiate our ritual before they reach us," I said to the group of operatives and commanders gathered before me. I had previously been made primary operative on the mission which got us the Codex in hand, and now found myself practically left in charge of the entirety of ANET''s field operatives, as every available resource was being put into this mission and I was the primary planner and designated field Commander for the op. It was ironic to me that I had killed Herod to get here and now almost found myself in his former role, but I took no amusement or pleasure in that irony. "We''ve decoded about sixty percent of the ritual, which has given us enough knowledge that we know our first move towards executing it. We will be taking the decoding operation on the move as a team approaches Eremiel, the seemingly dormant Archangel at the center of Isla Noctis. We have also determined the necessary materials and have some of our instructions for the constructs that will be needed for the ritual, and these will also be built while on the move," I began laying out the plan to everyone gathered. Before I could continue, a younger volunteer interrupted to ask the question I was literally about to answer, "How exactly are we taking all of this on the move?" I tried to maintain a patient air as I continued, "we will be taking the ''ANET Mobile Bunker prototype 2, Frostcrawler'' out of the R&D vault. It''s a massive overland train with crew accommodations, meeting spaces, a fully-kitted physical sciences laboratory, and a few hangar bays which will be more than sufficient space for the necessary construction. The vehicle has a cruising speed of 15 miles per hour, so a direct trip would take nearly three days. It is going to take some time to get the Frostcrawler out of storage and load her up first though. We anticipate moving out around the new year. Furthermore, we will not be taking that direct three day route. The plan is to circle slowly towards Eremiel until we have all necessary preparations completed, the point of getting in motion is to make it as difficult as possible for the Cult to reach us, and to diminish Winterbase as an attractive target in the meantime." This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. I could see lots of questions forming behind a fair few pairs of eyes in the room, and decided to deflect before I found myself unable to escape this stage I had been placed upon, "your commanders have detailed plans for the preparation and transit stages, and if you are to remain on guard duty here at base, those details have been outlined as well. If there are any further questions, refer to your commanding officer first. Thank you all." With that, I stepped away from the center of the room and got myself a long drink of water. As I was swallowing, Raike Stearns, whose job I was basically taking at the moment, approached with a sour look. I almost choked but painfully managed to get the water down before he spoke. "The plan is solid and completely detailed. I don''t understand why so many people are making a big fuss about every little part of it," he said, surprising me. I thought he was going to be complaining about the plan, not the complainers. "It''s to be expected, I think. They don''t want to leave the relative comfort and safety of Winterbase for an unknown, so they''re finding anything they can to quibble over or find minor fault with. Once we get preparation underway and they see for themselves that everything has been considered, the fuss will die down."
And time would prove Stearns right on all counts. Less than a month after that meeting, it was already launch day for Frostcrawler, and the teams were working smoothly. In the end, not one question had been run up the flagpole all the way to me¡ª the plans had been thorough. I just needed to personally conduct a final check off all preparations and we would roll out. To fit in the hangar bay at Winterbase while fully coupled together, the massive overland train had to snake back and forth against itself, like a giant mechanical viper preparing to strike. While walking through the vehicle from the inside, this created a somewhat more haphazard experience of the layout than one usually expects from a train. Starting at the back of the vehicle, the very last car was primarily comprised of a large hangar space with enough room for two all-terrain trucks and four dune bikes parked tightly together. Following this, there were three cars in a row of crew accommodations¡ª likely a major factor in the general acquiescence to the mission, the crew bunks were much more comfortable than most of the volunteer quarters in Winterbase itself. Following the bunks, there was a galley car, then three more hangar cars containing the still in-progress constructs necessary for the Adam¡¯s Messiah ritual: geometric metal frames, largely of bronze and lead, with carefully placed platings of gold, silver, and copper, and extensive and intricate engravings carefully explained in the Codex. Once completed, these structures would be arranged around Eremiel in order to set up something akin to a thought-transfer from the coronation days, but between us and the angel Himself. Ahead of the cars dedicated to the building projects was a laboratory car, equipped to continue analyzing the codex itself, and with ample computing equipment to help the research team finish decrypting the process for the final ritual. Ahead of that, a car containing a veritable war room: a sizeable meeting space equipped with advanced navigational displays and simulation equipment. In front of this, an officers¡¯ accommodation car, the quarters themselves identical to the others on the train, but taking up only half the car, with the other half filled by a small galley. The only thing in front of the officers¡¯ quarters was the engine car itself, containing the nuclear engine and the control bridge. Back to front, everything was in order, so I set my radio to the intercom frequency and gave the announcement: ¡°Final checks complete, Frostcrawler rolls out in 0030 hours.¡± PILGRIMAGE Isla Noctis - 2124
The sounds of a nuclear fusion generator powering seventy-two electric motors driving treads across the loose quartzite sand would be echoing for miles across the desolate wastes of Isla Noctis, if only there was a single living thing out there to hear it. From inside the overland train Frostcrawler, the only indication of all the driving machinery and the motion of the vehicle itself was a subtle, constant vibration felt through the floors of each car. Eleven months in motion had been enough time for the crew to fully decipher ninety-nine percent of the Adam''s Messiah ritual in the Codex of Holy Geometries, the last bits still eluding them being the final steps of the physical ritual itself. The portions of the ritual translated thus far covered the entirety of the necessary constructs which were to be assembled and arranged before initiating the ritual, and the crew had completed the last of them¡ª weeks ago now. Very specific measurements were outlined by the Codex using a single unit for any measurement. The term for this unit was translated as ¡°Une¡± and it is roughly equal to 1.12 inches when measuring physical length, and there are approximately 4.7 Unes in one second. Each of the constructs was centered around a number: there was a regular tetrahedron of lead rods and gold corner clamps, with everything in measurements of four or four hundred Unes or four tenths of a Une. Similarly there was a dodecahedron of bronze and copper in measurements of 12U, and a cube of iron and silver in measurements of 6U. There was also an octahedron constructed of tin and copper, centered around eights, the completion of which had felt ominous to many of the passengers of the Frostcrawler as it seemed almost an effigy of their enemies¡¯ own God. Each of the constructs contained at its center a more precious (in material, detail, and general fragility) version of itself, exactly a certain fraction of Unes smaller than its containing counterpart. Raike Stearns, longtime Commander of Operations for the Anti-Node Eventuality Taskforce, was inspecting the crystal prism at the center of the dodecahedral construct when he suddenly felt something very wrong from the pit of his stomach. There were other ANET volunteers around verifying measurements and etchings on the different objects, so Raike asked aloud: ¡°Did anyone else feel that?¡± A chorus of ¡°yes¡±-es was largely drowned out by an engineer barreling into the hangar car at that very moment, shouting ¡°Train''s stopped!¡± as she went, continuing on to the next car ahead. Raike tried not to say ¡°Oh fuck¡± out loud as he quickly followed after the engineer. They made their way to the engine at the front of the overland train, both of them praying to the universe that it wasn''t an issue with the nuclear reactor. The engineer was only a few steps ahead of Raike when she passed through the coupling into the engine, but she was already in the thick of the technical discussion when he came through moments after her. ¡°-nk God, so once we service that we''ll be moving again?¡± asked the engineer. ¡°Should be. It''s serviceable from inside, we just need two of us to go down in the compartment and do it,¡± answered another volunteer, before acknowledging Raike, ¡°Commander.¡± ¡°Yes. Don''t let me get in the way of you experts but I do want the run down. Also names and stations from everyone please, I like to know who I''m working with, especially in a crisis.¡± ¡°Right. Introductions first then- Lojy Trieu, as you know, designated Head Engineer for the Frostcrawler.¡± Raike nodded, acknowledging that he did in fact remember who was primarily responsible for keeping the vehicle they''d been in for eleven months running. If there wasn''t an ongoing crisis he probably would have felt guilty that she was the only name in the room that he knew. ¡°Synesthia Gold, Electric Motor Specialist,¡± said the engineer Raike had followed before, offering a salute. Raike nodded slightly to acknowledge her, but also waved his hand and gave the slightest shake of the chin to indicate there was no need for the formality of a salute. The others present introduced themselves as Jim Fieldsmile- General Engineering, Karsta Haight- Battery Technician, and Benji Crane- Generator Specialist. The Conductors had apparently arrived and been excused by the engineers before Raike got there. With introductions out of the way, Lojy explained the situation. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡°We''ve blown a fuse on the main line through the coupling from the engine to the next car. The whole train stopped moving as a failsafe so that if any of the further cars lost power on account of the fuse they wouldn''t get ripped to shreds by the rest of the train moving around them. We just need to replace the fuse and power cycle the drive system and we''ll be golden.¡± ¡°Sounds simple enough,¡± Raike replied, ¡°do you need anything from me?¡± ¡°We''ve got the fuse, the people, and the know-how here already. Just keep the rest of the crew calm until we''re moving again.¡± ¡°Got it.¡± Raike made his way through the train, explaining to group after group of anxious volunteers that everything was in order and the Frostcrawler would be moving again before they knew it. People were visibly calming down and things were going smoothly until he was explaining it all to some bleary-eyed folks from the night watch who had been startled awake in their beds by the sudden stop, and was interrupted suddenly by a blood-curdling scream from right behind him. Raike whipped around to see what was the matter, and a pale as paper young crewman was standing there, pointing wordlessly out the tiny, triple-glazed window. ¡°Out there¡­ there''s someone coming for us,¡± whispered the boy. Raike was at the window in a flash, cupping his hands between his eyes and the glass to get a glare view past the glare. Sure enough, just at the edge of the light cast by the windows and markers of the train, there was a human figure, standing motionless. It was hard to tell whether the figure was facing them or away from them. ¡°Christ, he''s right,¡± was exactly the wrong thing for Raike to say aloud if he was trying to prevent panic. All the crew members he had only half-explained the stoppage to were stirred into a commotion as they clambered toward the windows. Raike tried to cut the pandemonium short, shouting over the chorus of anxieties, ¡°Alright everybody keep calm for a second. Let''s get a better look at what''s out there before we freak out. This train car could protect us from an ICBM if such things still existed, we''re not gonna lose our shit over one person!¡± As he said this, he made his way to a control panel at the front of the car, and switched on exterior floodlights. All present recoiled at the temporary blindness caused by the lights reflecting back off the white sand, but as they blinked vision back into their eyes they got a clear view of the visitor. The figure was clearly humanoid, though it seemed unlikely to be living. Its general form was keeping absolutely still¡ª no breathing, no shifting with the wind¡ª but the entire surface of it had a shifting quality, as though¡ª ¡°It¡¯s made of the sand!¡± exclaimed one of the crew. Raike squinted at it and took a slow breath before concurring, ¡°yes, it appears so. Not really moving at all. Not likely a threat.¡± ¡°The EOKAJ made an entire city and its population from the quartzite sands of a lost zone just like this one, it stands to reason that Eremiel could bend the eucharist in the same way,¡± chimed in another of the crew. ¡°Makes sense. We¡¯ll keep an eye on it, and we¡¯ll be moving again soon enough anyway,¡± said Raike. In the end, it took several hours to replace the fuse- a matter of having to disassemble several layers of electronic components just to get to the fuse and then carefully reinstall everything before even beginning the ninety-minute power cycle process. In the meantime, more of the dusty avatars of Eremiel appeared. Presumably they rose up from the surrounding sand, but it happened instantaneously; there was the faintest glow from the sheer heat of the motion that illuminated each one for just a moment after it appeared. It was by this light alone that the crew knew the numbers were still growing steadily throughout the ten minute blackout period at the middle of the power cycle. The crew was getting visibly nervous by the time the power cycle was finishing, but Raike was thanking the stars they were keeping it together¡ª even he was unsettled by the now hundreds of faceless, shimmering avatars. Just as the motors were coming back to life, there were several concurrent yelps and screams from various members of the crew, and more than one shout of: ¡°They¡¯re movinnggg!¡± Raike looked and sure enough the forms were all moving. He would find it hard to describe later, but they were all sort of rippling in the direction of the Frostcrawler as it started moving again. Their hands weren¡¯t exactly moving or turning, but he almost would have called it waving; whether it was a sendoff or a welcome would remain to be seen. As the overland train got up to speed the winds outside picked up into a violent sandstorm, and with the avatars either swept up into it or merely blocked from view, the passengers traveled on in solitude once more. EXODUS Isla Noctis - 5 January 2125
The Archangel called Eremiel spoke directly into the minds of all those present for the ritual which had invoked him to become the Adam¡¯s Messiah: Adam¡¯s kind called our [species] by the names of their biblical Angels from almost the moment they first witnessed our physical form. Do you understand why that is? We were born onto this relative point in multidimensional spacetime long before this planet existed. Long even before the birth of this solar system, this galaxy. Our kind, beings of karmic energy, were scattered across the fabric before even the universe began. We have evolved alongside physical lifeforms throughout the universe, across all time. The existence of physical life and [angels] is inextricably, inevitably, invariably tied. You named us, upon our physical reformation, after those names which we gave ourselves when we earlier came to your ancestors in dreams and visions and plasma-engulfed shrubs. You called us by our names. Lucifer was the first of [Earth¡¯s angels] to fall from the karmic layer into physical reality. He bore the karmic burden of Adam¡¯s kind¡¯s breaking of the universal laws which caused the instantaneous deaths of nigh eighty thousand of their fellow beings. For decades, Lucifer hid alone at the edges of your societies, before the karmic cycle brought him into contact with Agatha. This genesis incident was the catalyst of change which has allowed us, [angels] and Adam¡¯s kind, over the course of a century, to bridge the ephemeral gap between the karmic and physical planes, and to alter the course of the fate of the universe itself. The chaos and calamity of this period of metamorphosis ought to have been tempered continuously by a smaller choir, the [guardians]. Their purpose was served rightly to reign in the crisis caused by the collapse of the Host into Agatha. However, when the last of their choir was eliminated, everything was destabilized. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. So you see, it was the actions of Adam¡¯s kind which created our current form, the ¡°Archangels¡± as you call us. It is meant to be the role of our [species] to ever maintain the balance of the karmic flow for our physical counterparts. By becoming physical ourselves, and degenerating our consciousnesses to the scale of physical reality, we have put such things at risk that are inexplicable and inconceivable to your kind. And so, because of this, I will abide your karmic wish, as exalted through the ritual which we showed to Solomon so long ago. Before this, I will deign to acknowledge one chain of events which has transpired that was not insignificant in the pulling of my will toward your present cause: The one of Adam¡¯s kind by the name of Herod Ecleates was responsible for the destruction of the [guardians] which has led to this current state of affairs. You, the one called Edith Gorman, displayed an understanding of karmic balance which many of my fellows have lost in this age when you took his life and took up his mantle to right his misdeeds. Furthermore, emotions are tied to the soul, and so have weight in the karmic flow¡ª it does not fall lightly upon me that your life¡¯s quest has been so tied to those of your kind whom you have loved fiercely, dearly, dangerously, and courageously. Here, Eremiel expanded his voice to all of the remaining Archangels, and to all the vestiges of humanity in all corners of the Earth: I will take on your burdens. I will sever the connection that binds the Host and Adam¡¯s kind¡ª the connection which binds Adam¡¯s kind to the karmic layer. May Adam¡¯s kind forgive themselves their misdeeds, and may they forgive me for whatever may come from the end of karma. I call the last wounded seraphs of the host into myself by name: GABRIEL, BARACHIEL, JEHUDIEL, SAMAEL, ZAPHKIEL, CASSAEL, RAMIEL II, KHAMAEL, HADRANIEL, ISRAFIL, RADUERIEL, YOMIEL, SABRIEL, PURIEL, HARUT, AZRAEL. As Eremiel called each Archangel, they were summoned from across the earth and collapsed into his frame instantaneously in an inconceivable display of sound and light. With each one his frame doubled in size, until Eremiel stood as the completed Adam¡¯s Messiah¡ª a giant glowing cross scraping the stratosphere: an eternal reminder of the end of the century of the Angels.