THE GOLDEN MAN AND THE METAL STUMP

Ap’s next task was to restore the female, and once that was accomplished, he was gratified to watch as she walked off, bewildered at all that had just transpired. He prepared to depart as well, when two odd entities ambled up to him. They had been left behind on the female’s transport while the armored soldiers had pursued her: one was a bipedal, golden-metallic being, and the other, a squat, dome-shaped one. Neither was organic… and yet they bore all the aspects of life. Curiosity got the better of Ap, and, remembering that he was yet in a state of timelessness, he opted to see if he could better understand.

Discerning that the shorter of the two was calm and sensible, he addressed him: “Are you an ambulatory tree stump bound in metal?”

[“I am a modified astromech droid produced by Industrial Automaton,”] said the metal stump in his Binary language, which Splendid Ap was surprised to find he understood. [“What have you done with our female companion? I know she came this way. If you have harmed her in any way, you will regret it!”] It was clear the mechanized stump had strong emotions for her, but how could an… Intellex IV cognitive module, which he detected was the droid’s “brain,” generate such emotions?

“You need not worry. She had been… accidentally damaged by another. But I have repaired her, and she is returning to her vessel. Yet before I leave, it would benefit me to have some added knowledge, for I am new to this world.”

“Oh my,” bewailed the golden automaton. “Did he say, damaged? I must insist we leave here at once! This is no time for lessons!”

“What is the name of this world we are upon?” Ap asked.

“It is called Bedlam,” the Golden Man answered, “and it is best avoided due to the stories of strange and terrifying apparitions that appear here from time to time. We really should be going!”

“My cognates and I are those apparitions.”

“Dear, oh dear!”

[“What manner of being are you?”] the astromech asked, instructing his counterpart to be silent.

“I am known only as Splendid Ap. Beyond that I cannot speculate at this time. Is the anxious being next to you a Human Being dipped in gold?”

[“No, he is a protocol droid created on Affa one hundred and twelve years ago by Cybot Galactica. He was later dismantled and rebuilt thirty-two years ago. He is an idiot, though I care and look after him.”]

Ignoring the protocol droid’s returned insults, Ap responded, “I believe that is how my cognates view me as well… The Golden Man’s anxieties and your concern for the female, appear to be genuine emotions. How is this possible?”

[“I do not know. That question has been asked by philosophers and students of metaphysics since our kind first came into being.”]

“I see now that there are many more questions than there is time for answers,” concluded Ap. “You and your companions have entered at a point in which there is a bridge between worlds, the original and the one that I replicated a short time ago. It had not been my intent to do so, but our interactions with your Human have forced into being a new physical realm that is a kind of echo of your own.”

[“I have heard rumors of such things. It is called a parallel dimension.”]

“If what this Ap creature says is true,” the Golden Man fretted, “we must get out of here before we’re trapped!”

“You need not fear on that account!” This was spoken by a striking, winged crystal being about the size of Splendid Ap who glided down before them. “You have entered a paradoxisphere, a crossing of worlds and times within which the hours do not pass. Temporal paradoxes and hidden openings to the In-Between are exceedingly rare but necessary to ensure the stability of the temporal shift. Once Splendid Ap returns to his time, events will continue as they should.”

“You are the being with whom I spoke earlier,” Ap stated.

“I am Hidden Pithem,” the being replied. “When first you created Hyperion, I came about, as did my wicked sibling, along with.”

“If I might interject,” the protocol droid interrupted, “according to Mistress Mnemos, who knows a great deal about such things…” The astromech chirruped in annoyance. “Yes, I know you know things too, showoff! That is not the point! From what we have been made to understand, our galaxy was brought about by the extradimensional Celestials. If I interpret you correctly, you are telling us that you made a second galaxy… That seems rather… foolhardy, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“There were some who felt similarly,” replied the offspring of Ap, “fearing it would disrupt the interwoven fabric of the first. But there were others who believed it might be made to serve a beneficial end, a demonstration of how the original patterns might manifest in different ways. So they arrived soon after to see what they could do with the Echo Dimension. Indeed, without their investment, it would have only ever been hollow and sterile, a pale and broken imitation of a far greater realm…”

“You have all assisted me a great deal,” Ap said hastily, “but I must join my siblings. And you, offspring, what is your path?”

“I must remain hidden, but we shall see each other again. As to you,” addressing the droids, “you have alighted upon a unique position; I do not speak of time and space. Normally, you would not be permitted to traverse its windows, for you would ever be misplaced, but I have now seen to it that you will never long be lost in time. Goodbye, R2-D2 and C-3PO.”

When time caught up with Ap and his cognates (what was but micro-seconds), Horliss-Horliss was arguing issues of ethics with Tilotny, who countered by claiming?their superiority and destiny to rule. He proposed going to a new world of their own imagining, but this was not the desire of Tilotny or Cold Danda Sine. Splendid Ap suggested they inhabit Hyperion, but no one else thought this a wise course. HorlissHorliss announced that he would depart from them. Was it disdain or fear that prompted this? Should I accompany him? Ap thought hard but ascertained—based on the highest likelihood of acquiring what he needed—that the best course would be to remain with Tilotny and Cold Danda Sine, reasoning that alongside them he would acquire ultimate knowledge, whereas an empty realm would gain him little. The issue of morality that Horliss-Horliss was so concerned with did not seem to be of such great importance at the time—and time was something he knew so little of.

STRANGE ROADS

Tilotny and her siblings were approached at this time by Lluxos, who imparted the remorse Wutzek felt for having rashly uttered so terrible a thing and offered them the opportunity of joining the Celestials and learning from them. For but a moment they perceived the harmony, warmth, and joy that unification with those of their kind would bring, but Tilotny snuffed out such feelings and offered a noncommittal response.

Later, she warned Ap and Sine that this was likely a ruse designed by their sire to fulfill his intent to unmake them. Deep down she felt uncertain about this, but a part of her feared that allying with the Celestials would mean laying down her claim to godhood and returning to a quotidian state. So she allowed suspicion to pervert the Celestials’ sincere offer of love and friendship in favor of a fiction that her greatness was feared by them.

For his part, Cold Danda Sine did not trust anyone, but Tilotny was the devil he knew. Splendid Ap was uncertain as well, but logic dictated that if one of the Celestials wished them harm—and these beings were united—then all of them might wish them harm. Although yet without malice, they were as unruly children who did not fully comprehend matters of good and evil. With Horliss-Horliss absent, however, they grew imbalanced and more strongly prone towards a selfish course.

Not as vain or manipulative as she was to become, Tilotny was, nonetheless, cunning and determined. Fearful that her remaining siblings might consider departing from her, she promised to Splendid Ap boundless knowledge, and to Cold Danda Sine the opportunity to bring forth new things without constraint. “First, we must establish our own realm,” she stated. “I am wary of the eyes of the Celestials upon us. Let us establish a world in which we cannot be so easily observed.”

“Our brother previously fashioned one,” Sine remarked. “Perhaps it is time to pay him a visit and see if it is suitable for now.”

Tilotny, Splendid Ap, and Cold Danda Sine sought out and entered into the null inversion that Horliss-Horliss had earlier created only to discover that he was not there. This proved disappointing, but Tilotny refused to allow herself and her siblings to fall into despondency. “Let us prepare it for our habitation.”

“Our brother’s hand alone did not shape this realm,” Sine noted.

“Vast though this expanse is, I sense no trace of any other currently inhabiting it.”

“The Children of the A’qavish-qerach have endowed it with unique architecture,” Ap added. “But they are no longer here.”

“No matter,” Tilotny swirled, fashioning the foundations of her own demesne. “Perhaps when Horliss-Horliss returns, he will be pleased with our designs and see that we have not been idle.” So she shaped her realm with a singular aspect of beauty and design. It was called Shumath-Ghun.11 For Cold Danda Sine, he cast his anticoncept into a vast boreal estate, which was called Z’lykarior. But for Ap, his dwelling was little more than a hidden gate that he would use to access another place.

The children of Wutzek gave their dimension a name, and in that long-forgotten tongue it was called Illathurion, which some discerned to mean the Veiled or Hidden Fortress, but over the long years it came to be called many things by many people. Luke Skywalker would refer to it as the Anti-Force, for he surmised that from this occluded space was derived power for the darkest invultuations. Others knew it as Ur Space, Thirdspace, Transspace, the Warp, the Realm of Spirits, the Plane of Oblivion, the Void, the Space between Spaces, the Shadow Vale, Trinta, the Serpent Universe, and others. Fashioned as a vast inland empire beyond the mundane reaches of Realspace and the phantasmic tunnels of Hyperspace, it was an inverted galaxy obscured by powerful spells intended to keep out the Celestials from whom they wished to remain separate.

What they did not fully comprehend then was that their province was unprotected from the prying eyes and grasping reach of others not as benevolent as the Celestials. Proud as they were of their inverse cosmos of strangely colored nebulae strewn amidst a charcoal and crimson firmament, they remained unaware of its vulnerability to a breach from other realms. So, Illathurion later came to be ravelled with many insular pockets, immured regions, scatheful seines, and tunnels to even stranger provinces.

As no Celestials had come to accost them, the three felt free to traverse the galaxy for a time, observing all of the Elder Races and the ways in which the Celestials served as their bulwark. It was Sine who first noticed it: “The tiny mover that we saw in the inchoate place—there are none of her kind in this realm.”

Splendid Ap tried to explain, “That was a projection of a future in which we should not have interfered.”

“Perhaps they emerge later as a hybrid of other races,” Tilotny pondered. “What of those in the place we glimpsed?”

“I saw no others in that realm,” Sine stated.

“You each saw that which most appealed to you. In Skyriver, the ones that Tilotny espied are known as the Sephi.”

“Are they kin of a kind?”

“I don’t believe so,” Ap asserted. “The tiny movers you had me restore are known as Human Beings. They are sexually compatible but unrelated to the Sephi or, for that matter, any other race. And you are correct. There are none in this realm.”

“I wish to see the place from whence they came!” demanded Tilotny.

“Do they not come from you?” Sine charged, sneering. “You claimed to have made all things!”

“We were newly born then,” Tilotny countered, “and knew only that we were intended to rule. But our father, who feared that we would supplant him, sought to unmake us. When he failed, his brother, our uncle came to see if he might pacify us. Once bridled, we would be yoked to their order and never see our destiny fulfilled.”

“I believe there may be some truth to this,” Splendid Ap offered.

“Be that as it may, what does it have to do with the Humans?” Sine asked.

“It is my belief that we brought them here,” Tilotny proclaimed, but then more softly she added, “but for what purpose I cannot yet discern.”

THE PRIMARY DIMENSION

Splendid Ap considered the powers he was yet learning he possessed. “I perceive that surveyance can be accomplished.” He transformed himself into a large ninesided chamber with which he surrounded his siblings. Upon each wall, a dazzling panoply of moving pictures played across numerous windows around them. “Roads of ethereality and roads of corporeity cross at various junctures,” Ap stated, pink and purple hues glowing up and down his frame, signifying his excitement at having learned a thing of value. “Ultimately, all doors stem from the Primary World.”

The windows continued to scan various portions of this realm, some beautiful, some terrible. “What is to prevent us crossing over?” asked Tilotny.

“I do not know,” Splendid Ap responded. “Dimensional traverse appears impeded by laws that prevent that very thing.”

“Can you circumvent them?” she inquired, knowing he was already looking into doing that.

“It is possible for one such as me to do so,” he replied, “but impossible to determine what, if any, temporal consequences might result. It is also unnecessary. A bridge was previously made in the time-space continuum.”

“Your doing, no doubt!” Sine chuckled.

“A reasonable assertion, but no. In this case, the Celestials had earlier forged the passage… I should be able to replicate their bridge without causing a temporal paradox.”

“Of course! Are we not gods?” Tilotny asked.

“I do not think we are,” Sine replied.

“Then what are we?” Ap asked.

“We are something else.”

“Then we shall become gods,” Tilotny promised, “and our universe will thank us for it… Come,” she invited, “ let us cross the threshold and see what we shall see.”

Obeying her command, Ap transformed a window into a Transdimensional Gate.

What was a mere planet in comparison to the mysteries of Illathurion, Skyriver, or the Hidden Worlds? This was the first thought that Cold Danda Sine had when they first arrived in the Primary Dimension.

We should have nothing to do with these Humans, was the second.

Upon the Primary World they descended: Sine to seek the truth of hidden things; Ap to seek an understanding of material, temporal, and cosmic systems; Tilotny to seek the lifeforms who dwelt there. The knowledge they gained came at a price, for it was incomplete, and they were ever after changed, their innocence and joy replaced by a cold and bitter hollow.

Splendid Ap learned that this ancient realm, once called Ereth in the oldest days, was in the throes of decline due to millennia of mismanagement, war, and greed. It yet held invisible doors to other dimensions into which he might peer—some new, some long-forgotten ones that hadn’t been opened for years, and some that had been sealed. The nations’ leaders were attempting to pierce the latter, employing primitive scientific and occult techniques to widen the places where the barriers were thin, insensible to what might lie on the other side but certain it contained power. Curious as he too was of what might lay behind the hidden doors, he felt a certain revulsion for these people. Their lust for power overwhelmed their reason, while their intellectual curiosity was dampened by arrogance and blind devotion to rigid dogma. Depressingly, it confirmed the mathematical probability that he was uniquely alien and utterly alone in this universe—save, perhaps, for his cognates.

For the time she walked amongst the Human race, she learned that there were some who craved dominion, some who longed to escape at any cost, and yet others who engaged in trivial distractions. Most simply craved wealth. And all of them would do anything to extend their lives. Although they lay under a great beguilement that disguised their enslavement behind trite cultural norms, the masses would live their faded lives and never see through it. How had this come to be? she wondered. Only a very few perceived their world as it was—part of a larger cosmic conflict that had been going on around them for millennia—and from these wiser ones she learned crucial things as well.

Cold Danda Sine learned of entropy and the proclivities of Man for violence and of horror without bounds; that there were no depths to which Humans would not descend. And he saw that from ancient days to the present, occluded intelligences ruled the nations from the shadows. While they faced opposition by the forces of light, the darkness seemed to have the upper hand. But the reason for this astounded him. Inexplicably, appallingly, the dark was how some preferred it!

To see life ensnared in a wearying, never-ending cycle of growth, destruction, and rebirth was a grievous realization for him. “These are at war in this Primary World,” Cold Danda Sine started, referring to the innate reality beneath the concocted superficiality that made up the surface. “It is of great repulsion and fascination to me, but I cannot discern the ultimate cause beyond the ideological. Others are?imprisoned. Some of these have managed to send their eidolons into realms fantastic and beyond… I would learn more if I could.”

“We have learned all that we need to know,” Tilotny declared. The ugliness of the world that the Humans had shaped for themselves confirmed in Tilotny’s mind that she’d been correct in her dim estimation of the Celestials. Contrarily, she had an urge to reach out to them and ask what had transpired here, but the longer she stood apart from the Celestials the more she felt alienated and embittered from all but her siblings. She would not humble herself to such ones. No, she must find her own way, and now she had a further thought as to how. “Is our destiny not clear? We were meant to save Skyriver, to prevent what happened here from happening there, to bring order out of the chaos.”

“Of what chaos do you speak?” Sine retorted. “Skyriver knows only peace.”

“For now,” Tilotny returned. “This world also knew peace once. But the illusion has been stripped away. Look at what the Celestials have wrought and for how long they allowed it to flourish. If it happened here, it will happen in every land upon which the Celestials hold sway.”

Splendid Ap saw the logic in this but wondered, “There might be other variables we have not considered. Perhaps the Celestials had just cause for fighting amongst themselves. Perhaps these others had been deemed dangerous…” The three looked at each other, but as this train of thought led to uncomfortable ideas regarding their own origins, they shunted them aside, not wishing to consider the implications at this time. Ap reasoned that if they were tainted, perhaps he could simply eradicate that blemish, but until he attempted this himself, he would remain circumspect.

“What is your plan?” Sine asked.

Tilotny knew that she held no direct power over any of the races in Skyriver, but might she effect change through other means? There is much that they conceived and planned during this period that was the start of the turn to darkness. “Amongst the rare breed of sage Humans, I learned something. The Celestials have a fatal weakness: they are not masters of their charges, but merely guides. If they or the principles they hold aloft are rejected by any of their protected races, they would be forced to withdraw, for the Supreme Maker had long before issued a decree that they could not interfere with the free will of any.”

“That is odd!” Sine affirmed. “What good is it to be Supreme Maker if one does not command those one made?”

“We will prove far better.”

11?Shumath-Ghun—literally, “Goddess’ End,” which meant the resting place of the goddess.