The
TWILIGHT OF THE GODS - Chap. 5
A
story of Mantra and Black September
By
Aladdin and Christopher Leeson
Posted 7-7-2022
THE LIGHT SHOW
What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Let me specify,” said the Timekeeper. “For us to accomplish what we must, we have no other option but to take you beyond the boundaries that you have believed up to now that were limiting you. In the course of doing this, it will be necessary to give you a new perspective on some of the secrets of Creation."
“Only some?”
“Yes, only some – unless you would wish to stay in attenuated time for many decades of study.”
“No, I don’t think so. Give me the condensed notes version.”
“By far the fastest way to teach you is to have you accept the same enhancements that other persons, including Diana, has accepted. You will be brought up to the capabilities of a time agent."
"Enhancements? I don’t like the sound of that. If I got these enhancements, what would be left of the real me?"
"I assure you, Mantra, your persona will not be overwritten. If I wanted to that, I could choose any man or woman off the street. The enhancement I speak of are necessary for you to gain the advantages of being in communication with VIGOPS uploads and downloads."
"So you say, but what’s to stop you from turning me into a mind-controlled tool? I once trusted a man too much and look where I ended up!"
“You are talking about Archimage, of course. But for all his faults, it was Archimage who set you on the course of becoming a consummate hero.”
"I didn’t ask to be a consummate hero. My life was complex enough the way it was!”
"Providence rarely awards any of us what we ask for, but it has a way of providing exactly what we need."
I shook my head. "Here’s the deal: I’m willing to play along for a little longer, making sure that you’re “playing straight” with me. But if I find out that you're up to no good, I'll set things right with the Sword of Fangs, and don’t expect any second warning after this one!"
"It's a bargain!" he said and reached out his hand. This time, I decided to take it.
"What happens next?" I asked.
“It's already happened.”
I frowned. “Nothing’s happened.”
“Something has happened, but it happened in attenuated time.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you have undergone an extensive modification process while you have been standing there.”
“I didn’t agree anything like that!”
“Oh, excuse me. I thought you did agree. Alas, languages are such inefficient modes of communication.”
I had the impulse to kill him then and there, but I was distracted by strange and disconcerting feelings inside myself. It was like everything about my perception had been sharpened, as if my mind had become a radio that had just been souped up to receive ten thousand new wavelengths.
“You will learn how to draw upon information provided by the VIGOPS as needed. It must be done in gradual steps. Allowing so much data to overflow your conscious mind would overwhelm you.”
“What am I supposed to do during my learning curve?” I asked.
“Your programming will handle it. Think of it yourself as a computer that has gotten an extensive upgrade. The programming will do all that needs to be done without you needing to think about it.”
I supposed that he was saying that I’d just become his automated cyborg. Damn! I should have killed the little rat before ever letting him touch me!
Suddenly he asked, “What do you think we should do next?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Consider my question a test of your connection tot he VIGOPS. How do you think we should best address our problem?”
“Well, what's really coming through loud and clear is that we should kill that bitch Sersi before she hooks up with the Ego Gem. Wouldn’t that be a logical step?"
"It certainly should be but, unfortunately, in Zero Time, the Gem already controls Sersi. Events that have already transpired in Zero Time are, as you Earthers say, are set in stone. As you might say, we will have to play the cards that we’ve been dealt."
“If you want better questions, why don’t you try asking them yourself?”
“I do, constantly. But I have immense respect for your aptitude of problem-solving.”
"If neither of us knows what we have to do, shouldn’t we be trying to get more information? Wouldn't that be better than just standing here and jawing? I’m one of those people who doesn’t like having grass growing under his feet.”
“Very well, we shall apply ourselves at once to the gathering of more information,” the Timekeeper said.
#
In a flash, we were located in a place that looked blurry and unreal. The only thing I could distinctly see was a vehicle parked ahead of us, a vehicle that I somehow knew was Gabriel’s “Time Capsule.” He went up to it ahead of me, opened a hatch, and invited me inside. I stepped in and, damn it, the damned thing was bigger on the inside than on the outside!
He started going on about “Inter-dimensional engineering” while showing me room after room. I couldn’t believe the size of the contraption. I grew tired of the guided tour long before it was over, but one thing could appreciate was that I would never get claustrophobic while staying indoors!
I felt prompted to change the subject. “If everything in Zero Time is beyond changing, what’s already been established in Zero Time at this exact microsecond?"
To make a long story short, he told me that several other other heroes, ultra types hailing from the Scaffold Universe, had arrived on the Main Bough, and these included the god Thor, whom I had already met. But because the pack of them had failed to avoid detection by their long-time foe Loki, the trickster god opted to act like a Roman emperor and threw them into a kind of gladiatorial competition against ultras plucked away from my own Earth. And the ultras that he chose to pick on happened to be the UltraForce, most of whom I knew slightly. The one hopeful nuggst of information that I gleaned from him was that the Ego Gem – acting through Sersi – had not as yet gained possession of the other six gems.
“Can we stop her?” I asked.
“That is one of of the options we still have,” Gabriel replied, in a sober and tentative way. "Are you ready to launch our excursion in earnest?"
"Excursion to where?"
After he had answered my question, I found myself wishing that I could go almost anywhere else!
#
Maybe my VIGOPS connection was starting to work, because I thought that I understood that we would not be going back to the real world, but into a near-future timeline, one that Gabriel believed would a very accurately simulation of own Earth’s fate if we didn’t get involved and make things turn out differently.
Somewhat to my surprise, we didn’t arrive inside some glorious realm of the gods, and we didn’t even on the Godwheel, where Loki was, but we instead found ourselves looking down on New York City. Something – the VIGOPS, I think – was telling me that this scene was the onset of the decisive battle between the Scaffold Universe “Avengers” and the UltraForce. We were already past the point when they had fought one another for Loki’s entertainment and they'd become allies going head-on against the goddess named Nemesis. I intuitively realized that Mantra wasn't there and asked Gabriel why not.
“Remember how I said that this is a very accurate future timeline? Your alter-ego is not here because you are not going to be there. How can you be, since you are going to be with me while all this is occurring?”
“This is just too confusing.”
“Understanding it will become easier,” he assured me.
He continued to fill me in and I learned that by this point in time Nemesis had snatched the six gems from Loki and the God of Mischief, no more than a bug in comparison to Nemesis, had slunk away, leaving the saving of the Multiverse to the Avengers and the UltraForce. That was disheartening for, to my understanding, had all of them had been equal to the god Thor himself, up against Nemesis they would be no more than a swarm of buzzing flies.
I thought that I would at least get to watch a rousing good fight, but the the monitor in front of me wouldn’t let me see more than a free-for-all in midair. But suddenly the scene became a sort of light show, no more informative than a fireworks celebration.
Then all went dark.
“What happened?” I asked Gabriel.
“Eureka!" he exclaimed.
"Eureka? Does that mean you've found something good?"
"It's very good," he replied.
"What did you see?"
“I saw a mystery wrapped in an enigma.”
“If you're trying to sound smart by quoting Winston Churchill, it isn't working. Tell me straight, what did you find out?”
“We have discovered that the physics of what transpired in the course of the battle totally defies the Law of Conservation of Energy."
“So what? Since I've met you, you've been calling earth scientist a disaster area."
"Of course it is. But Émilie du Châtelet’s basic concept was not wrong. It is only its ramifications that Earth’s physicists do not understand.”
“Whatever. I just want to know if we have gathered enough information to prevent the destruction of the Multiverse in Zero Time?”
“No, it is still doomed. Absolutely.”
“Oh, bugger!”
“But we have learned that the alignment of forces that were engaged in that battle are not at all what we formerly believed to be the case. Nemesis was there, yes, and the ultras, too, but there was also a third force engaged at the same time. Our monitoring equipment make it clear that it was not part of the attack upon Nemesis, but part of the defense. But, unfortunately, its intervention was not one hundred percent effective. Because of that, the Multiverse has not been rescued. In fact, that tiny particle of surviving Nemesis Energy caused that entire timeline to blink out of existence a microsecond after we left it. But if we can properly interpret the information gained, we may be able to return to the Main Bough and alter the conditions of the battle so as to utterly defeat Nemesis!”
"How easy will that be?” I asked.
“It will not be easy in the least, but now we know why the Nemesis Energy was only able to inflict a "slow kill" on the Main Bough."
“Maybe you know it, but I don’t know it!”
“It is like this: Due to some force that we do not yet know about, the great majority of the energy released by Nemesis was intercepted by what should be called an “energy-conversion field.” This field transformed the god-energy emanating from Nemesis into harmless types of electromagnetic wave energy. You were looking at a small part of that transformed energy when you were looking at those colored lights."
“Wait a minute! Are you saying that enough energy to destroy the Multiverse was changed into a few megawatts of visible light?”
“By no means. The vast majority of it was turned into invisible and yet non-lethal energy forms. Unfortunately, a tiny proportion of the original Nemesis Energy was left unconverted and that will be enough to put the Main Bough into its centuries-long death spiral. It is our paramount task to find out how that energy conversion field came to exist and how it can be made even more efficient at the moment when it engages with Nemesis on the Main Bough in Zero Time."
“That's crazy! I told you what would happen if I found out that you’re shucking me! How could the Nemesis Energy be converted into electromagnetic energy? Wasn’t it made of a totally different form of energy? – magical energy, I mean. We talking about the residual power of a dead god, aren't we?"
"Ironically, this was a topic that was better understood when you were born in the Fifth Century than it is now in the Twenty-First.”
“What was better understood?”
“The people of antiquity understood the principle of Ying and Yang. They understood that Magic and science are not different. The energy that empowers both states of energy are merely two phases of the same phenomenon. When the savants of contemporary decided on the basis of mere whim to stop believing in magic, its picture of the universe became less accurate than it had been in ancient days.”
"So, where does all this take us? In fact, where in hell have you already taken us?"
He glanced at his monitor. “We're in another timeline, a timeline were the Nemesis Event never happened.”
“Say, I like the sound of that. Can people come here and be safe?” I asked.
“No. The Nemesis Energy that will poison the Main Bough is the Creation Energy. Nothing that exists is more powerful. The power of Creation overrides the past, present and future as if they had never been. Even the tiny amount of Nemesis Energy that escaped conversion is sufficient to wipe clean the entire slate of Realty.”
“So we’re all going to die?”
“Someday. But we will not die of the Nemesis Effect, not if we do what must be done to counter it. Of course, even if we give it our best efforts, we're still going to need a great deal of good luck.”
“So, it’s still a craps shoot. What are we supposed to do to set things right – specifically”
“We must order our thinking. We cannot solve a problem until first we ask the right questions.”
“What are the right questions?”
And so he told me.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly what I most wanted to hear!
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 6
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