Alarms fired off in his mind, but Walker closed off his thoughts as quickly as he could. Realizing what was happening, he started to visualize music videos to entertain the Awakened before him. If she was somehow reading his mind, he needed her to be distracted, and what better way than with musical elements from the various artists he'd watched across his life.
"Coming out of my cage...and I've been doing just fine." He could hear Morgan whispering to herself, nodding her head along with Mr. Brightside.
As he looked at her and the Tree, intrusive thoughts tried to sneak into his mind about what the Tree of the Gods being a bomb meant. However, he needed to talk, to focus on anything else, "How do I close my soul? I'm not a fan of broadcasting my life out there."
"Mmmm.." She said, still nodding her head, "I don't know if..."
"If you don't help me in this, I promise I'm not taking you with me to the council."
"Pfft." She said, making a face and stopping her head movement. Walker changed the music video in his mind to the Foo Fighters. Her neck started twitching to My Hero involuntarily. She looked him up and down then sighed, "I don't think you could stop me...but....fine. Sit down."
Walker sat down on the white tile floor that reappeared, the Tree of the Gods disappearing into the distance yet again. "You need to look outside of yourself. To project your soul- can you pause the song please?"
Walker shook his head, "Sorry, it's stuck in my head too," He lied. He couldn't give her the time or inclination to see what was truly going on in there. This exercise was on a timer and he needed to get it done as soon as possible. He had no idea what she could do inside of this place and would be happy to never find out.
She looked at him strangely, "Alright, kiddo. I thought you had more self-control than that. Anyways, right now you're shooting out your soul for every third stage Awakened to see. The 10th line may only be snatching up bits and pieces of it, but I'm from the 2nd and hold divested Alma from the Original themself. My sensitivity is much higher than what you're used to, which is a good thing for you since I can easily show you how to do this."
Walker felt, rather than saw, something hovering over him on the left, "I'm separated from my body right now, or this constructs body that is" She said in a hollow voice, "It's funny. If the Primigenials had listened to the tree in the right way, it'd have given them a vision of how to do this through the system. Pity." She floated over to his right side, "To project, you need to extricate your soul and move it outside of yourself. It's similar to how you first connected it to the rest of your body, only instead of pressing down, you're pulling up. Try it out."
Walker took hold of his invisible muscles and grabbed up the area he recognized as his soul. He pulled on himself, stretching in an upward fashion, feeling it strain a little as it was unfamiliar with the exercise. After an initial hardening, his soul refusing the unusual motion, it loosened up and let him pull as he wanted. He did it as a taffy-maker would, grabbing two handfuls together and throwing it into the sky. The experience felt like someone pulling on his hair, only without the pain.
Morgan was back in her body looking up, "Good, although the distance you've placed it is a little high for your first learning experience, try pulling it back in a little."
Walker changed the tune in his head, giving her some action from the Beatles, then stretched his invisible muscles out and grabbed the top, pulling it back in.
"No no, pull from the bottom."
He didn't understand her request, so he tried a series of different visualizations to get his soul to work the way he needed it to. Rope hauling, stitching, none of it worked as his soul continued to float above him. He had a brief moment where he thought he'd continue to live the rest of his life like this. A man walking around Symphony with a part of his soul constantly floating over his head.
"What's wrong with you?" Morgan asked, "For a sapient with a piece of the Origin, you're pretty inept at this."
Walker changed his mental tune to Eminem's It'd feel so empty without me in response.
She snorted, "Tell me about how you normally go about manipulating your soul."
"Why do you call mine a soul, but when you speak of other's, you call it their Alma."
She tilted her head, "Because you're not holding a piece of Alma anymore. You were," She clarified, "but the Origin material wrote right over that. Now, you have a piece of the original soul. The origin. The beginning of things."
"So what does that mean?"
She tapped the tip of his nose with a finger, "Focus on what we're doing right now Kiddo. You'll understand. Now, how are you moving your soul?"
"I don't know. It's like...." He tried to put it to words, "It's like there's this feeling, like a weird muscle, somewhere here." He said, pointing to just below his chest.
"Ughh, their teaching is worse than I thought. No, you don't need to use that. It's kiddie stuff," She shrunk herself to the size of a ten-year old, "Is somebody a little kiddie?" She asked in a baby voice.
Walker had always hated that, "No."
"Good." She replied, shooting back up to her original height, "Then don't use your metaphysical hands, use your mind. It's less of a command, and more of a pushed suggestion. You want it to retract, you need it to come back to the fold. It's a part of you. Built into you." She tapped the side of her head, "Think at it."
Walker tried out her advice.
Return
Come back to me
Shrink
Please come down a little?
Fuck you! he thought at last, attempting to push his emotions at the drifting soul over his head. Rather than sit there uncaring of his requests, this time it shrunk a little.
"Good! Do what you did again!"
Walker mentally shrugged and continued to curse at it, Your mother was a cow! It pulled in a little more and he focused on it, I bet you use commas instead of periods! You're the first soul in history to score a 90 on the IQ test and think you did well!
As it continued to shrink Morgan said, "Great! Stop right there." Walker acquiesced, yelling at it to stop. He could now feel that his soul was only a few feet above him, "Working with your soul is fairly straightforward-"
Walker shook his head, "Recently, that hasn't been my experience."
She pointed above his head, "It worked didn't it?"
"Yes, but," He replied, considering what had just happened, "It didn't react to my suggestions or my attempted commands. It wasn't until I started to insult and feed my emotions into it that my soul reacted."
Morgan ran a hand over her smooth skull, "Huh. I suppose as an Original, your soul will be a little different than mine. Well, the principles should all be the same," She rolled her shoulders, "Now, try to find the essence of yourself. Your inner-person. Your core." She pantomimed a circle with her hands, "You want to think about what happened when you first awakened. What did you see? Who were you across the timeline of your life?"
Walker closed his eyes and reached back into his memories, finding the screens of the first stage and the moments of clarity that came with them, "I wasn't the best person, but I did try. And, I always try to make myself better than I was before." His soul pulsed with his words, and he found a pointed ping in the formerly small space just below his chest. Just below where he considered his invisible muscles to be.
"Good, you've found it." He could picture Morgan nodding as he kept his eyes closed, "Now, look for any perforations in your soul. Look deeply and focus. Feel it out."
Walker felt around. He traveled the breadth of his soul, still stretched out and hanging above him. As it was still extended, he had an easier time finding each, like a shirt with holes stretched out by an expanding waistline. He pressed his extra sense into the first hole he found, and a memory shot into his mind.
He was standing in front of a gravestone alone. His grandfathers. Everyone around him had thrown some dirt onto the coffin, and he could feel the gritty material in the palm of his hand, yet uncast. He felt...nothing. 10-year old Walker wondered if something was wrong with him as he looked at the brown slabbed coffin holding what used to be a kind person in his life.
The memory ended and he thought about it for a moment. He recalled something he learned in his basic psychology classes when he got his teacher's credentials.
Everyone processes grief differently. I wasn't affected by my grandfather's death yet because I didn't understand what was happening. It was less than a year later that I truly grieved the loss.
He felt the hole close.
"What the shit?" He said, opening his eyes.
"Ah, you closed it already? It normally takes people a long time before they can fix all of them."
"I only closed one." He clarified, "But still, what was that?"
"What did you see?" She asked, curiosity painted across her face.
"Myself as a child, wondering if something was strange about me."
"Psschh," She said, waving him away, "You're still a child! And, of course there's strange things about you. YOU got PICKED for the ALPHA PROTOCOL, DUMBASS!"
"I thought that was random."
She made a conciliatory gesture with her hands, "Sure...sure. It's a little random. But for the basic intelligence people like you, you were picked because you don't think like everyone else. You're abnormal for your species. That's what they want. People who don't think outside of the box, but instead consider that there is no box, or that it's a sphere instead. You're weird."
"I'm not that-"
"Do you like being around people?"
"Well sometimes-"
"Do you also hate being around people?"
"I mean-"
"Bingo!" She smiled, "Fun word. That's the thing about it Walker. To use your words, it's a shot in the dark, but sometimes, like how they chose you, it pays off for them. Genius's continue the line. Sure they think of new ways of doing things, but they don't think of completely different things to do! It takes a weirdo to save the multiverse. Well, their multiverse."
Walker grumbled to himself as he thought about it. He wasn't that weird. Maybe he liked mayonnaise a little too much, but still. It was delicious and nobody could find fault with him for that.
"I'm not that weird." He said with resolution.
"Oh really? What job did you do before all of this?" She said with a wave of her hands.
"I was a teacher, and before that, I was in the military," he said, not knowing where she was going with this.
"Uh-huh." She replied tapping her thumb against her chin, "And what was the average age of the people you fought in the military."
Walker froze.
She caught him, "Exactly. You went from fighting and presumably killing a specific age of people, to teaching and helping them grow? Don't you find that pretty strange? Isn't that weird?"
"I don't like this conversation." He said as memories from his time in Afghanistan started flooding in, pushing the music box out of his mental window.
"Oh, but I quite enjoy it kiddo." She replied with a feral smile, "You're a collection of conundrums. Kill, then save. Feel the need to be around others, then be uncomfortable when those same people are surrounding you. I bet you like to think you're smart, but you're also constantly confused by everything around you." Morgan was on a roll now, "Feel the need to have a life partner, but you're always finding flaws in their character?" She said as she stepped closer, a grin still affixed to her face, "Constantly complain about impending deadlines when you're the one who set them, maybe?". She stopped as she stood directly in front of him, "You're not happy unless you're facing a crisis, which you constantly bring on yourself through one way or another. I'm sorry kiddo," she put a hand on his shoulder, "but you're the epitome of....manufactured drama. You set up your own greatest failures."
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An image of the Slicer shot through him for a moment. A tingling accompanied the image and shot through his spine as he couldn't refute her claims. He looked Morgan in the eyes, "Maybe. But, I can be better."
She laughed into a hand, "Maybe you can. But we'll see, won't we." She gave him one more laugh before walking away, "I can't hold you in here forever. Get working, Creator."
Walker looked at the back of her head for a moment, wondering what it would feel like to punch it. She raised a finger and whisked it back and forth through the air, reminding him that his music box still hadn't turned back on. Color stained his cheeks, and to cover himself he began playing some of his favorites from the 80s, then turned back to the holes in his soul.
The next one he found was his first fight, back in elementary school. He watched himself get beat up by a group of kids, crying on the ground during recess while the other children continued on their way, shifting around the weak kid on the floor. Those children had truly been vicious, and he knew from experience that children could be nightmares when there were no adults around to keep them in line. He plugged up the hole by remembering all the times he'd learned to get around a fight through the targeted use of empathy, as well as a few times he'd won with great certainty. Maybe it was bragging, but he hadn't lost a fight in over a decade. When he thought of that a few more holes closed up on their own, making his job easier.
This continued for a relatively long period. He continued to plug up any issues and outstanding emotional debt from the time of his greater youth. Scenes with his parents, old friends he hadn't thought of in years, and understandably embarrassing moments he'd not considered since their disastrous circumstances. When he shifted to his middle school years, the tone of the memories shifted with it. The situations were more nuanced, with a greater emphasis on self-discovery and a lack of understanding on his part for what had led him to this scenario.
One particular hole appeared when he had fought with his old computer teacher. The man sent him to the office for humming while memorizing the home row of a keyboard. Walker had tried to argue that he was memorizing the keys to a song he'd made up, but Mr. Weinbrunner was old school, and said he was distracting the class. When he arrived at the Principal's office, he'd explained what he'd been doing while the large man had nodded his head. He'd forgotten long ago what he'd said after.
"That's called a mnemonic device, used to memorize complicated terms. Who taught you to do that?"
Walker didn't want to say that his parents worked a lot, and he was on his own with homework each day. Attaching unfamiliar terms to songs was just an easy way to go about things, and was something he'd thought up in fourth grade. He just gave his standard response for when he didn't want to say something that could be embarrassing...."I dunno"
"I see. Well, if you're inventing your own mnemonics at this young age, maybe you should consider being a doctor, or even a teacher....I bet you'd enjoy history as well..."
The principal sent him back to the classroom with a note he wasn't supposed to read, but did anyway. He'd laid into Mr. Weinbrunner for not knowing his students better. Walker, whose Dysgraphia was in full force at the time, saw the potential of computers and typing early on. The ability to no longer have to rely on his terrible handwriting and subsequent issues with teachers had greatly appealed to him. He'd explained that near the end of his meeting with the principal, who immediately understood and sent him on his way after writing the note.
I didn't remember any of this, Walker said to himself as the memory stopped. What kid thinks about mnemonic devices that young? Plus, Mr. Weinbrunner was a dick.
Surprisingly, the hole closed after his last thought. He didn't know what to think about that.
After he'd cleared up everything before his late teen years, with the last hole showing a sad breakup and harsh words being exchanged, he felt...better. It was cathartic to see his unfinished emotional ties from the past being closed one after another. The wisdom of his current self helping to heal the damage caused by his younger one.
The shift to the years just before his twenties was harrowing. The scenarios became more dynamic and vicious. He might have an Awakened mind, but that didn't mean he constantly considered his past and had time to look through every memory. Girls and fights. Old friends betraying him for one reason or another. His first degree and the eventual uselessness of it. He began to really pay attention to what was happening thematically with the holes.
None of the memories were happy. None were filled with joy and smiles, only heartache and precarious situations. He remembered something he used to say to his students in class when asked about what being an adult meant.
Being an adult is based on growth, so, how do we grow? That's simple. There are three ways in which human beings become...more.
The first way is through traveling and experiencing new places, new ideas to what we call life. It takes an open mind and a heavy wallet, but it can certainly be done.
The second is to read and experience the first way through a different modality. Smart people read, and you can read to become smarter. The more books you read, the more lives you live through vicarious examination. It's part of the reason I read fantasy. Nothing quite like reading the story of a hero slaying an all-powerful villain when you can place yourself in their shoes. Each location, each culture, each person, is a new introduction to your brain. A new way of seeing the world.
The third way is the worst. Trauma. In trauma, you see bits and pieces of who you are as your decisions set the tone for your own life. Trauma leaves a mark on you, something that no matter what you do, sticks with you. It often forces you to grow, like an itchy scab that won't go away.
People don't necessarily change unless they're forced to, or they want to. And even then, it takes time, pain, and knowledge.
It was always good advice to give to them, and in his experience, it happened to be all too true.
His twenties reared up and Valerie came in. But, there weren't as many holes as he expected, not after the first stage. The beginning and mid part of this thirties barely had any at all in fact.
In one final stretch, he dealt with some issues from his parents, and it was complete. He tried not to think about how that worked diction-wise. When the last one filled in, he felt cleaner...better. Like he'd had a long shower after a hard day's work. Rather than a pulse in his chest, it felt like a warm glow pushing into the rest of his body.
Morgan cocked her head to the side when he finished, "All done? I don't hear any more memories leaking out of you."
Walker nodded as he stood up and stretched, "Yep. I've completly filled in every hole." He said as he turned off the music box.
"Hole?" She started laughing, "Man you're too much. Soul-holes, hahahahahhaa!"
Walker patiently waited for over a minute as she got a hold of herself, "Anyways," He said when she started to calm down, "What's next?"
She straightened up, saying "Sorry, sorry." Her grin ran away and Morgan looked over at him with a serious look in her eyes, "Next you find the resonance of your soul. You've completed the first stage, and the second stage. You've found and eliminated every bit of uncertainty about who you are. You know yourself. You know what you've done in the past and you have a good foundation for who you are now. It's time to bring all of that together, so you may know yourself in the future as well. Who do you want to be? Who do you need to be, Walker? Who are you?"
She scratched the side of her neck, "And we need to do it fast because we're running out of time."
He snorted before being able to stop himself, causing her eyebrows to draw down, "I'm serious kid. This is taking a lot of juice to hold you in here with me. This is a specifically designed resource that was meant to hold things in while charging itself, not to allow visitors. The longer you're here, the more energy I'm expending to keep you. Now, sit down, dive deep, and get your shit done so I can boot you out."
"Why do I need to do that here...plus...why are you helping me?"
Morgan rolled her eyes, "Because you need an elevated soul to help you reach the third stage, just like the first, and you need to do it here because this area is filled with diluted Alma. It's within the air of the construct and fills the walls as well, maintaining this glorious prison." She pointed at just below his chest, "Closing those holes on the outside would be like setting off bombs on Sonata with how powerful your soul has become. Here, it's such a minor blip you didn't even notice me cover it up. By placing you within the construct of the Tree of the Gods, I've protected your little moonlet and all those lesser idiots as well. You'd have been fine, but it would be a near thing for those close to you. If you want to leave, be my guest." She finished, waving a hand and showing him a door appearing in the air. "Step through that door and you're back in your body and mind, just like you'd never left."
He looked at the door, pausing on the handle, before shaking his head.
"No."
"Good. As for why I'm helping you, I've already explained that. I need you to get close to the Council. I need you alive. Now," She pointed at the floor, "Let's do this."
He nodded and sat down, feeling Morgan put her hand on his back, "This is going to hurt. Brace."
He placed his palms on the floor for balance, then felt, rather than saw, as a foreign energy stabbed into his back. Initially, he felt his soul rebuff the efforts, but Morgan asked him to open up to her, to let her in so he could help her, and after thinking about it and a moment of trial and error, he asked his soul to let her in. It acceded, although not without roughing up any energy trying to expand in his body, closing off any extra access points.
"Your souls an asshole." She said in a strained voice, while he gasped, as it felt like a cold rush of water pushed throughout his entire body when she took root near the middle of his soul.
"Focus on your center!" She yelled out, and he did just that. Straining his senses on the spot just below his chest, a metaphysical reality expanded, covering his mind and providing new sights for him to behold.
He was in a large dark space filled with stars in the sky. Only, unlike actual stars, these constantly moved and shifted, each time forming into something else. A bolt of lightning, an open eye, two hands holding each other.
"Each of those can be a resonance, but you can only choose one. One thing to represent you. One Icon that brings forth all of who you are. Make the right choice and gain immense power. Make the wrong one, and find limits upon who you can become. Choose, Creator. Choose, Original!"
Walker looked into the sky and expected to find a resonance with just one, but instead, he found resonances with each of them. Each had a different meaning. He felt the soft spots in his soul, the holes only recently closed, and they spread a warmth throughout his body as the next image appeared.
A doll appeared in the air, and Walker felt a kinship with it related to the perfect image of life. Who he wanted to be, who he could be, perfection in every way. As he looked at it, it turned golden and stopped moving, the stars in place.
"Yes! That one!"
Morgan yelled out behind him, but he didn't listen. His instinct said that this was wrong. All of it. This wasn't who he was.
Looking next to the doll, he found a group of stars, and unlike before where they had formed on their own, he commanded them like he did his soul.
Become what I need! You know me! I know me! Do what I ask of you, please!
The stars swirled and swam against each other, a celestial river flowing across space. Great stars sliced across a canopy of night, mixing and blurring, making connections before breaking away. Always moving and searching for their place. Some began to settle, golden lines appearing and connecting them into several different ideas. Over time, leaves and branches formed, creating one singular image.
A grand tree.
Of course, he thought to himself.
He commanded his image to spread, reaching his metaphysical arms out and having the tree do the same. It spread its branches and leaves, connecting not only its own constellation, but to multiple others as well. A large mural of ideas and suppositions found within the boughs of a tree representing one great truth over all others. A kaleidoscope of Icons under one banner.
"No, not that!"
He ignored her again.
"Stop!"
Walker mentally shut her out of his mind with a vengeance, picturing a window shutting with a bang.
A doll? Why would a doll ever represent his soul? He knew himself far better than that. Perfection was an illusion. Reaching for it was what mattered, not becoming it.
No, she'd been trying to do something. Something that would greatly harm him. Something that would likely let her out of this place.
He knew a trap when he saw one.
The energy in the soft spots of his soul had felt wrong. They tried too hard to make him feel better. To feel Whole. But that's not exactly who he was. He was a broken man. A conundrum. A savior and a killer. A teacher and a monster. There were no feelings of completeness for him. No ideas of a road with an end. Only the drive to do better, be better. To expand. To grow.
Like Symphony itself, Its Creator didn't want limits. Didn't want the idea of perfection at all.
He commanded his soul to reach back, latching onto the energy that Morgan was providing for him. He began to pull, taking it into himself and removing her control in the process. In the outside world, he could feel as she shoved against him, trying to remove her hand from his body, but it was already too late. She'd entered his soul, and that was enough for him. It had to be. Because he needed the extra power. He wasn't enough on his own, original or not, for what he planned to do next.
In the metaphysical reality of his soul, Walker leaped high into the air. Looking down toward what he had been standing on, he found the face of Morgan, eyes bloodshot and a snarl on her lips as she looked up at him.
He winked then turned to the golden lines in the sky.
As he reached the peak that his current strength could take him, he found that his estimation was correct. He was only a small percentage of the distance to the grand tree and its many connections. Pushing his hands toward Morgan's face below, he called on his soul to gather all of the energy she'd been feeding him. It gathered, a great purple mass, and he pressed it over his body, a shell to protect him.
Walker placed a singular thought in his mind as he commanded his soul, "Go!"
The Creator. The Bringer of his own Calamity. The late thirties man who had cried for his losses only several months ago, flew toward the golden constellation of a Grand Tree. Its branches reached further than his eye could behold, far into space and a neverending night sky filled with potential.
When he arrived, rather than joining with the golden lines as he instinctually understood most of the Awakened had done in the past, he spread his hands out and clasped the sides of the expansive space in front of him.
"I will be better." He said quietly to himself. "Better than myself, and better than all of you."
Walker squeezed his hands together, pressing all of the golden lines together. His hands strained and purple miasma broke off of his body, fading to the darkness around him. A scream erupted from below him in the metaphysical world, and behind him in the physical as well while Morgan was drained of every ounce of Alma she had. The last of the borrowed power began to burn away from his hands, his own black streaked with blue, green, and now purple taking its place as he continued to press and squeeze the golden lines into a singular image. One thing that would represent everything else. One image. One Icon.
With a boom, Walker's hands collapsed into each other and were immediately pressed outward again as his image took shape.
It was a book.
"I will always be better." He said quietly as he looked at the black cover stamped with his name. "And I won't be tricked by people like you again. I learn from my mistakes."
"Let me out." He told his soul, and just like that, he was free.
There was nothing left of Morgan when he came out, just some dust on the floor. The white room seemed hazy, as if a dream fading away, and he knew his time was short.
He looked over and focused on the Tree of the Gods. It still stood just the same as ever, each Primigenial unknowing of the events that had just occurred with many in a heated argument, yelling across the branches.
Walker smiled as he looked down at the book again, "You and I are going to have some fun." It warmed in his hands.
"Let's go."
As Walker's body faded from the constructed room, his overlay lit up.
Message from the System:
The System Administrator role has been assigned to Dante!
Congratulations!