JOSH & SEN SAVE THE MULTIVERSE
Book 1: The Path of One
Chapter 1: Sen Is in Hell!
Great things were expected of Senyak Marztanak, the second seeded heir of Tenyak Marztanak, the Steward Hegemon of the entire Polar Neutral Iteration. But Senyak was failing. Not just slightly failing . . . full-on, lose-his-place-in-the-hierarchy and find-a-new-iteration-of-origin failing.
Senyak and Damni had taken on their first joint Masters’ mission to stop an individual chaos actor who was harvesting mortal soul essence from victims of genocides that the chaos actor, himself, was facilitating.
The Masters were a loosely associated group of Immortals whose goal was to prevent the probable extinction of all sapient-mortal life from the multiverse. Damni, Senyak’s Ka bond, believed in their goal. So Senyak did out of necessity. Such was Ka bond, and Damni was a worthy Ka bond.
Senyak had initially thought their joint mission would only take him away from his responsibilities in the Marztanak Hegemoncy for one, maybe two Ka nexus revolutions, a mere twenty-five to fifty local solar rotations. An unnoticeable time for Immortals like them.
Upon arrival through the aspect doorway, Senyak’s plan was to wrap up the mission quickly by trouncing the adharmic, genocidal cur in a duel for the iteration. He would beat him into a state of Ka exhaustion, which required him to return to his iteration of origin to replace his lost cultivation, then Senyak could return to the Immortal Core iterations before he was missed. No muss . . . no fuss! Defeating the chaos actor would not be difficult for Senyak, given his Immortal focus as a combat specialist. The plan played to Senyak’s strengths . . . what could go wrong?
* * * * *
Sen and Damni had tracked the chaos actor‘s location via his immortal Ka signature, using their Ethos Combis. Combis were Immortal Ka constructs, obtained at the time of transcendence to immortality, which linked Immortals with all matter, energy, context, and meaning in any iteration they presently existed in. Combis provided information on probabilities of events, locations of all items, material or immaterial, and knowledge of all outcomes from performed or anticipated actions.
After Senyak had confronted the chaos actor and introduced himself as the second seeded heir of the Marztanak Hegemoncy and pronounced his formal challenge, the chaos actor presenting in a tall and dark-featured physical avatar, had agreed immediately to the duel. His only request had been, “A short time, just two Ka nexus rotations to prepare and make our duel honorable.“
As the chaos actor was not a combat specialist, Sen had readily agreed. After all, there could be no glory in crushing a weaker, unprepared opponent.
Sen and Damni had used the fifty solar rotations
During this time, Damni, who had ascended to immortality by rising through mortal cultivation in a physical-mater iteration, had shown Sen many things concerning physical communion with his Ka bond while in the present material-mater iteration . . . Senyak, who hadn’t been born and didn’t have her experience as he had been actualized as an Immortal through the wills of his progenitors, had not known such joining was possible . . . Whether they were at the dense core of a singularity, inside the swirling tempest of local gas giants, even between the galaxies and essentially free of all forces . . . the variations were all unquestionably worthy! They would have to take the time to come back to this backwater and further explore this aspect of their bond!
It was only when the time marked for the duel with the chaos actor arrived that Senyak’s plan fell to pieces, plummeting Sen into the dark plight he was now suffering in!
The chaos actor hadn’t shown up for the duel. He had even diffused his Ka signature to untraceable levels with some mortal-level, Techno-Lord Ka severing device. They could no longer track him.
Senyak remembered thinking . . . It is the height of insanity that mortal-grade technology can obfuscate my Immortal Ethos Combi?
But at that point, Sen’s troubles had only just begun. It was now 500 solar rotations later,
Furthermore, it was becoming clear that the chaos actor was nearing the end of his adharmic essence collection. Combi estimates were that the actor had filled approximately 92 percent of his soul Essence gathering array.
In true Karmic balance, Sen was also nearing the end of his abilities. Realizing this, he finally turned to Damni for help—who until then had been quietly letting him lead their floundering mission. She was quietly biding her time because there could be no question that stopping the chaos actor was due to Sen’s success. Anything else could lead to a legitimate challenge of his standing as a second-seeded heir. At this point, they both knew he needed help, and right now. So, it couldn’t have been a surprise when he asked for assistance. Like the best of Ka bonds, she was ready for him.
“It’s about time, honey,” she said in a kind tone while rubbing his shoulders.
Sen returned her caring gaze as she looked down into his eyes from her ovoid face. The form she had chosen in this physical iteration had pale-blue skin with an elongated head that gently swayed on a thin, elegant telescoping neck, continuously waving as if gently pulled in an oscillating underwater current.
“Yes, I have a high probability-suspicion on where the chaos actor will have to move to finish his plans. Currently, he is at ninety-two percent complete per Combi evaluation. I also trended the occurrence and total life count of the ongoing genocide events over the last seventy-five years.
“It seems that our interventions have slowed the chaos actor. As this time stream plays out, there is a significant downturn in incidence and overall lives lost to genocide. In fact, there will be a complete cessation of genocidal events in this iteration by the year 2035. A downturn due to globalization of commerce, media technology, and decreases in the at-risk population of victims. I believe this is because we haven’t been giving him enough time to destabilize these native trends before he has to run from us, so they are increasing. He is now dealing with diminishing returns on his investments here.
“If these current trends remain unchanged, the chaos actor will have to leave with an incomplete array. This will cost him a lot of essence when he moves to harvest it. Likely more than half of what he has gathered. Either that, or he will again have to enhance the probability of genocide events.
“Along these lines, the decrease in the at-risk victims of genocide can be credited to a single human woman for her actions in starting an organization to fund education, medical access, and feeding services to these victims of poverty. She is a true origin motivator! It is her rise that is responsible for the largest effect on the chaos actor’s plans for a full genocide array. If he wants to reach his goal, he will have to eliminate her.”
Sen’s eyes bulged out as he swallowed with a dry throat. They had him! At least where he would need to be! Not only that but knowing where the chaos actor would have to focus his presence would prevent his Ka diffuser from blocking their Combis from detecting him.
Sen tasked his Combi, and it chimed immediately. The chaos actor was already on the move and striking. He had already expunged the origin motivator Damni had just told him about in four of the local cuboid’s twenty-seven total iterations. The principal of iterational overflow was very clear that only a simple majority of the cuboid’s origin motivators needed to survive the chaos actor’s onslaught to save the native fate of the local iterational cluster and shut down genocide here. That meant Sen had to save at least fourteen of the twenty-seven origin motivators in this cuboid. But Sen was now down to only twenty-three remaining. Put another way . . . if he failed ten more times, all was lost!
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They had to move fast! Sen jumped up and flew to the pilot’s chair.
“Sweetie . . . where are you going?”
“Huh . . . I’m . . . we’re going to stop the chaos actor . . . Aren’t we?”
“He’s not directly interfering with the time stream. You know the Principal Master’s Penta Protocol as well as I do. We can only interfere to the degree that he does. If he doesn’t appear in a physical avatar, neither can we. So far, the actor is only instigating Ka dominion to use onsite mortals to affect his desired outcomes. So . . . until he moves directly . . . here we stay, sweetums.” Damni finished with a raised eyebrow, her arms crossed over her chest.
The infrequently seen but known recalcitrant posture of his Ka bond destroyed all of Sen’s hopes with more finality than a fleet of Star Negator warships. Hopeless, his head banged against the console in front of him.
The Principal Master’s Penta Protocol was the Master’s only immutable requirement. This was due to the Principal Master’s great power. No sane Immortal would attempt to contravene him. But, more than this, the Penta Protocol was also generally considered the best course of action for overall mortal protection. Before its enactment, direct intervention by Immortals, even the Masters themselves, had caused so much damage to the involved iterations that complete collapse of all temporal probability models had occurred. Many mortal iterations had imploded to primordial singularities from such Immortal help.
Sen and Damni would have to defeat the chaos actor from right here . . . by basically talking the mortals involved through it.
Sen’s head banged the console again, harder this time . . . He was . . . Fucked . . .
* * * * *
The chaos actor had chosen to strike at the origin motivator in a closed space with no chance of escape. Six other mortals were present as potential Ka dominions for him to kill her with. As of yet, all probability models indicated that the chaos actor had not, and most likely would not, directly intervene. Obviously, desiring to avoid having to deal with Sen in combat.
The chaos actor had also correctly determined that Senyak wouldn’t match his actions and chose direct Ka dominion. Sen really couldn’t. Ka dominion, a very effective way to accomplish one’s goals via mortal agency, caused expungement of the mortal’s soul tether. It was an adharmic action. Performing adharmic activities would be an irreversible choice for Senyak. It would start him down the adharmic cultivation pathways and prevent him from maintaining his status as heir. In fact, it would likely get him banished from his family and their controlled iterations.
Sen gritted his teeth realizing he’d given all of this strategic information in his simple introduction when he had challenged the actor to a duel. Now the chaos actor was using what Sen had foolishly considered innocuous to beat Sen about the head and shoulders with. An excellent reminder that there were more weapons than those that were held in one’s hands.
It was plain the actor knew more about Sen and how to manipulate that information than the inverse. The actor’s skills to leverage a favorable battleground with his manipulation could not be denied. Senyak’s earliest combat instructors’ teachings haunted him from some of his earliest memories.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. This is an Immortal Ka iterational truth we have dispersed to all sapients, even the mortals. Make it yours as well.”
So far, Senyak had succumbed in every battle . . .
To change this, Sen needed knowledge. He put his Combi to work. It chimed and informed him of all the weapons in the boxed lifter.
The elevator’s occupants were even less helpful.
—The target. The origin motivator stood in the right back corner, talking on her communication device
—Two males. Both with no combat training. One was an elder, seventy-five local sun rotations, weighing less than fifty kilograms and walking with a four-footed . . . walker . . . standing at the left back wall. He had one of the steel-shod pens in his vest. The second was middle-aged and heavyset weighing 120 kilograms. He stood in the back middle next to the origin motivator.
—Four women of varying ages. From nineteen to sixty-eight years old and weighing between fifty-five to ninety-four kilograms. The most senior lady at sixty-eight . . . years . . . had the large hand shears in her bag, standing in the front center and weighing sixty-five kilos.
The last finding was—
—Anomalous reading: 0.04 percent chance of occurrence per iteration.
Sen reviewed the Combi’s information. There was no knowing what the fourth line actually meant. He asked Damni to follow up on it while he attempted to devise a strategy before the chaos actor moved on to another iteration.
Not a lot to work with were Sen’s first and second thoughts. Unless he came up with something he wasn’t currently seeing, the chaos actor would wade through these humans, reach down the origin motivator’s throat, and tear her heart out.
His Combi chimed. It had identified the next iteration the actor was targeting.
Sen chose the origin motivator as the mortal he would reach out and communicate mentally with. Upon later reflection, he realized that this had likely been a poor choice.
* * * * *
“I don’t know, baby . . . I guess we can get together after class today . . . But what will you do for me to make it worth it?”
“Hello, hello! Origin motivator in the yellow dress. Your life is in danger. You must act defensively immediately!”
“You perv! This is a private conversation! Get off this line!”
“What? Line? You don’t understand! Your life is in danger! You need to rally support to fight off the independent chaos act—”
“Your life is in danger, you sleaze! When my boyfriend finds out where you live! Jack! Can you hear this guy? Kick his ass Jaaaaahhhhhhaaa-ahhhacck-glacc . . .”
Two wet thunks and a sudden snap ended the conversation as the fat man next to the origin motivator gouged out her eyes and broke her neck with three quick movements.
Quietly, Damni suggested, “Maybe physically accelerating the next target’s responses will give you some more time to talk with them . . .”
Sen attempted to recruit the fat man to defend the girl in the subsequent two iterations. Damni had been right about the physical acceleration. It changed the outcome, but not positively. Resulting instead in not only the origin motivator’s expungement, but several other of the . . . elevator’s . . . occupants dying as well. The girl had her skull shattered against the metal back wall of the elevator. The large hand shears were left deep in the carotid artery of the fat man as he tried to hold the elderly woman back as she cut through the elevator’s occupants toward her target. The older lady had smashed the origin motivator’s skull after disabling her with rapid strikes to the trachea. Prevented from choosing the fat man due to Senyak’s mental linking with his psyche during their brief and useless conversation, the chaos actor had chosen the elderly lady with the shears. More importantly, now the chaos actor knew Senyak was on to him. This significantly worsened things.
Seven iterations left to stop him.
Two more times, Sen attempted to recruit the fat man and instruct him in basic striking and self-defense. This achieved only negligible results. The few seconds he had before the chaos actor moved were just not enough.
At this point, the iterational pattern of the chaos actor was clear. He was simply going down the metaphysical lines from left to right, superior to inferior within the local iterational cuboid’s postulated structure. Even after the actor had learned Senyak was interfering, he had only laughed and mocked Senyak, continuing to slaughter all of the mortals in the elevator only because he knew Senyak was watching.
“C’mon Senyak, great and mighty second heir of the noble Marztanak Hegemoncy! Wouldn’t it be truly dharmic . . . not to mention much more honorable . . . to accept your ineptitude and failure, rather than refusing to see that you have lost? All you are doing is increasing these mortals’ suffering . . . No? Here, let me show you exactly what I mean!”
The chaos actor then proceeded to mutilate every elevator occupant, leaving them conscious as they bled out. The fat man Senyak had linked to begged him to do something . . . anything . . . before succumbing to unconsciousness and a meaningless death.
Five iterations left.
Sen then tried to interact with the old lady. This only resulted in the fat man taking the shears away from her, killing everyone in the elevator, then himself.
“Surely you see that these mortals are just resources for us to use. This is not murder, Senyak. I’m just reaping wheat to make bread, for Ka’s sake!”
Four iterations left.
Damni reached over tentatively with a hand and placed it on his forearm. “Sen, there is something you need to see concerning the anomaly I have been looking into. If the chaos actor continues in his current pattern, in four iterations, there are eight people in the elevator. This anomalous male is apparently a survivor of a violent attack that left him dead at a very early age in ninety-nine point ninety-six percent of all iterations. He’s also carrying a case of briefs, which I believe will significantly change the probability outcomes compared to how things have occurred so far.”
Mocking comments/bloodshed/slaughter . . .
Mocking comments/bloodshed/slaughter/laughter . . .
Mocking comments/ bloodshed/slaughter/laughter/two rude comments about Senyak’s avatar’s genitalia . . .
One iteration left to stop him . . .