The Canaan, Pinnacle of Existence.

“Welcome back to the Canaan, my name is Enoch. Do you need a helping hand, or would you like a few moments to gather yourself?”

“Uffda, that first step is a real doozy. Where’d Kallos go?” Telos stood up with the assistance of Enoch. The pure white aesthetic made everything about the white room blend together and made the man speaking to her stand out all the more. Enoch wore black slacks, a polo shirt, and a white doctor’s coat. On Earth, Telos would’ve said he looked English, but maybe that was simply due to the fact Enoch spoke with what sounded like a very posh English accent.

Enoch himself appeared to be in his forties, had perennially disheveled looking short hair, gray eyes, and a short white beard. While the man looked human, he had the essence of an Aeon, one comparable to, likely even greater than, Bythos or Sige. Enoch’s power didn’t seem to be a threatening thing, though. Everything about the lab-coat clad man radiated calm, support, and readiness to dispatch his superior’s orders.

“Kallos? Your companion is in another containment room. It’s best you be separated temporarily while your vessels expand, and your abilities reach their natural levels. Your separation prevents the inevitable clash of paradox while you both reacclimatize to the Upper Domain.” Enoch smiled perfunctorily, as if to acknowledge how meaningless and useless all those things actually were in relevance to Telos. Telos interpreted the smile Enoch gave her as apologizing for buying time or delaying through unnecessary buzz words.

Maybe the White Room was hell?

“And who or what, exactly, are you, Mr. Enoch?” Telos asked.

“I am Enoch.” The man smiled, and then laughed at the awkwardness that grew from his non-answer. “I have gone by many names in service to you. Some call me Metatron. I am your personal assistant, or at least, eyes, ears, voice and hand. I have long been your Will in the mortal worlds outside, prior to your last departure.”

“And who am I?” Telos asked hopefully.

“You don’t know who you are?” Enoch suddenly had a clipboard in his hand. “How very distressing it must be, to not know who you are.”

“Name?” Enoch asked.

“Telos Metanoia,” Telos answered truthfully, while the man scribbled on the clipboard in a language that made Ath look like the drunk ravings of a madman in comparison tot his sacred, incomprehensible language. Only it wasn’t incomprehensible, Telos could read what Enoch wrote in. Unironically, the name of the language was Enochian. Unlike within the River of Light, the Sefirot seemed distant. Distant and unnecessary. Yet if they were so unnecessary to this place, why did they exist?

“Age?” Enoch asked.

“I don’t know,” Telos answered. Her mind filled with images of eternal darkness, then light, then darkness. How many cycles had gone before? “I feel like the answer to that is very old, though.”

“That’s good,” Enoch sighed in relief. “Do you know what the Canaan is?”

“Yeah, no. I do not even know who I am, remember? Is this my home?” Telos guessed wildly.

“The Canaan is a metaphysical construct that sits above the Omniverse. It is the totality of the Upper Domain. Those lower order realm beings who theorize its existence believe it to be the Throne of God, the Final Heaven, the pinnacle of existence.” Enoch waved a hand, and the floor of the room turned transparent.

“The River of Light,” Telos murmured. It flowed in slow spirals ever outward.

“One segment of the River of Light,” Enoch corrected. “Here in the Canaan, we call this singular piece you see a Canvas. Each Canvas contains countless existences within the flow of Ein Sof.”

The view shifted, and Telos found she was looking at ten, then twenty, then one hundred, then a thousand, then one hundred thousand different views simultaneously. Not with her physical eyes, but with her mind’s eye, of which she apparently had one hundred thousand or more of, given that she could see each of them in full detail. The expanded processing power of her mind in this place made her feel deeply unsettled, and intensely inhuman.

“The Canaan is the only location we have found in which you can exist without disrupting lower order domains. Each of these Canvases can be put together to create the Mosaic of Creation.” With a gesture from Enoch the individual views of each Canvas blended into a complex, higher than three-dimensional axis, piece of art. It looked like the foam atop ocean waves one moment, then bubbles the next. For a brief moment in time Telos saw slices, like membranes, and then she saw bubbles again.

“These are true views, or representative?” Telos asked Enoch curiously, captivated by the motion of existence.

“Yes?” Enoch answered uncertainly. “To quote your own answer when I asked that when I was new.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

A memory awoke from the depths of time. A much younger, but physically older, completely different looking and entirely the same appearing Enoch stood in a similar white room, beholding the full glory of reality. The form Telos wore then was masculine, but she’d seen plenty of male versions of herself before. Every time she activated Existence Oscillation she’d beheld hundreds of alternate versions of herself, so this wasn’t that shocking, but it did beg a question. Did she have a real form? A gender? A race?

“You brought me the idea to make the Canaan look like one of the space stations used by the Quantum Overlords,” Telos murmured, as an ancient memory broke free from the dark, haunted place that were her memories. The human Enoch gesticulated wildly at displays of immense space stations from a particularly advanced Canvas.

“Indeed, my lady, I did. Prior to that, we lived in a cloud. Very droll.” Enoch seemed to struggle with not smiling in pleasure that Telos remembered him, and his contributions.

“Wait, the Canaan looks like a space station. Why does this room look like a big white box made out of clouds, then?” Telos poked at a wall. She half expected it to drift away.

“Your direct observation of the lower order domains always resulted in cataclysmic disruptions, which is why you split yourself into four much weaker beings.” Enoch sketched Telos on the paper of his clipboard. From what Telos could see, he was very good. He managed to convey the wonder Telos had felt while viewing the hundreds of thousands of variations of Ohr Ein Sof, and the multiverses they contained beyond counting.

“Four different beings? Why four?” Telos murmured. Why not five? Or ten? If weaker was the goal, wouldn’t more be better?

“The Creator, the Destroyer, The Preserver, and the Judge.” Enoch thumbed his chin in thought. “As for why those four, I couldn’t tell you. The Creator and the Destroyer were especially onerous to deal with.”

“So, which one am I?” Telos wondered aloud. Perhaps she was the Creator, or the Destroyer. Both could fit. Judgement might be fun. The Preserver sounded like a dull role, so she really didn’t want to be that one. Who wanted to be the maintenance man of reality? None of them really resonated, though. The names felt wrong.

“Ah, I have been unclear. You would be the original, my lady. It was you who raised me to this place from Earth and have allowed me to reincarnate and experience the full turns of the Great Cycle on numerous occasions. Your shadows, the Creator, Destroyer, Preserver, and Judge have maintained control of the Canaan in your absence.”

Memories rose in the dark, ancient depths of Telos’ mind. The memories practically creaked as they returned to her, like dim, flickering lights of an ancient incandescent bulb in a run down, obviously haunted shack. A minor discomfort accompanied the awakening of the antediluvian memories, an unexpected pain, like a cut on the wrist from a frayed slap bracelet.

“My Emissary,” Telos murmured appreciatively, and gave Enoch’s shoulder a gentle, familiar squeeze of recognition. “Some of it is coming back. Which means Kallos is…”

“An Avatar of the Judge,” Enoch said. “It was her duty to reconstitute you, now that the Omniverse has grown strong enough to endure your gaze. No longer must you experience your creation through me, shadows, emanations, or fractional motes of yourself.”

“I’m in love with a sliver of myself? That’s… special.” Telos groaned.

Enoch didn’t react at all, and instead made another sketch of Telos. This one caught the spiritual crisis that struck Telos as she contemplated the implications of being married to a partition of herself. Telos extended her senses and was shocked by how few people were aboard the Canaan.

“Only you, Kallos, and I are aboard the Canaan. Where are the others?” Telos asked, but answers already bubbled up within her mind. Flickers of another location. A throne. A male and female argue over the throne, before their eyes widen and they vanish as if a blackhole had eaten them.

“Prior to your arrival the four were in the Throne Room. The Creator and the Destroyer argued over which of them had the right to sit upon your throne, as they have since your departure, while the Preserver tried to explain their impending non-existence to them. The Judge finalized the activation of the Omega Protocol.” Enoch did nothing to hide ages of scorn for the rivalry between the Creator and Destroyer.

“The Omega Protocol…” More ancient memories rose from the dark abyss of time. “There’s no more versions of me left then, are there?” Telos could find not even a whiff of their existence. Even in all the myriad variations of the River of Light, across the entirety of the vast Mosaic, not a single trace of one of her slivers existed. The Sefirot’s emanations illuminated all within the Omniverse and served as her sensory organs in every realm.

Good job, me. Lacking in style, why not spy on lower domains with a giant ghost ship? Way more dramatic. Wait, am I a voyeur? Am I stalking the omniverse because I don’t have anything better to do? What is the point of my existence?

The knowledge that lurked in the dark abyss of her awakening memories provided no clear answers, beyond that the route to the meaning of everything lay in the Mosaic. Maybe.

“Only the echo of the Judge survived, for it is buoyed to your existence until you decide otherwise, my lady. Your Kallos is not the Judge itself, but an individualistic avatar that the Judge used to witness your restoration. It is my belief that the Judge became infatuated with existence and conceived a plan: that if she tied herself to you, she might at least partially escape the assimilation that awaited her and the other three.” Enoch barked a laugh.

“Restoration,” Telos murmured with a laugh. Dim half memories of a few deaths flittered through her mind, then dozens, then hundreds, and then counting became meaningless. “Fancy way of saying consolidation. I guess that answers the question on if the alternate-me’s summoned by Existence Oscillation were still alive or not.” Telos exhaled a wary sigh. “I hope the Judge didn’t just throw them all in a blender and pour us into a me shaped mold.”

Enoch had no answers for her, let alone any words of comfort, and looked down at his feet in awkward silence. Am I not allowed to have an existential crisis? No, clearly that’s all I’ve ever had, and this was all supposed to answer the questions of why.

“Let’s check on Kallos,” Telos said. It was a mixture of a command and a request. Enoch did not protest at all and fell in behind Telos as she exited the door he’d entered. It was her home, and knowledge of it filled her mind as if she’d only been off to college for a few years, and not gone walkabout for ages. Not that walking out a door, across the hall, and into another room were amazing feats to be memorialized in song and celebrated across the ages.