Emilio, flanked with Liam was floating in the “false” Purple — he felt a new connection to the Artificial Intelligence, and like a sailboat of old, a digital wind blew through his mind. He also felt Liam at his side.
“Please describe your feelings,” asked Sophie’s mentor.
“It’s nothing,” his Emilio intimidated for the first time in quite some time.
“My knowledge on Guessers is rather extensive. Over the eons, we were able to fully document their gifts, unlike those of Attractors.” Emilio did not like the public display of his personal unique tool. Billions were watching. “Have you ever played with the mind of others?”
“I don’t think so.” Sophie back in the Center was enjoying the lesson.
Her mentor explained, “You operate in a slightly higher dimensional field. You are a bent piece of paper when everyone is paper to steal the digital creature’s analogy. At the moment to simply get information on paths after a point, but all Guessers can read minds once they understand how the brain stores information.”
“How so?”
“A mind does not store, like a recording the full experience. If finds the closest match and stores the difference. Imagine driving down the same road. The same sight is seen so the brain cannot store it anew each day. It replays to itself a past recording and compares it. Imagine a sign is different one day on the side of the road. Your mind will highlight the difference as it cannot be read in the mind. Your mind can see these alternate writings. Guessers touch a person and can read their past.”
The President wondered, could this be true. Through the neuro-patch, this metal electrode reading his normal and higher brain waves, his mind began to layer things, but instead of watching powerless alternative futures, his gift pushed his mind to flow into the machine, he was connected to Marilyn and wondered if he could read her mind. Liam, as a driver was ready and guiding him in to a place of his choosing.
Emilio's mind floated in electrical energy for the blink of a heartbeat just long enough for visions to form. Marilyn was set to broadcast live his images, so the indiscretion would be public; at least until she was able to take control. Based upon Sophie and Malik’s previous intrusion, maybe the exploration would be shown to Sophie.
As a sponge weighted by too much water, his mind began to drip. Images flooded from somewhere. Liam had called him a Guesser, a Seer, and he was about to see. He did not know the origin or where he was but the images refused to slow or stop, they played in a cascade, like a kaleidoscope of colors instead of this Purple world. Few but Liam and a handful of cosmologists could understand the magnitude of what the plateau served next.
In the space around them, like the sound of whales in the sea, they could hear the murmur of strange alien languages. The whispers of intelligible words got stronger and more defined as a giant white highway made of stars appeared. The structure was billions of miles wide. It looked like a network of neurons and their dendrites of the brain of a larger creature. This also was like watching from orbit city lights infect a coastline with light.
"The Nexus," whispered Liam. His words echoed down to every human watching including Sophie. At the heart of the structure was a point brighter than others, “The Dot, my Dot” added the Oldest with a touch of nostalgia. If the Nexus was a spider web, the Dot was its center.
The crystal became brighter.
As sound traveled along the light-forged highways of the structure, the fragile ropes supporting it seemed to rock in the wind. The central node, the point from which the spiderweb was tied, began to vibrate sending shivers up the lines anchoring it to the Underworld. Across the entire Multiverse, all chatter ceased, and chimes began to ring. Around the entire structure, pink waves flooded the structure, they were pouring in from one point. “The Rho waves, the computer knows how to use them.” In the vision, some words were able to resonate; they were translated by Liam.
Then there was a loud bang, a disconnection, rupture. The light structure collapsed, and the pink energy fought away blue energy inside the Nexus. “She stole it.” Liam was sad, the recklessness was total.
"Is there pain?" asked Emilio to the brown crystalline creature.
"Yes," it replied shamefully. There was now silence as everything went dark between the points of light. Liam was worried. Could he be the source of discontent of the Multiverse. “Pathetic.”
The images that came next were even stranger. Two shapes were floating below the belly of the Multiverse. In the distance, Liam and a spark of yellow light. Then brown crystals of Liam's home world began to appear around them, its origin impossible to perceive. "This is my world," said Liam, "and this is me." The creature wasn’t happy. Only Sophie recognized the beauty of the world where she had met her companion. Liam, the President were watching unfold the greatest rape ever committed, the theft of the Dot from the Lower. Both were ghosts, immaterial and powerless.
In the vision. Liam was standing next to the large confinement device in which hummed the Dot.
"What are we,” he struggled to find the just noun, “witnessing?" asked the President. He knew only the Oldest could answer.
"Since my pairing with the Attractor, she has been clear; only full disclosure and truth, it is her modus operandi. I see no reason to ignore her wish and not answer truthfully." From the command room of the Electoral Center, Sophie, watching the strange game, nodded in agreement. She liked Liam; his wisdom was comforting. "These images, this is a very nice illustration, generated by this computer intelligence, of the events leading up to her theft of the Dot from the Lower, my world."
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The elaborate cathedral of crystals holding the central singularity was opened and then unhooked from where it stood. Like parts of the Grand Canyon crumbling from a detonation deep below the ground, walls crumbled. The scale of the destruction was planetary, the Dot and its confinement was not meant to be disturbed.
"After the rupture of the Nexus, which we just saw, the creature called Marilyn somehow poured Sophie's energy into the channels. Ignorant that anyone could steal the Dot, or more precisely wrestle away its primary control, I feared the energy would damage my world. So I ordered the Dot moved to safety away from this...” on cue large structures crumbled. By will alone of the god-like creature, Liam a pulsing ball of energy sent shockwaves destroying the confinement revealing a single point of light. Animated by the will of the creature moving with it, began to translate to a distant part of this beautiful world. As it did, the pair saw the fragile network of ropes between the Dot and other regions of the Multiverse snap. "These images are, I believe, propaganda, not prophecy, Seer."
"Propaganda?"
"Visions created by your unique mind would not be slightly off. I alone know my birthmark is missing from the image. It never was disclosed in the medical profile she stole. This is playback from her memories, not prophecy."
“Her dreams?”
“Maybe.” Before Liam or Emilio could continue, the images resumed. Marilyn disagreed with Liam's assessment, but she stayed silent. Like having a genuine functioning Ouija board, Emilio's gift leeched into the computer's systems to draw out this information. Marilyn wondered for a moment if she should sever the connection and push Emilio out of the game, but she was curious. She knew these images were not real, but rather creations of the President's strange mind, it had a purpose — Sophie’s purpose. The Attractor wanted this and she saw no reason to end it.
What came next would need explanation to even expert Cosmologists back on Earth. Emilio's mind seized upon one of the deepest secrets stored in the computer's memory. There was energy, color. Quickly, images passed outer regions of galaxies to a deeper, darker region to the center of millions of galaxies; the place in time and space where the Big Bang should have taken place. At the physical heart of our dimension. Floated a point of energy, pure, the rare matter given zero movement.
In the most remote part of space floated a point gently pulsing with light like a gem, it was the perfect symmetrical singularity. Oddly, it seemed similar in most ways to the Dot located down in the Lower. As everything left this central region of the Cosmos to cool in the Cold, the gem awaited.
Then, in the distance, between the rushing galactic matter, two points of light, like yellow fireflies, approached. These were not creatures of light or even focal pieces of glass. Instead, the small points were some types of holes, matter, so strong they bent space around them. The gravity of the pair of holes, like magnets on Earth began to pull onto the singularity. At first, it refused to move. It held anchored in space by invisible links located in the Lowest. Liam, the Oldest still had control of his portion of the singularity. I laid deep in caves.
"Incredible," said Liam, in awe.
"What is it?" questioned the President.
"Your singularity. It appears to be as deep as ours. When your world was created, energy poured in and remains at this point. A vestige to the birth of your world. But something is using these two small points, those black stars, to move the singularity without touching it." The two holes continued pushing against the singularity. There was a voice, Liam himself from deep within his world of the Lowest. He told the others to open the containment vault down in the Lower. As the anchor point was released, the gem in the Cold moved on both worlds under the influence of the black holes, releasing the singularity.
There was ripple.
As the mass down in the Lower moved, the singularity began to tilt closer to the holes as a boat tilting under the force of waves. Around, there was pain. Liam and Emilio knew of nothing in the Cold powerful enough to do this.
"This singularity, located in your world, is tied to many others, including mine in the Lowest. What you see here is an effort to use brute force to push a singularity using gravity, but since it was tied below, via layers of the Multiverse, it could not move. Once I released it on my end, in a desperate efforts to protect it, both ends moved violently. Imagine a bow where both ends of the bowstring are cut simultaneously. Someone is using massive black holes like toys. Nothing is this powerful. No computer intelligence can do this, no energy in the Multiverse operates at this scale. What we are seeing is impossible."
"This happened," confirmed the President. "I don't know why I know, but I do. This is the past."
"Nothing in your world can move a black hole, much less two. I trust you, Mr. President. Our Dot was wrestled away, so this is possible, insofar as anything is possible. The pain inflicted to the Multiverse must be beyond imagination. What carelessness. This scar alone would explain the Sixth Attraction."
Marilyn somehow was now powerful beyond imagination. This made no sense; the digital creature was decades old. The computer moved black holes in the Multiverse like a chess player moves a pawn on a board. The singularity began to move as if escorted by the two large dark masses. Their pull accelerated and urgently gave the singularity a velocity in the direction of a point in space.
"Marilyn are you doing this?” asked Emilio.
There was silence. Liam added, "She just explained minutes alone she no longer feared the inhabitants of Mars, which she did not long ago. The growth of power is exponential. Why would any creature capable of such power even care about humans? She orchestrates this game, insists on it and takes care of her Center. Nothing makes sense if this is true."
As they spoke, the singularity was thrown half was across the universe. As it passed some unfortunate stars, it destroyed them, leaving puffs of smoke in its trail. Then it began to slow down. Moments before it entered the Milky Way, the two heavy black holes parted ways like brooms before a curling rock about to arrive at its destination. This object wasn't big; it was now small. The crystalline body, a star or a gem came to rest after entering humanity's solar system. It finally stopped in the vicinity of Saturn. Then, the singularity, as if falling slowly under forces of gravity, began a descent to the Sun. Halfway into the fall, small metal drones sent from Mars converged around the singularity and began to spin. They locked the singularity at a fixed point in space.
Marilyn held the Dot.
Emilio heard Liam say softly, "This is madness. The sheer presence of such a gravity pit in this system is reckless. If the computer drops it, all life will end."
"Why are were here, why is she showing us these images? Shouldn't we be in the Purple, doing something else entirely?" asked Emilio.
“Sophie,” offered Liam.
“Enough snooping,” Marilyn spoke as the Purple color returned and the vision ended. "That is the beauty of what I call unbound initial conditions. I programmed you, dear President, to uncover useful information within the Purple. You snooped around my memory banks, I can't be upset if you did just that. Elegant of you."
“You are reckless,” snapped Liam at the digital goddess.
“No. You were clueless,” she retorted back. They were in the Purple, floating once more. “A child.”
There was a long commercial pause.