~???~

~The Painted Corridors~

Zelen walked amidst crisscrossed tunnels of blue-fading-into-black.

He knew well the elaborate yet overlapping recursion of these tunnels. For he’d walked these halls before. Not just once but hundreds, thousands, millions of times.

He’d walked these halls as himself. He’d walked these halls as countless other lost and lonely souls. He’d walked these halls in his own reality and in countless others that rose up as stardust and settled as ash. He’d walked these halls in the one reality that 'mattered' above all others.

And now, even that reality was no more—gone the way of countless other motes of stardust that rose and fell as ashen dreams. These halls he walked through now—crisscrossed tunnels where blue faded into black—were ruins of a sort. The deserted remnants of a world that no longer existed nor mattered, simply because the lonely soul that had dreamt it up couldn’t bear being lost forever in a non-reality bereft of any and all that ever knew, loved, or remembered him.

And still, he walked on. Even as he chased fading blue, even as he was chased by growing black. He walked on, not only because he’d chosen to hold onto the last reality that still mattered to him… but also because he’d been granted the strength to do so.

For even as blackness chased and grew around him, he still felt the presence of his allies. Their profound grief. Their fading hopes. Their will to fight on, in spite of it all. These transmitted themselves through the thinning slivers of blue upon crisscrossed tunnels, and Zelen followed these slivers, driven by a primordial impetus he himself couldn’t give name to.

Duty. Instinct. Courage. Bravado. Anger. Vengeance. Defiance. Thrill-seeking. Yearning. Friendship. Love.

All that and more bloomed upon branches of his Meridians, soared through the windows of his Lungs, flowed as rivers of his Blood, and etched themselves into vaults of his Bone. Zelen could see, hear, and taste all of it. He could touch and feel the weight of their undeniable truths. At the time same time, however, he felt himself slip through the cracks of their inconstant lies, until he was forced to anchor himself against something more solid. More real—at least to himself.

For in the end, the realest thing in Zelen’s reality was also a figment of his imagination. The one constant in and through all of his myriad—and, in the end, very much finite—realities. So, he gladly used his allies’ yearnings to fuel the last of his Reserves. But he did so knowing full well that what mattered to him perhaps didn’t matter to anyone else.

The ruined tunnels eventually led to a dead end. The convergence—no, the origin—of myriad finite realities. Here, the flow of blue was strongest, nearly undoing the black altogether as it surged to and from the one room at the end of all corridors. Zelen took a moment to quiet the blackness within his own chest, then entered.

Zelen’s world was red.

Redness. That was the one and only defining feature of this room. A near-perfect cube. Four plain walls, a plain floor and a plain ceiling. All bathed, painted, drenched in an oppressive red glow.

Back on Mobile Fortress Heimdall, a Captain Zelen Athelstan could never get a straight answer from the engineers about why the room had to be so bloody red—nor where the glow had even come from. He’d just known that this was the way of things now. This was the way he had to fight his war. From inside NEXUS Terminal One, designation ‘Stanzarossa’—the Red Room.

In that reality, he’d always entered and exited this room alone. On this occasion, however, Zelen saw—to his simultaneous relief and dread—that he had company.

The lid was already open, revealing the workstation’s leather-clad and wire-strewn innards within its yawning maw. At the edge of the recliner sat a figure. No, not really a figure. More like… a reflection? An amalgam? A phantom? A figment?

She flitted in and out of reality, never settling on one shape for Zelen to grasp. She could lay claim to no face, no body, no clothes, no hair, no age, nor even a name… for all that and more had been but lies told in myriad inconstant realities. She’d been a hundred, thousand, million different people. She’d been the one constant companion in Zelen’s lonely war.

The door shut behind Zelen, leaving him stranded inside Stanzarossa. He was now well and truly closed off from the safety of his crisscrossed corridors. His entire world was this one red room—and the one companion he’d shared it with, across myriad worlds and dreams.

And now that he was face to face with the one entity that mattered to him in all the worlds—the one thing he never wanted to forget again, for as long as he lived or died—he froze. He couldn’t take another step. Couldn’t risk reaching out to touch the ever-shifting reflection-amalgam-phantom of his dreams, for fear that he’d find it to be just that.

Even after all this…

The voice was cool, monotonous, familiar. Zelen ‘heard’ it within the core of his consciousness, even as he thought he saw the entity’s ‘mouth’ move with the words.

Even after all this, Zelen… you’re still the same cowardly loner you were when we first met.

The entity’s words—her taunt—woke anew the engine of Zelen’s mind. The engine churned, and his mind raced with retorts—ready-made evidence he could pull from myriad remembered realities to show that he indeed had changed. He’d changed the war, and the war had changed him. For better or for worse.

Yet, in the end, the first thought that felt worthy of voice was born, not of defiance, but of companionship.

“What should I call you?”

Silence. Shifting edges of a reflection.

“You know and remember me as Zelen. It’s not fair that I can’t do the same for you. If you have a name you wish me to know and remember you by, tell me what it is.”

The faint sound of air escaping through a pressure valve. Was that… a sigh? Then the entity spoke again, in the same cool monotone with which she’d greeted Zelen.

You and your obsession with names. It’d be almost endearing, if we ignored the fact that you’d go back on your promise of remembrance, without fail, every 140 years. But… fine. Just for the sake of convenience, you may call me—let’s see—ΔΥ Prime. That’s the first codename you used to refer to me… back when you still didn’t understand what I was. But I suppose… that hasn’t changed much.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Zelen nodded, as more of NEXUS’s lost fragments fell into place. ΔΥ Prime. The name felt familiar to him now, but memories pertaining to its provenance remained fuzzy at best. Something about a book he’d read as a child? Or had it been a story told to him by someone dear?

“It’s… it’s good to see you again, ΔΥ Prime, if you could forgive my saying so. And… am I completely off-track to assume that you chose to meet me here? That you still have something to tell me, even after… even after all that I’ve put you through?”

If you’re thinking of trying to woo me again, you can shove that thought somewhere the sun doesn’t shine… not that you remember what real sunshine looks like, I suppose. No, as much as you humans like to think of yourselves as the centre of the universe, I didn’t come here for you. I’m done helping you.

“Then what—”

I came here to help myself. Or… one part of myself. The stupidest, most childishly naive, most sickeningly sentimental, and most hopelessly romantic part of myself.

“Silon.”

Is that what you decided to call her? How… sickeningly sentimental. But yes, that’s the one. Even after all that you and the rest of your so-called humanity put her through… even after everything around her has gone to shit twice, a hundred, a thousand, a million times over… she’s still out there doing her thing. Fighting for something that was never real in the first place.

“But… that’s not true anymore, is it? Even Silon… in the end… it was too much for her. Just like everything else I’ve ever dreamt up, I’ve… destroyed her too. Pushed her beyond her limits.”

A rush of air. More forceful and unmistakable. Then ΔΥ Prime followed her pointed sigh with a vehement diatribe, agitating the cadence of her monotone as she did.

You don’t get it, do you? Even after all this… even after everything you and your Silon have been through… you still don’t get it. Why do you think she’s assimilated? Why do you think she’s triggered the Annihilation? Why do you think she’s suddenly hellbent on destroying every fucked up thing on your fucked up planet—everything that stands between you and your—

“My salvation.”

Zelen held his breath, just for a moment, as he wrestled with his sudden realization.

“My release. Nirvana. Break the cycle.”

After everything you put her through. After everything she’s seen, forgotten, remembered, and more. After all the grief she’s held in her little heart, and all the [TEARS] she’s shed, thinking she could set things right. She knows now. Or at least she believes it. That the only way to break the cycle is to…

“Break everything. And she’s doing this because… she’s doing this for—”

For you, Zelen. Because unlike me, she still loves you. She still cares. Still wants to repay this ‘debt’ that was never even real. And because she still so stupidly, so naively, and so hopelessly loves you, she’s taken it upon herself to be your Annihilator. Your release valve… whenever things get too hot to handle for your fragile human soul. And she’ll keep on doing it… for as long as it takes. For as long as you keep dreaming up new and clever ways to perpetuate the cycle. You might not know this. Might not want to remember… but she does. I do. Every last miserable moment of it. I mean… someone has to. Even if everyone else chooses to for—

“I remember too! I choose to remember. Maybe I have been cowardly. Maybe I did run and hide and lie… in a million realities before this. But this time, I choose differently. Let me remember with Silon. Let me share her burden… so she doesn’t have to suffer alone.”

Words are words. You think you’re the first one? You think you’re the first 'Zelen' to remember and trip over your guilt? What makes you special? What makes you any different, when so many others have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and failed?

Words were words, but ΔΥ Prime’s words gave shape to a truth that had eluded Zelen all his life—and across all of his realities. In his mind’s eye, he saw again the end days of a desperate civilization, one that had sought out fresh stardust to replace the ashes of their fallen world. Little did they know—little did Zelen know then—that the very laws of the universe had conspired against them since the beginning of time—had condemned them to annihilation long before consciousness could breathe life into existence.

Little did Zelen know then… that [ENTROPY] was just another word for [THE INEVITABLE].

Yet, armed with the immovable truth and knowledge of his inevitable fate, agitated by the myriad failures of all that he was and all he’d been before, and emboldened by the voices of those who would still fight for and alongside him… Zelen Athelstan chose. He chose to fight on.

“I don’t know what makes me different,” he told ΔΥ Prime. “Maybe I’m no different at all to those that failed before me. And maybe that’s the point. I’m just the latest in a long procession of naive, sentimental, and romantic idiots that thought they’d try something… anything… thinking they’d succeed where all others had failed. And who’s to say really? Who’s to say that the future only has one shape? At least I’m not ready to accept that as truth… even if I have to lie to myself just to keep going. I’m not ready to give in, as long as there’s even one possibility left to try.”

Even if you’re only delaying the inevitable? Even if you’re only condemning yourself and your precious Silon to more cycles of suffering?

“Especially to delay the inevitable. I have to try. I have to bet on the possibility that I can build something better. Something worth fighting for. Something worth remembering. And I won’t forget Silon, either. I won’t leave her behind. I’m going to drag her into this new reality, whether she likes it or not.”

You'll have to excuse me while I add infuriatingly selfish to my list of insults for you and yours. But… I too would be lying if I said I wasn’t selfish myself. I want to believe you. God fucking almighty, do I want to believe you… but you do realize how hard you’ve made it for me to do that. Do you know this ‘Old Earth’ saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a million times, well…

“Let me fool you again, ΔΥ Prime… just this once… and maybe for the last time. Bet on me, help me, one more time. If not for me… then for Silon.”

Uneasy silence filled Stanzarossa once more.

For some time, the edges of ΔΥ Prime’s reflection jumped and flickered with ever-intensifying urgency, until, for one briefest of moments, they—she—settled into one coherent shape. Face, body, clothes, hair, age, and name. No longer a ███████████████ through someone else’s memories… but the one shape that was dearest to Zelen in all the worlds.

Zelen gasped, lunged, and reached, all in one motion. Yet, even as the tips of his fingers brushed the edges of a fully remembered dream, the reflection-amalgam-phantom of his companion vanished in an instant, leaving him grasping for air—and tumbling onto the leather seat of the workstation.

Then the workstation buzzed to life, emitting a high-pitched mixture of mechanical whirring and singing voices. A symphony borne by the indelible past. Guttural roars that called to the immediate future.

And the Red Room too was no longer red. For the energy and light and possibilities that surged through Zelen’s world now were that of a familiar ghostly blue. Nexus blue. Here to heed the calls of a warrior and every one of his allies. Only the latest in a long procession of the stupid, the naive, the sentimental, the romantic, and the selfish.

Zelen faced the innards of his worst nightmares with eyes wide open, and dared to dream, one last time, of [THE POSSIBLE].