PROLOGUE
The Burning Tower at the End of Time
Eidolon Heathing disrupted the silence at the end of all things with his quick, nervous footsteps. They acted as quiet padding that sounded loud as gunshot in the complete and utter nothingness the large, alabaster colored tower floated in, echoing with such intensity that they could be heard in the died out cosmos that enveloped the tower in a great, sable blanket. His dark cloak, sweeping the ground behind him as he went, was a comforting following act to the snap of his steps, a gentle whisper to ease the non-existent startle in non-existent citizenry.
He sidestepped ever carefully around the unmoving flames that seemed ready to engulf the tower at any given opportunity. They sat statue still, as if not real at all: But Eidolon had learned well that if he stuck his hand in one of those dreadful sunset colored sirens that he’d learn swiftly heat cared very little whether or not time was flowing and would still burn the absolute daylights out of you if you were foolish enough to wander into it.
Unmoving was, of course, not an entirely accurate sentiment for the flames: They were moving, just in such a way and style that Eidolon (friends of whom called him Ed, thank you very much), or anyone else he had ever known or met save for the thing at the top of the tower, could hope to perceive. When he had begged the thing at the top to show him how they moved, he explained that Ed was not even remotely ready for such a thing, and to show him would result in his mind folding into fifth dimensional fractals before exploding like supernovae in the center of his brain.
And so, Ed found it acceptable to say the fire was not, in fact, moving, and both Ed and the Flame found it agreeable to not cross paths with one another. It was a compromise Ed was more than happy to adhere to, because the fire never moved much from its place, and Ed very rarely diverted from his course, which was now coming to an end.
He extended his hands, gloved in fine satin white that shimmered with glistening kaleidoscopic lights as the gemstones within, no bigger than a pinhead each, caught the ever-presence torchlight shining from the sconces and their unmoving fires. With a great heave, he threw the door open with such intensity than it caused a brief draft to flow through the chamber nested beyond the aperture.
The chamber’s single occupant looked up from the cathode-tube monitor, some 17 inch monstrosity paneled with an eggshell white that, with age, had turned more to a dehydrated piss yellow, casting its blue-white glow across its face like a burial shroud. Its sets of eyes (yes, sets, because there were many- Ed had tried very hard to count them once and had given up around the time the sixteenth pair had sprouted in the place its neck met its torso and the pair he had started with dried up and fell off) snapped up to him and blinked asynchronously.
Each one held a pitch blackness to it that made Ed shiver and think of the eternal, never-ending (well, it ended eventually, everything ended eventually) that lived (Or, perhaps died?) outside the Tower’s walls and was centered by a single pinprick of teal colored light, each pinprick now boring into Ed’s very soul. They came off of The Thing at the Top of The Tower in stalks, sometimes, but others were happily embedded into its head-like appendage, or the trunk of its body, or its arms. Many more, and much larger ones, would open along the base of its body, appearing in its massive, slug-like lower half as it extended backwards into the roaring inferno of infinitum that bordered the yard of the Never-Ending on the other side of the Tower’s exterior.
“What?” It spoke, but it didn’t really, because the Thing at the Top of the Tower didn’t have a mouth with which to speak. Or maybe it had several. Really, it varied on the day, and Ed had given up at trying to understand any sort of schedule or system with it.
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“You don’t have to be so snippy.” Ed stated, trying to veil the ever-splitting terror that filled his heart and ran from the top of his head to the tip of his toes as all those many, many eyes focused on him. Crossing the floor as he hid his hands in his robes, tilting his head back to observe the Thing at the Top of the Tower. He never really appreciated it from as far away as the doorway was, but upon entering the dank smelling chamber, he came to remember just how large TTATTT (his acronym for The Thing at The Top of the Tower) was. It had to be well over twenty feet, but with its hunched upper half, it was closer to ten.
“You didn’t knock.” It retorted. Ed hummed in affirmation and, he supposed, a half-assed apology.
“The Cycle begins anew.” Ed stated, raising his hands to TATTT. “The fire has begun to move faster upon the sconces and, sometimes, I can even perceive it. The one that will push your tower even further from the light of temporal congress has been remade, even after that absolutely terrible thing you did to him last time—”
“The Time With the Geese.” TTATT responded, emitting a deep noise, like a kick drum being knocked faster than any human leg could kick it, but with the same incredible force. “I rather enjoyed The Time with The Geese.”
“Be that as it may—They have been reborn again, and once again, they seem to have no memory of their prior attempts. Up to and including The Time With the Geese.”
“Where is it, this time?” TTATTT inquired. It answered its own question, though, before Ed could: Its fingers (as innumerable as its eyes, in the trillions) flying across the dehydrated-urine keyboard with such intensity that the system it used visibly struggled to keep up. By the time he’d finished, its face wrinkled in such disgust that it almost rebounded to orgasmic pleasure.
“K E N T U C K Y?” TTATTT inquired.
“Indeed.” Ed nodded. When he did nod- Which was rare, as he spent most time denying TTATT whatever nonsense it observed or wanted in that particular moment.
“Disgusting.” TTATT answered.
“Indeed.” Ed affirmed a second time, his third affirmation. A new record. “Anyway. I merely wanted to alert you to the situation: I will, of course, resolve it, so that your tower may forever burn and you may grow ever closer to the present.”
“EVER. CLOSER.”
“EVER. CLOSER.”
“EVER. CLOSER.”
“EVER. CLOSER.”
TTATTT clapped its fat little hands (there were several sets of those, and all were smashing together like runaway trucks), bobbing its slug-like body up and down in delight, its hellish giggles bubbling from the depth of its throat. Ed calmly removed his robe- It was sure to get caught on something, if he went with it- And peered at himself in the mirror. He despised this particular body, with its flab in some places and its near gaunt skeletal state in others, its pale limp sausage penis, its saggy chest. But it was a good disguise- Such that most folk never paid him any mind. So bland and generic it was that he’d done much of TTATTT’s bidding without ever really being noticed. He’d plunged the world into it’s first big one when he shot some fellow named Fred in the face, nearly at point blank, and had in fact been so generic and boring that someone else was blamed entirely.
With the body selected, he waved a hand over it. Overall straps exploding from his shoulders like flesh-burrowing worms, the rest of the garment slowly pushing its way out of his pores: Then came a starched white shirt to sit beneath it. Fungi grew on his feet, thick and wool-like, before rotting away into the shape of socks: The rot congealing and covering the socks with thick, heavy work boots. His head flattened near the top, his greasy black hair weaving and lightening in color to perfectly pleasant corncob yellow.
No sooner had he prepared himself, admiring his handiwork in the mirror, than he was picked up by TTATTT. It examined him silently—And finally approved. Rearing its arm back, and hurling him, full force, onwards: Away from the Burning Tower with its never-yet-always moving flames, and towards the present. Ever closer.
Ever closer.
Ever. Closer.