Chapter 2:

The group’s rustling settled as director Dal Chort’s yellowed eyes flashed with malevolence over every member of the packed conference hall. His porcine visage turned here and there, chasing extraneous sounds with a glare. The slapping of sagging jowls under his chin was a testament to how seriously he wanted silence before continuing. Those who were recrossing legs stilled. The clearing of throats lessened. Director Chort was an unforgiving man. As high-powered as this group was, none wanted to offend him unnecessarily.

A few moments later, the director was finally satisfied. Nodding to himself, he dragged deep on the thin cigar clenched between his withered lips. The ember burnt down to a stub and he pulled it away in a hand that sagged age-spotted skin. A shapeless grey cloud exhaled from his wide-open mouth, and Chort thrust a clawed index finger at everyone. “Immortality is a myth . . . That is true. But life unending is exactly what we are selling. Never forget it!”

A susurrus of dissatisfied mumblings started amongst the field agents seated in the levels of stadium seating that rose before Chort. He slammed his open hand on the thick wooden table in front of him with a resounding thump. The agents once again stilled as the director’s yellow eyes somehow pierced everyone for the attempted mutiny. Then he seemed to choose to play to the crowd and patted the air placatingly in front of him with both clawed hands. “. . . I know, I know . . . The terms of your agreements range from improved athletic skills, to ridiculous amounts of monetary riches, to— much more often than makes sense for sapient beings —increased dimensions of their sexual organs.” Chort discarded the smoldering butt he was still holding to the side. “. . . But all of these are just aspects of our targets’ greatest desire. Mere symptoms of their truer disease if you will . . .”

Letting their curiosity build, the director’s head slowly scanned from side to side as if making sure everyone was with him. “. . . These simple, single-dimensional mammals trapped in their linear perceptions are beings that want, think they will, and indeed fully expect to live forever! They are incapable of understanding their incredibly short and very transient time in this physical dimension.”

Chort raised his hairy palm and spread his clawed fingers inquisitively as he leaned back in his folding chair. “How else do you think you can get them to surrender their spiritual and mental essence for our refineries to put to use in restoring the environmental damage preventing us from getting back to the core of our galaxy and those who need us, hmmm . . .?” Chort trailed off as his wiry brows and thick cranial ridge lifted with the question. Waiting another moment to let this point sink in, he then pounced once more in attack to solidify his gaining acceptance. “—But we should be able to tell this very salient point about them from the interactions our targets have with each other, shouldn’t we? If these peons understood how short the duration of their sojourn in this reality was, why would they continually turn on their closest Karmic ties? Why would they murder their neighbors based on the color of their skin . . . for worshiping a different higher being . . . for the type of people they elect to intimate with?”

There was clearly no arguing with that. Obviously captured by his message, their continued silence showed that the audience was now freely giving its undivided attention.

Now in charge, the director's repulsive and universally agreed fiendish face almost became charming as he leaned his massively obese frame into the creaking chair under him. “. . . The answer to that last and very rhetorical question I asked you is, of course, they wouldn’t. Chort shrugged his shoulders almost helplessly in the face of their target’s failings. He pulled his pack of cigars from his chest pocket and continued. “No . . . our targets truly believe they will not have to answer for the Karmic ramifications of their actions. They do not believe they will be weighed by Balance after their time as living spirit beings is over. They do not believe that they will have to account for all the hurt caused by their day-to-day choices and actions.

Dal Chort let the crowd absorb this as he pulled a second thin cigar from the package and lit it with a sharp snap of his fingers. He exhaled a plume of smoke like an erupting volcano and spoke under it. “Obviously, the spirit beings we bargain with from this place believe that they will live forever. That they are immortal, and therefore immune to the final price that we all must pay for the wrong that we do.” The director pointed a deliberate and fisted index finger at the center of the crowd to drive his final point home. “And that includes the prices they are willing to pay you field agents. They do not believe that they will have to ever pay the agreed upon terms of the agreements that they make with you . . . Which is why they are so willing to offer so dear a price— their spirit Essence –for only one-time access to our more advanced biological, quantum field, and space/time technologies.”

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Dal leaned forward and waved a trail of smoke from the burning cigar in his hand to punctuate his next statement. “. . . And never forget that we began this program of soul Essence acquisition to obtain the very necessary resources to repair the environmental damage to our galaxy that has left so many stranded and alone for so long, hmmm!”

Murmurs of agreement in Chort’s words lifted from all corners of the audience as the director looked on smugly. A superior expression took hold of his pig’s face as he continued to his coup de grace.

“There have been many back home who criticize what we are doing here as wrongful, adharmic, even evil. But our targets are nothing but evil themselves. I submit that the universe is a better place without them. Rather than be criticized, we should be rewarded for what we are doing here! How can our actions be adharmic—

“ACKHEMMM.”

A female Beast-Affin with strong Cheeta features seated at the end of the first row stood up and walked steadily toward Chort’s raised platform. Her frame was emaciated and spoke of long-standing illness, but she still moved with the grace of her heritage. Her voice had also been ravaged by whatever wasting condition she had, but she was still able to speak loudly for all to hear as she strode toward the director.

“Do you really think so, Al’naakir?”

The startled expression that had spread over the director's round face was instantly replaced by a look of abject terror at the sound of his true name. He stood up and stumbled over his folding chair as he clumsily scrambled in a hurried backpedal from the female’s advance.

Unhurriedly, she continued to speak. “. . . Yes, Al’naakir, I really do see you hiding in there. And since you are taking the moral high ground here, why don’t you just come out and tell all these nice people the truth? That, to get them to pursue this adharmic path of soul Essence harvesting, you were the one who disrupted the subspace connections of their galaxy’s core by seeding it with the netheron particles that have prevented faster-than-light travel for the last two hundred millennia. You were the one who cut off their core worlds from the rest of them. You’ve done this not only in their home iteration but in all 27 iterations that comprise the multiverse’s local cuboid. Just so that you can simultaneously replicate the harvesting you are doing here to advance your own pathetic cultivation.” The Chetah-Affin arrived at the three steps that led up to the level of the director’s elevated platform and she continued unchallenged.

“. . . While we’re at it, tell them that you never intend to repair the damage you have done to their galaxy. You will never share the soul Essence they have wrongfully taken and will continue to take from their neighbors . . . and even if you did give it to them, the Essence could never relieve the subspace distortion you caused! Tell them that this is the second time I’ve caught you doing this— And believe me, Al’naakir— I’m not going to be so nice this time!

The Cheeta-Affin was only a handful of steps from Chort’s backing-up body as the surrounding crowd finally weighed in with a communal gasp of incomplete understanding. Nevertheless, their murmurings were distinctly angered.

As if awoken by the crowd turning against him, Dal Chort’s massive porcine body spun completely around and started running to the back of the stage. Looking like a hydro-melon with drinking straws sticking out of its sides, he furiously waved his rotund arms signaling his security team to intercept the angry female Affin.

In response, four heavily muscled bisors stepped forward and, with malice, tossed the quad horns on their heads. Every one of them stood a meter taller than the emaciated Cheetah Affin, and their thick shoulders squared off as they blocked her way to the director’s flight.

The lead bisor, in a professional and no-nonsense manner, stepped forward with his palms raised in a halting gesture. The still-walking Affin sighed in resignation and muttered under her breath, “. . . you really want to do it this way, Al’naakir?” The look on her face was plainly that of having to accept a distasteful task. Without stopping, she tilted her head and muttered to herself as the fleeing director disappeared behind a heavy black curtain into the backstage area. “. . . Well, Al’naakir, you brought this on yourself.”

Then she looked up and spoke into the empty air above her. “Yahkam, this is Damni. We have a runner!”