"Hearken" VII - Samhain - Part 1 of 2 (307 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 2 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by prophet (View user info) at 2006-10-30 16:04:57 EST
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS OF "HEARKEN YON, O CHILD":
Chapter I - "Lonely Soul": http://www.ubersite.com/m/43146
Chapter II - "Dream Deferred": http://www.ubersite.com/m/44192
Chapter III - "An Itch of the Mind": http://www.ubersite.com/m/47585
Chapter IV - "Dawn of Awareness": http://www.ubersite.com/m/55411
Chapter V - "Essence of Divinity": http://www.ubersite.com/m/69014
Chapter VI - "Our Inevasible Fate": http://www.ubersite.com/m/77734
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4.5.2.7.1 SD
(27-Mar-2041 CE)
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"I take it you have succeeded in your mission."
The sinister, disembodied voice reverberated through the dark and mostly empty abyss, resounding off of unseen walls.
"I would not dare prostrate myself before thee had I not," replied a thin figure clad in a black robe, one knee upon the ground with arms outstretched, palms down and straight ahead.
Thomas recalled the details of his assignment silently, as he awaited a response in the depths of an uneasy, encroaching silence that pressed down upon all sides of his body.
Security was lower than expected. All that expensive technology, sidestepped through a single weak human mind. Francesca had not been trained in the ways of the mental warrior. Her employers at the Guicamo Corporation did not yet believe in the scattered reports that had begun to arise; reports whispered among dark alleys in the night. Reports of men that could erase your entire life's memories and replace them with new ones.
Reports of men who could play games with the fabric of time.
Reports of men who could materialize out of thin air, and just as quickly dematerialize through a wall, a passing bullet train, or just back into empty space.
Ghosts.
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0.6.2.0.3 to the New Aeon
(31-Oct-2006 CE)
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It had been roughly four months since Eric had first proven, more to himself than anyone else, that he was not completely insane.
Either that, or he had an uncanny knack for convincing other people to be insane in just the same manner as he was- that is to say, a knack for convincing people that everything in the world was just how it should be, excepting Eric's apparent ability to perform small cantrips and illusions.
Simple things: the ability to make objects levitate, the weight of which he had the ability to do so with constantly increasing. The ability to make changes to nondescript aspects of the environment, such as changing a black ball point pen into a blue one, however inconsequential and useless such a change might seem. Perhaps most impressively, the ability to perform acts of manual dexterity with startling speed and precision, to the point of which he could take a silk tie and apply it to his neck in a full Windsor-style knot... in under three seconds.
It all started when an old black janitor named Johnny, who had ingratiated himself to the young man with his selflessness and purity of heart, had witnessed Eric launch an ordinary, number two pencil across the basement of the library where Johnny worked, flying at startling speed into a shelf of encyclopedias- all without Eric having laid a single finger on the writing utensil.
From there, Eric was finally certain that the world really wasn't quite what it seemed.
Everything appeared to follow rules; to be part of an immutable system that existed outside of the realm of human intervention. Yet as it is with many appearances in life, this one was deceiving. The world was NOT an immutable or unchangeable construct. Eric had become sure of that.
The system was indeed rigid, and the rules it was governed by DID exist, somewhere. These rules were quite difficult to bend, and as far as Eric could tell, quite probably impossible to break. Just the same, this system, these rules, were not beyond some degree of egress... the rules COULD be bent. And as soon as Johnny had bore witness to Eric's abilities, the child began to press the fullest limits of his abilities, free from the constraint of human doubt.
After four months of somewhat directionless training, having access only to mainstream (and largely flawed) resources of the Occult- the kind you find on the shelves of Barnes and Noble- Eric had made an amount of progress that any everyday Joe would find simply astonishing. Progress that, conversely, any true meditative adept or enlightened yogi would consider trivial. Eric knew he needed more focus and purpose to his training, and while the janitor had been a good listener and loyal friend, Eric knew he needed a real mentor.
That was the purpose of this night's exercise. The boy was convinced of the presence of great, sentient minds that resided presently in the celestial aether. He had first read of them in books, and then became convinced of their presence when he realized he had seen them in his dreams. He had spoken with them- not just in the last four months, but for years. Some of them he had believed to have done battle with, locked in jealous struggles for power as They became more aware of his awakening from the sleep of the secular.
Though Eric was unaware of it, his successes in these battles could not be attributed solely to his own developing prowess. He had not achieved victory unaided.
It was Halloween night of 2006, and Eric sat in the empty library basement in darkness, with just a single candle flame for light. Though he had no way of knowing that this ritual would eventually take on an unfathomable significance for men and women in the years to come, somehow, he could feel the sanctity of it echoing through the coming ages back to this very moment, where it would be conceived.
Eric knew there was a power to this time of the year. A power recognized for centuries, when it had taken on many names from many cultures: Oiche Shamhna. All Hallows' Eve. Dia de los Muertos. Samhain.
He intended to utilize that power to find his new mentor. His Guide.
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Thomas waited even still, on the mass of levelled dirt that hovered in complete darkness, as he recalled how quickly the interloper had moved. How quickly it had... thought. A battle, in this age, was not just a contest of physical strength. It was a contest of Will. A contest of souls.
This was the only factor that limited the unseen opponent, when engaged against Thomas in combat. Where Thomas and his attacker were both able to react with inhuman agility, able to charge the atmosphere around their bodies so as to create deceptive afterimages and trails when they moved, able to cloud the minds of men and even to slow the passage of time, there were two crucial differences:
The first was that Thomas' new opponent was ever-so-slightly faster than he, an advantage that would otherwise be likely to cost him his life, if not for the second crucial difference.
Thomas' new opponent had no soul.
An soul is an often underrated commodity in the New Aeon, where many if not most of the tasks performed by human beings can be done better by machines, and where virtually all of the jobs held by men only a few short decades before had been supplanted by robots. Yet there was one ability human beings possessed that the machines still lacked: a growing number of men on the face of the globe appeared to be able to alter the very construct of reality.
This new warrior that Thomas faced was no machine; or at least, not by definition. By definition, it was an organic entity, one that looked, smelled, and in many ways acted just like a human being. But just as it was not a mechanical entity, born of metal and circuitry, it too was not a human being, born of woman. It was the first in what would be a long line of creatures created to bridge the gap between man and machine. A creature with the greater capacity for reasoning and physical endurance that was common among robots, and with all the subservience displayed in a machine. A creature that was also endowed with abilities that only mankind possessed: the capacity to connect directly to the Source from which all things radiate.
This was a creature born of Genge: a type of Genetic Engineering that infused superior DNA models with nanotechnology even from the moment of conception, to breed entities equally of Man as they are of Machine. Kritam. The Created Ones.
While this bastardization of humanity- this affront to God- possessed both superior reasoning capacity, reflexes, physical strength, and in many respects, the paranormal abilities that only the Society knew how to teach, it was still more Machine than Man. It did not possess a soul. It could not achieve the same connection with the Source that Thomas had nurtured over two and a half decades of devout training and perseverance.
This first incarnation of inhuman abominations- the first born of the race of Kritam- would be the first, as well, to die at Thomas' hand. Not hardly, however, the last that would suffer such a fate...
and certainly not the last of its kind.
User Reviews
Submitted by NetProphet (user info) at 2006-10-31 08:31:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Who's being an asshole?
I thought I was waxing philosophical...
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-10-30 21:22:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by NetProphet (user info) at 2006-10-30 16:29:36 (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-10-30 16:17:00 (#)
Ranking: 2
???
You never post.
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If that's the case, what are you reviewing?
Do you suppose birds engage in such fevered discussions because they have something meaningful to say... or because they like to hear the sound of their own voice?
*********
The +2 is for the story. Were I to rate your asshole comment, it would be a -100.
Regardless of how long you have been here or been gone, there is no fucking need to be rude to the regulars. Asshole.
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-10-30 17:39:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This story made me happy in my pee-pee place.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-10-30 17:38:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
where you been, brother?
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-10-30 16:37:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sound of my own voice, I'm pretty sure.
:) <---------------gay smiley
e
e
eww now my kebyord is all sweATY! grundle
Submitted by NetProphet (user info) at 2006-10-30 16:29:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-10-30 16:17:00 (#)
Ranking: 2
???
You never post.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If that's the case, what are you reviewing?
Do you suppose birds engage in such fevered discussions because they have something meaningful to say... or because they like to hear the sound of their own voice?
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-10-30 16:17:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
???
You never post.
Submitted by NetProphet (user info) at 2006-10-30 16:11:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
It's been almost a year to the day that the last chapter of this series was posted. I just noticed that now.
Odd.