The Hikari Paradox

Everett's Reconciliation II

But he couldn’t. It was all inside an awakened perception, a pseudo-mental journey experiencing the lives of hundreds of different Konstantins. His old body stood, as clothes fell from it, the flesh rotting away, leaving nothing but yellowed bone behind. Then another embryo appeared; pink, alien-looking, inside a placenta filled with the amniotic liquid of infinity itself. 

His mind transferred again and again, from one fetus to another. He lived all that could have been lived, but of fast forward. One life for one blink of an eye, one hour long enough to understand eternity. Whatever he had left was his blindness, the knowledge of calculus he was conditioned to solve; but with unknown terms, vague. The extraction of nothingness out of nothingness was too much even for his mind, so limbo was the only other destination. 

He lived as a snail.

Open your eyes.

He lived as a toad, Galapagos, watching humans die and return in the form of their children, a daughter weeping over the tomb of her life-giver. She had died of old age, and the daughter was old too, her child standing somewhere in the back, acknowledging that soon he was going to be the one weeping over a tomb. A cycle unbroken, immortality through death, a continuity maintained by the precepts of randomness, of fermentation that once led to a living cell, then a living organism, then reason and post-cortex. 

Open your eyes and up the stairway, the voice said again, as crows answered from below, the echo encircling the million-eyed Konstantin. 

He struggled to, and they listened, the million lids of a fly-eye opening in tandem, like children born in temporal synchronicity. But there was nothing, no stairway, no stars, no cosmos. Just a grey floor, lines of azure energy pulsating in fractal-like lines etched on its surface. Sea mist lingered above it in milky curls, but there was no ocean there, just an eternal grid of perfect patterns, a two-toned mimesis of reality’s essence. 

And photons in the distance, three glowing orbs in the darkness far away, contouring three silhouettes. A small animal, a shadow of it on the left, while on the right stood the dark outline of a cat, its whiplike tail shaking anxiously. In the middle, there was the shape of a human, a wide, feathered hat on his head. Tall and sinew, he seemed to move along the currents of wind, even if the air was stale, unmoved. But the mist shifted too.

“It took you long enough,” a familiar voice said, as the photons intensified, outlining the three shapes even more intensely. “What troubles your mind, enlightened?”

“Photons,” he said, even if he had no mouth. He was just the million-eyes Konstantin. “I can’t stop thinking about photons.”

The silhouettes wavered, as their halos grew stronger. The mists quivered, crashing waves of whiteness, eerily shaded by the azure patterns underneath. Shifting light: disintegration… Black particles, like shreds of cloth in front of a white screen, ascending graciously like the flounces of a ghost princess’s dress waltzing in the derelict grand ballroom of some forgotten castle.

“So, your mission is quite ambiguous for you, am I right?” the cat said, its silhouette flickering out of existence, then appearing on the man’s shoulder, her shape blending with that of the hat. “You seem confused, just like the others. He is confused, right?”

But his eyes are open, a voice said, present everywhere.

“You, who are with no audience, do you understand what happened?” the man said, his hand moving like the flow of water.

Konstantin’s million eyes blinked together, and he shrugged, or at least he thought about doing it. 

“He doesn’t,” the other shape said, walking in circles around the man’s feet. “Then let us explain. Your world has ended. Well, not all of it, but your home, the city of Sankt Petersburg, is no more. The rest of the world will soon follow, as the deep space will pulsate again, and with it, photons will come.”

“A… photon belt?” Konstantin said, his tone shaking. “Are you telling me that we were hit by a photon belt? But they don’t exist!”

The silhouettes shuddered as if struck by heatwaves in the desert, and one of them released a short giggle. 

“They do exist, enlightened, and for you to complete your task and protect the world against the apocalypse, you will have to believe in them as strongly as you believe in the existence of oxygen. You, together with others, are your world’s final barricade against your doom. So, now, you’ll return back to your new body, but a different man, a man possessing knowledge about the end of your kind’s end of relative time. You exist here, as you exist there, in the shell of Konstantin and in the shell of Franz, so keep this knowledge with you, as it will guide your path.”

Konstantin felt his breath intensifying, even though he had no lungs. It was odd to adjust to a state of paradoxical existence, but after all, he had died barely a few minutes before; minutes that had passed like lifetimes. A mind used to a set of particular stimuli, to certainties such as breathing, hunger, or pain was hard to reshape and direct on a different existential track. 

“Why… what happened? And who are you three?” Konstantin asked in the absence of a more competent question. 

“It’s simple. Your world ended, we’ve summoned you here to send you back, you’ve been sent back but couldn’t remember, so we’ve summoned you again to remind you,” the three silhouettes said in a voice. “Now return and use the woman. She will know what there is to be done.”

As they said that, the photons vanished, followed by the mist. His million eyelids slowly descended, as the grey floor beneath him vanished into nonexistence. 

Are you okay?

His body was starting to regain shape. At first, molecules tingled at the tip of his fingers. Extremities coming back to life, pushing life back into the biological grid. 

“We’ll work on that post cortex of yours,” the three voices said like a choir, as he a strong grip around his shoulder. 

He opened his eyes and looked up. Alaya was almost on top of him, shaking him to the core. Groaning, he straightened his back as the woman took a few steps back, snatching his CyberChique in the process. She froze there, her eyes pinning him with the thousand-yard stare, a statue of warm flesh. Konstantin looked to his right and jumped in fear.

A grizzled dog, muzzle and fangs like those of a wolf, stared at him with yellow eyes. It was huge in size, barely fitting in its chair, and it regarded Konstantin with a bored expression. Laying a massive paw on his leg, the wolf said:

“Don’t worry, my friend. It’s me, the dog. I just didn’t like that form of mine, especially because of those short feet. Do you imagine how humiliating it would be if the others found out that I was carried downstairs? Carried! Me, in the need to be carried like some disabled pup, all because of four stumpy, useless legs.”

Sweat poured down Konstantin’s face, as he struggled to regain composure. Facing an almost wild beast had never been on his bucket list, unlike the wishes of many others. He preferred animals at a safe distance, behind strong glass, them minding their own business while he observed them from afar. That type of connection was not for a man such as himself, but for daredevils, adrenaline junkies, those mad explorers who confronted the creatures of the forest head-on, with certain footing and distinguished posture. 

“He’s ok, don’t worry,” the dog said, eyeing the woman. “It’s not the alcohol, it’s something else. Soon though, his body will hurt, and he will be forced to take his medicine. I gave it to him a few hours ago, so he should be fine as long as he takes it. Did you hear, Konstantin?”

“What?” he asked, still shaken by the animal’s new looks. 

“When your body starts to shiver, drink that vial I gave you. It will make the pain go away, just as if it had never been there. Once you drink it, the pain will come back tomorrow, but somebody will bring you medicine… I just know it.”

Alaya's soft hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up and saw chaos in her eyes, and a dark line between the eyebrows contouring a deep frown. 

“You come with me. We have to talk,” she said, tugging at his clothes. 

“You don’t tell him what to do, you degenerate,” the dog snarled, shifting in his chair. 

Alaya ignored him and walked at a steady pace, forcing Konstantin to follow her. The dog huffed, and without excitement, he stood from his chair and lazily dragged his body behind them, as they walked through another door. 

“This way,” Alaya said, lighting up a set of purple stairs leading underground. “I’ve seen what you’ve seen, and we must talk.”

They descended for a while, longer than one would have expected, finally reaching a barricaded door, thicker than a human arm, pneumatic locks pinning it into a metallic frame embedded in the walls. Carefully, Alaya tracked her finger around a black plaque, drawing a strange pattern. The door brightened up in the same cherry blossom shade that governed her world, then hissed, the locks clanking open. 

Behind, there was chaos. A small room filled with trinkets and junk, useless relics of old ages. On the left wall, there was a stack of some antique type of computers, plastic foldable rectangles with physical screens. Some drone pieces were scattered around the stack, a CPU, a phonic metamaterial armor, the IR eye connected to a VecSpace board, and clutters of meaningless stuff. 

The table governing the room was suffocated by tall blocks of paper. Paper! What savage technology that was, a wasteful resource that had had its part in the murder of more than half of Earth’s forests. It seemed there were still people who had learned nothing from the past, or if they had done, the lesson had been long since forgotten. 

“Are you still living in the 21st century?” Konstantin grumbled as the dog stopped by his side. 

“Pardon?”

“I mean, you have paper there. Did you know that wood structures, furniture, and paper more specifically, were the main reasons for our near-extinction experience? Did you know we almost destroyed our O-zone layer because we’ve killed our forests for that useless thing?” 

Alaya nodded silently and invited him to sit, her lips contouring a wicked smirk.

“I know, but the forests have been replanted, and paper is the only non-trackable thing in this bloody city. Now listen, Konstantin, Franz, whatever your name is, I’m a simple woman, but I can help you with that end of the world thing of yours.”

“Straight to the point, I see,” Konstantin replied.

“I don’t have time to waste. I’m a busy person, I’ve got things to do, very important things. So, I have some connections in case you find yourself in need of resources, but if you want these connections, there are a few things I need you to do for me.”

“You do realize, I hope,” Konstantin said, “that we’re talking about a total extinction here. That includes you as well, and all the people you know. How can you…”

“Honey, it’s very simple. For me, the world ended years ago. I couldn’t care less if we’d all die. Still, a girl must have her fun, and I do plan to have a lot of fun with you. So, if your conscience can bear the sin of humanity’s death, then be my guest,” she said, waving at the door. “If you can’t, then you’ll have to play my game.”