The Prometheus Objective

39

He saw Raiden’s astral body jerk with the impact. It spun and thrashed as if in the throes of electrocution, and Caleb’s first impulse was to reach out and pull him free of the offending vine. He saw now, clearly. The tree as a menacing Lovecraftian deity, absorbing its followers and annihilating them with callous disdain.

But it wasn’t that.

The vine — another offshoot of the serpent — coming toward him, hovering now just a foot away…

It had no motives, nothing but mindless fulfillment of its timeless purpose. Whatever it was: primordial sentience incarnate or data repository in some Matrix Overmind, its function was that of curator, teacher…

Library…

And Caleb, he was ever the student.

Despite the feeling — no, the certainty — that the others here were locked in a fight for their very souls and were likely never to return with any semblance to their true selves, he turned toward the serpent. Bowed his head, opened his mouth wide, and prepared to accept what he had spent his whole life searching for.

He always thought that maybe upon death, all the answers would come in the afterlife, if such a thing existed.

Now, this was a shortcut.

But only if you can come back, big brother. Only if you can come back.

He heard it and wasn’t sure if the voice was his sister’s or if it came from his own mind — the last remnants of it before the onslaught of eternity ripped his self and his paltry life experiences and knowledge to shreds.

He accepted the fruit.

And bit deep.

Orlando could see the twins. Right there, in his grasp almost, but for the golden cords encircling them, but for the onslaught of information cascading through his being.

He didn’t know whether it was the proximity to his children and his role as father to protect them at all costs, or if it had something to do with leftover vestiges of being a Custodian, but despite the flood of infinite-everything, he felt oddly detached. Unaffected.

There were glimpses of star systems distant and indescribable; worlds upon worlds full of races and lifeforms and complex thought-beings, such varied forms of intelligent life; some immense, and others microscopic, occupying their own universes so tiny they could fit in the merest cell of a granule under a blade of grass.

All these visions beckoned to him, demanded his attention, his awe and his wonder. And more… glimpses now of other rifts breaking through the space-time, shredding the backdrop of stars, planets and galaxies and nebulae. Dismantling the scene as if it were just a cardboard backdrop, and then tempting to reveal the truth of what lay beyond.

Orlando knew he had a glimpse of that already; he had peeked behind the proverbial curtain — and didn’t like, or fully understand, what he saw.

He shook it off. Ultimately, right here and right now, it doesn’t freaking matter.

He could compartmentalize the knowledge transfer, push it to one side, and focus. On what did really matter:

The two little beings right before him.

And one other soul outside this reality. Phoebe.

As if on cue, he heard it again…

Orlando…

Bring them home.

It was sweet, the voice. It was gentle and powerful, and just as alluring as the stream of visions and truth flooding into his soul.

And yet, it couldn’t be quenched or ignored. Especially not after the next words filtering through the billions and billions of bytes of data, overpowered everything else.

We haven’t had our life together, not even close. Come. Back. To. Me.

And that was all it took. He wriggled one arm free, then the other…

Caleb climbed the great Pharos Lighthouse and stood with the architect Sostratus at the apex below the dazzling flame and the mirror directing the light across the harbor. Only this time, here under a timeless night sky, under constellations that bore no resemblance to anything ever in this planet’s heavens, the beam wasn’t offering a beacon to weary travelers.

This time, it was devouring the world.

Snuffing out reality everywhere it touched, absorbing and vacuuming up every droplet of seawater, every cloud, every mountain, rock, and living thing; even spreading out to the sky and devouring the planets, stars and galaxies.

Caleb found himself before the mirror, directly in the path of the return beam. Absorbing it all, taking everything into his every pore. Consuming without pause, the very nature of every atom the light returned, even as it destroyed all it touched, out into infinity.

And beyond? he thought giddily. Was that Orlando’s voice, or his own or…?

Whose?

You know…

A thought appeared, trying to rise amidst the barrage of impressions and visions, amidst glimpses into the lives of beings struggling to survive on harsh, distant worlds in galaxies beyond the reach of the most powerful scope.

A young boy, looking more like his lovely mother than his duller father, running through a room full of books and comics and magazines, holding aloft a toy spaceship and gleefully shouting about soaring to infinity.

Alexander…

Another burst of information blasted into his consciousness, his self as it was now. Is my body still even back there somewhere? And where is here?

Thoughts came, and answers returned just as fast. He nodded and understood. It was all so obvious. Other familiar voices mingled with the billions already streaming in his cosmic thoughts: like the ultimate government surveillance program, he could hear each and every conversation.

Lydia, seeing her now in a shaft of sunlight: Caleb, you’re so close. Here, with me… A book in her hands, standing before a massive shelf of countless scrolls, in a sunbeam-highlighted chamber with countless packed shelves.

His heart (wherever it was) cracked and crumbled. He wanted to reach out to her, but then his father appeared, striding into the Pharos vault at his back, where the door opened as it did that first time for Caleb and Phoebe.

Son, it’s time. You’ve won.

He ached, his every astral cell cried out in loss and denial, and now — liberty and joy. This was a reunion and more. A becoming, a merging.

Was this heaven, then, just by another name? A rejoining the infinite? Escaping the singular, and the separate?

His mother agreed. “Come,” she said from the entrance to the vine-shrouded temple in Belize, where his biggest mistake and overzealous curiosity led to Phoebe’s early paralysis. The loss of her childhood, and his never-ending guilt.

Caleb smelled freshly baked cookies, and they were back now at their lighthouse home, beside a cozy fireplace, preparing for their Morpheus friends to arrive…

Stay, they all said, standing and dropping their papers and pencils. The game was over, the need for the right questions — forever gone.

All the answers were coming. So fast, blindingly fast, that he couldn’t focus on anything, and now, arriving at the top of the stairs, the light of their beacon in the rain was right there, calling to him.

Only, it flickered, not broadcasting to its full strength.

Because other voices shouted above the din of all these long-lost friends, and so many others throughout the millennia.

Caleb, man… Brother…

Orlando?

Find something and get out of there. Come back to us…

But this is it, he thought. It’s why I’m here. Why I’ve done anything and everything in my whole life. Maybe in countless previous lives. All leading up to—

To bullshit, Orlando yelled back over the flood of conversations, the din of epic battles and cannon fire and laser blasts on some remote moon. Search your heart… your feelings. You know that’s not true.

Yes, it is. Caleb frowned inside. How could it not be?

And more importantly, he thought as he turned back and saw Orlando’s figure nearing the rift and holding the twin forms. How can you leave all this? Seeing what’s beyond, seeing the truth? This is the sin of the Tree and eating of the fruit. We will become as gods and have no place in the world of mortals.

So that’s what you want?

Of course. Who wouldn’t?

Not me, Orlando replied as he, along with the twins in his grasp, floated before the sword-shaped rift — the portal that from this side looked like a grainy old film. Not inviting, just dull and bleak compared to the vibrant world all around, and the promise of more beyond and through the Tree.

I’m leaving, he continued. Not going to miss out on the little things, like seeing these hellions grow up. Like kissing the hell out of your sister some more. Eternity can wait, big brother-in-law.

And with that he moved into the boring, fluttering tear in space — then stopped short.

Something — someone — else was in his path.

Someone glowing with a radiance that banished the black and white, dispelled the kaleidoscopic golden energy and wrapped it all up in an emerald haze.

Raiden absorbed it all: every drop of wisdom, every gulp of experience, every draught of enlightenment. And it all kept flowing, an endless upload of non-stop truth. Time was irrelevant. Matter a nonsense construct, stars and planets just balls of hot air floating in some faux garden in a world of make-believe where the trees sagged, and the wallpaper-sky frayed and peeled, revealing…

This is what I need to see, he thought, except… It wasn’t him.

I don’t want to see beyond that.

Off-mission, he thought. Crowe maybe… he would care, but unless what was beyond there, beyond the sun and stars…

Somewhere, beyond the sea…

…lay power, then maybe Raiden cared. He didn’t come here for the truth. He came for the power that would elevate him, and these others, to become like the gods themselves. Or God, or whatever created this garden, this world, this Tree…

And then told us to stay away. Just go play like children.

He looked away, or tried to, even though a dazzling light speared toward him from beyond the peeling layers of this universe. With supreme effort, he turned his attention behind him, toward the rift to the world he had known. The world that had borne him for hundreds of lifetimes, that had carried him and pleasured him and tortured him, denied him and enhanced him, and then made him start all over again. And again.

First, he saw the two smaller forms — detaching from the vines, being unhooked by the larger one. The new arrival seemed infused with an extra aura, like a grace, and the snake-things deferred to him, even allowed him to exit with the little power conduits.

Maybe it didn’t matter. They were done. They had entered the rift first and had fed the Serpent.

A pang of jealousy coursed through Raiden’s form, riding along with the download of infinity. Then it turned to anger. He couldn’t let them leave.

That’s my world back there.

Mine!

He concentrated and reached out — and found he was now part of the tree. One and the same, through vines and branches, bark and roots. Under the stealthy, patiently constricting serpent farther up there, knowingly watching. He reached out, connected with the others, the followers of Horus, the companions. The others who had become One.

The rightful rulers of this world.

Eternity continued to flood his mind and soul, and with every passing moment, the world beyond the rift seemed to fade in significance. Although — he could still see out the tear, into a universe controlled by him alone. By Raiden and…

The others, now accepting and merging and becoming one, fueling their selves together into one… great… God.

Merging with the serpent body that slithered around and around the trunk, slowly, like the Caduceus. The acceptance of the other five souls did nothing to diminish his own, but only felt like dumping gallons of water into an already expanding ocean.

The power!

He reared up, twisting undulating and feeling the other vines, all a part of himself. One bird remained below, drinking heavily, consuming the nectar.

Caleb Crowe could wait, but he would join them shortly.

For now, the three fleeing souls had to stay. And stay they would, for none could taste of this gift and want for anything else.

What had I been seeking before?

An image flashed somewhere among the countless visions of past and future: a group of men and women lording over the world, high atop some mountain temple, like ancient gods.

It would/had come to pass, only in a different way.

This world would fall first. The rift would be widened and thrust open, and he would slide out, birthed into the corporeal only long enough to offer the truth to the poor, blind souls of this misguided realm of falseness.

He and his companions had chosen well.

The game was over. The game should end, and all should eat from the fruit and become one…

And then return beyond the sea.

He heard a hissing in his ears, the sound of a trillion souls crying out for salvation. An end to pain, grief, remorse and regret. An end to ignorance.

He coiled, ready to strike and devour the three fleeing figures, but something gave him pause.

A lone figure in the rift.

Not a soul. No astral body, no separated-self.

An actual form of matter, braving the howling winds of energy, the maelstrom between the world of the game and the world of the truth.

Somewhere, deep down in his recent memory, he recalled that this shouldn’t be.

Couldn’t be.

It gave him pause, just enough to question it.

And in that moment, something happened. On the fringes of his being, connected still to the tree, that one loose element waiting to fully accept the fruit…

…introduced a level of doubt in the whole enterprise, interrupting the stream and dislocating the truth.

“Dad,” came the voice from the emerald glow.

And with it, toward Caleb, flowed wave after wave of emotion, of love and longing. Of a lifetime, short and meaningless in light of everything else he’d just absorbed, but one that would be missed so powerfully. The crushing weight of the loss overwhelmed him suddenly and triggered the sense of protection only a father could feel.

Alexander was headed for the rift, was almost at it.

He couldn’t survive. Nothing could. He would be torn to shreds, all because of Caleb.

“Going to save you, Dad…”

No!

Caleb tried to shout, tried and to yell to Orlando, stop him, stop! Not another step.

Alexander took another step.

The rift shimmered, cracked, twisted and jittered as Alexander approached.

The emerald glow… Caleb saw it around his son’s neck. It was protecting him, somewhat, but it couldn’t save him in here. In fact…

He knew, knew based on its nature, its true cosmic-matter structure, it would in fact do the opposite, and probably much worse.

“Dad, listen to Orlando. I know this is the end of your quest. You’ve won, found the ultimate treasure, but please… It’s not what you want.”

It’s not… Caleb already knew how this conversation would transpire. Knew already in a half a billion universes and alternate realities how it played out. He knew he would always come to the same conclusion that Alexander had just brought him to.

Knew, because it was the truth, and because he was who he was.

In this life or in any.

“It wasn’t the treasure you were after. It’s not the knowledge, or all the books in the world, or all the knowledge that was ever lost that made you what you are.”

It’s the hunt, the thirst for that knowledge, and…

“It’s the quest itself. The hunt, the chase, and the certainty that we may never be certain of anything. That’s what drives you. It’s what it means to be human, what it means to deny that last bite of the apple.”

But Caleb was no longer listening. He had already spit it out, every last morsel. The taste still lingered, but it felt like his throat burned and he had consumed the foulest, most acidic alcohol. He detached himself from the vine, and with a thought, blasted back toward the rift, where he caught the serpent in its hesitation, grasped it by the tail, and with a strength rivaling the Titans of Greece, flung it back into the upper branches of the tree.

With a last, giddy breath, and a bow toward the writhing, trembling tree of light, Caleb exhaled and did his best to leave the infinite breath behind. Like a deflating balloon it pushed his astral self backwards, colliding with Orlando and knocking both out and through the rift—

— through Alexander and returning to their own bodies.