The Prometheus Objective

2

Throughout the night that had no end, the aurora bathed the cabin in its otherworldly radiance, projecting the cosmic lightshow onto the snow-helmed rooftop, and the wind-sculpted icy hills and trees.

And the twin babies slept. And dreamt.

And their father was there with them in the dreams that weren’t dreams, in the minds that were one, in the world that was beyond this world, everywhere and yet nowhere. Here and in the before, and in the time to come.

Orlando Natch touched their minds, saw their thoughts and connected through their impressions to the collective, via a conduit the likes of which he could only imagine through a world of gaming and imagination. He felt as if he’d been hooked into a massive multiplayer online game, linked with a billion other gamers, accessing a shared database that housed not only the game itself, life, but the memories, visions, thoughts and feelings of everyone that had ever existed.

The twins are psychic, he thought, but much more. And since they’re so young, so connected still to what — or where they were — before birth, I can travel back on that ephemeral cord to the Whole, the Other, to whatever this thing is.

“It’s the Record,” a voice chirped in his ear.

Sounds like Caleb, he thought. And could even hear him talking about something in the literature, something extremely powerful psychics could access, something called the Akashic Record:

A storehouse of everything. All the knowledge of everything discovered and yet to be discovered. It’s what inventors and madmen (like Tesla) glimpse in their visions, gleaming the solution to problems or just finding what they need to know. And some claim it’s even sentient, or guidable by others, by aliens—

Or Custodians?

And they often send humanity glimpses of just what’s needed. An invention to harness the elements. The secret to curing a disease. A melody that will resonate through the world, bringing joy. The start of a religion, even, a vision of a miracle or an angel, to guide humanity onto a different path.

Orlando drifted into a planet-sized globe of what should have been a blinding light, golden and radiant, yet was oddly just comforting and inviting. Inside, he was greeted with compartments of wonder, with numbers and symbols scattered in astounding patterns and incredible depth, with visions of faces and structures, of mathematical formulae and musical notes.

Two bright forms floated there with him, still holding his hands, and they were like excited kids showing a new friend their home and their toys.

It’s there, they pointed. Here and there. Thrilled to share their knowledge, and Orlando knew…

It’s everything. Literally all of it.

He had to chuckle. Caleb’s mind would explode. The answers… everything, everywhere. Every tiniest molecule a composition of the whole, an unlimited database accessible in every nook and every niche, like a giant, vast library, all interconnected with the compendium of human history.

I just have to think, and the answer comes. Imagine something, and I see the route, the way, the formula…

Now, they’re showing me something. Something crucial to humanity’s survival, something so perfect and understandable and sensible, and yet — not what we thought. Not what anyone expected.

Caleb especially… it went against everything he had ever wanted.

And at once, Orlando felt like an interloper, the ultimate stranger in a strange land, one who didn’t belong, but he’d been allowed a glimpse only to understand the truth of it all.

We’ve been so wrong…

Orlando wanted to shout, to scream at the top of his insubstantial lungs, to howl and cry; and then he realized, maybe this was what the primal first scream of a newborn really meant… they had been in touch with the infinite, part and parcel of Everything, until being expelled, thrust into the world and rent from eternity.

And it just wasn’t fair.

He was on the verge of total understanding. This was it, they’d brought him here out of self-preservation, but also out of communion with their brothers and sisters in the world — who were in pain now, in a world tearing itself apart.

What’s going on out there? He wondered, and as fast as that, he knew, saw it all, and realized what he’d just been shown was the answer, the solution to it all.

He just had to see the way to implement the solution, and then…

NO!

Bits and pieces of golden light spun apart before his eyes. Turning grey like lead, alchemy in reverse, and it took a moment but then he realized…

I’m breaking apart.

No, not breaking apart…

I’m being reeled back in.

The twin figures at his side desperately clung to his hands even as they were shredded and skinned like caught in a potato peeler at high speed.

The pain, beyond unbearable, shred his core, and all these new memories, all the brushing against eternity…

“Father!” two voices cried out in unison: two glimmering forms burning bright amidst the fading globe of the everything, that had, for a moment, been in his grasp.

And from this distance, dwindling and shrinking into a tunnel of utter blackness, like being in the belly of a snake, that distant beacon looked like a single, tempting apple.

And then it was all gone.

And he returned to utter blackness.

And pain.

Until…

A light, a scream, a howling cry of denial, loss and agony.

Someone screamed and screamed and the lights were so bright and the walls so white, and the screams…

They came from his own mouth.

Pain and blindness, the pain from his whole body, his muscles rent and screaming, his knees, on a hard floor and reverberating in pain.

Or is it just the process of squeezing a form that had been completely astral, free and infinite, into a finite shell of muscles and nerves, all straining and firing at once?

He tried to focus but could only make out a vague shape through the painfully bright sea of light. A shape that gradually took shape as a man. Familiar, sort of, from a lifetime ago.

He wore a lab coat that should have been white, but seemed to be streaked with red, and he was ranting. His voice seemed so innocuous and normal after all Orlando had just experienced.

“…had to end it. After what I’ve seen, after all we’ve done. I didn’t know, I…”

The blurry form staggered against a wall, and more crimson painted itself in streaks in his wake.

“…Couldn’t let you exist. Not like that, not when we had protocols to reel you in.” He coughed, splattering a mist of red on the wall, then slumped to his knees.

The vision resolved, and Orlando could feel the throbbing of his own pulse, hear the thundering of his heartbeat, the ringing in his ears and every itch and nuanced pressure of this material body raging its frustration at his return.

“…I’ve seen it all, too much. Too… goddamn much. You deal with it now. I’m sorry…”

The vision cleared, and Orlando stood on uncertain legs. He moved toward the scientist, trying to find his voice, then begging that the man hold on.

“Send me back, send me back! My children, the Record! I was there!”

Then he noticed the slumping figure’s wrists — both slashed open, and the blood still weakly pumping out. The dripping stains on the walls, on the door behind him.

The locked door, he guessed.

Trapped in here.

Equipment. Monitors, medical cabinets.

The screens. Orlando stumbled to one and saw in black and white a split view of eight different sections of this compound.

Eight scenes of confusion, horror and mayhem.

In the least terrifying, two women were just kneeling, rocking back and forth, praying maybe. In others… shockingly violent fights in the mess hall. Dead bodies splayed out in another dimly lit corridor, and there — a doctor giving himself an injection; and there — others screaming and bouncing off the walls.

Orlando stumbled back, shaking his head. At the door, above the administrator, whose eyes now blindly stared at the table Orlando had been on, he tried the knob.

Locked, and no keyhole.

Orlando pounded his fist against the glass, then peeked through the narrow window into the hallway, seeing a body slumped to the side and two other administrators stumbling around, hands to their heads as if trying to dislodge a deadly infestation of ear mites.

I have to get out of here. Have to get to the twins.

Have to warn Phoebe. Is she even safe? Are any of them?

Gently, he reached down and checked the dead man’s pockets. Finally…

The key card.

Time to see just where the hell I am, and then get out of here.