By Aladdin and Christopher Leeson

Chapter 4

A Guillotine for a God

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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I saw amusement in Diana's eyes. "When you ask about beginnings, you don't know what you're asking," she said.

"Oh, come on! Everything, even insanity, has a beginning somewhere," I replied.

"Let me say it this way: In the beginning, there was darkness...."

"Are you trying to be funny?"

"Maybe you actually don't want to hear the story from the beginning. In that case, I'll cut to the chase. How much do you know about the old Gnostics?"

To tell the truth, I didn't know a lot about that cult. The Gnostics were a persecuted Christian sect attacked by every other religion in their world. After 450 AD, the year in which I was born, only one sect of Gnostics remained, lingering on in western Asia. They were called the Manicheans. But even they were destroyed by persecution before the end of the Middle Ages.

"The Gnostics," continued Diana, "somehow knew that the god who had created the universe had himself been a created being. His creator, the supreme god, was incomprehensible and unknowable. It was this flawed, created god called the Demiurge who created all the universes. He lived, did amazing things, and then died."

"The Creator God died?" I asked.

"One would say to, but the Demiurge did not die in the ordinary sense."

"He made a close escape?"

"No, he committed suicide."

"What for? Like, if a god doesn't have everything going for him, who does?" I asked.

"One of his flaws was that he could become lonely. For eons, the Demiurge sought to create others who were as brilliant as he was and worthy to be his companions. But every sentient race he called into being proved to be inferior. Due to his own innate flaws, the Demiurge could do naught but create beings even more flawed than he himself was.

"So he got so lonely he checked himself out?" I asked.

Gabriel spoke up. "That's woefully correct, Eden. By applying his immense intellect to the problem of his own self-destruction, he found a way to end his immortality – or at least he thought he did."

"What did the idiot finally do?"

Diana chimed in again. "He created a – a suicide platform -- a sort of hangman's scaffold. The platform was a rudimentary universe created only for that purpose. Standing in that universe, the Demiurge opened a portal to an already existing universe and placed his head into it. His disastrous mistake was to place his head into the Main Bough of the Tree of Eternity."

"Do you mean our Main Bough?"

"I'm afraid so."

I sighed. "It sounds like this story is heading for a bad ending."

"Very astute! Unfortunately, we're living that ending now," said Gabriel.

"So, he chopped off his own head. Is the head in our universe now and causing all this trouble?"

"I'm afraid so," our hostess affirmed.

"Why did that cosmic nutcase pick our universe to bother?" I asked.

"Because ours was the pride of his creation work," Gabriel interjected. "Nothing else he had created ever equaled it. It was not perfect, but because it was near perfection, he wanted it to be his resting place."

Diana continued the story. "When he activated his guillotine, the dimensional door closed, shearing off his head and letting it fall into the Main Bough. His body remained in the 'Scaffold Universe.'"

"So what's the catch in all this? I'm pretty sure that there's a catch and that it's a doozy."
 
"The body he left behind in the Scaffold Universe decayed and became toxic. It became six individual gems called the Infinity Gems. Each Gem preserved a different attribute of the dead god -- control of Reality, Mind, Space, Power, Soul, and Time. They comprised the Creator god's power only lacking his unifying intelligence."

"Are you talking about his head -- the head that fell into our world?" I asked.

"Yes," said Diana. The head that fell to Earth congealed into a seventh Gem – the Ego Gem. It was the repository of what was left of the god's self-awareness.

"The six Infinity Gems repeatedly threatened to destroy the the Scaffold Universe, but the destruction of that inferior universe would not have harmed the Tree of Eternity, any more than would pulling a rotten tooth. But the Ego Gem still lived, waiting for the day it could reunite with the lesser Gems that had been derived from its dead body. Unfortunately, the Ego Gem was completely insane, because it held only the intellect of the Demiurge, not his spirit. Intellect without a moral, living spirit is a psychotic personality. However, the Ego Gem lacked meaningful power while it existed alone.

"So, what is this comedy of errors adding up to?" I asked.

Diana swallowed hard. "Eventually, the seal between the Scaffold Universe and the Main Branch of the Tree of Eternity has been gradually diminishing with time. On rare occasions, powerful beings have found ways to cross through the seal, and each time they did so, it weakened the seal further."

I frowned. "And I suppose that Thor and Rune, traipsing back and forth, did a lot of harm."

"They certainly did! And don't forget Loki's nefarious crossing also," said Gabriel. "But the blackest part of the comedy is this: When Rune returned to our reality, he brought with him terrible booty."

Rune had returned? The thought both frightened and angered me. Now my family had been made sitting ducks for that fiend's malice.

"What booty did he take?" I asked.

Diana shuddered: "He bought into our universe the six forbidden Infinity Gems. If they are ever united with the Ego Gem, the seven will merge into the Infinity Array. When that happens, it will create a mad monster that will be the veritable rebirth of the Demiurge. But this incarnation of the Demiurge will be a soulless, mechanistic reconstitution, lacking the redeeming qualities that the living Demiurge possessed."

"Wait a minute! You two expect me to go up against the totally evil and all-powerful zombie of a mad god! Don't I get any say in that?''

I had hardly been able to fight Rune to a draw due to having help from other ultras. How in hell was I supposed to go it alone against the much more terrible supernatural menace that Gabriel called Nemesis?

#

"Mantra, your fears are reasonable," said Gabriel. "But hear us out.

"The Mind Gem that Loki took from you was one of the seven Infinity Gems. Despite the cosmic power he commands now, he has done nothing meaningful with it except practical jokes. But the Ego Gem seeks to unite with the Six and has possessed Sersi, a goddess from the Scaffold Universe. The Ego Gem intends to use her power to wrest the Infinity Array from Loki and recreate itself as Nemesis!"

"Are you saying that by losing to Loki, I set the universe -- the Multiverse – on the road to destruction?"

"Do not fault yourself, Eden. You were never a match for the Asgardian trickster. It would have taken a team of ultras assisting you to fend off such a being as Loki."

Did I dare believe him? Archimage had lied to me for many centuries. How could I trust what these strangers were telling me? They might be trying to dupe me into doing something nefarious. How could I know what was real and what was not?

"So," I said stiffly, "if the six Gems fall into the orbit of the Ego Gem, will it be worse than if Loki keeps them?"

"Infinitely so," averred Gabriel.

"Can't you time travel into the future and take a peek at what happens?"

"The Timekeepers have already done that. They have learned that Loki will lose the Gems to the Ego Gem."

"That sucks, but let me understand. You're saying that the Ego Gem intends to destroy the entire Multiverse? What for?" I asked.

Gabriel clenched his fists. "The Ego Gem carries the bitter memories of the Demiurge, and the Demiurge hated imperfection. Everything that Nemesis sees will remind her of her imperfection, and she will want to destroy everything and start over again!"

"She? You've been calling the Demiurge a 'he' up to now."

The little man shrugged. "When Nemesis is recreated, it will take on a female persona. This may be for no better reason than that the Ego Gem will take on a female persona after acclimating to the body of Sersi, a demi-goddess."

"If you say so. But if this -- Nemesis -- rises, what exactly will happen?"

"She will use the power of a major god to let loose the forces of anti-Creation. But our reports say that she will fail, due to an attack by an audacious warrior. His blow will strike the Seven and cause the Nemesis Array to break into the seven individual Gems."

"That's good, isn't it?" I asked.

"It's good, but not good enough to save the Main Bough. Nemesis will be given time to release a micro-erg of energy, and the leaked energy will attack the Tree of Eternity like cancer. The Tree will fight for its life, but in the long term, it will be unable to cope.

"The toxicity of Change will eventually exhaust and collapse the Main Bough, and its breakup will bring about the collapse of the entire Multiverse. In the broader perspective, the eons of growth and accomplishment seen since Creation will vanish as if they had never been."

"What warrior gets to conk the bitch? Is it supposed to be me?"

"No. The warrior is one whom you've never met, Eden. But, even so, you've heard of him. The Black Knight."

I took that in. I had read about the Black Knight in Aladdin's reports. They said he was a run-of-the-mill adventurer, showing up seemingly from nowhere. There apparently wasn't much to the man except pluck and a glowing sword. For some unknown reason, this third-stringer had been inducted into the UltraForce.

"The Black Knight is, in fact, an intruder from the Scaffold Universe," Diana explained. "He came to your universe to find and reclaim his exiled lover, Sersi."

"Are you kidding?!" I said. "Some dude with nothing much going for him manages to shack up with a goddess and then goes on to smash what's left of the god who created the Multiverse?"

Gabriel smiled woefully. "Our best hope is to rewrite future events so that Sersi does not claim the Gems. The menace will vanish, and the Knight will never have to fight that failed battle."

"How much do you know about this upcoming disaster?" I asked.

"Not everything is clear as yet. From the information I extracted from the central VIGOPS, we know that even a tiny particle of the god-energy escaping from Nemesis will be enough to send the Multiverse careering to its doom. Once the process has begun, there will be no saving the Multiverse."

"Do you have any idea how to change the future?"

"As long as the events do not yet occur in Zero Time on the Main Bough, we still may intervene usefully," said the Timekeeper. "While we still have time, we must have a detailed reappraisal of the Black Knight's battle with Nemesis before a workable plan can be formulated."

"While all this is coming down," I asked, "what are the other Timekeepers going to be doing?"

Gabriel winced. "They will do...nothing," he said.

"Nothing?"

"They are planning a withdrawal aimed at maintaining their personal safety only -- supposing that the catastrophe will unleash local destruction only. By now, the Timekeepers will have finished evacuating the Main Bough," he said with disdain, "leaving our time agents with no specific orders."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Presuming you've been telling me the truth, nobody can be as dumb as your Timekeepers. Aren't their own hides on the flaying table, too?"

"Yes, they are. But because of their preconceived and incorrect ideas of how Fate works, they could not cope with reality and so have opted to flee."

"Where are your people evacuating to?" I asked. "Can it be used as a refuge for others, too?"

He gritted his teeth. "In the long term, there are no permanent refuges. When the collapse begins, it will not affect every location at once. The Timekeeper leadership intends to occupy these remote locations but their hiding places will outlast the central collapse by no more than a few centuries."

"I can't put my mind around this. I can only hope you've been lying to me all this time."

"I've been telling the truth, and the truth is that my people have behaved shamefully. I am even more exasperated with them than you are."

"I doubt that," I said.

The little man suddenly perked up. "All is not lost, Mantra. Michael, the former leader of the Timekeepers' field division, created new technological aids that I still possess."

"Former leader?"

He was arrested and evacuated by force with the Timekeeper leadership. Fortunately, Michael took extraordinary measures to conceal my membership in his group. I hid myself until our race departed from this universe. Only then did I gain freedom of action."

"Where does that leave us?"

I thought I saw optimism in Gabriel's glance -- forced optimism, I supposed.

"Though the Timekeepers have refused to act," he said, "I was able to appropriate their secret files concerning the looming disaster. There may be something in the data that will suggest a way to circumvent future events."

"You mean all you have to hope for is a 'maybe'?"

"Not at all. We have our own minds and imaginations. Michael did a great deal of preparatory work using his inborn assets."

"So, your leader was called Michael? Do all you Timekeepers name yourselves after Archangels?"

"Of course not. There are only seven Archangels."

I shook my head. "Okay, I get it. You're basically all alone and a renegade. I don't scorn you for that; I've done some of my best work with the help of renegades. But I'd feel a lot better if we had a super-civilization backing us up."

Gabriel's optimism was looking rather sheepish just then. "I know I'm expecting a great deal from you. In fact, I was tempted to lie to you lest the immensity of our task discourage you, but I ultimately decided that truth is the best policy."

I turned toward Diane. "How much do you know about this fiasco?"

She sighed. "I've gotten the full briefing only lately. It's grim, I admit, but I'm hopeful that Gabriel is on the right path. Getting your help will surely improve his chances."

"Don't you dare put this on me!" I snared. Oh, brother! These diehards were expecting me to straighten out a messed up situation that had been going wrong for millions of years!

"We will have two opportunities to avoid disaster," said the small man. "If we can prevent Sersi from taking the Infinity Gems from Loki the future is saved. If we fail in that, we must discover whether there are any exploitable variables in the Black Knight's clash with Nemesis. In either case, we may discover some opportunity we may exploit to avoid the collapse of the Multiverse."

I scowled. "You make it sound so easy, Gabe. What if your hopes are cockeyed?"

"Give Gabriel a break!" exclaimed Diana. "He's already accomplished a lot on his own. What Gabriel lacks is in the resource department. Are you willing to become a resource for him or not?"

"Why me? How about you becoming his ride-along assistant?" I asked.

Diana threw up her hands. "If I could do more, I would." She glanced across the room. "Lukasz -- the other Lukasz – has been waiting to speak to me. On the off-chance that Creation survives, I still have a job to do."

I looked toward the middle of the tavern room and observed that Lukasz and Thanasi were still quaffing ale. "Say, Di," I called after her, "would it mess up history if I warned my old self about some of the crap that's coming down the chute over the next thousand years?"

The time agent paused and looked back at me. "Any interference you do will only affect this timeline, not the Main Bough."

I guess that answered my question.

"Eden," said Gabriel from over my shoulder, "the time for action is now. You have to make a leap of faith -- perhaps the greatest you have ever made. You must also believe success is possible."

"I'm keeping an open mind," I said.

He shook his head. "I will do nothing to coerce you, warrior. But you must understand that if you undertake this task, much will be asked of you."

"What, precisely, do you expect from me? And if I agree to do this crazy job and get killed, what happens to the kids back home?"

"The alternate Mantra has vowed to keep your death secret from them and to rear them as her own. She will even take over your identity in Canoga Park."

"But if we fail, Holy Hell is going to come down on Canoga Park, right?'

"True. All I can say is that if we fail and you are slain, I promise to take the children and their new mother into a remote timeline, one that should not collapse until well after the end of the youngsters' natural lifespans."

"Well, that's something. But before I agree to anything you'd better tell me everything you know. And don't leave out the details; I hate missing details!"

Why had I just said that? Was I starting to believe this nut stuff?

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5