Genevieve
I finally reached a room. It was the infinity drive. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but what I got was a long shaft with railings that ran around it and slanted down like a spring coiling toward its base.
The shaft itself was empty. There was no illumination – there were no devices. There was nothing.
Unless you could see what I could.
Right in the middle, there was a pinprick – a single black dot.
It was the doorway into the prisoners’ realm.
I reached the railing in front of me, crunched forward, and locked my hands around it. I grabbed it as if I were physically holding onto hope. I grabbed it as if I were physically holding onto the end.
At first everything was silent and still, but then a wind began to pick up. It came from nowhere and moaned up the shaft. It ran around the railing, pushing my hair over my face. It was so violent, it whipped my cheeks. I stared through the strands at the center of the shaft. That black dot started to wiggle. It twisted to the left, then the right – then it bulged. It became no larger than a pinhead, but it stole my breath away.
I fell down to my feet, my hand still clutched around the rail. “No,” I hissed.
The shaft began to light up. It started at the bottom, then slowly reached toward the top. I saw level after level illuminate. It looked like a ladder. As soon as it reached that dot, it would expand, and the prisoners would escape.
I was forced to stare at my hands as I gripped that railing with white, stiff knuckles that were ready to explode. My energy became disordered.
… My energy.
I’d faced it, I’d accepted it, and I’d understood who I was on a fundamental level – but did I still comprehend what it truly was? Where did it come from? How did it move out of my body? How could it control external forces? And why did it need to be fed?
There were no answers. There was just the continual shudder of the shaft turning on. As those lights continued to flicker on slowly, level by level, the shuddering became worse. It pounded under my feet now. The railing shook, the sound echoing around the cavernous expanse.
I closed my eyes, tears trailing down my cheeks, but then I forced them open. I pulled myself up. It was now so windy, I had to hold on for dear life. My hair stung my cheeks and neck. “Don’t do this,” I hissed. “Don’t escape. This galaxy doesn’t deserve to be ruled by the Atlanteans. We don’t have a right to do anything just because we’re more powerful.”
I could scream out my impassioned words, but they did nothing.
I’d finally gotten here – after trials and tribulations, I had reached my destination. But as I faced off against the end, I realized I didn’t have the power to stop the inevitable. The shaft was turning on, and I watched as that black dot grew wider and wider. It was now the size of a fist. It continued to wriggle and writhe about. I thought I could even see the impressions of faces pushing against it. Their mouths were opened in silent screams. The silence, however, would end soon. More energy continued to pulse up through the shaft. It began to pour into that black dot. It became the size of a body, then larger still.
The shaft was massive. It was so long, I couldn’t see the base. I didn’t know how many people you could fit in here – thousands, tens of thousands, millions even. But I watched as that black mass continued to grow. I saw more and more faces pressing against it. Then hands. They ripped and groped, ready to break their way out.
The wind was now so bad, I had to use my energy to securely clutch hold of the railing.
There was only so much the railing could put up with. As it shook, sections of it further down broke clean off.
One snapped up toward me. I had to force myself forward and twist my head to the side to avoid it. It smashed into the shaft wall.
The shaft was open to the planet above. It was the center of the tower. Lightning strikes began to make it down through. They struck sections of railing or the wall and left blasts of energy cascading everywhere.
One even sailed close to me. It struck the railing. I had to yank my hands off. I tumbled to the side. The section of the mezzanine floor I was on broke, and I began to roll.
I tried to grope at anything within reach to stop my descent, but I couldn’t.
I was only one woman. I might have a full complement of Atlantean genes, and I might have all this power, but what could I do?
I managed to snag hold of a chunk of railing, but just as soon as my fingers locked around it, lightning lanced into it. It was disintegrated. I began to fall again.
I tumbled down, section by section. I reached a hole in the floor, and I fell right through. I sailed down 20 meters until I landed hard on the floor below.
My energy couldn’t do anything for me. I was winded. I even thought one of my ribs was broken.
I rolled again. More lightning struck the already warped floor. One happened right in front of me. It twisted the flooring out toward the middle of the shaft. I now groped with all my might. I managed to just snag hold of a section of railing, and my feet dangled out of the middle of the shaft. That black writhing mass was right underneath me. If I fell—
It was no longer a question of if. The railing snapped.
I was suspended there for a single second, my energy rising within me, but then it stopped. I fell. My hair fanned around me. My arms flailed.
I struck that black mass.
Those groping hands and mouths reached out, pushing against their prison. They locked me in place against it.
I began to scream but stopped when something locked its hand over my mouth.
They pulled me down toward the black mass. First all I could hear was the crackling of my own power and my stifled screams. But soon enough, I caught whispers.
“Let us out,” they called. “Submit. Release the energy within you. Accept what you are. A king, a god, divine.”
“No,” I tried to scream around their grip. “I’m not going to—”
They started biting my arms and legs. Pain erupted through me. My energy tried to save me, but all it did was inadvertently release itself to them. I could hear as it sunk down into the black mass, and I could feel as it grew.
There had to be thousands of bodies stuck within it now. And with every second, they multiplied.
The full horror of the situation struck me. A hand reached out and was clasped over my face. Once more I was drawn into that vision. I could see a wave swallowing the entire galaxy. This time it was more than an apparition. I could feel the full horror. Laced over the top of that was the greed – the righteousness. Within me was something that thought this felt right.
If you were more powerful, you did have the right to control those around you. You had the right to consume anything you wanted. Because you could not be stopped.
Power was capricious at its very heart. No one got to decide who they were born as. But if you were born into force, it was only logical that you used it. Something had chosen you – something had bestowed the gift. So it was yours to grasp.
I was pulled further down into the black mass. I almost couldn’t see the top of the tower anymore and that faint glimmer of light above.
That vision was consuming me. It was as if it was trying to use the power of my own soul to write itself onto reality.
The Atlanteans continued to whisper. I heard their elitism – their blind, centric idealism. Everything they wanted was right. Because the only concept of morality they had was unchecked desire.
There was no point in controlling oneself. There was no point in becoming better for the sake of others. Why change for a galaxy when it was in everybody’s grasp to change the galaxy instead? And if you had the biggest grasp – the strongest hands – then you could make the greatest changes.
“Let’s remake this galaxy,” they hissed. “Let us expunge its sins. There will be no more uncertainty. People will know exactly what is in store for them. Those who have committed crimes will pay.”
Yeah, because everyone would be killed.
Though it was tempting to think that just because you could, you should, I couldn’t flirt with that thought for long.
It would deny the greatest experiences of my life. I had never been able to do as I pleased. I had been bound to the weakness of my own body. But it had taught me something that I finally understood. We are all in some way bound to weakness. The will, though the greatest force in existence, is not limitless. You cannot hone it and make it more powerful by giving it exactly what it wants.
That did not mean that you descended into deprivation and pain. You did not starve yourself to control the desires of your mind. You turned them inward, instead.
I had already come to the realization that the Atlanteans had allowed their technological prowess to extend further than their moral progress. They had worked on their external force, but never their internal. And in doing so, they had crafted the greed within their hearts.
The energy – the Atlantean power – my power – was only an expression of what was within me. It was like an extension of the will – pure force written onto reality.
But it did as it was told – and it became what was at its master’s heart.
I had been terrified of this power since awakening to it. And though I had accepted it on many levels, I had never understood it.
It had seemed external, foreign. Something that had been thrust upon me and not something I had created.
Now I understood.
I had searched outside for the answers, but they had always been within.
I had tried to grope at that knowledge within me, but I had done so externally. I had never tuned in to my mind. Now I did. As I was pulled further down into the black mass, with no possible escape, I didn’t fight it – I allowed myself to sink through my darkest side.
And there, in my heart, I saw the truth.
As the Atlanteans had progressed, they had found a way to give force to their wills – literally. They had tapped into the sub-quantum realm. They had found the power of consciousness. Rather than an artifact of an interconnected neural network – a fiction created by the sophisticated brain – consciousness itself was at the heart of reality. And it, like all other forces, had the power to create or destroy.
When the Atlanteans had found a way to tap into that untouchable energy resource, they had not been ready for what was waiting for them. For as I had said, they became what was in their hearts. Greed – force – the desire and knowledge that one can and should impose their will onto reality. They thought the galaxy was a canvas for them. They thought everybody they came across was the same. Their bodies, their planets, their civilizations – they were nothing but a storehouse of energy that could be broken down so the Atlanteans could refashion them into any shape they wanted.
They were right – they had become gods. But shackled ones.
The only thing they had expressed and the only thing they had created was a civilization of greed.
I was pulled into the center of the black mass. I was at its heart now. I could feel those thousands upon thousands of hands groping at me. They were trying to pull me apart to get to that energy of pure consciousness.
… I could give up. I knew how to do it. It would make the pain stop. But it would not truly make the pain end. It would simply displace it from me onto another.
The Atlanteans had failed to appreciate one fundamental lesson. They were not the only ones who had consciousness. They had turned their minds out and weaponized them against others without realizing that the very force they were using fundamentally connected them to all other sentient beings.
They thought the greatest good out there was to squeeze all the energy they could from their wills. They’d been wrong. For the greatest power is the capacity of consciousness to connect itself across sentient beings. It is a fundamental force within all. When two become connected, they are stronger than one. When three become connected, they are stronger than two. That was a truth they had never realized.
As that understanding ran through me, I opened up my mind. I used my energy in a way I never had before. You see, it wasn’t coming from me – it never really had been. It was coming from my connection to something greater.
As I opened myself up to it, I forgot about the pain. It drifted away. Momentarily, I was no longer one person – I was two, then three, then four, then five – then more. My mind expanded.
It connected first to the closest person to me. Scott. I felt his mind. He opened up to me, and the process was unstoppable. It felt like it could push a bridge through any substance, through any void, through any destruction. Then it spread further. I could feel Peter. Then his men – then the ships above.
I didn’t stop there, though.
I had to call on the full power of the galaxy to contain the Atlanteans. As I opened myself up to all of that power, they screamed. For the first time, their haunting, greedy whispers changed.
They could feel their demise.
“No,” they shrieked. “We are the righteous ones. We deserve the future more than any others. We found how to externalize our powers. We are the originators.”
I didn’t listen to their cries.
I closed my mind off to them. All I did was create a bridge between me and everything else out there.
I’d already said that I’d never felt connected in my life. It had always just been me alone on my sickbed. Even with my grandfather, I hadn’t truly been able to connect with him. I’d felt his love, but I’d always felt separate. Scott was the first person who’d managed to break down that door.
Now? Now I understood. It wasn’t connection that was an illusion – it was loneliness. Consciousness was just a continuum all tapped in to.
Finally it happened. That black mass writhed once, then twice more, and the screams became a cacophony.
The prisoners began to break down. They twisted and fought, pulling themselves apart from within. For as they recognized they could no longer fight me and use me to free them, they set upon one another.
They feasted upon each other’s energy in a never-ending drive to be the only one who would survive.
But none can survive alone.
The black mass contracted. It went back to being a single point. Then even that extinguished itself.
I didn’t fall through the shaft. I was still suspended there with my energy. It pulsed around me. It held me. It caressed me. But more than anything, it connected me.
I smiled. It was over.