A sheen of sweat covers my tingling skin. There is pain and confusion, and I can still feel the thunderclap of my heart in spasm.
Where am I?
I’m resurrected, but Vieta is nowhere to be seen, and this isn’t the genoplant. The smell has gone too. A trick? Or perhaps someone activated a genoplant in a nearby star system. But that isn’t likely, and this doesn’t make any sense.
I died.
Vieta did something to the genoplant circuits, so surely my mind is lost and my body is still floundering around in the basement of the monastery. So where the hell am I now?
It’s a WOOM. Somehow I know that. And it’s opening.
Emerald light invades the darkness, teasing me with vague nostalgia of a different life.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
I freeze. I know that voice. “Who are you?”
“Well, last time I was the mother of God, and before that I was a goddess. You tell me.”
Focus. I need to think. “Qod?”
“Very good! Almost record time, Salem.”
“Salem? Who’s … ? Sunny told me that Salem …”
“Who’s Sunny? Wait. Let me check.”
“Sunny told me that Salem had to remember.”
“Ah yes. Found him. His real name is Amen Brackshard, one of the monks in the Order of the Codex. He’s in the Aberration Sphere too.”
“I’m sure he is. He was one of the first people ever to have met Keitus Vieta … Can you get me out of here?”
“You’re not ready yet.”
“I know who I am. I’m Salem Ben. I still feel like Plantagenet Soome, but I really do know who I am. You have to let me out. Vieta knows about me. We have to—”
“Slow down. You’re perfectly safe.”
“Safe? Sunny mentioned my name in that life I just visited, and now Vieta knows about me too.”
“Relax. I told you you’re safe.”
“How can you—?”
“Don’t you remember how long ago Soome was alive?”
I think for a moment. “He was around not long before the first collapse of the universe.”
“Try to remember where we are now.”
“Yes, yes, we’re at the birth of the fourth cycle of the universe, I know.”
“Even if this Keitus Vieta is real—and I still see no evidence of his existence—he couldn’t possibly have survived the collapse of the universe once, let alone three times.”
“So I’m just suffering from the aftereffects of Soome’s life and panicking for no good reason?”
“That would be a logical assumption. And that’s why the WOOM and I are keeping you restrained for now. For your own good.”
Ahead, beyond the open lips of the exit is the subtle hue of the Aberration Sphere. Millions of souls all afflicted with Keitus Vieta. Perhaps my perception is skewed by Soome’s life, and Vieta is no longer a threat, but I clearly remember Sunny’s insistence that Salem Ben should remember something. Something he showed me when I entered his room for the first time—the time he showed me his paintings. One in particular.
It was a beautiful painting. The silhouette of a man in a bubble, a spear piercing both his heart and the bubble. A moon at the spear’s tip. And where the spear had pierced the bubble, a whirlpool had formed, sucking matter inside.
Why did Sunny want me to remember that? It means nothing to me. Qod must be right. This is all just part of Soome’s life experience, and my waking thoughts have somehow warped the details to include my own name. Or perhaps there is a fault with how the data is overlayed onto my brain, mixing the real me with the people of the past. But that has never happened before.
The slippery sensation of fibers sliding out of my head distracts me, and a few moments later the shackles release me.
“Observation Sphere?”
“Yes. I need to get out of here.”
“You sound disturbed.”
“I am. The more I find out about Keitus Vieta, the more he unsettles me.”
The metallic tendrils lower me to the gangway that leads to the exit of the sphere, and I welcome the pure white light of the corridor ahead of me, as if it is washing me clean of the blood and horror Soome died in.
“You still think Keitus Vieta is a threat?” Qod asks. “I’ve already told you I can find no record of him in the Consortium files, and surely if he wanted to harm you or even pay you a visit, he’s taking a long while to go about it. Three cycles of the universe is quite a span of time, don’t you think?”
“Hmmm.” Her reasoning seems right, but the urgency of Soome’s experience and even the memories of Orson Roth and Dominique Mancini give me cause for concern.
“Anyway, you didn’t answer my question from earlier,” Qod says as I make my way along the corridor toward the Observation Sphere.
“Did I find what I was looking for?”
“Yes,” she says.
“What do you think?”
“Hey! Leave the sarcasm for me, would you?”
“Sorry.” I smile. “But you know the answer is always no. And besides, my priorities have changed. Death doesn’t seem quite so important as finding out who Keitus Vieta is or where he came from.”