Kapitel 19: THE MAN MACHINE
47
One hundredth cycle.
Levi stood in the tattered home of the elder of Steinschild—the village that had been his own home...but something was different. Nobody he knew was here. Buildings were in different places, and the air just felt...off.
Sophie and Abel—then still calling himself Luke—left to investigate on their own, he was more than okay with that. There was a pounding sound in his head ever since he had woken up, and it had only gotten worse as he tried to have a multilingual conversation. Even the language that the woman that had apparently been the elder had been...different. He could pick out enough details to understand what she had been saying, but there were words and phrases she used that he didn't know at all. He talked to her for what felt like forever. A lot of the time was spent trying to understand what she had been saying, but when he did...
The conversation boiled down to very specific facts that would end in Levi's eventual death that Abel and Sophie would later see on the monitors underneath the bubble-room. Those facts he did learn were as follows:
1. The dragon would be coming soon to the planet by way of an asteroid. It would spell doom for the human race as it comes from a land darker than any before. It would hollow out a mountain and make its rest to hibernate until one day it would come down and devour humans.
2. The prophecy was written by an 'odd young boy' who would once went up to the mountaintops the past year and hadn't come back down.
3. The ones he was traveling with had a terribly long future ahead of them that could end with light if they remained to fight.
4. Levi's headache was caused by a bomb that was implanted just behind his eyes. He was a soldier of stone—A golem created by the dark ones who had only existed to transmit these specific facts.
Levi didn't know what to make of what he learned, certainly he had mistranslated the old woman—either that or she had been senile. She raised a hand to his forehead and wiped as if something had stained his forehead. Immediately he felt a burning sensation and he jumped off, scared. He bolted out of the home and found a reflective scrap-sheet of tin that the smith next door must have tossed. He grabbed for it and raised it up eye-level. On his forehead he saw markings burned as if he were pressed with a branding iron.
Emet. It was Hebrew for truth. As the woman had wiped his forehead he saw the last character begin to fade.
Met. It was Hebrew for death. Levi felt the ringing noise inside his head grow to an unbearable level, it rang through his body and he held his hands up to his head. You are a soldier of stone. Created only to transfer a message to those who can use it.
"Aghh!" He called out, waving his head around as it increased in tenacity. "How am I supposed to deliver a message if I've got a...a..." he didn't dare say it. The sound got louder and louder and all other thoughts left his mind and only one truth remained. There was a bomb in his body. He didn't know how, he didn't know why, he only knew that it was. The words left his mind and he began running, he didn't even remember standing up. If he was going to explode, he was going to take out that damn bird and end this stupid game. He was going to make sure that the others could leave this place alive.
He didn't even know what to do about the other things he learned from the woman. There was too little time to think about how he could tell the others about it. He had to hope that they would find a way. That they would find the way. Another stretch of time he didn't remember was the run back to the door. He was just there, this logic-breaking door that somehow brought him inside with no apparent inside to go to. His memory lasted another few moments before he made it back into the bubble room and the bomb went off, ending his thoughts completely and wholly.
48
Cain almost died the day he made contact with Godsong. When he grabbed the cable connecting his younger brother to the Infinity Engine he mortally wounded his body, burning it completely. Yet, his eyes opened, but it wasn't of his own control. He was looking, but it was as if someone was making him look. He stared straight at Godsong, he was upright, perpendicular to the ground even. He couldn't move anything, not even his eyeballs. He was staring straight ahead and couldn't do anything about it. The last thing he remembered was waking up that morning and seeing Abel sleeping beside him. He was so excited for the chance to help him out, but he remembered the feelings that erupted too. Feelings that he kept under for a long time, much longer than he would have liked to admit. A shadow stepped into his view.
As the light from Godsong started up he could see it had been the tall figure with the long white hair. He felt more than a strike of fear when they approached, hands firmly held behind their back.
The figure said nothing as they bent close right in front of him, their mouth perking up the slightest bit into a grin, but worst of all was their eyes. There hadn't been any pupils or iris, just blinding white that erupted the smile into a maniacal look. Cain froze in fear, but it wasn't like he could move anyway.
A second figure moved into view, this time he could clearly see it was an older woman. She looked to be well past her eighties, her hair looked doll-like for how thin it was, and her eyes were the exact same as the silent ones'. The players would recognize her as the old woman that currently had a bullet in her brain, and previously had a bullet in her brain for each previous cycle.
"You...are quite the smart one," she whispered, her voice almost song like, barely even there. "It is hard to believe a pack of children found the book. You...excite me. Or...perhaps that was your doing?" She turned to the silent one.
Cain had no response, he could not talk back.
"I was going to kill you and then consume you, like I've done to thousands before you," she said, with a grandmotherly-like smile on her face. "You read it, after all. That's how you were able to operate it."
Cain said nothing.
"Hm, I see...you do have your own ways of causing mischief, but I've had an even greater idea."
The silent one continued to stare at Cain, that slight-grin still stuck to their face. The blank eyes drilling holes.
"You're mind is too...interesting to simply see extinguished. My partner specifically picked you out. You shall be of much use to us."
Still the grin.
"The name of this body is Ai, she is long since dead, but still she moves. This is...news to you, correct?"
Cain could not answer.
"Yes, I see. Well, you might then say I do not come from this body, but it does serve its uses. It is very powerful," she said. "Now you wonder why I am telling you this. I wish to return home, and that home is far from any you know." She took a small step to the side so that he was staring straight at the core of Godsong once again. "It seems I've gotten myself stranded here. I came from outside of your world—landed here inside an asteroid. That was...almost four and a half hundred of your years ago. Your people have been very helpful thus far, but I need you yet...although in your previous state you wouldn't have been much help to me," she said, and then she turned Cain's head to face a black sack of flesh on the ground where he remembered standing last. Ai turned his head back straight.
"That used to be your body, you figured that much out, yes? Good." She nodded, "You've given me a chance to test how you people see with your Night Eyes outside of your own body. You are the perfect gift, so lucky to be the first of its kind to fully complete the process."
That was when Cain focused on the core of Godsong, the shined surface gave a sort of reflection of his current form. Looking back at him was the corpse of a rabbit. Its mangy body had been dripping of blood near its calves, its mouth was opened and its tongue hung out.
"Lucky, you will be the second game master to our little experiment, but first we must protect that nasty flesh of yours. We're building you an exoskeleton so that when you flash forward you won't get left behind."
The silent one looked to Ai, an unspoken question hung in the air from their eyes.
"Ah, yes, I had forgotten those concepts weren't in the book. I humbly apologize," she bowed, "My partner here wanted me to tell you in person. It's much easier to hear than to read it. You'll be hosting this game we're playing quite a bit until we have what we need. You see, we need people who can see with their Night Eyes. We call them that because it means they see us, not just the sacks we wear. You can see us because you read the book."
Cain wanted to blink more than anything, he wanted it to stop. What was going on was crazy, this was all crazy.
"You read the book because the girl read the book. She read the book because the worm read the book, and he was the one that put it in your language to read. So many people and so many lives affected by one story, but you took to it like a moth to a flame. We saw you, it is an eye for us as it is to you. The humans below us, the names attached to Arctic Systems and Genros..." She began, coughed, and then stood up straight, her eyes filling in a dull brown, "Ai Nagatomi, CEO of the Genros Foundation," and then she bent back over, the color draining as easily as it filled. She pointed toward the silent one, "and Z-One, you may know as the old beggar and the original author of the Eye, also the CEO of Arctic Systems." Their eyes didn't change, didn't so much as react, even. "Those are associations only to the bodies, of course, that means more to you than it does to us at this point. Oh, but why are you hearing all of this information? That is what you wish to ask, right? Good." She nodded again.
"Because there is someone watching us right now. They're seeing us with their Night Eyes. In fact, it's quite a few someones that you'll meet rather shortly. We've got a running list of humans throughout your history who have had exposure to the Eye, and which of those will be currently helpful to us in our goals. You see, when a human dies a minuscule amount of your energy flows to us. Your human experience flows into our bodies...not these sacks of yours mind you. I experience bits and pieces of what the one that died had. However, when a human that has opened their Night Eyes dies a significantly larger portion of that energy flows to me."
The silent one bent down, cocking their head and looking deep into Cain's eyes. Ai didn't lose her eye contact.
"What we're looking for is a way to increase that output. So we've created the Flash Forward Phenomenon using Godsong. We've created a particle field inside this facility that recycles energy. We're planning on intercepting the route that the energy takes, so that before it comes to me it instead creates a space-time anomaly and enters an alternate dimension, almost exactly constructed as this one. We've got bodies in these spare dimensions, you know that as you've read that Luxmund is infinitely multiplying." Ai's look turned cold for the first time since she'd entered the room.
"When one person dies they are shifted into an alternate dimension that is locked at the metaphorical hip to this one, our Prime Luxmund. The humans will continue to die in those universes, send their experience back, and be sent to a new dimension. This shall continue until we have built up enough energy to return home. Your job is to keep our game running so that we can compile enough energy to return back to Noctem. It's simple for you, yes? You won't have to fear us any longer and we get to leave your realm."
The memory diluted and began to fade, but just before it did.
"Although...I almost feel bad for those watching now. The information will be too much for their small brains and it will kill them. It'll be a nice boost of energy, I can tell you that much. And they'll keep going around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and-
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein