Play Testers Wanted Pt. 22

"Not our Booker, obviously," Dawn frowned. "Poor thing. He is so damn miserable."

"Tell me about him, please," I asked, and her features became thoughtful before she spoke again.

"He would visit and listen to me play," Dawn began. "He would hum his original pieces, and I realized he was gifted. His music made its way through. He could perform complex songs, and his memory was amazing. His limitations diminished him in many ways. It was the chronic headaches and dreams that haunted him."

"Dreams, what sort of dreams did he have?"

"Here," Dawn said as she retrieved a stack of large sheets of paper. "While he could not speak, he had a talent for drawing."

I took the sheets and looked through them. Akira looked over my shoulder and whispered.

"How?"

"We must have shared a connection," I said, desperately reaching for any solution to make sense of the ever-growing craziness.

When did this insanity begin? The accident when the world shut down for an hour and my dad died next to me. No one had ever explained what had happened or who was responsible. I recovered, but still, there were gaps, and I suspected transfers from one body to another for years. Now I learn that there were multiple copies, and I was the last hold out of one of Nick's goddamn experiments. I blinked away the tears, the rage, and the frantic grip on reality. I looked again at the images depicting events inside and outside the game. However, I didn't recognize some of them, and they showed the world during times long before my birth. The apparel the people in the pictures wore ranged from the 1960s to the early eighteenth century.

"What is your opinion of these images?" I asked.

"If my friend is correct, our Booker is quite the artist with a vivid imagination. Of course, Iram isn't what you'd call your typical small town. Being so close to the Maze and that lot."

"Maze?"

"Hmm, how to describe it? I've never been there myself, but many of my lovers have, and tried to describe it. The universe is a great clockwork machine, and the Maze is a big cog with many teeth and connections."

"Clear as mud."

"Yeah. Oh, before I forget. The red leather book behind me might interest you. Take it if it strikes your fancy. It is the collection of Booker's songs, operas, and pieces he never finished. My apprentice copied down the music, Warren the calligrapher cleaned it up, and Sean hand-bound the book into its current form."

Akira picked up the book and handed it to me. I opened it and read the music as it played in my head. The songs varied in style and tempo, most of which were delightful.

"Wonderful. The other Booker was truly gifted."

"Was? I see. The doctors told him he was dying, and he accepted it."

"He is dead," I told her, and her expression became serious. "I killed him."

"No, your presence freed him; of that, I have no doubt."

"Does it matter?"

"Yes. Your soul is now complete, and he is at peace. Hopefully, one day soon, you will accept it and rid yourself of your guilt and pain. Be patient."

I did not bother with details. Whether it was an accident or other excuses, I had ended the life of my clone. God, just thinking about it made me sick.

"I don't know how to feel."

"I hear bitterness and sorrow, but I do not hear malice or hatred in your voice," Dawn said after a long moment. "Dreams. I can hear the echo of water, pain, and confusion. So many voices and all of them yours." Her hands formed into fists and her face flushed with color, but it was not embarrassment but rage this time. "Damn you, Nick Shaw! When will you give up? You are dead."

"Care to explain your outburst?" I asked.

I felt the connection. I felt Dawn's mind brush against mine like Left did when we spoke silently. 'Let me see Booker,' her mind asked. Indeed, she was strong enough to waltz in and take what she wanted. 'I am not a rapist. I am a healer. Let me lance this psychic wound and let you heal.'

'Go on,' I relented, and a part of me needed to find out what had happened.

'This is going to hurt a lot,' Dawn warned me. It is difficult to express the sensations and events for which the human language has no context. There was pressure in my head. It was as if she cradled my entire life experiences in her hands and pushed them together like a water balloon that refused to pop. 'Here it comes, and I am sorry.'

The external pressure overwhelmed me, and something broke. My blood turned to ice water, and I shivered uncontrollably. I felt Dawn's presence as I relived the critical memories she had triggered. I floundered in the chaos of memory, emotion, and unrecognized events. They possessed no linear pattern as my youth and adult life collided. I walked among crumbling towers of stone. The fallen pillars lay like felled titans of old. This city was Iram, but it was not my memory but Nick's. I had no control over what I remembered or experienced for now.

Akira strode through the abandoned streets of the ancient city. "This way, I can feel moisture," Akira said. "There must be an oasis or water source of some kind."

"Take point," I said, with Nick's voice echoing in my ears. "If we are to survive, we will need that water. Go, my hound."

Akira's face lit when she heard those words. The Hound of Shaw whistled, and the other Silent Shadows joined her and searched the surrounding buildings. I went to what might have been the main temple or perhaps even the palace. There was a psychic influence at work. While Nick appeared clueless, I could feel the mental tug. The moisture struck my dry face, and the waterfall fell upon the obelisk that stood atop a stone plinth in the middle of the artificial pool.

"Come to me," she called from the bottom of the reservoir.

Nick stripped and dove into the water. It was the same sensation I had experienced swimming through the fountain at the center of the town named after the fabled city. Events continued to unfold as Nick found the gem sticking out of the silt at the bottom of the pool. Where I had found a Duskwalker relic, Nick unearthed an Atlantean treasure. Within the navy blue stone was an Atlantean artificial intelligence. Did Nick steal all of his most extraordinary ideas? Did he invent anything on his own? The more I learned about him, the more I despised him. Nick breached the surface, cupped some of the water into the palm of his hand, and smiled.

"I have a great idea for using this," Nick said.

I was sleeping in the fluid-filled metal tube. The water supported me as I floated there. I understood now. It was not just any water Nick had used, but he had sourced it from one of the obelisks and repurposed it to clone me. I was his closest living male relative, and the accident had been a godsend for the dying man. Someone close to him had sabotaged his horde of stored blood and DNA samples. A trusted confidant had betrayed him, and he had fallen to plan C, cloning me. Nick's thoughts betrayed him as he modified my DNA using the template in the tomb of the Hidden Masters. He trusted that those who left behind the code would grant him immortality. But there were complications, with unseen genetic drifts, and after so many attempts, he finally resurrected me.

Nick came to the Midwest, to this Iram, and planted the bracer that denied him. He knew something about its history and hid it where none would or could find it. Nick never meant for me to discover it, and he feared that it would claim me and do something. Nick laughed when I tried to unlock that memory, and I plunged into a new battery of remembrances. Nick had been lurking, watching, stalking me until the right moment. Using my BMI as a backdoor, one of the AI triggered the download of Nick's last copy from just before he died. Iram would be where he would return to the real world using my body and access to his vast wealth. This time with a better chassis to carry him forward forever. My early life wasn't a lie; I clung to that truth like a lifeline. Fuck you, Nick; I won't let you steal my life the way you've stolen everything else.

"Shaw protocol six zero nine eight zero," I said though I did not know why and felt ill.

"No," Dawn's mind blazed to life inside of mine. "I cast you out, Nicolas Shaw!"

Something inside of me struggled to take over. Out of the shadows of my consciousness, it crawled, cursed, and hissed like a cornered animal. The misshapen thing looked like Nick but a Nick that had been shattered and put back together poorly. The psychic clone of Nicolas Shaw reminded me of the corpse on the street of Iram.

"I... I can make it work, and I must survive! I will survive, damn you!"

Was this any different than demonic possession? Dawn triggered one memory after another until my experiences drowned out the last vestige of a desperate dead man. I felt the mental snap the moment it began. All those memories were popping like a cascade of pain-filled cysts. I tumbled into the dark with no expectation of surviving. If I died, then so did Nick. I always saw him as a shining light--all the good his technology brought to the world. In the end, Nick was a thief and terrified of death, and I was his get-out-of hell-free card.

The next memory was unfamiliar, but it didn't belong to Nick or me. I stood in the center of a great stone circle, and inscribed on the floor were lines, celestial symbols, and arcane glyphs. The power welled up from below and filled me to the point of burning out. I fumbled with finger gestures, yet somehow the energy took shape, sped across the distance, and struck the target. While the wood and straw figure burned, my instructor's voice critiqued my attempt.

"There is no doubt you can channel; another failure like that could kill you. I suggest more of a trickle instead of a flash flood. Try again."

This time my focus was on control and not destroying the target. I slowed my movements, let the energy flow gently, and set the next target alight with ease. The memory jumped to what felt like hours of practicing various configurations of my digits, all six of them, and the effects they could produce. Body movements followed until, like any other martial art, the two became one smooth flowing action. The last memory was being at the center of the circle with eight other students surrounding me. I was blindfolded, and at the sound of the horn, I defended myself and eventually overwhelmed those around me. I had passed my final test.

What followed was complete absence. It was empty. There was nothing. Stop. You may think you know what nothing is, but you are wrong. You imagine perfect darkness, but darkness is something. You cannot feel anything because there is nothing to feel. It was a pre-big bang, and my universe did not exist yet. I was alone. I was a flawless null. I had lost my name, identity, hell, even Left was gone. I became the breath before I uttered the first syllable of the first word. All I had to do was express it, and my world, my universe, would blaze into existence. I had no lips to speak, but my mind clung to that one word despite my annihilation. It took an eternity to vocalize a single syllable.

"Fuck."

"Booker! You are alive," Akira exclaimed as I opened my eyes and water surrounded me.

Akira hovered close as she grabbed me and kicked, propelling us upwards. We broke the surface of the fountain for a second time today. I found speech difficult, and while my mouth worked, nothing came out. My mind was a wreck.

"The Sympath healed you," Akira said. I must have given her one of my 'what the hell are you talking about' looks, so she continued. "Empaths feel what others feel while Sympaths feel for others. Dawn said she ruptured something inside of you that was toxic. That poison nearly killed you. Dawn is still cleaning up the mess you left."

"Eh?" I managed a confused noise.

"You died. You shat and pissed yourself. I stripped you down and threw you in here. I hope the water might revive you. Are you in there?" She rambled, fearing I would end up like the other Booker. Was I destined to be trapped in my skull?

"Fuck," I cursed.

"You said that before," Akira laughed.

"I," the new word passed my lips. "I." A statement of being. "Here," I struggled, and it hurt to push past the mental scar tissue. "Ow."

"He is in there," Left declared, sounding hungover. "I am here too, by the way."

"Cat!" I cried as the hooded woman walked up to the pool and set down clean clothing. Her hood was down, and she smiled at me. "Cat."

"Bastet," the female Osirian corrected me. 'Rest, young man. Reply if you can,' the Bastet whispered in my mind.

'I am in here,' I desperately reached out. The woman made a startled feline noise. I thought softer and repeated. 'I am alive. Sorry, I did not mean to shout.'

'Your mind is strong. Rest. I will be close when you are ready," Qui Wan assured me.

She never shared her name, but a part of me knew instinctively that those sounds made up her identity. Akira helped me to the edge of the fountain. I gripped the edge and pulled myself up. There was little effort to lift my body from the water. I felt so light, as if I had burned away everything weighing me down. My skin seemed to drink in the sunlight. I felt my head move on its own as I closed my eyes. I felt the warmth of the visible spectrum and more.

Akira's arms held me, her head on my shoulder, and her mind a soothing balm. 'I love you. I know you can't hear me, but I am here for you.'

'I love you too,' I sent and heard her gasp and then a sigh of relief. 'I need to recharge.'

'Take all the time you need,' Akira replied, her thoughts laser-sharp and controlled.

We sat together, never speaking a word aloud. Instead, we shared images in a wordless exchange of memories and understanding. Flashes of my childhood, the neighborhood, and the house I grew up in before the accident. I saw Akira raised by her grandmother in the temple high atop the side of a mountain. The temple had stood for centuries and was there to this day. Then an unfamiliar memory appeared in a dizzying display of falling and tumbling down the side of a hill. There had been a flash of blue light as if light reflected off a piece of cobalt glass. Then the loss of balance, rolling, crashing into something, and ending on a dusty stone floor. This recollection was not one of my memories, nor did it belong to Akira. So, whose memory was this? I stood up and looked around. Brambles and tall grass shielded the front of the corridor. Egyptian funerary motifs decorated the walls of the tunnel. I had seen images like these, but there were aberrations never displayed in other tombs in this case. Anubis, god, and guardian of the dead, hooded and furtive, stood facing the soul to be judged. Further down was hawk-headed Horus donning a mask with human features. Whoever this was continued down the tunnel flanked on either side with the odd artwork.

'What is that?' I thought as a small table rose out of the floor. My body approached the flat top structure and discovered a gaming board. Game pieces clustered over the table's surface, and each type represented one of the four fundamental elements. There were murals on each of the three walls where the corridor ended. I found patterns within the murals and placed the appropriate game pieces in succession, starting from the center square. The first secret door opened and revealed a narrow passage behind the game board. The memory continued and revealed a corridor whose etched walls and ceiling carried thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of groups of the basic designs, each forming a complete four-piece pattern. It must have taken their most skilled stone cutters to lay down thousand of alternating sets of elemental symbols.

'Why, and what do they represent?' I asked myself.

The groups formed a recurring pattern, and a logic emerged in how those groups took shape. These designs were not a random act of decorating the hall. There was rationality to it. The groups formed repeating sequences with air always next to fire and water next to stone. Then I asked myself what else I knew about this pattern with such a succinct design. There was only one thing, a strand of DNA. The hall was nothing less than the map of a specific genetic code. At the end of the hall was a statue. I recognized the subject of carved stone as one of the Anunnaki. What was a Sumerian figure doing in an Egyptian funerary tunnel? These images filled the gap in the blueprint for Duskwalkers and who placed it there.

'This is where my current body was inspired and perhaps the birth of Nick's obsession with immortality.'

The memory continued as the view showed me returning to the game board. I removed the pieces and inserted those that matched the mural on their right-hand side. The second secret door opened. Beyond the door, the walls and floor were natural stone with little work from human hands. The floor was smoothed a bit but still had cracks and uneven portions. The tunnel turned and bent its way down to the main hall floor. I must have stepped on something because the hidden door slid shut, locking me in. I continued down, and near the bottom of the ramp, it was clear the purpose of this vaulted chamber was to store the dead. There were dozens of sarcophagi nestled carefully into slots lovingly carved to hold them. Each coffin was black with a death mask of its occupant prominently displayed like the pharaohs of old. The symbols I recognized, and I felt my body stiffen in surprise.

'The Hidden Masters,' I whispered in awe. 'This is the resting place of the secret keepers of the Order.'

It was then that I realized whose memory I had been sharing. It was a residual of Nick Shaw's early life, his life before Numenor, and when he first took up the mantle of Hidden Master. I watched through his eyes as he explored the tomb. I watched as he plucked an enormous sapphire from a shelf carrying it and other offerings to the dead masters. He held up the teardrop-shaped jewel, a gem covered in dirt, dust, and mud. Nick spat into the palm of his hand where the sapphire lay and tried to clean it. It failed, so he popped it into his mouth to use his saliva to loosen the muck and see the gem and its faceted brilliance. A sudden sound startled him, and he inhaled. I could feel it lodge in his windpipe. I could feel him try and fail to breathe. He tumbled to the ground as his vision blurred and dimmed. It was never clear, but somehow the stone dislodged itself, and he could breathe again. He knelt on the filthy floor gasping for air. In his foolishness, he nearly perished. The memory faded, and we woke from the sharing.

"The exorcism was only partially successful," I said, fearing there was more of Nick wandering around my skull than I wanted. "That was a DNA strand described on the walls of that first corridor."

"Yes, it was your DNA," Akira added. "That is what he wanted you to know--a design left behind by the Anunnaki twenty millennia ago. Nick told me about it after a particularly pleasurable night of lovemaking. He told me about finding the Tomb of the Hidden Masters, the Corridor of Promise, and that damned jewel. He believed he had swallowed it, but he was wrong. It had broken down into its basic components and bonded with him inside his brain. The gem was a massive colony of nanites, the very things that granted him his vast intellect and inspiration for crystal-based technology. Most of the wonders attributed to him belonged to a long-dead race. He took credit for it all."

"I need to reconnect mind and body, be patient with me."

"All the time in the world," Akira said.

I slipped on the clothing the Bastet had left for me. Once clothed, I stepped away from the fountain, took up a beginning position, and began a martial routine. It had become my go-to when I was stressed or needed to work things out in my head. Now, it has become a tool to knit mind and body back together. I was a third of the way through it before realizing it was an unfamiliar form. My hands formed claws, and the elegant footwork had to be kung fu style. Could it be the tiger school?