“Nothing but the rain.”
*
EARLIER: 87TH FLOOR BABEL INCORPORATED GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS, PORT TOWN
Radar, infernally augmented by Babel’s tower just picked up the flight of four–Hornets and a Ford minutes out. The Emperor of Earth (0x53) summons his staff, specifically the haruspices. They pray over the puffins they slaughter hastily. Liver first then the rest of the entrails into the brazier–poke impatiently. Cassius, still looking more scab than man inhales the stench and observes a long time. When he raises his face there’s an inhuman mortis-smile contorting the rotten tissue. The portents are good and all goes to plan.
In Shakespeare’s play he falls on his sword, but in life he learned-recursively to flee the field and leave a ringer. In the new cosmology he attempts the same: laughing, dancing mad he castrates himself. The demons in his court begin to chant an old song in a vile tongue, and every mortal watches in frozen horror. It’s not blood but ichor that pours from his underwhelming stump. He takes the hook blade to his own ears and nose, dancing mad toward a medical pod prepared in advance–medusa cables link it to a universal machine. A big toe and his left hand–Cassius hacks them off himself in turn gleefully. Each are taken by a demon who bows to the monster-once-man. He collapses into the med-pod giddy with ‘blood’ loss still laughing.
There is the demon’s singing/chanting and the sound something like a meat-grinder. “But he said the portents were good?” Babel’s CFO and Cassius Chief of Augury. “He said they were good?” And he’s still repeating himself when a demon get’s sick of it and snaps his neck.
The butcher’s knife does not hear cries and Cassius does not care for his minions–only that he have an audience to witness his greatness. And if he incinerates his audience as they bear witness? He’ll find another and another and so on.
13 forgettable mortals programmed with elaborate instructions leave Babel Inc.’s HQ. Each lugs a heavy load: lead lined envelopes. Each envelope is placed in a lead case that’s wrapped in an exotic carbon fiber shell and placed in a backpack stuffed with radar disrupting chaff.
Like heavy-metal dandelion seeds or beetle’s dung ball’s, they scatter. Demons escort and secret the 13 off into the multiverse–each carrying some portion of Cassius. Each will smuggle their bit of him like a profane relic back to their world for re-constitution.
The quick-witted among the mortals are wondering if they’ve been dupe-abandoned when the med pod start ejecting a pink jelly into a fishbowl at one end. When the demons elbow them out of the way and ignore them, they’re quite certain they’re going to die.
The demons disconnect the universal machine–the meter-by-meter infernal computing cube of immense power–from the array that links it to Babel’s tower. The block, as if out of spite and with intention, gives one great surge of power through the antennae atop the glass tower to the Tesla-and-Eiffel concoction-infernal across town.
*
Here’s the truth of it: this is what brought the Red Star down. Whatever lies or bullshit heaven or hell concoct to cover their implication-in or incompetence-around the Ignatian incursion, it was Babel’s tower–great source of magnetic interference in realms physical-metaphysical-and-beyond.
The locust was already falling, toward space–toward the multiverse from it’s orbit on the periphery. But the odds that it would ever–without intentional-vector–encounter much of anything (let alone an Earth to destroy) were non-zero low. I’m saying that when it’s baseball season, a lot of fastballs get thrown throw the fresh summer air (the multiverse). It’s a rare occasion for a bird to fly in front of one. What are the odds? Better than the odds that the Locust would hit an Earth with no help. ‘Space’ is aptly named and vast.
Cassius spite made manifest in Babel’s tower ripped the Red Star down. It did not call, it did not plead or politely request. The tower had stored so much energy when it did take the island(s) of St. Ignatius and rend them and re-fold and compress them further than they already were. The island(s) are a web, a spring. Ignatius is an archive, tesseract, a means of slant-ward/wise travel and Cassius machinery harnessed it’s very geometry to produce the energy to reach across the heavens, firmly grasp the last locust, and rip it down. And all this before the Ford and Hornets even arrived.
*
Ira standing in the doorway. Lu doesn’t notice the clover lurch up and claim what was an Earthly vessel. She is looking for every familiar scar on the tree trunk ankles of the woman walking toward her. She finds them all.
By the time her person-illuminated arrives in front of Lu, the clover has reclaimed the clay beneath. Ira helps Lu to her feet and they follow Nic into the burnt chapel.
In the burnt chapel there is no congregation, just a feast on a black slab surrounded by a particularly weird collection of weird sisters: Parson, Maddie, Nic–clothed in the holy bathrobes and comfortable jammies sublime. Each sister levitates cross legged, sipping perfect coffee. Each sister smokes fine, pungent, potent weed. The preacher was born-mortal, an a-series looking down her shnoz from the same old endlessly repeating sad-bastard eyes. Maddie, the young woman with frizzy hair, Medusa-snakes and resting anger. Nic-two women equal and opposite in all things in one form. Ira fixates with almost religious awe on her face–two-in-one lava-lamping across her skin.
“It’s not polite to stare” Two voices from one frame, equal and opposite. “I’m just fuggin with you.” And the weird sisters in bathrobes make a place of rest for the two women. They give them ambrosia, the perfect coffee and god’s herb, and they are reinvigorated. And as to the “who-are-you-why-are-you?” queries, Nic answers: “a long-past-long time ago, part of me was born right here on this island. It was a bad time, a time like today. This is my home, and those are my babies.” The weird woman gestures over Ira’s shoulder to the birds chirping, hopping, hissing and pecking at each other but waiting so politely at the threshold of the chapel.
*
After Leviathan saved all/some/most of the worlds–or at least the possibility of worlds–the church ethereal did celebrate. A portion of the convoy led by A(84) spent a few billion years bringing the good news to every corner of the scorched plane at the End of Time. A smaller portion kept the party going long after, making a joyful noise and making burnt herb offerings from the scorched plain up/down into the budding new multiverse.
The Witch had gone to her watch in a dead tree with a cheap telescope. The Parson was in the church growing arms. Adam was a million bits of broken glass rolling over ash. A(84) wandered and watched the garden grow, blowing smoke rings to heaven.
They caught him, a band of demons lead by him-not-him, another A-series who’d sold his soul–the one A(84) once cast into the Detroit river (and waterways thereabout). They lurked and followed the procession until the party ended–until the revelers and proselytizers and preachers and partiers trickled away. It took a million-past-a-million years to deliver the good news of Leviathan’s return to holed up Custodians, wayward angels, and wandering heretics.
But when the work was done, and when the beings celebrating left, all that was left was A(84) who couldn’t let go/un-clinch or unpucker, no sir. Neither could the Witch A(79). She went straight to her tree, and hung a telescope-albatross right around her neck. The other schnoz, A(84) reverted to fuck-up.
They found him alone on the plane, lying on his back on the Ford’s hood–high as fuck and staring up–and ambushed him. They smashed the watch in his chest to make him weak. They took his sword. They buried him vertically, packed ash in mouth and ears and nose and left him to desiccate.
*
A(84) hangs like fart above Port Town, over the large and still-growing crowd of demons below. He hangs by his bathrobe-become-parachute just above the time-frozen glass and shrapnel–the paused layer of metal rain over the town.
“You’re just delaying the inevitable dumb ass” a familiar voice (his own, almost) bullhorn distorted shouts up to him. Even at height, he can make out the eye-patch on the shit-heel who killed him.
“I don’t know why you’re in such a hurry for me to come down” the schnoz shouts back “I’m going to take that other eye when I get there.” He let’s go and falls like a stone toward the crowd of demons below.
*
The Fed trucks land, deposited by lightning outside Cassius shattered glass tower. The witch leaps on lighting to the roof of the sky-scraper, determined to work her way down while mal with her phalanx of G-beings works it’s way up.
Mal, steps out of a truck and raises an umbrella. The shrapnel and glass in the immediate area of the skys-scraping tower snaps into motion again, falls fast, and plinks off it like rain.
Any demons that wanted to fight already ran up the road, and the mortals surrender. The tone in the building is defeat, and the attitude is that of cooperation in a white collar raid.
High up in Cassius chambers it’s a horror show. Gore sprayed and smeared all across the floor, Cassius ‘humors’ spread everywhere. And there in front of his desk–the med-pod. Beside that the meter by meter-by-meter cube–the universal machine. Atop the box, the fishbowl, the jar full of snot and Kambucha-looking gunk–Cassius brain slurry.
There is an electric hum and the hair on every mortal’s neck stands on end. The ghostly hologram of Cassius’ face appears above the apparatus.
Mal stands at the threshold, the Witch and Bartleby flanking her.
“Welcome fools.” from the hologram and the snot in the jar seems to shimmy.
“If you could do brain in jar, why not brain in killer robot?” Mal lights a cigarette. “You have to know that you’re about to die in a pretty humiliating and powerless way.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, I’m going to pour you out.” She takes a step, but the witch mom-arms her. Picks up a piece of debris and throws it at the fishbowl. Sparks. Hiss. Equal opposite ricochet. Force field.
“Clever.” The witch appears fully illuminated, many arms arrayed behind her as a peacock’s feathers. She floats over the ichor on the floor, reaches through the force field and into the universal machine, snaps phased fingers. “Field is down.” Mal raises her pistol.
“This changes nothing. I am infinite and I am inevitable.”
“His name was Stan.” Mal shoots once, the bullet through and through the fishbowl. Brain-snot flows to the floor.
“This changes. I am infi-” The hologram glitch-twitches and distorts. “Infi-, infi-, a finite and mashed potato.”
She shoots again, and again again. The fishbowl shatters. The snot falls to the floor.
There is the sound of thunder, worn bearings grinding, god’s 56k modem screaming its last. A choir of angels going off a cliff in a charter bus. All the awful sounds that blur the vision and beat the gut. Eyes and ears on Ignatius bleed, all of them, every iteration of the island.
There in the sky, looming low over the Earth(s) (and visible or detectable nowhere else on Earth(s)) it hangs: the Red Star. The last Locust hangs over Port Town bigger than the moon and growing every-so-slowly larger by the second.
The Witch takes off her shades to see her nemesis hanging in the sky with bloodshot eyes. “Mother. Fucker.”
*
A(84) lands in the center of the main drag and the demons dog pile nothing, an illusion. “Clever. Come out chickenshit.” From the mirror-image–A(48) in the cheap suit with the stolen sword.
“Make me.” the flash of lighting one side of the street, along the base of a building. A(84) draws his sword across bathrobe sleeve, sheathes it. The building’s façade sags and falls on a few dozen demons.
84 charges. The one-eyed demon turns to meet him, sees only the bathrobe. The fuckup Ronin cast it like a net, and while the Betrayer struggles in the robe that befuddles him. Other demons, dogs in cheap suits, go down. Almost men with fang and claw and poor tailoring, and lead pipe or flaming crowbar or crude sword.
They don’t fight fare, but step-parry-slice, they’re not particularly gifted either.
By the time the betrayer frees himself, it’s just him the shnoz and a few dozen demons.
I’m gonna take that other eye now.” A(84) takes a broad stance, crouches low, sword held high over head.
“Eat shit.” The Betrayer nods to two demons in suits who charge.
*
Nic’s chapel, you’re on Nic’s time. Since she has the time, she tells them just a bit about when her story and Cassius’ intersect.
So long ago a number of years would be meaningless to you, Cassius found this place. On one of his many “new game plusses” while trying to find the river Styx and Charon, he ended up here.
It is high on the list of least happy accidents in human history, that Cassius Gaius Longinus would find this place. It was here he graduated from augury to the study of probability (and its manipulation), where he encountered the sacred geometry (though he was never worthy of it), and where he learned to became a truly trans-human terror.
There are certain kinds of paragons so glorious and bastards so awful that god made but one of them. Cassius was one of the latter. And wen he climbed the island’s unremarkable remarkable mountain and surveyed the garden, when he saw the nature of nature/creation/reality and brought his art of augury to bear on the whole multiverse, he saw not one other iteration of himself in the whole damn tapestry.
To the sort of man who makes narcissus look salt-of-the-Earth, that’s both an insult and invitation. He would see that every garden in the greater-garden had a Cassius growing in it. That first trip to St. Ignatius, shipwrecked here in a great storm, he knew this place was the key to escape, to conquest, to immortality.
*
Two goons charge, coats clinging to them, ties wild over their shoulders. A(84) parries the high blow from a crow bar left. Blocks a swinging knife right.
The smirking betrayer reaches a hand high, electricity leaping finger-to-finger, closes his fist and at a gesture a great cloud fist-full of the glass and hot shrapnel frozen above darts down and riddles A(84). He doesn’t care that it ‘kills’ two of his own (and the remaining demons don’t care either).
Two more demons charge front and back, sword and cudgel. The Betrayer flings metal rain from above. A(84)’s left hand rises and the bathrobe snaps into place like a flying-rug/shield above. It takes the shredding rain. Front goon has a sword high over head roaring. 84 steps, slices left-right-cross body, the demon is a cloud of ash. Footsteps behind, twist sword, side step slash-back, cut the second in half. Both are ash clouds. It happens again and again again: the goons charge, the betrayer snipes, and the schnoz gets weaker.
A(84) runs the last goon through, turns to face the Betrayer. He meets a car thrown super villain style.
*
In the chapel, the only source of light is the doorway, and it turns red as Nic continues. And when he learned how to unnaturally extend his life by consuming. “Don’t you mean possessing?” That’s not a thing, honey, I mean consuming his progeny. He made his way back here.
This was no Catholic mission, whatever symbols once lived here, it was his cult. And it was Cassius trading company that brought the pens and the people in chains later. Every backhanded hurtful-help loathe-love gift or demonstration of philanthropic largesse toward the island–even and perhaps the sincere ones, especially those–he had some hand in it as he spread himself across the centuries.
And in all that time he laid the groundwork for this: for an escape out into the multiverse.
“So how do we stop him?” My dear, we don’t. Ira get’s irate “but my home, my people.” We’re going to give the devil his due. “But what’s that got to do with us? We’re collateral damage in some god’s war?”
*
A(84) pushes the car off himself. Rolls onto his belly and begins crawling toward his sword on the sidewalk. “No no, you could hurt yourself with that.” A(48) drags him by the ankle out into the center of the street, lays him out along the yellow line. “Why don’t you just stop time?” Kicks to the ribs. “You’re nothing without that watch.”
“Bonus to the first being who finds me a car old enough to have a cigarette lighter.” And the remaining goons skitter off to do the Betrayer’s bidding.
“Fucking cowboy boots? Really? Who wears cowboy boots with a suit?” Kick. “Ohhhh Kay. That’s the last rib on that side that weren’t broke.” These boots are rad, douche bag. Kicks him harder. “Sure they are. You’re a cowboy from Ohio.”
The minions bring him a cigarette lighter, and their foul breath sets it red hot. The Betrayer straddles A(84) and holds the lighter over him taunting him. “I’m going to take both eyes.”
“Your boots are stupid” A(84) found a lose brick with the hand by his side, brought it up hard against the skull of A(48) on the blind side. Stunned, the demon drops the cigarette lighter.
That’s the instant the Red Star snaps into the sky over Ignatius. Even the demons vision blurs. Even they cup hands over their ears. When the trumpets sound over St. Ignatius, and only St. Ignatius, the suspended blizzard–the glass rain and shrapnel–falls hard and all at once.
A(84) grabs the Betrayer by the lapels, pulls him down as a human shield. He hears the nearby demons hiss and *pop* to puffs of dead smoke.
*
“Our people are actually gonna be quite fine, hon.” It’s Gram-Gram or her ghostly-apparition in the doorway of the chapel. She and a gaggle of puffins lead the villagers to the chapel, and Gram-Gram “had words for a few neighbors, the ones that handed you over. We had a little chat about something called ‘loyalty.'” Thanks Gram.
*
A(84) bench presses the born-mortal demon skewered to him up-and-off a spear of shrapnel. He’s looking at his own dead eyes and lolling mouth when he flings the corpse off him. He looks to his abdomen and has one giggle before the pain pushes him to the brink of unconscious. Cyrillic script and the edge of a stenciled Soviet flag on the metal–a little bit of the casing of the telephone-pole-long missile that almost killed him on the way in. He rolls to his side and finds his feet, finds his sword and takes back the blade the Betrayer took.
“He walks. Slowly and bleeding badly, but with the endurance of illuminated. These magnificent and transcendent beings are difficult to kill in the extreme. Even the lil’ scrawny chicken limbed ones. Even the dumb ones, like this shithead right here.” I can hear you. “Then why do continue the grim procession? There’s nothing left to do here.”
A(84) keeps limping down the main drag, the Parson A(523) levitates cross-legged over his shoulder bathrobe and jammy vestments–many arms arrayed behind her like a Peacock. “Because I’m not convinced you aren’t a hallucination.” I gotta get Nic to give me some pointers on gravitas. “Nic’s dead, now I know you aren’t here.” I assure I’m here, uhh “yadda benotaffraid yadda” and offers an ambrosia beverage–green weed slushie from the EOT.
“Drink this and retire from the field.” No. “You did plenty.” He stops and points up at the red thing looming, now half the sky. The Locust is covered in pockmarks and fissures–it’s mouth-parts visible like a tiny mountain. I know I did plenty, again. “We have a plan.” We always have a plan and it always makes things worse.
“So what are you going to do?” While she waits, the parson’s free hands ‘come-hither’ and call all variety of snacks from nearby dispensaries, bodegas, drug stores and corner stores–all the good shit you can’t get fresh outside of time.
“I’m going to kill Cassius.” Deputized mortal beat you to it. “Well fuck.” And he leans on his hip on the hood of car so as to not disturb the skewer. “I will” Long pause. You’ll stab the giant space rock with your slicey-sword? “I have two.” That will certainly make you twice as effective against the giant space monster.
A(84) turns and limp-lumbers on toward Babel’s headquarters. “There could be wounded civilians in the rubble.” I have a few friends in HVAC, you used to as well. They did good, thorough, very quick work in the realm of search and rescue. “Bullshit.” He takes one step. There’s a clearing in the woods and a way out and forward. He staggers a second step, waivers, falls.
*
A flight of four left the carrier, and as-planned three F-18’s followed their precise path back–a path now-visible to the pilots. They’d barely secured the planes when the winds changed. The seas grew angry and angrier still. In the sky to the east over the islands there it was: looming low, the Red-Star so close it was wrecking tides and causing earthquakes–entering the upper atmosphere and falling fast toward St. Ignatius.
“Admiral, what are your orders?” And the best he can do is jut his chin.
*
They confiscate the infernal universal machine. Heaven’s feds take disk drives and storage media of all types from paper to magnetic to crystal. They finger print and metaphysically ID tress-passing Dice-Cultists so that they can be returned from where they came and perhaps re-filled with something like a human personality or intellect.
They do all of the above quickly, all except the Witch A(79) who feels like she’s been run through. Feels gut shot. Somehow, someone got her outside and back to the convoy. Evidence, crates and barrels of it, great piles made its way to the fed trucks. The organizational apparatus hummed all about her, but the witch stood stunned and defeated there in the headlights. “Leave me.” And when Bartleby puts a hand on her shoulder she punches him. Repeatedly. The sword comes out.
“I don’t know much.” Mal snaps and a joint appears in her hand. “Look at me.” Snaps again and a second joint appears. She lights both and puts one in the ancient younger woman’s mouth. “I don’t know much about how woo-woo works yet. But if you stay and die, it’s just me and Bartleby against the forces that do this” gesturing at the destruction all around. “Come on.” The witch sheathes the sword. The women head back to the third truck in the convoy.
They’re roaring down the street at hideous speed, the main drag driving away from Babel HQ. The Red Star makes an audible friction hiss in the upper atmosphere. The great red writhing bulk dominates the sky from horizon to horizon, larger-much-larger than any Locust thus far observed. “Why are we still here?” from Mal.
“Gotta make a pickup.” The Parson waits levitating up ahead, a bathrobe with a heavy load santa-sacked over her shoulder. A G-man standing on the runners of a vehicle catches her by the hand, helps her inside on the fly. She passes the sack of A(84) to the back of the vehicle for medical assistance. Quiet lightning lifts the convoy off the disintegrating road just as whole buildings, as great tower waves in the harbor are being drawn up to the Locust that crashes down.
*
The Locust strikes St. Ignatius and St. Ignatius alone. The Locust strikes less like an asteroid and more like a bullet, compressing against the island–the physical manifestation of a metaphysical force. And the force in force-equals-mass-times-acceleration kinda-way was added to the force, the energy, that’s always-already stored in places like St. Ignatius. The power of the Locust impact, what Cassius machine added, the natural “spring” of the island(s) all conspired and colluded until they crossed the energy-mass-conversion threshold and the real fun began.
*
There is a chapel in a clearing in the forest surrounded by clover and filled with the sweetest little vicious birds you’ve ever seen that guard the place like hell hounds. Inside sit witches, heretics, refugees. The space grew and stretched and encompassed all who needed refuge, comfort, succor.
Nic was dead until the people had need of her again. They are, all of her are, the patron saint of the island. She called for help in this very clearing and was answered by a thing old and foul, and if she paid a cost for that, she’s been determined ever since–forever past forever–to answer the call of any Ignatian (and to do so for free).
Nic, she who is two women (at least two) equal and opposite in all things is so tied to this place that the lamentations of the birds and the people called her back.
They called her back just in time to see the islands nearly destroyed. .
*
There’s continuity between matter and energy, we knew this by the time Einstein wrote the warning letter about the A-bomb. We knew it though we did not not have any way outside of bombs to make the crazy-stupid amount of energy required to see that continuity in being and action.
The force of impact, the beautiful elegance of F=MA does to the Locust what Cassius couriers are currently doing to the bits of his his corpse: delivered it elsewhere.
Simple as I can say it: St. Ignatius exists across Earths. If you are on the islands? You are in a very real way, at least two places at once. When the last Locust struck St. Ignatius, it embedded itself in every Earth with a bird-shit covered set of islands called St. Ignatius–all of them, every single one.
*
EOT
*
The mobile command caravan sits under camouflaged netting. Armed guards surround the lonely liminal: this one’s a factory where work came for a bit before running off where labor was cheaper.
Inside Bartleby sweats, purely figuratively, “Please help.” Looking to Mal, whose all high as fuck and passing a flask back and forth with A(79) who rises only to go smash something inanimate and seethe outside before returning to drink and sulk.
“Who me?” Yes you. “What do your superiors say?” The only superior I have left is god’s machine and it says to keep submitting reports and ‘await instruction.’ “So do that.” That’s the only thing it’s ever said. I’d rather not wait. So again, help me.
Mal points the hand with the flask at the universal machine with an evidence tag on it. “That’s not from Cassius world” How do you know? “Looks wrong. All the shit in the tower did. Cable splices, electrical tape. Rat’s nest” So what? “That’s tech that doesn’t talk to each other. He stole it.” From where? “Go find that out.” Bartleby takes two steps toward the door. “For fuck’s sake, man. Delegate.” She gestures at two G-beings who skitter off to find what Earth(s) the stolen gear came from. She stands and staggers to the table, puffing on a joint. She frowns and sways surveying the strat-game geopolitical map of the multiverse. She kicks the universal machine. “Untapped resource, plug it in and let’s crunch some numbers.”
She takes a swig from the flask, passes it back to the Witch. A born-mortal, a sulking witch, and heaven’s Feds plan roadblocks in the firmament in the hopes of catching the 13 pieces of Cassius–thirteen pieces that can let the man congeal, consume someone else, and reconstitute himself in new form on new worlds.
*
Deep in his bunker on the opposite half of the scorched plain at the End of Time, professor Woland watches the evening news. A minion rubs molten, sulfurous ointment on his gout. He winces, and when the segment on St. Ignatius plays, it’s so sweet he rewinds it to watch it a second time. “The test applies to all or it applies to none.”
*
END CASSIUS AND THE WITCH CHAPTER 6