They lingered for two days by the rift on Earth to make sure the danger had passed. It made no appreciable difference to Hector. Once he’d entered War Barge Kevin, he’d effectively left the pnet. There was no communication off the barge except through Kevin himself.
On the barge, things were different than what he expected.
There was no way to soften the sting to his ego. He’d been discarded by the leadership now that they had what they wanted. Evelyn had a private room, ate in the officer mess, and spent her time among the other Arahant.
Hector occasionally encountered one of his friends in passing. Otherwise, he was on his own. The many Jinn who slept in his compartment were considerate of him in a distant way. They wouldn’t engage in conversation, but they helped him whenever he had a problem.
It was a lonely time. He was cut adrift from his previous life and yet to discover his new pce in the world. Cultivation could fill a lot of his time, but not all of it. Despite his drive to advance, he wasn’t a machine. Nor did he have any strict deadline pushing him forward. His long sessions were a symptom of boredom more than anything.
He’d found the fitness center and rapidly learned that he was too strong to use equipment designed for baseline humans. He worried he would break the machines before he felt any strain. Even the cardio equipment failed to stimute him. The transition to the peak of the fourth level had happened in truly unusual fashion. He wondered if it was unique in history. Who cultivated to level four with zero body enhancement, then took a ptinum psma elixir?
Since he had no need to rush forward, Hector used a good deal of the energy he gained through cultivation for a mental strengthening technique. He would empty his mind and circute cosmic energy through it. There was a certain amount of resistance to the circution and over time the amount of energy would decline as it melded with the mind aperture. The result was increased intelligence, resilience, endurance, and resistance.
He liked the first three benefits, but the real reason he practiced the technique was to gain defense against mental manipution. Volithur never encountered the Arahant, but Hector found himself interacting with them quite a bit. He suspected his future would be a great deal more diverse than what was in his inherited memories.
At the end of the second day of observation, Kevin rose upward to leave the atmosphere behind. Any Jinn crew off duty crowded to the nearest window or screen to observe. When Hector had asked enough questions, one of the men began to describe the process.
“Kevin is going to use his gravitonic field to create an artificial singurity. It distorts spacetime so that he can stretch it past the primordial chaos and reach another universe. We cross over a bridge of spacetime and appear somewhere else.”
“That’s crazy,” Hector said.
The man squinted at him. “It’s technology. Your kind goes around in magic balls.”
“That’s what she said.”
The man didn’t get Hector’s The Office reference, of course.
From his vantage point, the background of stars seemed to ripple oddly, then stretch out like it was a scene printed on estic. The stars faded away to darkness as they entered the space between universes.
“That’s it for a while. We’ll be in the between for hours.”
“It’s just dark until then?”
“Bck as coal.”
Since everyone else was moving away from the window, Hector got a better spot. He settled in to cultivate with his aura, wondering if the cosmic energy would be any more plentiful in a pce like that. It was not. The bridge of spacetime was no different to any of his senses.
So he switched back to chaos cultivation with his externality.
The return of light happened slowly. Stars began to appear as faint streaks which grew brighter. Then they snapped into pce in a normal sky. They’d crossed over. Hector looked out at space for a few minutes before growing bored. The gravitonic field meant he didn’t get to experience weightlessness. It was no more magical than watching a night sky on television.
He almost made it to his bunk when a kxon began to sound. The Jinn rushed to reach their battle stations, leaving Hector uncertain about what he should do for a few minutes. Eventually he arrived at the obvious conclusion. He was supposed to stay out of the way.
Sitting on his bunk and cultivating, Hector counteracted his curiosity with ironic self-talk. “I’m in the wrong genre at the moment. This is obviously military science fiction happening around me. They’re making bck holes to jump to different universes and have the whole ‘battleship in space’ thing going on. I’m clearly supposed to be more ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ style.”
Hours passed before some of the Jinn rotated back to their bunks.
“It’s a fallen world,” one said when asked about the situation. “The monsters have killed most of the people living there. Kevin will need to sterilize the world before they infect this universe’s ground state. Then we leave before the universe colpses.”
Apparently the Coalition Army didn’t always win. Sometimes they settled for mopping up the mess by destroying an entire world. How did the Jinn destroy a pnet? Antimatter bombs.
“Antimatter? Doesn’t one of you have to sacrifice themselves to do that?”
The Jinn grew somber. “For an entire world? More like ten of us.”
Hector didn’t know what to say to that. He certainly couldn’t help. He doubted even Lord Annihitor could destroy an entire world. Xian just weren’t meant for destruction on those scales. Days passed in orbit. He ate at the mess, slept in his bunk, and cultivated as much as he could stand. The mood was dour enough that he didn’t get many opportunities to ask questions.
“What are they waiting for? Our options aren’t going to get any better.”
Hector heard a lot of simir opinions expressed by his neighbors. They knew some of the antimatter attendants had to sacrifice themselves. Everyone assumed the dey was cruel. For Hector, it all seemed grotesque. Wasn’t the whole point of technology to move beyond the limits of humanity? Why did their antimatter munitions require the sacrifice of a life? That sounded more like a twisted Arahant ritual than a rational Jinn tool.
He didn’t know how much more of the manic cultivation schedule he could handle. His reserves had reached about half capacity. Another seven days and he could advance to level five if he wanted. The mental strengthening barely consumed any of his energy when he used the technique and that was the only drain he currently had.
“Look at you, slumming it with the enlisted!”
Hector looked up at his friend. “Rod? Did you get lost?”
His friend scratched his head. “I did, actually. Several times. But I found you, so now we can head back to the forward observation deck.”
Hector was out of his bunk in half a second. He didn’t know why Rodrick would invite him to a section of the barge he hadn’t seen yet, but Hector was ready to do anything. On the walk there, he almost changed his mind.
“You’re telling me Confgration wants me getting involved in an Arahant ritual?”
“Not ‘involved’ with it. You’re not one of us. It wouldn’t work.”
“That’s not what you just said.”
“Confgration wants you to donate some cosmic energy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Honestly, Hector, me either. I was told to ‘fetch the Xian’.”
The forward observation deck was the size of a conference room with one wall composed entirely of reinforced gss. The center of the floor was cleared away, though by the chairs and tables packed on the sides of the room, that had not always been the case.
One of the Jinn was having an animated argument with Persuasion while Confgration suspended a balled piece of paper from a lighting fixture using a length of string. The lesser Arahant were waiting in silence. Evelyn appeared by his side as he was trying to discern what was happening.
“It works most of the time,” she said.
“What works most of the time?”
“Illusory energy and legal energy are almost mirror images of each other. In the days since Levinia’s time they’ve found ways to let them work together.”
A memory rose in his mind. “Cosmic energy can be an emulsifier.”
“So you have heard of this?”
“That’s how the Dream Engine worked.”
Confgration finished hanging the ball of paper and took a candle from Zelda. “Simple chant from the chorus to build the base. Cantor establishes the correspondence. I guide the effect. Hector, donate your cosmic energy to the fme.”
“Sage, I’m not sure what you’re asking me to do.”
“Donate energy when I light the candle. It’s not complicated.” Confgration held up a finger to forestall any further words from Hector. “Kevin, you will give us the countdown?”
The war barge’s voice sounded throughout the room. “I strongly object to burning the paper. We agreed when you came on board that you would limit yourself to candles.”
“This is not for the purpose of contemption. You agreed to a joint working.”
The other Arahant moved to form a circle around the Sage of Confgration and the hanging paper globe. Hector found himself pushed forward to fnk the sage on one side while Zelda mirrored him on the other side.
Zelda swayed her pointer finger back and forth like a conductor three times and then flicked it down. “Burn,” the ring of Arahant said as one. Swish, swish, swish, flick. “Burn.” Swish, swish, swish, flick. “Burn.”
Hector’s mental senses had never been particurly potent, but even with that deficit he sensed something happening. It was like a malicious presence coiled around the room and was trying to decide which victim would be the most delicious morsel. He instantly took back the comparison he’d made to himself about the depressing sacrifice required for Jinn antimatter deployment being like a twisted Arahant ritual. That was just an unfortunate consequence of a nearby human needing to be the source of legal energy. What he sensed coming into existence around him was real bck magic. Palpable destructive intent caused the hair on his arms to rise in panic.
As Zelda continued cuing the tempo, she began to speak in a nguage that sounded suspiciously like Latin, though they undoubtedly called it by another name. Her words were decisive and hard. The clipped tempo almost made it sound like she was rapping. The performance caught the attention of the invisible beast. Hector no longer felt like the predator gazed upon him.
The chant in the background and the Latin rap weaving among it had a vaguely psychoactive effect on him. He wasn’t part of the malignant ritual, just an unwilling observer, but he felt the warping of reality.
“Ten,” Kevin began the countdown over the intercom.
Zelda’s swishing and flicking picked up in pace, causing the chant to move faster. Her angry, archaic accusations grew more vitriolic. Hector sensed he was in the eye of a supernatural hurricane. Kevin slowly counted down the seconds while the intensity of the ritual became a caustic delirium.
At one second out, Confgration lit the candle with a touch of his finger. He nodded to Hector, an obvious signal that he was to do his part now.
Donating cosmic energy wasn’t something he was familiar with. When Volithur had been shoved into the Dream Engine, the device had done all the work itself. Hector extended his domain and pced a cable of force into the fme of the candle. It flickered at the contact but didn’t go out.
Kevin said ‘ignition’ at the exact moment both of Zelda’s hands swatted down, causing the Arahant chorus to scream the word ‘burn’ as she went silent. The invisible beast that was the ritual struck out. Confgration wove the power like a master artist.
And cosmic energy drained from Hector like the cable of force connecting him to the candle was a straw leading directly to his soul reserves. The ritual greedily sucked his hard-won benefits away.
From the rge window, a fsh of light grew to immense proportions.
Confgration extended the candle to the globe of wadded paper. It burned. The paper ball. The world below. The two were fundamentally no different to Hector. He couldn’t look at the one without also seeing the other. They’d become metaphysically entangled to such a degree that they were the same thing. The ritual raged on the conjoined existence, eagerly burning.
