Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of illusion. Just as a candle cannot
burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life. As it is the nature of wisdom and truth, older
than the mere confines of time themselves. But he can live without
verschwommenes, just as the first
man came to live without his first wife. And orphaned children learn to grow up without their birth mothers. Albeit in the simplest and purest forms of providence and veracity, he was never truly an orphan.
Quite far from it, yet death became his untimely importance. Driven by a lingering unknown temptation under side the orthogonal function of his consciousness. Something or better yet someone, faintly whispered as if underneath one's breath.
"Long time..."
"No see, old friend."
The prolonged, deep low pitched
and distorted unsettling voice cut through the great boundless
darkness, forming in the aether of the void of empty nothingness. As an ire and ominous faceless silhouette peered into focus. The figure was nothing but onyx pitch-black barely visible yet entirely drenched in light,
as if it's mere presence quenched the illumination around it and basked in it's ever lasting inglorious splendor. Like an old lighthouse
guiding lost sailors to the edge of it's shore, but it was nothing more than a thing of broken dreams and perverted nightmares. Forever disfigured and stigmatized by the whispers from the shadows.
"Wast thou ever friends *!@%?#$"
Suddenly another voice with commendable vigour reminiscent of redeeming qualities and a slightly more human tone spoke, as if in sequential response. Thereafter an eminent mutable discordant aftershock could be heard rumbling subsequently. With loud tremors like an unimaginable roar with intense shockwaves of seismic activity. But it was as if there were a thousand whispering voices faintly muttering in the background, that could convey speech without words. Yet still, there was a flawless retention of mutual understanding in the natural flow of conversation. Which seemed a little more based and akin to connection, rather than just the communication itself.
"They first came to me as echoes from the ether, and there after..."
"As lamenting screams of agony and despair, the dying breaths of The Bhikkhu Monks Of The Mikkyo Order."
Then suddenly, a blinding light coherently flickered followed by an array of flashing distorted and convulsive visions. Like a raging thunderstorm racing before his very eyes, faster than his human mind could begin to comprehend.
Horrifying scenes of mass murder -- massacre and genocide, the fruits and spoils of war. With blood stained contusions, lesions and scars, a misfortunate but fleeting niche of rotting and decaying flesh. Each and every single moment seemed increasingly more dire. Like a sesspool of miserability and despair, the staggering confusion felt as if one was being torn through a sunder of different worlds.
"Their vital essence now forever sealed within my Trishula, The Trident Of Devastation..."
With it's prongs, each spike resonating with the names and memories of eighteen hundred thousand departed souls, trembled as he spoke.
"The old laws grow weaker...
"And soon they will wither away along with these barriers..."
"Then the ugaritic walls of the stereoma will come tumbling down, like the falling leaves of an old dying pine tree."
But before anything could happen, no reaction, response nor expression inclined. In any impassive or expressionless manner, it was just dead pan silent as the grave.
And then, miraculously as if drawn by unseen hands, the entire ordeal dissolved into nothingness, snuffed out in darkness, fading into the yawning void from which it had been born. Out of the blue a mind opening light at the end of the tunnel inexorably shone, as stimuli gradually enveloped.
And one fully succumbs and awakes from the subconscious tether of the psyche. Hyper ventilating and gasping for air as he woke up from his slumber, soked in night sweats. The mind and body still in shock, as the andreline rushed to his beating heart in his pounding chest. As he immediately sat up straight on his bed and gradually took some time to catch his breath. Devastated, he desperately tries to keep his wits by him. Attempting to clear his mind as a means to ponder and reflect upon the nature of his dream but the mere experience was nothing but utterly horrid and astounding.
Now disdained by the mental images that have been burned into his retina, he simply gets out of bed and heads outside for some fresh air.
Calmly breathing in and out whilst gazing at the view of the wonderful starry night sky, for tis was still dusk before dawn and the morning sun had not yet risen. And the boy had never been out in the city late at night or experienced insomnia before.
After an hoursworth of introspective thought and contemplation young Appolyse decides to go out a little early for his morning run today.
As he heads south of the island, running at a relatively slow pace to preserve stamina and endurance for the entire full lap. Still bestrickened and weighed down by the weight of his strange dream. He has a rather
blurred and fogheaded perception but he is slowly becoming of sound mind and body. Tracking along the island contour, he notices a small group of men causing commotion near the seaport.
And he feels the vigour of curiosity overwhelming caution, and thus he decides to approach the docks and get a closer look.
"Utterly ridiculous!"
The deep based voice of an old grumpy drunkard sailor could be heard shouting from one of the
Aqua Galleons by the docks.
"How? Where could it have gone?"
As the other smugglers murmured
on as if response to a previously mentioned statement in argument.
The gangway gate busted open,
spitting out a skinny young man tumbling onto the docks. As the gangway gate shut close after him, the irritable commotion gradually exacerbated. Until it became a full on skirmish, and all the seamen were aggressively barking at each other and pointing fingers as if asserting some form of blame to one another. As they grumbled on the innocent bystander on the side simply picked himself up and carried on, standing up on his feet and dusting himself off.
"Ugh, still hate that part".
The meagre and dashing young gentleman muttered whilst adjusting the collar of his faded leather trench coat. With the mainland spread out before him, a sprawling neon-drenched
biopunk heterotopia of chrome towers and grim dark alleys.
The journey across the sea was long and treacherous with the sky a bruised canvas of perennially overcast clouds. It had taken him a full fortnight to deport off The Democratic Republic Of Libya, before The Mafia caught word of his whereabouts since his last endeavor.
On his last mission, Red made the mistake of double-crossing The Black Muchachos Mafia. And shooting El Chapo, the head huncho.
Ever since that move, he's been burning hot. A risky play even for him being the boss's right hand man but still his always been a hotheaded fool.
After his middle man had gotten him a new connect with a lead operating deep in The Black Market. The underground illegal market for xenotransplantations, firearms, nuclear weapons, bio chemicals, narcotics and necrotransplantation.
Involving any surgical operations of
the most extreme cases pertaining to all strange manner of mauna and faunachron body parts and organs.
His designated mission was to steal Newtonium (also known as Element X-125) a quantum nuclear fusion reactor functioning as a self-renewing and perpetually versatile energy core. Nesting on the island of stability with it's arcane glow painting the landscapes in sickly silvern and blue cyber hues, a constant reminder of humanity's hubris. It's nucleus produces a quantum tunneling field that suppresses proton repulsion, allowing continuous fusion.
The Secluded Island Of Orizaba Hiroshima shrouded in mystery, which has come to be rumored to be The Surgery Of Death were life ending operations and man slaughtering contraptions are made.
A few hours later, after poorly navigating the mainland's labyrinthine underbelly. And bartering with a one-eyed, jutting chin and pipe-smoking
smuggler called Popovich for directions. Red found himself on an old and rusty ferry with the toiling and roaring of the sea, its bite like acid on bare wood.
But still the scoundrelish vagabond
treads on steadfast ahead looking on to The Orizuru Tower on the horizon, shining like the north star with its power grid still faintly humming even from the distance.
With the cold and foggy mountains looming over, their peaks incessantly
shrouded in storm clouds even as the lower slopes were carved into precarious rocks. The air here was different – thinner and sharper
with a slight salty taste and
the scent of something much much older. As the old ferry groaned into a rickety, empty and dusty dock covered in dustbunnies and spiderwebs. Red disembarked, the metal gangplank groaning under his weight. The dock was mostly deserted, save for a few haggard-looking fishermen mending nets under the flickering glow of a single, bare bulb. And then, he saw him.
A kid no older than 11, maybe 7. He was hiding behind a stack of dilapidated crates near the base of the mountain, knees drawn up to his chin admiring the view.
His clothes were threadbare, too large for his skinny frame, and his hair a shock of unkempt umber. Framed a face that looked far too innocent to incur any suspicion.
Red sauntered over, a practiced smirk playing on his lips.
"Rough day huh, kid?"
He asked, his voice a smooth charismatic and gravelly purr.
The boy didn't flinch, didn't even turn his head. His eyes, the color of
the ambers of a burning flame, remained fixed on the horizon.
"The tide will take what it wants..."
He says, his voice a flat monotone devoid of childish innocence.
"Always does."
Red raised an eyebrow, noticing that the boy is not the usual doe-eyed street urchin. Intrigued by this enigmatic stanger's demeanor, he normally teased again.
"Beautiful, isn't it?..."
Red charismatically continued to banter with the enigmatic youngster.
"The way everything just shifts about in sin city --- the city of a thousand windows, did you know they say the city never sleeps?"
But still the boy remained silent, still
staring out into the turbulent sea with an unnervingly vacant expression.
"Deep thoughts for a little guy, huh"
He informally muses again, while leaning against a rusty bollard.
"Hey kid, you waiting for someone?"
Then suddenly the boy slowly turned around, and finally spoke with a rather an unsettlingly direct gaze.
"No one ever comes for me."
His voice reminiscent of a weariness that belittled his age, something Red had personally learned to recognize from countless broken souls he'd encountered in his own lifetime.
"Yep, they never do."
Red leveled with the boy, a low, dry and slightly sarcastic expression. While trying to put a read on him.
"Tell me about it mate, story of my life."
He pulled out a crumpled pack of synth-cigarettes, offering one to the child.
"Want one? Sort of builds character, or at least that's what I've been told."
The boy stared at the cigarette being handed out to him and then back at the man handing it out.
And then all of sudden concurrently, in a single glimpse something unreadable flickered in his eyes.
"They're poison."
Then Red blatantly laughs at the boy's statement, while completely at ease with a magnetic confidence radiating from his casual pose and charismatic demeanor.
"Everything's poison kid..."
He retorted, while lighting his own cigarette with a plasma lighter.
"It's all just a matter of taste really."
As he unapologetically came to his conclusion, while exhaling a plume of acrid smoke into the cold air.
"Ah, where are my manners. The name's Red by the way, and you are?"
"My name is Appolyse."
"Appolyse."
He repeated, tasting the name as he slowly inhaled the smoke of his cigarette and he exhaled it out again.
"So, Appolyse, what's a smart kid like you doing out here?"
"Contemplating the existential dread of maritime currents, I presume?"
Red partially laughs to himself and
Appolyse shruggs, while hugging his knees tighter.
"Watching, waiting for change."
Red took another drag, his eyes narrowing as he looked a bit confused by the boy's statement.
"Change, huh? Sounds kinda vague and ominous.
"You mean like, oops The Yedoma Core finally went critical and turned everyone into glowing puddles kind of change?"
"Or more like, my pet rocky finally evolved into a great strange monster kind of change?"
"Neither..."
The boy indifferently concluded, as his gaze drifting back to the dark and gloomy shadowed ice peaks up in the mountains.
"The one where hope returns, the one that birthed misery."
Red felt a cold shiver trace its way down his spine, a fleeting feeling he rarely experienced.
Hope and misery -- the kid wasn't just spouting nonsense, there was a chilling conviction in his tone that felt rather reminiscent of a detached understanding of cosmic horror. He had only ever heard whispered in the darkest corners of The Black Market, the unchartered dominion of The Diabolical Wretchman.
"Nah, sounds like you've been reading too much, kid"
Red casually remarked slighty forcing a lighter tone, although his mind was still racing from the boy's previous statement.
"Or maybe just not enough. What makes you think this misery comes from hope?"
Appolyse finally stood up on his feet, his small frame surprisingly firm and resolute.
"Sorry, I was just thinking outloud..."
"I'm actually supposed to be hiking high up in the mountains."
He gestured towards the gorgeous, snow covered peaks in the heart of the mountain.
Red looked at the boy with a rather baffled and confused expression, quietly thinking to himself.
All the way from the docks, to the ferry, the boy and then the mountains. A new calculus began to form in his cynical mind. He could tell that this wasn't just an ordinary child, but a local steeped in vast information of the history of this community.
But nevertheless it felt a tad bit risky and dangerous, although the boy could be useful or perhaps a walking disaster. Either way, he was far more interesting and informative
than his RADAR.
Radio Active Detection And Ranging device that separates ions by mass and charge ratio. Detecting alpha, beta, gamma emission, nuclear spin and vibrational frequency changes. If any radioactive elemental substances are in proximity, they can be detected by the radiation they emit, and this is called radioisotopic labeling.
"Okay kid, look"
Red says, stubbing out his cigarette.
"I've gotta proposal for you"
"What if I told you I could take you to Isaac?"
And in that single moment the boy's behavior drastically changed as he
seemed a little bit more upbeat. Appolyse turned to Red, as his radiant amber eyes gladden finally holding a smidgen of hope.
"Wait a minute, You know Isaac?!"
Appolyse asked Red with a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement, as his heart skipped a few beats.
He had also become substantially intrigued by this strange man. In the few moments since he had mysteriously appeared by the docks. But now, the boy is genuinely beginning to question himself about him.
"Yeah, I think everybody knows your brother kid."
Red casually replied with a smile that could charm secrets from a sphinx and hands that could steal them just as easily.
"Um, the weird blue skinned alien intergalactic figure head -- right?"
"Infamously known as The Prodigal Starchild or at least that's what we called him in The Galactic Federation, you know back when we were still working together."
"Although it looks like you and I
still have a lot to chat about"
"And maybe, just maybe, if you're lucky, I'll teach you how to con a desperate space merchant out of his last Galactic Credits."
"You know, everything is a negotiation kid. You just gotta pick your cards right, comprende mate."
"Yes sir I understand."
Appolyse responded with a new found sense of kinship and
shared understanding.
"Mr Red sir, can you teach me?"
Red slightly grinned, a flash of predatory charm whilst exuding a rollicking hooliganish comportment.
"Kid, it's Red just Red and yes I can."
"I can teach a blind man to see the lies in his own reflection. But I can never take a mule to the river and force him to have a drink."
He than extended his right hand arm with an open palm, in a gesture of good will and mutual respect.
"What do you say kid, partners?"
Appolyse looked at the outstretched hand, then back at the looming silent peaks of the mountains. The wind howled a low, mournful tune through the snow covered peaks.
"Come on kid."
Red teases with his charming voice a brilliant catalyst of what his deceiving eyes convey in ambient silence as a slight tact of conviction.
Likewise, Appolyse mutually reached
out and they both shook hands as a means of a gentleman's agreement.