Project: Ashes 005

 Chapter 4 continued

Glorious Idiot had just walked into a massive portal sitting in the middle of a cyclopean wall that had flowed into existence right along side it and far above it.
Above her the ceiling was high, but high for a house were people lived, now moving towards the wall the ceiling had accelerated so far upwards that he couldn’t see where it ended, even though he had a pretty good look at it having lost his balance, now lying flat on the floor pausing for a moment to contemplate the nature of malicious irony and if he had been a bad person in his erased life. However a part of himself that burned as a strong beacon within his very centre told him that he had been a really awesome genius. He wasn’t sure if he should trust anything, even if it was deeply rooted in himself, that described it self with the words “awesome” and “genius”, but that fire sure was bright and warm.
So he got up dusted himself, looking at the portal that had defeated him during their first encounter. ‘Know thy enemy’, said a voice shrouded in shadows standing next to the beacon. His Reflector saw himself and his shards, knowing that he wasn’t like other people, people smiled and laughed. But well, all people apart from him and Needs a Sense of Humour woman were gone and he wasn’t. Oh and he was about to save the whole universe… with Needs a Sense of Humour together.

“And?”, asked Needs a Sense of Humour from behind him.

“Patience woman. I’m trying to get my bearings.”, he said feeling her rolling her eyes. He enjoyed that.

“In front of you,” she said, “that is the direction your nose is currently pointing, is a large portal. It leads to your swirly reactor. Open it. It is your door.”

He sighed. “Please, all of this is a bit perplexing, if I do say so myself. I recognise the door to the cascade spiral… generator… that word doesn’t feel right. I know it, like I know myself but like pretty much everything else I can’t actively remember anything about it. Of course if you, oh model of enlightened knowledge know more about this, please you go on and open it yourself.” He waited for an answer. It didn’t come. “I thought as much.”

He stared at the portal trying to take it in. It was absolutely massive, so much so, that he and his charming companion where reduced to motes of dust in its presence. The thing was probably round and along its outer edge it had a glowing inscription in a flowing run script that was arranged in wide elegant loops informing who ever was looking at it, that this was indeed a portal, including a helpful effect that shifted the colour of the script towards amber in the direction where there was a more human sized entryway, while shifting towards indigo when looking in the other direction.

He got up again studying the script. It did not tell him how to open the portal nor the smaller entry way that was pretty much in front of him. As he had been the designer of the portal it made sense to him that he would hardly print a nice and easy to understand instruction manual into the door it self detailing how to open it. What was behind it was one of the greatest engineering achievement of all time.

    ‘And yet look at you.’, thought the Scoffing Sage the part of him most of his other facets tried to silence. But they never succeeded. ‘In the end all you achieved was failure. At least there was the woman to save you.’
‘Bah!’, thought the Genius, who didn’t have time for this kind of negativity. “The machine worked. It is still working. Which is why we are here in the first place. What ever happened, the cascade spiral was not there to prevent it. It was there to save us in case the plan failed.”

He was pulled out of his thoughts by her voice. “How long to you need to stare at teh portal before it opens?”

“While I still know almost everything, I have forgotten pretty much everything.”, he said. Then falling silent again, that hadn’t made any sense.

“I know how you feel…”, she said. “Just follow your instincts. You spent decades building that thing. It is a part of you. Made it easy to pull it back. Just open that door how you keep opening that mouth of yours. No need for conscious thought.”, she smiled a thin smile.

He wanted to give her a well earned and lovingly sharpened answer, when he realised that in a way she was right. “He”, since his return, was this strange collection of amorphous voices, who were all him yet all different. But there was another presence no matter who was in focus taking the reins there always was the Infinite Sky above them its countless stars seeing all there was to see, showing him what he needed to know in its many constantly changing constellations. And right now the Infinite Sky reminded him of the Alternator. A handheld focus, not unlike the Eternal of the woman, but completely different. The Eternal was static, blocky and boring. The Alternator on the other hand was fluid, shifting and allowed him to move the world. She pulled at the threads of the universe, he set them in motion.

The Alternator appeared in his hand glowing in the deep blue of the deep ocean and the clear sky on a hilltop observatory. He raised it, high above and across his head pointing at the portal. He closed his eyes moving the Alternator around, feeling how it interacted with the portal until he felt just the right kind of resistance.
The Infinite Sky led his hand in a long circular motion which he made a little bit more dramatic than strictly necessary, setting in motion the mechanisms that held the portal in place.
He heard the voice of her behind him trying to vocalise a curse that died before it could be spoken, as the script on the edge of the portal began to shine, bright blue, flowing in strange curved paths inwards, engaging the machinery below it.
Billions of component parts rearranged themselves in three dimensions, passing through many falls paths and dead ends, that he had to carefully circumvent by directing their flow with the Alternator. A part of the portal moved in waves towards them forming  a tunnel around them. Closing them in pulling them towards the centre of the machine that was now being reestablished.  
“Yes.” He remembered now. It was not enough to open the portal. If one did that one would enter a gigantic work of art that looked like an incredibly complex machine, which didn’t do anything but shove energy around while looking mysterious and very stylish, the actual cascade spiral was hidden within the portal itself.