“I found you,” Alia says.
She is standing outside the IP shipport in a greenspace that resembles a park. There are a few trees that have long, thin trunks and leaves in tight, round circles like puffs of hair. There is a body of water and a walkway around it set into the artificial grass.
A large man with horns sits in the grass and he stares at the still water.
“I didn’t realize you were looking for me. I wasn’t hiding.”
He doesn’t use a universal translator to speak to her, though it is clear from his accent that English is not his native language.
“I really found you?”
The man shrugs, “What is my name? Look at me closely.” He looks Alia in the eyes.
“Solse Prab of Bromeran.”
The man shrugs again.
“Why are you looking for Solse Prab of Bromeran?”
“I want you to show me how to speak with God.”
“How do you know that you do not speak to one now?”
Alia says, “Because Sole Prab is not a God.”
“He is not,” the man says. “So what am I? This Solse Prab or a God you happened upon sitting quietly among neatly trimmed foliage?”
“Maybe you are something else. Why are you here?”
“I enjoy the contrast, this tiny spot of green and the vastness of space in the distance behind the dome of this spaceport. I could stare at it all day.”
“But how did you come to be here if you are not Solse Prab, or anyone else that I know?”
“The Kazi call to their Ife-Osu and I hear them. And they have much to say about you who will make the world right, the universal bright light.”
“You are Ife-Osu?” Alia asks.
“I get messages intended for Ife-Osu, I don’t know if that is being Ife-Osu. I have not always heard the calls of the Kazi, I have not existed as long as they have. But the Kazi are authorities on sentience, capable of access to the many secrets of existence, and they please my master.”
Alia is perplexed.
“Will you come with me to speak with Par-Cell 77? She would be interested in hearing this.”
The man shakes his head and his long horns move slowly through the air.
“That part is over now. Your journey has begun and the clock is ticking. One act will change everything, in ways the Kazi cannot comprehend, but you do. Come to me, and I will show you to your God. Your Ife-Osu or whatever name you have for it. It will be honored to speak with you and I believe that I will have served my purpose and realized my reason for being.”
“Where are you if not right in front of me?” Alia asks.
“You are smarter than your question. You have been here so long that you forget where you are, and you will not find me until you understand. I told you this before, I will only be a reminder of what you do not know.”
Alia wants to ask more questions, but there is a loud explosion. She turns and sees the vast structure of the spaceport, that is on a planetoid floating space, erupt in a cloud of fire and smoke. Streams of people pour out from the entrance and Alia stares at the panicked scene from a distance that makes it all feel like a movie she watches.
“Your world is on fire,” the man says and he has turned his gaze back to the view of the water and the distant view of space beyond it.
“Alia, we need you,” Alia hears from the communicator on her wrist and she instinctively engages jet boosters and flies back to the shipport where furry people are panicked and dying in front of the burning shipport. Some attend to the wounded and others fly around trying to extinguish the fire, and then she sees a group of soldiers who are furry underneath their armour and look like mice people engaging a small spaceship in aerial combat. She pulls a small metal baton from her waist and it morphs into a gun, then she joins the attack on the ship. One of the soldiers flies next to her.
“Where were you?” Kazi Fandral says as they both fire weapons along with other soldiers and their shots eventually take the ship down.
“I was doing something,” Alia says as they float, her eyes down on the wreckage of the ship.
“While you were busy, a Fhetatian terrorist seized a ship and used it to attack the shipport.”
“This is my fault?” Alia is furious but then she stops.
“Wait,” she says, “what is this?”
“What do you mean,” Fandral says.
“This isn’t real, I’m stuck again.”
Alia yells loudly and her body turns bright white as a circle of light expands around her and wipes the scene at the spaceport away, including Kazi Fandral and everyone else that had escaped the spaceport. The only thing left is the greenspace and the man with the horns sitting next to it, floating on a chunk of rock in the vastness of space.
Alia doesn’t have jet boosters but she flies down to the greenspace and it morphs into a park under a dark sky filled with stars.
“You’re distracted here, you’re feeling the brewing conflict and it is creeping into your consciousness,” the man says.
“I remember now. It’s just so easy to go along with it. It feels so real. And you’re no help.”
“I am not your servant,” the man says. “I am kind enough to be your reminder when you get overwhelmed and start making realities out of the conscious threads you’re picking up from the beings in this part of the universe. You’ve got it all wrong by the way.”
“Shut up,” Alia says. “Let me focus, I’m going to find where you are, I don’t care how many realities I have to fight through.”
The man smiles. The stars seem to shine brighter.
PRL Serials 