Forevermore Unto the Void

The War in Heaven (part 3: Damocles)

1

Four Minutes to Midnight (~52505 AFR)

"James Wadeth," Archimedes began, coldly sizing up the spectre before him, "the man who founded the first global empire only to fold under the pressure. I'm told you requested me specifically. Any reason in particular?"

"You're in a position not unlike the one in which I found myself during my life. Let's just say I wished to speak to a kindred spirit," James answered, measuring his words carefully.

"So, tell me, James, how has eternity been treating you?"

"I hate it with a passion," James spat. "I was always told 'suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,' but my problem seems damn permanent and the solution damn temporary."

"You have all the knowledge in," Archimedes tallied the realms in his head for a couple seconds, "twelve realms-thirteen if Apocryphôs counts as its own realm-gathered here. How do you want for things to do?"

"I want you to imagine living like this for...52,500 years. I've solved every problem from the origin of life on earth to when the sentience in The Pit will fall and all thirteen realms will collapse into entropy-to the day. It's maddening. I'm surrounded by knowledge yet powerless to affect the outside world unless I'm summoned directly, and no one's been able to do that for 52 thousand years. I could give you a formula that can predict, accurate within fifty centimetres, exactly where you'll end up in the Other Realms given various portals."

"Do you know how long I've been alive?"

"Thirty-two thousand six hundred twenty-three years, four months, nine days, five hours, and six minutes since you woke from cryosleep. You are biologically immortal-made such by long-forgotten methods no one living understands."

Slightly taken aback, Archimedes replied, after a pause "How did you...?"

"I've been watching you, Archimedes. I took great interest in you since you awoke from cryosleep. You see, all this exposure I've had to the Other Realms has given me...abilities. I'm not going to claim to be able to conjure fire from the aether or teleport through rooms, but I can see possibilities, manipulate them to a degree, and have very minor forms of telepathy and telekinesis. All of these are my manifestations of a phenomenon I call prompt-psychic. Soon enough you and your team will begin to show signs of it. Anyway, I could sense you were a kindred soul, so I've been keeping an eye on you.

"Back to what I originally wanted to ask: what's your plan now that everything's gone to shit?"

"'Gone to shit'? You haven't been paying attention, James. Things are proceeding just as planned. After a millennium or two of planning, scheming, assassinating, and bribing, everything is about to come to fruition."

"Best of luck to you, then."

"Not a matter of luck at this point, James. Am I free to use the library?"

"As you wish. Can't take any books with you, but you can read as long as you've the time for it. I do have one more question, actually."

"What's that?"

"Through some of my surveillance, I've heard a great deal of Syndicate men swear 'by the gods.' They don't...have a presence in these realms, do they?"

"No, they don't. They just have access to ancient reports from around the days of the fall of R'lyeh. One of the ancient heads of state let that slip once or twice, and it just spread."

Archimedes nodded his thanks and began to thumb through the shelves that were packed with ancient and forbidden tomes.

An army gathered behind Caesar on Mars. Against the wishes of the announcement Caesar had sent, the masses had cried for rebellion. Now their leader stood at their head, waiting for Caesar to give them instruction.