The Book of the Second Gods

Right in between two scratches and a few not-very-successful attempts to rewrite a phrase, the phone rang.

It was mid-December, around daybreak. I had been sitting for a few hours right there at my desk, laptop at my side, pencil in hand, building one of my little worlds. It was the pale copy of one of the universes I’ve been meandering in my usual wondering state. I was starting to feel how the fatigue was setting in and how I was slipping into an evergrowing drowsiness. However, I kept telling myself just a little longer because I was trying to get through one of the descriptions I felt was important.

I jumped and, with me, my heart jumped as well. You don’t exactly expect such a jarring noise at such a lonely hour in the morning. Besides, whoever calls at this time doesn’t necessarily bring good news. I looked at the phone and I saw it was her, my favorite fox whom I love more than anything.

I answered in a worried voice, ‘Yes,’ and I waited a few seconds until her clear yet trembling voice said drily, ‘He’s gone.’

A long silence followed, stretching its tentacles into the hidden corners of my mind, unable to wrap itself around what was happening. Finally, in its reverberation, ‘he’s gone’ managed to strike a chord of logic within me and I could find in there the one who might have left. The last time we spoke, at the end of August or the beginning of September, she had been with a guy whom she praised above all others until I started laughing at her, weary of it all.

I rarely felt that way when I talked to her—losing my patience, I mean—and it always happened when she talked to me about boys and, later on, men.

From the other end of the receiver, I felt she was overwhelmed.

I told her ‘I’ll be right there,’ and I didn’t wait for her answer. I pulled on a random pair of jeans and a soft cashmere sweater against my bare skin. A glance in the mirror assured me it was enough. I slung my bag over one shoulder, searched for my keys, and threw my white wool coat over my arm, planning to put it on in the elevator to save time.

As soon as I finished locking up the door I realized I had forgotten my phone. I rolled my eyes at my scattered mind and reluctantly accepted that I couldn’t do things well unless I did them properly. I unlocked and took my phone from the table where I had left it, slipping it into the back pocket of my trousers. I put on my coat and did a final check: phone, money, keys, ID.

Before knocking on my sister’s door, I stopped by a convenience store to buy some snacks and a bottle of questionable wine—I had planned to get something better, but that’s the best you can find at a 24/7 store. I mentally prepared as best as possible before arriving at her door. Let’s just call her Fox, for my sake.

She opened only after three or four rounds of knocking and waiting. Standing in front of me, her silhouette was shrouded in lilac-colored rays of light, while the door frame completed this Renaissance-looking painting. With each passing second, my eyes adjusted to the strong contrast. At first, my gaze was drawn to her bare thighs, which possessed curves worthy of Michelangelo’s sculptures. I had to quickly snap out of it since Fox was trying to meet my eyes, two crystal beads shining in hers. She took my hand right before stepping into the living room and said the most illogical thing imaginable, its echo resonating in my mind long after her lips finished uttering it: ‘I finally managed to open the door to the realm where we can find him.’

Even before I could stutter a ‘what,’ she pulled me into the living room, releasing my hand. She stood there, looking at me with a completely different expression, as if another person now occupied the middle of the room. Patiently awaiting my reaction, she wore an almost mischievous smile.

Maybe this change in attitude would have surprised me. It could have even made me ask myself what caused it if I hadn’t been left gaping quite literally by a show of lights that reminded me vividly of the northern lights that I had seen live not long before.

All the colors of the rainbow were shining, enveloping us. The rays shone mostly in violet and indigo nuances and were flickering joyfully just like when you look at a diamond in the full summer sun, only not as blinding. Quite the contrary, sweet little rays with velvety texture were forming a sort of three-dimensional fabric that seemed to gently nudge us towards a convergency point: in front of us stood widely open the two gigantic doors that led towards the balcony. Beyond them, it wasn’t the regular view of the city, for which I envied Fox, however. Instead, there was what I could call the source of the lights: a kind of tunnel formed from the unending light-spun fibers; a tunnel that seemed, itself, endless.

But the unfathomable path lying at our feet only made me wonder if perhaps something might have happened somewhere, in a dimly lit corner of my consciousness, and if maybe a creature didn’t start gnawing at the frayed edges of my reality.

‘A beauty! You wouldn’t have expected to see something like this here.’

‘Here…’, I asked without too much consideration. However, something was telling me that here gained new inflections.

And new inflections were gained by the place we were in, the room itself transformed by the light into shadow and velvet. The universe at the other end was overflowing here, in our little world, and it was as if, standing there like a beacon, it was inviting us to exploration. We felt its wish almost like a prayer.

Both it and her, waited patiently for me to get out of my state of unbelief and let myself dream. Because it was my own world that was lying there at my feet. I felt its pulse, the one as unmistakable as my own thoughts. And when I did decide to have faith, Fox took my hand and we got closer to the universe unfolding ahead and that made us little by little the velvet emissaries of this world.

From my left, she kissed my cheek like some sort of promise, right before she let my hand go and stepped decidedly towards the tunnel’s opening. She took a few steps before I noticed that the path was curved and that soon I’d lose sight of her. I took a few steps myself, almost without thinking, but I drew to a halt; logic was clearly telling me: one more step and there would be nothing to step on. Somewhere close by had to be the edge of the balcony, and I, against the conviction given by all my senses that I would step into a new world, was overwhelmed by a powerful and deeply rooted fear of survival. My reason was screaming through all my pores, telling me to go back and snap out of it. I didn’t want, however, to lose sight of Fox, so I started to feel my way forward and advance inch by inch, not giving in to either side. My heart felt as if it had changed residency—pulsing loudly in my ears, where the scream I would utter as I would fall into the pavement below echoed as well. As I was moving forward, and Fox was getting farther away, breathing became harder. A hard-to-control panic took hold of me and almost pinned me into place. I dreaded that at any moment I could see Fox disappearing, my mind endlessly projecting images of her and me sprawled on the pavement. Yet this type of imagery doesn’t quite make the same impact on the mind as the concrete world, the actual obliteration from existence being far above the reality for those still in it.

Advancing bit by bit in a time that seemed to have almost expanded, I noticed I had already passed the curve of the tunnel, and now I was in a straight line again. Somewhere at the far end, instead of the parked cars and the electrical wires, you could now see a milky substance almost lilac in color standing guard. It was pierced through by the slightly unraveled lode-like fibers of the tunnel in which we were. Somehow my mind had relaxed a little, letting itself be swept away by the new reality standing before it. Breathing was becoming less painful, and the ringing in my ear stopped together with my fears. She stood in front of me, ready to disappear into the almost liquid mass. I glanced behind, expecting to at least see the window, but in its place, there was nothing but a dense white-looking fog that didn’t promise anything good. I took a deep breath, straightened my back, and took a step forward, toward the new obstacle that was waiting for me, this time with determination. Although it seemed quite close, after about 50 yards, I thought I must have walked a lot more than that. After I crossed the distance that seemed to be between me and it I realized I hadn’t actually gotten closer to my goal. Fox, however, had already disappeared beyond that milky wall. Wanting to get to her as fast as possible made me desire to reach it too. Once the desire became almost palpable, I realized the wall had gotten closer.

Finally, a few steps away, the milky wall stood right in front of me. Now that I was near, it seemed like it was solid, some sort of elastic pudding extending into the tunnel as well, engulfing those light-spun velvety fibers as if they would have sprung out of it, and as if it would have tried to stop them. I steeled myself and reached for the wall. But somehow my hand stopped right before touching it, and, just as you can feel the heat when you get closer to a radiator, I could now feel the energy that permeated through the dream-made pudding. I felt not only the pulse of the new world, but I also thought I could feel the hot breeze of the lava ocean I had created not that long ago. I could never have lived in this alien world. No human could because it wasn’t made for our feeble bodies. But I knew now that I was no longer myself, I had become something else. I looked at my hands and, instead of my white skin, so rarely kissed by the sun, I could see the violet pores of the new world. I, myself, was now made from the fibers of the new universe, and the only way to move forward was to embrace this new nature.

I regained my courage and I finally touched it. Instead of a smooth texture as my sight was telling me it should have had, my fingers told me that this odd barrier was made of something else entirely—something resembling more to pure energy, to what you feel when an almost physical thought forms into your mind. And this energy was seemingly linked to my home universe because, from the other side, you could hear bits of my favorite music.

The reality was that I didn’t actually get to touch it because I was suddenly dragged by an invisible force, not inside the barrier itself but someplace else. A place where I felt lonely. Lonely as we feel when we try to see in those hidden corners of our minds. Only here the place wasn’t as familiar. It was as if the thoughts weren’t exactly mine and I felt not like an intruder, but more like a guest. And this wasn’t just any place, but one designed to welcome me, embrace me, and show me around. I thought I heard music once more, but I must have been mistaken because later on I could walk around freely and I couldn’t find where it came from.

When I finally managed to take hold of it, I opened my eyes wide. My first instinct was to look for Fox. Not for long, though, since she was right in front of me, a few feet away, seated on the edge of the coast, her body facing me, with her gaze towards the sea: wherever you looked onto the hot expanse all you could see was steam, in some places denser, reflecting playfully the lava’s red light.

We had arrived on The Second Home.

I thought I could hear music again but I tried not to pay attention to it. It was natural for my senses to play tricks on me when everything seemed both familiar and strange, extremely beautiful but truly frightening. I shielded my eyes with my hand and looked around after the two suns. I thought one of them should have been right behind me, somewhere in the direction whence we came, only it wasn’t there anymore. Nothing was. An empty expanse furnished by an occasional rock here and there. In the sky, the big sun that looked like ours stood now alone in its proper place, as if it was a little after noon. A moon bigger than ours stood at the horizon just above the line the sea formed with the coast, its lower part shining in turquoise shades. I knew, however, it wasn’t exactly a moon. It was a sister of the planet we were on. This thought brought me back to reality and back to Fox.

I couldn’t see her very well in the blinding light of this younger sun. It was hard to actually see her just as she really was. She was sitting carefree, as if she was next to a cool ocean, back home, not beside a molten-lava sea, able to obliterate us with its hot vapors at the smallest gust of wind. There was no wind, though—at least, not then—and her profile fitted perfectly in this weird-looking place. I would have taken a picture but as I was reaching absentmindedly for my pocket, I felt a small earth-rumbling beneath my feet. Just like an earthquake only softer. It was enough for me, however, to make me itchy with impatience, wanting to get out of there, yet not knowing where I wanted to go instead.

I approached Fox slowly. Not only because I needed an explanation for everything that had happened but also because I truly missed her. Somehow, in this faraway world, I felt there was a chance for us to get close again.

But Fox got up, straightened her back, and looked directly at me as if piercing directly into my mind. Trying to hold her gaze, I saw that it wasn’t the Fox I knew who stood before me, petite-framed, with an almost always warm expression yet occasionally mischievous, the one with whom I had done so many things. Things we were allowed to do and, more importantly, things we weren’t allowed to do. Fox, whom I had yearned for with all my being for so long. No, she was now a completely different being, tall, athletic, with red-tinted skin speckled with iridescent dots that shone in the yellow light of the star with an unnatural glow.

‘I think that’s the way we should go if we want to meet him.’

Her voice wasn’t familiar either, its inflections slightly higher than Fox’s. Still, the way she articulated every word, the specific way in which she punctuated the phrase, and the way she pointed with her hand like it was an extension of her shoulder, her head turned in the same direction, made me think that on the inside it was still her.

‘Him?’

‘Who did we come for?’ she looked at me with a look that said you know exactly who I’m talking about.

Her eyes we unfamiliar. I came closer and I realized her strangeness wasn’t apparent. It wasn’t a trick played by the light or by my mind… they were completely different than human eyes: a little bit bigger than normal human eyes, with bushy long eyelashes, especially the top ones, and the pupils were somewhat like those of a cat: a narrow slit surrounded by a huge emerald-green iris with purple inserts. It was a true wonder made to be contemplated. And that was what I did until, ticked off by my curiosity and by the amazement with which I moved my eyes from one of her features to another, she went ahead in the direction she had previously shown me. I went after her because I knew that’s what she wanted and, in the end, what I wanted too.

Where the molten lava met the land, it sometimes seemed as if the earth was bleeding and, from what I could tell, it had done that for the past few million years. As we were approaching the edge of the coast we could feel the heat intensifying… and not quite. And this doubting state, the questions that popped into my head one after the other almost at every step, started to torment me and to dim the joy and wonder you could feel when you step for the first time into the completely alien place you have always dreamed of. After a while, walking along the coast, practically going towards The Third Home—the moon with bluish hues, now only half visible—not feeling as if we were getting anywhere, always keeping the same distance between me and Fox, her company meaning only that I could contemplate the back of her new form, I felt in the end overwhelmed by the questions that I had in my mind, so, with emphasis on every word, I asked simply:

‘Where are we headed?’

‘To find the Three-Eared Rabbit.’

‘You know that’s not his name,’ I said without thinking.

‘Then what is?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said ticked off because I fell for it.

‘Then that’s how we’re calling him until you’ll decide on another name.’

‘Fine. Where do we find him, then?’

‘The rabbit? Probably in a burrow.’

She started to laugh out loud at her own joke, thinking it was funnier than it actually was, probably because she desperately tried to keep her calm and cool. A realization was setting in, that all this was maybe just as new for Fox as it was for me if not, perhaps, even more so. When her laugh died down she answered simply that we’ll see but you probably already know where he is. I wanted to reply, to contradict her, but right then I felt as if from somewhere deep inside me something was gently whispering to me, and I thought that I knew indeed where we were going. And then the thought slipped away.

We were walking for quite a while when something that from a distance seemed like a narrow path came into view. However, unlike other paths, what lay before me now seemed to have a completely different aura. Partially covered by the hot clouds forming above the lava, this path sent a faint glow towards us, every now and then, as if it were some kind of creature with scales shifting from side to side, reflecting the sunlight that had slightly changed its position. As we got closer, however, I realized that what awaited us was no ordinary path. And it certainly wasn’t narrow. It was rather something I would call a wonder of the world, one that I couldn’t explain and was entirely unfamiliar to me. Undulating like a serpent in the scorching heat of the vapors rising from the sea, stood before us a colossal bridge made of colorless glass, but sparkling with every ray of light that caressed its surface, tinted by its light. And its expanse led far away, somewhere beyond the horizon, cleaving the sea in two on its uninterrupted journey.

Fox looked at the bridge kind of like when you see something that you’ve only heard about for the first time. We both looked at it without making a sound because we were not only amazed by such a construction that surpassed everything we had seen before, but also by the boundless yet inhospitable beauty of what seemed more than just an architectural piece: we had before us a perfect work of art that spoke so much in so few lines. It was as if nature itself had contributed to something that people believed they were experts in, and behold, they truly seemed to be. I would have wondered who built this marvel—and how magnificent this world must have been if it crafted such a jewel—if I hadn’t felt overwhelmed by the completely otherworldly spectacle in front of me. The immense glass bridge writhed gently in this hell of fire, and its breath filled the sea to the horizon, menacing, tainted here and there by smoke and sulfur and small flakes of ash coughed out by a stray balloon of air, escaped from the nearly solid sea. In front of us, wherever you looked you could only see this: lava and fire and death, and a path of glass. It was as if the purpose of the bridge was not to take you to the other side but to remind you of how fragile life is and how it could be swallowed at any moment by its other face.

We reached the entrance to the bridge and saw Fox looking for something, somewhere to the right. Right at the edge of the bridge, at its intersection with the rocky shore, and extending into the sea of lava, stood a sort of outpost, an apparently official building that had some large panels periodically displaying information written in a language I didn’t recognize. As we approached, we noticed that from the shade of one of the panels, the timid foot of a lounge chair emerged, with its resident leisurely dangling their paws to one side. Every now and then, one of the paws twitched, as if tickled by a fly. However, I didn’t see any flies, just as I hadn’t seen any other living creatures besides myself and Fox around there yet.

When we got right next to the panel, Fox slapped the lounge chair’s furry resident over one of its paws and spoke a few words that I didn’t understand—they seemed equally foreign and distant to me. It was as if I heard music coming from somewhere again, and suddenly I found myself overcome by a state of confusion. But above all, a drowsiness that was hard to overcome took hold of me.

‘It’s from the smoke, the toxic fumes. And it’s quite likely due to the heat as well. It’s hotter than usual, and the new circuits sometimes malfunction,” the creature said.

I looked at what stood before me for a long time, its face swollen from sleep and bearing an amused expression. It was an inbred of a raccoon and a beaver, with a dwarfish yet cute frame, yet pseudo-human, which reminded me of some cartoons I had seen long, long ago before I even knew Fox.

‘I’m usually quite lively, but when it’s this hot and there are more fumes, I can’t cope. I have no choice but to doze off, pinned down for hours in this lounge chair, from one traveler to another,’ the creature said.

‘Who pins you down?’ I asked, attempting to strike up a conversation to keep myself from dwelling on how unreal everything that was happening to me felt.

‘No, dear, no one pins me down. You didn’t it quite right.’ But his eyes only showed how he regretted being so outspoken.

He turned around quite suddenly, as if remembering he had something on the stove or as if someone had called him, and he entered through a door that was slightly hidden by the information panel, which I now noticed for the first time. He poked his head out and signaled to Fox, who didn’t wait to be called twice. When they came out, after about 5 minutes during which I thought I heard some whispers, both of them looked slightly changed. More relaxed. Together, we circled towards the right side of the glass building and arrived in front of two immense doors that were now wide open, revealing a massive creature inside, about the size of an African elephant, but looking more like a grizzly bear on steroids. However, the way it moved immediately made me realize that it was neither one nor the other, but rather some kind of robotic wild animal. I wanted to scream or jump aside, but all I did was stand still, feeling a deep panic penetrate the darkest corners of my mind and shake them vigorously until nothing remained intact. Until even greater exhaustion overwhelmed me, rendering me inert, like a vegetable. It was a somehow familiar sensation from the time when Fox’s father died and our lives changed again by 180 degrees, as they had done before, only this time more for the worse than for the better. In the artificial calm that I didn’t even know how I had acquired, so to speak, I felt my consciousness somewhat half-active, as if the other half was in a state of hibernation, still waiting, like a wounded animal, for a chance to escape.

Fox glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she went to the robotic animal that seemed to be our means of transportation from now on. My confused mind couldn’t fully comprehend the conversations happening around me, and it had somehow started to give up trying. However, I had begun to imagine various scenes in which I was dressed like a Bedouin traveler, riding on the mechanized bear through the sea of lava, dreamlike vapors distorting the image and making me smile a tired and slightly ironic smile at what passed before my eyes.

She called out to me, and I snapped out of the increasingly immersive daydreaming state I had fallen into as if my body had a mind of its own. I looked at this incredible bear and couldn’t quite figure out what its fur could be made of. It looked slightly artificial, perhaps because it was too well-groomed, too shiny, too perfect for a real bear. Of course, I didn’t have much experience with real bears. I hadn’t been to a zoo since high school. Our parents had taken us there on a weekend with beautiful spring weather, just to spend some time together as a family. Both Fox and I were going through that crazy phase where all you want is to grow up and get away from your parents because it seems like that’s the only way you can be who you think you should be. Obviously, like any teenager, we still turned to mom and dad when we had a problem.

I caught myself running my fingers through the bear’s fur and thinking intensely about the past. I felt as if I was myself again, although the music was still playing in the background, its volume fluctuating as if the source of the sound kept moving. I managed to gather myself a bit and asked without giving it too much thought:

‘And how do we climb on it?’

Fox looked at me wide-eyed as if she wanted to laugh but held back. She mumbled something that I couldn’t comprehend, a kind of open sesame, except the type of magic that responded was man-made: a high-tech creature that, upon hearing the command, lowered itself slightly, leaving beneath it just enough space to fit the stairs that formed as its belly opened. It was like a door with stairs on its inward side, revealing an entirely empty world as if it hadn’t been furnished and ready to use yet. I was slightly surprised that there was no seat, no control lever, no windshield to see through. Encouraged by Fox, I climbed the three steps on the right side, while she went to the left, even though she could have climbed on the right like me just as easily. I slightly raised my eyebrows, but it didn’t matter: whatever I would see from here on, I decided that it wouldn’t amaze me anymore. It was as if I had just acquired a kind of immunity to oddities. A sort of nothing surprises me anymore regarding everything around me, let alone the little quirks of Fox’s behavior. And despite my go-with-the-flow mentality, I couldn’t help but ask her why a bear? Her response was to raise her eyebrows as well and curve the corners of her mouth downward, one of her characteristic expressions of I don’t know and I don’t care, which made me feel less bothered by the strange form she had.

To be honest I started to think that those cat eyes were a perfect fit for her usual behaviour. And to be even more honest, I couldn’t quite remember exactly what Fox was like as a person anymore because we didn’t spend as much time together as we used to. Her skin, on the other hand, looked far too peculiar. So peculiar that it was almost a surprise to me every time I looked at her. And only now did I notice the dress she was wearing, which began to capture my attention because it seemed to resemble the garments of the statues I had seen at museums or on television. It was made of a single piece that folded and gathered gently into a brooch made of mother-of-pearl and of liquid metal continuously undulating under the dim light of the yellow star. Her waist was accentuated by a belt of the same peculiar metal, which occasionally seemed to come alive, cascading down her thigh in an abstract yet vibrant explosion. And then, after putting on its show, it slowly retreated back into the waist, patiently waiting for another opportunity to shine.

Everything seemed new, otherworldly, and magical to me. But the natural way Fox behaved, the completely uninhibited manner in which she moved, spoke, blinked… all of that reassured me and made me feel more at home in this bizarre world that I had created I don’t even know how many years ago, and of which I had almost completely forgotten.

Except for him. I knew I couldn’t forget him.

Now both of us were on board the four-legged vehicle. Something I wouldn’t have believed possible. It felt completely foreign and incomprehensible to me. Fox looked at me, smiled as if she was about to blow my mind, and said a few words. They must have been vocal commands for the vehicle because almost immediately after she finished speaking, the doors closed, and the space around us began to undulate and constrict. For a moment, I felt slightly claustrophobic, but once I realized what was happening, I relaxed completely: the previously black and empty space transformed so that each of us had a sort of shell-like seat with a consistency and texture resembling foam, then reclined back slightly. It was something I had never felt before, but it seemed perfect, and I thought that all car seats should be like that. Once I realized how comfortable I felt, the material it was made of stopped moving, as if it read my mind, and decided that any change from now on could only be for the worse. As we settled into our seats, I noticed a fine mist descending over our chests, hips, and legs, which then solidified into a transparent and extremely silky veil. I thought it could be some sort of seatbelt, but I didn’t feel restrained in any way. On the contrary, I had an even greater sensation of comfort, if that was even possible. After the few seconds I spent inside the belly of the robot bear, I realized I would never feel comfortable in a regular car again if I ever believed it was possible to end up in one.

I heard Fox giving another command. Suddenly, the universe appeared all around us, so black and complete that for a second, I had a sensation of weightlessness. My senses were clearly playing tricks on me. It was, in fact, a sort of welcoming screen. Of course, I didn’t understand anything that was being said or displayed on the screen—well, if I can call it that—because there was nothing there. It felt like all the letters and numbers were floating in a three-dimensional space, infinite and different from our own. Just another sensation. And one other was the scanning that the vehicle performed on me, attempting, according to what Fox told me, to establish a subconscious-level connection. I looked at her, wanting to ask where she got all this information from and ultimately how she ended up here, but I changed my mind when I saw her concentrated and serious expression. It was a look I knew well, one telling me that her intolerance for stupid questions, or any questions for that matter, in this case, was at its peak.

As I had decided that nothing would surprise me from now on, I also decided to enjoy the journey and what I encountered along the way. After all, just minutes—hours—days—or who knows how long had passed since we entered that portal, when I believed I could die at any moment, falling from the 15th floor, reality slamming my body into the asphalt with the speed reached in those two or three seconds of free fall. Instead of a possible death, I stumbled upon complete madness, and I confess that I liked it. It was a million times better than anything I had experienced before in my life and many times better than anything I could have encountered in my journey on Earth. Wherever I was now—paradise or purgatory, dream or crazy reality—it didn’t bother me. On the contrary, the feeling of happiness, which I had almost forgotten, began to make its presence felt without me even realizing it.

Fox was so preoccupied with initializing our vehicle that she seemed to have completely forgotten about me. I found it amusing to watch her and ask her an occasional odd question related to what she was doing: What did this button do? What did that command mean? Did you enter the coordinates now? Questions to which Fox responded with more of a feral grunt rather than an actual answer, but it was enough for me. Two minutes later, we were already in motion, and all around us, the projection of the outside reality was displayed, omitting the toxins and suffocating heat. I could see everything around me so clearly that I thought the projection was actually better than reality. No matter how much I tried to imagine how we looked from the outside, I couldn’t because, although I felt we were moving in a perfect line, without any swaying or tilting, somehow I thought that anyone who designed a vehicle with the appearance of a wild animal would have it move in the same way. So my senses and my reason were in contradiction, blurring my vision of the bear walking on the glass road.

Reeza. Even her name has a special ring to it.

Filip’s thoughts slowly formed inside my mind as if they were my own. The thoughts of others were unclear to me and came as if from the most remote corners of my mind. However, the intensity with which he thought about me added a completely new layer on top of my own and it drowned them completely. I could only hear what he was thinking.

He looked at me in the rearview mirror and I could see with my own eyes the expression of his thoughts. I would have known he was thinking of me even without being able to read his mind, but the fact that I could see my own reflection with my mind’s eye, as well as being able to feel his complete deep admiration, akin to veneration, made me nostalgic. I like to be venerated. The most beautiful thing in the world. Perhaps I would have abandoned them a long time ago had I not had that pleasure, a thought that surprised me by its sincerity as well as by its ability to drive all the intruding ones away. This and the fact that, by looking at my hands, I started to realize just how human I was. Have I really become human again? Was it possible?

My thoughts were starting to slip through my fingers, so I propped up my head with my hand, feeling myself sliding back into a state of daydreaming, despite my efforts to stay alert. I knew this world was supposed to be safe, but the jumble in my mind, the sudden way I found myself here…

A vivid memory from the hospital reappeared in my mind, complete and immersive as if I were there again. My forehead lightly touched the window during tighter curves, allowing me to relax and slip into a deeper sleep. The same kind of odd, repetitive, and familiar sound, beep-beep-beep, brought me back entirely to the moment when I first opened my eyes in this world. Or maybe re-opened, to be more accurate.

I felt as though I had lost touch with the world; as if I were waking up from the dead. And I was trying my best to do so, but I couldn’t focus or remember anything. I had only one kind of feeling. One that was difficult to find a name for, because I hadn’t felt it in a long time. Centuries? Millennia, perhaps? It was back when I found the toga and the pendant in front of the greenhouse, all intertwined in a pile of bones. That image made me open my eyes wide. I had seen the hospital hallway back then. Objects that seemed both foreign and familiar were everywhere. People too. Some were busy with tasks. Others were sitting in chairs or lying on beds along the corridor. A woman dressed in a white coat noticed that I had opened my eyes and approached me. She asked me some questions, and my lack of reaction made her uncomfortable. She asked someone if I had any family, then I think I dozed off again, just like now, against my will. I don’t know how long I stayed in that hallway. Or how many times someone came to ask me something. Every time, I felt like I was slipping back into non-existence without being able to make a sound. I had forgotten what it was like to sleep, to have the sensation of not knowing yourself. Things I hadn’t experienced since transcending. Things that had ceased to have meaning for me, but were now regaining their existence. I smiled at the irony of the situation and regained my hope.

When, at last, another woman came to ask if I was feeling better, I was in an even greater state of confusion than before. I had just then realized that I had a body, and the heart of this body was beating violently and erratically like a wild animal that had just been caught in a trap. I had so many questions that I couldn’t formulate one before another took its place. I felt not only that my body and mind were now solid, made of flesh and bones, but I had the sensation that everything was on the brink of liquefying within me and was becoming just like the sea of lava.

I managed to stand up, knocking over things and grabbing onto people, and I headed toward a mirror. Those around me were trying to pull me back to where I came from, constantly asking me things and refusing to let go. However, for me, there was nothing else but the slightly blurry image in front of me. I don’t even know how long I stared at my reflection. I wasn’t in my old body. I couldn’t have been, because it had died so long ago that I had forgotten what it looked like. This realization calmed me. What I was seeing now was the manifestation of one of my avatars. Certainly, one much more real, more physical, more… tangible.

I grinned, a realization dawning within my dream, once again comprehending the significance of the image in the mirror. Through my mind’s eyes, I perceived my reflection growing increasingly vivid, this time caught in the rearview mirror: Filip searched for me with a worried countenance as if having misplaced something dear. And so I smiled, a genuine smile that transcended the boundaries of mere wakefulness. No need for sight. I concluded that this lad, with his reminiscences of youth and his fervent admiration directed my way, embodied precisely the ailment required during this phase of convalescence.

‘M,’ I murmured without realizing, and several moments later M was already calling Filip. The realization that I had summoned him without even being aware of it brought about a sense of relaxation. It was reassuring to know what I was capable of and how strong our connection was.

Something caught my eye. To the right, in the back seat of a car waiting at the traffic light just like we were, there was a girl gazing dreamily out the window. She had a contented smile, and that made me want to focus entirely on her. I closed my eyes and saw her playing with a puppy in a yard with tall grass, overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. I saw her happy and radiant, just as she looked on the outside. I wondered… I raised my right hand and, with a gesture, summoned the clouds and darkened the sky. Then I clapped my hands together hard, and lightning followed by a loud thunder split that imaginary sky in two, frightening the girl and jolting her out of her own reverie. When I opened my eyes, the cars were already in motion, and she was looking at me through the windows that separated us, puzzled but frightened as if she knew that I had invaded her mind.

Filip felt pretty much the same way, wondering why I had clapped my hands, but he didn’t know how to ask and was overthinking unnecessarily. I smiled at him in the mirror and felt a wave of warmth. Another time, it would have left me indifferent, but now I laughed out loud, which made him blush even harder and feel even more confused.

I’ve changed. Could it be because of this human form? I needed to decide what to do next… and for that, I need M. M who materialized next to me at the hospital when I shouted his name back then, in my confused fury. This told me that my power existed beyond the limits of this repulsive body. I had this thought and immediately saw how Filip’s facial expression had transformed into one of disgust. I need to control myself, and that won’t be easy.

This lack of control reminded me of the moment at the hospital when the woman in the white coat tried to give me a sedative because I seemed uncooperative. When she touched me, I felt a strong repulsion, which manifested as a surge of energy that threw her away like a rag doll. She was lucky to have a few onlookers behind her who softened her fall. Chaos ensued. People screaming, bewildered, not knowing who to blame. Women complaining. Children yelling as if someone were cutting off their hands. Security arrived. Other doctors came. Paramedics. People upon people, all against me, determined to immobilize me. The surge of energy had left me drained. And these confused, angry people were roughing me up, poking me with needles, holding my hands and feet, striking me, and in the chaos, sometimes striking each other. Weakened, I remembered M. I tried to break free from their grip, but I began to be inundated by their anger, the images they saw, the fear they felt, their confusion. Their thoughts and sensations pierced me so violently that a deafening pain made me see white before my eyes. The last thing I remember is M. As he materialized in their midst, he grabbed a man by the shoulder and tossed him aside. When I felt his energy, I lost consciousness.

An eerie sensation of freedom enveloped me when I finally glanced to my right and saw the second star–one unlike any seen before in the earthly sky was just rising from the sea, which, at its junction with the heavenly body, seemed to be engulfed in flames colored as if made of the clearest water. A star that demanded veneration from nature itself, and one which I would have worshiped myself. I gazed in awe at the wonder growing in the sky, changing all the colors around us, making the whole world take on a strange hue.

‘Locals call it Eebtiiti, meaning the light of fire in Ramaala Sahiiae, their second language,’ Fox said to me in a slightly contemplative tone.

‘It’s blue…’ I replied, a bit surprised that this mostly turquoise star was associated with fire. And even stranger was that I didn’t remember it–just as I didn’t remember the bridge–instead, I was expecting to see a red dwarf in its place.

‘Reeza’s fire is blue as well,’ she replied with the same air, ‘the fire with which she scorches the lands, called Iioedi Siiesiiral–the Soul of Life.’

‘The Soul of Life?‘

‘Here, every fourteen years, the land starts to become infertile… that’s when it needs to be scorched and left fallow for about as long until it regains its breath. And then anything planted on it grows bigger and more beautiful than before. But a legend says that in ancient times people didn’t need to do that because Reeza would scorch for them, in one breath, all the evil from the land, and silver apple saplings would appear. A very rare tree around here, rarely grown outside of laboratories, because it’s very sensitive to the increasing heat outside. Its beauty is incredible. I’ve seen a few, and each time I was left speechless.’

‘And does it make silver apples,’ I joked. ‘Or golden, perhaps?’

‘It makes a fruit that looks like it’s covered by a silver film instead of skin. It’s not silver, obviously, but rather resembles the skin of a fish just taken out of the water. It looks extremely beautiful, especially in this blue light. And it’s more than just tasty–the skin is so good after is cooked into some kind of honey that its intense taste goes beyond the limits of taste buds. It’s almost psychedelic–it’s considered a kind of nectar of the gods, and rightfully so, something like this shouldn’t even exist. It’s so special that once you’ve tasted it, you can’t escape a kind of craving hidden deep inside. Some people have done all sorts of horrors just to get to taste it one more time.’

‘So it’s like a drug?’

‘Yes, one without side effects.’

‘Other than the addiction you’re telling me about?’ I asked somewhat amused by her contradictory statement.

‘No, there really are no side effects,’ she said, pausing to search for better words. ‘It’s like when you know how it feels to be in love and you want to experience those thrills again… Or how happiness feels like. Or how it feels to be in your mother’s arms when you’re little. It’s normal to want these things.’

Thinking about what she had just said, I noticed how, beyond the edge of the bridge, from the right, from the midst of the dust clouds, a sparkle could be seen now and then. I didn’t get a chance to ask Fox what it could be because in front of us a flickering symbol appeared, on a background representing a kind of map where you could clearly distinguish the bridge, the endless lava sea around us, and two points: us and those who sent us the message. Fox gave a vocal command and, after a short animation, a man who had the same type of eyes and skin as Fox appeared before us. He wore rather official attire, reminding me of someone who works in the police or the military. For a moment, it seemed so real to me that I wanted to step back, feeling suffocated by his presence, but then I realized he was nothing but a holographic representation of the officer in the vehicle flying very low alongside us, which I could see perfectly to my right.

The vehicle, which looked more like a hybrid of a drone and a fighter jet, was full of insignias, but it still maintained an official air. I suspected it was a bridge patrol. The man, a captain of the Allied Forces, as he introduced himself, with slightly androgynous features and extremely beautiful jet-black hair, requested permission to scan us. Jarhala Sornad from Saharalii–the first name I heard in this new world seemed extremely exotic, just like the person bearing it. Another name was Fox’s:

‘I am Sela Koro from Firal-Afal,” she said proudly, then grumbled discontentedly as she entered an access code into a now two-dimensional dry little box that stood in the captain’s place.

A series of inscriptions then appeared systematically on the screen, forming a kind of verification log, apparently marked in red for the requests and green for their responses–it seemed that this world wasn’t so different after all, I thought somewhat amused. In the end, after all the paperwork check was done, the captain appeared again, almost indecently close in the somewhat cramped space for two women and a hologram. I glanced at Fox, who responded with a look that suggested I shouldn’t say a word. And indeed, I didn’t say anything, feeling somewhat diminished, just like earlier. Not even when the conversation turned somewhat bizarre, I couldn’t even muster a gesture.

‘I found nothing in the documentation regarding the android you’re transporting,’ the captain said, turning his gaze towards me.

I didn’t immediately realize I was the android he was talking about as I was more focused on the fact that probably we were as uncomfortably represented in his cockpit, though smaller than him, we were surely taking up more space.

‘It’s a prototype I’m taking to the fair organized for winning the elections. I have a special permit allowing me to transport such items on my responsibility, with maximum discretion,’ Fox looked somewhat meaningfully at the captain, but he didn’t respond immediately, as if carefully thinking a few moves ahead.

‘Ms. Koro, I apologize, you do not yet appear in the system as head of the Koro Laboratories, but I have heard of your success. Congratulations. I assume you wouldn’t risk compromising your career by engaging in illegal transports, however.’ Now it was the captain’s turn to look meaningfully at Fox.

I got out of the car slowly, like a cat just awakened from her sleep. When I looked up, I saw the sky, with all its complexities, was waiting for me like a good friend would. The clouds were dense in shades of lilac, with a touch of orange where a sunbeam managed to pierce through them. Memories from another world, from another life, made my heart skip a beat as I looked up. Memories I knew I had lost with my reincarnation, yet refused to be forgotten. Would I ever regain them?

Filip closed the door and then looked up himself, curious to see what I was looking at. A normal sky on a normal summer day. Nothing extraordinary, he thought, but he continued to look. In his eyes, I was a daydreamer taken out of a dream herself. And, ultimately, maybe it wasn’t so far from the truth. I had been a goddess with a thousand faces. A goddess who had held the secrets of the universe in her palm and had lost them in front of simple mortals, just like in a classic epic. Like in a fairy tale. Or like in a game.

‘Filip!’

Ofelia was at the window, waving for us to come in. I lowered my head, resigned. As if I had given up something important. And, in a way, I had. I had given up everything in a last effort to save something, and now I wondered if it had been worth it. I felt like a pale shadow, kept alive by an ugly feeling that others called hope. Then I remembered my brothers, vaguely remembered my endless journeys in the darkness of space, and then the sky of the Second House, and I felt a lump in my throat. An unbearable sensation that only made me angry: I hadn’t become human, even though I was trapped in this body.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ofelia asked more to herself.

‘Probably had time to chew over the situation,’ M replied. ‘Did she say anything on the way, Filip?’

‘No, she seemed pretty relaxed. She even fell asleep at one point.’

M’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t add any comment and instinctively reached for his pendant.

We all sat down at the table. I could feel the others trying to figure out what I was thinking, studying the features of a face they couldn’t read, but which sent shivers down their spines. In their eyes, I seemed worried, sad, angry, resentful, and ready to explode, but also convinced that their plan would succeed, all at once and more. In a way, I found amusing the diversity of their thoughts. In another, I wondered if maybe those were, in fact, feelings I shared: a mix of emotions completely unclear even to myself superimposed with the emotions of others.

M served me some salad on my plate, along with the drumsticks and fried potatoes that someone had put out before we sat down. It seemed to him the most unreal thing in the world: to serve his absolute goddess. He smiled unintentionally, which made me give him a reproachful look. One I didn’t even realize until I noticed it through his filter. I hadn’t eaten much since I materialized here two days before, and that worried him.

‘Did they say anything about the incident, at the station ?’ Filip asked Ofelia, who, as usual, was curious and often felt excluded from truly interesting conversations.

‘They didn’t say anything more. I even asked around a bit, but everyone says pretty much the same thing… that they can’t figure out what happened. However, it reminds them of a case from a few years ago…’

‘The burned apartment building?’ Filip asked happily, finally knowing something.

‘The burned apartment building, yes.’ Ofelia replied, then reminded M of the incident he knew all too well but preferred to listen and ask questions, just to avoid silence. That’s because they all had a sense of unease that they could barely tolerate. Filip, thought M with envy, seemed the most at ease with me.

‘But if, in the end, no one reached any conclusion back then, maybe they won’t reach one now… so why worry?’ Filip asked, then redirected his attention to the food. ‘I’m so glad you made fried chicken drumsticks! They’re my favorite.’

‘I know. I can tell,’ Ofelia said with a slight smile. ‘But I didn’t make them, I asked the lady across the street to help us with food for the next few days. If you have any other preferences, let me know.’

‘Sure,’ Filip replied with his mouth full, trying to stuff in another potato, which made M smile.

Their plates were getting more and more messy, and I felt sick. It was a combination of acid in the stomach with trembling fingertips and a whirlwind sensation.

‘Reeza, you need to eat something…’ M felt strange because he had never imagined in his life that he would call me by name. Again, I couldn’t help but smile.

‘Hmm, here, you can have some of mine,’ Filip said and unwrapped some meat from the drumstick, putting it on my plate. ‘When I first moved in with grandma, I didn’t feel like eating much, but if she made crispy drumsticks with french fries and unwrapped the meat from the bones for me, I just couldn’t resist… it was so good and effortless.’

M wanted to tell him that I had a few more years behind me than he did when his grandma fed him, but he stopped when he saw the fork in my hand. M and Ofelia looked at me tensely. My movements seemed so slow to them that they felt like they were watching a slow-motion movie and worried that it might stop at any moment. Filip, on the other hand, put another piece of meat on my plate and chatted about how he liked drumsticks to be fried in general.

‘You know what I was thinking?’ Filip asked as he put another piece of meat on my plate.

And Ofelia found Filip’s casual behavior strange.

‘What if I take Reeza to the mall? Let’s get her some clothes.’

‘Clothes?’

‘Well… this shirt seems too big for her… and it doesn’t fit her well.’

‘Filip… honestly, I wouldn’t trust you with this and we don’t have time for such things…’

‘I can take a friend with me if you think I’m not good at choosing girls’ clothes.’

M laughed and choked on his food. He coughed a little, continuing to laugh until he looked directly at me and suddenly became serious. That made me smile again.

‘I didn’t mean that I don’t trust your taste, obviously. I’m just afraid you might cause some mischief.’

I slowly shifted my gaze from M to Ofelia in a way that made them both feel cornered.

‘I don’t want to offend you,’ Ofelia began, trying not to be intimidated by my cold stare. ‘But after all, Filip is a teenager who causes problems… that’s his style. And you… I don’t think you have enough experience to be out on the street unsupervised.’

M adjusted his voice to continue the argument, but I cut him off by raising the hand holding the fork. It seemed strange to me, so I paused to look at the fork, then put it back on the table.

‘In the past… Or, better said, somewhere in this time, there’s a version of me who’s shopping at… what was it called?… a mall? Filip is right, these clothes are kind of… boring, and, as he said rightly, they’re too big for me.’

‘They’re my clothes…’ Ofelia said, slightly irritated by my comment.

‘In the last few thousand years, I’ve had the habit of wearing dresses made from entire galaxies,’ I said, feeling completely ridiculous. A sensation that came from them because to me, nothing seemed strange.

‘I don’t think they have that kind at the mall…’ Filip chuckled.

‘I don’t think so either,’ I said, ‘but at least something more… suitable.’

‘I can’t wait! I already have some ideas.’

‘M, you’re going with them. I’ve seen what Filip plays, I don’t want to walk down the street with Xena.’

A wave of laughter filled the room, Ofelia and M feeling that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, and I started eating again and focusing on the taste, the texture, trying to block out the thoughts and sensations of the others this time. And then the food truly started to taste delicious to me. It was like rediscovering the pleasure of eating, and my inner smile, my satisfaction, was reflected in the others.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw M reach for the pendant.

‘Are you thinking about Fiiuea?’

I thought he was going to choke from the shock, but he held it together. He realized why I had asked him the question and gently lifted the pendant as if to answer the curious gazes of Ofelia and Filip.

‘Since you came, I’ve felt the pendant. It’s like it’s alive. Vibrating, resonating. Subtle, sure, but enough to give me the feeling that something’s happening. That it’s communicating… Do you think it’s possible to be communicating with her?’

‘Maybe it resonates with Reeza,’ Filip speculated with his mouth full.

‘That’s what I initially thought too. And I believe Reeza is the source, but my intuition tells me there’s a destination. And I can only think of Fiiuea. She has the other half…’

‘Who’s Fiiuea? Ofelia asked,’ suddenly much more interested in the conversation.

‘A priestess from the Second House.’

‘From Reeza’s temple?’ Filip’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

‘From one of my brothers’s temples… which in the future I come from no longer exists.

I saw their expressions start to morph into reflections of what I was feeling and I was disgusted by what I was doing to them. My feelings should belong to me alone. I tried to change the subject:

‘M knew Fiiuea more intimately than anyone.’

He looked at me first, then at Ofelia, before stammering that they met at the Academy.

‘M is a legend on the Second House. He was the only man who became a priest.’

‘And the only servant you’ve ever had, he added.’

‘Servant?’ Filip asked, puzzled.

‘That’s what priestesses are… servants of the god whose temple they serve. Each of the other thirteen gods had at least 100 priestesses.’

‘And Reeza had one priest? That’s so cool!’

‘She did it to save me, in a way. One day, I was on the domain of a beast of a man, who hunted… I did something stupid, honestly, I don’t even remember what, some child’s play, and the punishment for virtually any mistake anyone did was to participate in the next hunting party.

I felt M overwhelmed by emotions, but nothing showed on his face. He seemed as composed as before when he resumed his explanation.

‘You see, there are no animals there, but the instinct to hunt persisted. So we, ordinary people, became the prey. My sister had been on three such hunts for various stupid things she had done. For me, it was the first time, and, small as I was, I didn’t know how to hide or run. So I was pierced by an arrow almost immediately after the hunt began.’

‘Arrows? I thought you were advanced in technology,’ Filip said, and M suppressed an outburst.

‘It’s regulated as one of the three hunting weapons. We have our laws too. Plus, it has to be exciting… to give the pray a chance to escape; if you slaughter them, what’s the point? The other two are the whip and the spear,’ he said, anticipating Filip’s question. ‘Anyway, my sister hid well. So did the others. They kept spotting me; I would hide just beyond a bush until they found me again and again. My luck was that the scoundrel of a nobleman wasn’t a good shot. He missed me narrowly a couple of times. But the third time, he hit me in the ribs. Not badly, but I was bleeding and it hurt like hell. I felt a fear like I’ve never felt before. Then another arrow came and hit me in the leg. But I kept running. I kept trying to flee. When he got close and I thought he was going to aim the arrow straight at my throat, my sister pushed me. I don’t know where she came from. She took the arrow straight to the chest.’

A wave of sadness washed over us all, but no one said anything. We waited for M to continue.

‘The bastard rejoiced. He was happy he hit two of us. I was screaming like a banshee. My sister was breathless, fallen over me, her warm blood trickling down my chest. The arrow that was stuck in my ribs broke and I felt a dull pain. Laughing, the nobleman approached me, shouting to his friends that he was going to shoot me straight in the eye because he couldn’t wait to try that method. And then I saw how his face changed. How it became silent and how he fell to his knees.’

‘Did someone hit him?’

‘Just the shock of seeing Reeza before his eyes.’

‘She doesn’t seem that scary,’ Filip said, looking directly at me as if trying to find something frightening in my complexion.

‘Not now. It was different then. She had a different form… the other avatar, so to speak, was as if only the face and bust were made of translucent skin, the rest was a mass of darkness, of black void, enveloping the world like a storm cloud, but almost tangible. I only remember a fragment, when she came above me, but it was as if the world disappeared completely. I think I fainted from fear.’

‘From fear? I can’t imagine you being that scared!’ Filip was amazed, but I felt the sensation I had provoked in M, the memory of the moment, and I was in a way proud, but in another I was confused. Why did I feel the need to take on that terrible form? All my brothers took completely human forms, why didn’t I do the same? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with an answer.

‘And what happened then?’

‘I later found out that Reeza wasn’t a supporter of the custom of hunting people, but she promised the nobleman that she would become one just to show him how it feels to be hunted. In the end, she left him alone, after telling him that if he wanted to escape with his life, he had to pay somehow. Apparently that somehow was to officially adopt me and send me to school to become her priest. That was how he rewarded her mercy: by giving her a servant. As for myself, I rewarded her by dedicating her the life she had saved,’ M said bitterly, then continued, surprising himself ‘If he hadn’t proposed that, I would never have met Fiiuea. Or you.’

When he said those words, I felt the pendant vibrating, as if it resonated with us both. Then I got up from my chair and went to M, reached out to the pendant, but hesitated for a second before touching it. When, finally, the white skin of my fingers touched the smooth surface of the stone, I was pulled into another world.

He stood up as soon as he laid eyes on me, letting a wrench fall from his hand. He approached me before Fox could come between us, gasping with admiration, ‘What do we have here? A state-of-the-art android!’ He circled me, eyes jumping from one place to another, looking at every part of me. Every part except for my eyes. He seemed more interested in how I looked or what I was made of than who I was. Yet his strange attention didn’t really matter. Something else caught my attention. It was a word that the captain had also said while looking at me, a word that somehow skilfully escaped through the fabric of my memory device.

I looked at my hands, and nothing seemed strange: my white skin looked perfectly normal, perfectly human. My fingers seemed to resemble my own—those I was sure I left on the other side of the milky barrier, in a universe from which I now felt I had never been a part of, just like sometimes when we return from a trip, we feel as though we have never left. Looking at my hands, searching through every corner of my mind for a trace that would reveal the true nature of my form, I felt something weighing on me. A very real weight, like a sudden increase in atmospheric pressure. It was odd and suffocating, although gradually I realized that I wasn’t suffocating in fact. Just as I felt hot, however it was only my mind that perceived the heat. In such a way only my mind could perceive the discomfort of the dryness in the air. Once I realised that I, and the way I perceived the reality, was the source of all my discomforts, I felt liberated again.

Realisation is the greatest weapon against imprisonment. The realisation that the world and freedom itself are nothing but an illusion. The same way everything that seems unmoving, unchanging around us is, in reality, in constant motion. Freedom is like a religion with the rank of myth—something we lie ourselves with as being part of us, but that is, in truth, so far away that it can only seem like a surreal concept—like the flowing clocks or the elephantine legs. It’s beyond the probable reality of today or of this very moment. Yet, once I had that realisation, I felt exactly like that: liberated. My freedom to think had been taken away from me for a while, but now my mind couldn’t be diminished anymore. And I freed myself from human nature itself and took another form, a form I embraced as the messenger of a new happiness. Stepping back a little, I realized that my world was not just made of her and it never had been.

As I felt the scent of freedom, I realised that an energy that was pulsating from somewhere beyond the far end of the bridge, much further away still, was inviting me there and telling me that it still cared for me, even now, after so long. And I only knew exactly who I was looking for and what I came to do now, as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes and I could see clearly again. And the faint image that had formed in my mind was that of the tattoo on his neck that seemed to resemble a rabbit’s head with three ears.

And that’s why when I snapped out of my reverie with the stranger’s eyes looking directly into mine, seemingly searching for my consciousness, I did nothing but raise my eyebrows. And this time, my body completely submitted to me, just like my original one, somehow knowing who its real master was.

‘I’ve never seen an android that looks so…’ he didn’t finish what he wanted to say, but I knew. And he could tell that he was right just by the way I looked at him.

The man, who seemed relatively young, with his red skin forming only a few fine lines, stared at me as if I were an extraterrestrial being. And, in the end, that’s what I was for him: a being from outside the universe he belonged to. And just as I was a stranger to him, he was one to me. I looked at his clothes, which didn’t necessarily seem practical, probably fashion dictated what he should wear, like it did to so many other people from a universe he would never know, and with which I imagined he didn’t know how much he had in common. I wouldn’t even know how to exactly describe his clothes—a kind of combination of palazzo pants with a Roman toga pulled over a dark blouse with some leather laces. Their colors were as normal as they could be—the pants and the blouse seemed a light brown, which was hard for me to identify in the distorted light, and that toga was electric blue, undulating perfectly in the soft rays of the blue sun. The toga was fastened with a silver brooch on his left shoulder, and its simplicity was somehow familiar to me. It wasn’t as spectacular as the almost living metal in Fox’s clothing, but it seemed tasteful. On his head, he wore a kind of cap whose brim looked like it could be used as a visor if needed. His features were generally human, if you didn’t count his red skin or his enormous eyes with their cat-like pupils.

Fox, on the other hand, had pulled out some sort of tablet and was tapping away at it. I could feel her panic just by the way she fidgeted unintentionally, or by the way she ran her hand through her unremarkably human brown hair, from time to time. I didn’t know what her intentions were, and the fact that I felt betrayed brought with it a kind of indifference aimed at her. A sort of ‘do whatever you want, I don’t care anymore…’

‘Can I touch it?’ the guy asked, and kept on circling around me without caring if he bothered me or not.

‘Please, don’t,’ Fox said, her voice strained with stress. ‘Tell me if there’s something I can help you with, and then we’ll be on our way. I can’t stay here a minute longer.’

I avoided looking at her, but I could see as well as hear how she searched for something frantically on her electronic device. It was almost evident that I was both the cause and the object of her search. But, overall, I didn’t care. I found more captivating the open interest, the avid curiosity with which this strange guy with his red skin looked at me. His curiosity was like a kind of currency, a language I could understand. His stares didn’t annoy me too much, nor the proximity of his face, or the hands that were almost touching but not quite. He was fascinated, but somehow avoiding exactly the real object of his fascination: he was avoiding the real me.

When she finished typing on her device, Fox looked at me directly and said just two words: have faith. However, it was hard for me to put my faith in someone I suspected of something despicable: the subjugation of my mind. I didn’t actually need any confirmation to know that was the case. That her panic stemmed from the fact that I somehow managed to free myself. Faith was the last thing I could have felt for her.

She went to the bear and pulled out a cable from somewhere between its front paws, a cable that seemed made of something entirely different from the ones I knew. It was made of some kind of silk that sparkled from time to time, as if trying to whisper to the world that it wasn’t what it seemed, just like me. With this really odd cable, she went to the guy’s machine and asked if she could connect to it. He, however, was busy looking carefully at every pore on my face. Or so I imagined, because what else could he be looking at? After a few technical exchanges, passwords, questions, the cable was connected, and was now mysteriously alight, as if a luminescent liquid traversed it in magnificent pulsations of violet and white with hints of turquoise. The overturned machine had also lit up, completely, as if it were some kind of descendant of a Christmas tree, full of coloured little lights. Sure, some might have had their purpose, but I suspected that most were just for fashion, just like the owner’s clothing.

‘How did you manage to crash when you are the only one on the road?’ I asked him. He didn’t answer, instead he went to where Fox was working on her tablet. It was connected by another seemingly normal wire to the machine. In a low voice, yet loud enough for me to hear, he asked if he could talk to me. I rolled my eyes and went over to them to see more clearly how Fox sweated in her new skin and to hear her forbid the guy to speak to me, just as she had forbidden him to touch me.

‘If she talks to you, it would be nice to answer her,’ she said without lifting her eyes from the tablet, seeming completely different from my Fox.

He turned to me and told me his name straight up, as an introduction to our new connection. Thanatos, or Tha, for short. That’s how he introduced himself, lightly touching his forehead right in the middle, just above the fine fold between his eyebrows. I thought I heard him wrong and asked him to repeat, which he did slightly amused, as if expecting my reaction.

‘Like the Greek god?’ I asked stupidly, my ears still not believing it, and in a mix of enthusiasm and impatience that suddenly made him seem even younger than he had appeared at first, he briefly told me where it came from.

‘My brother chose it. When he went to university, the first one from our village to do so, and he chose there to specialise in the Teachings of the First World because he had always dreamed of working around a temple. He could never have become a priest, of course—except for one exception, now 300 years ago, only women can have that honour—but he could have worked as a clerk or even as a translator of the old texts. Anyway, when he came home after his first year, my dad already had a child with his new wife, with whom, by the way, he didn’t get along in the end… In the first months of my life, I was already a renegade child, whom my mother together with my brother’s mother raised with great difficulty. Anyway, my brother always took care of me and was like a second father, and he told me all sorts of legends from the first and second worlds, and when I grew up, and I didn’t want to bear the name my father had given me, he simply told me Thanatos.’

‘You seem very proud of him.’

He hesitated a bit before answering to me, slightly embarrassed, with an ‘I was’ that I couldn’t hear in the end, because it was a completely engulfed by another sound, a violent noise that enveloped me quickly and brutally, almost sending me into a trance—making me try to see something that wasn’t there, giving me a strong sense of fear, of danger. It made me understand that the pressure I had felt earlier was nothing but another sign that something was about to happen. Fox and our new friend Thanatos, Tha, seemed to hear a different kind of noise, calmer, slower, because they could function as before, without being overwhelmed, without feeling that their minds were drowned by a huge wave of sound and fear. They seemed to be discussing, faces transformed with fear, and then they simply ran off in a direction where some kind of internal instinct whispered I would be safe too. We left behind the two vehicles that remained unmoved right in the middle of the huge bridge, still reflecting the blue light—one gentle and in fine undulations, the other sharp and iridescent—and reflecting themselves in the glossy expanse beneath them.

Their charm, however, quickly changed, everything being engulfed by the darkness.

I could feel everything pulsing around me, starting from the tips of my fingers that were now touching the pendant I had created from my very essence in a time now immemorial. My temples were burning, and I couldn’t feel M at all, even though I knew he was standing right in front of me. For a second, I thought I was being pulled back into my world by an unseen force, but then I realised that what was happening was the resonance of our thoughts: mine, M’s, and Fiiuea’s.

I heard Filip as if in a dream, and I extended my hand to him, which he took with slight hesitation at first, but then with determination. In a completely bizarre way, it gave me a sense of safety, of grounding, which then let me allow myself to fly towards a stone-like cloud that seemed to envelop the sky. Fiiuea was looking at it with a heavy heart, as if it foretold something bad. One of her servants had slipped in unnoticed earlier, and now he waited quietly. When she finally turned her eyes to him, he delivered the news she had anticipated. The bath was ready.

The immense basin was filled to the brim with boiling water. Lazy swirls of red steam rose, filling the vast room with a fine mist. Among them, on the water’s surface, floated petals of silver apple blossoms. The silver shone even brighter on the water reddened by purifying salts, piercing the vapor with the fine sound of wind chimes, giving the ritual a magical dimension. Of course, Fiiuea knew it wasn’t magical at all. She knew it was based on complex chemistry and a lot of meditation. Probably only 5 or 6 people in the whole world could have created this bath. Three of them were here.

She signalled the servants to leave, then took off her almost transparent robe and jumped into the water with her hands first. A freedom that would have scandalised the old priestesses and that would have probably guaranteed her a generous punishment, if not even exclusion from the order. This, however, was her own ritual since she had started practicing purifying baths again. For a while, she had been a drifter, without a place of her own. Besides she hated everything related to her old life, yet she knew it was useful to her. She had established the weekly purifying bath right from the first month when the gods had disappeared. Remembering those times, she touched the pendant and realised she was now feeling stronger.

‘No, it’s not because of the bath. I feel Reeza. It won’t be long now.’

Fiiuea swam a little in the scarlet water from which bubbles rose: it was still boiling. She closed her eyes and turned to swim a bit more. She felt restless. Her mind kept drifting from time to time to an old alchemist who had just come from afar for an audience. It was something normal, and Fiiuea was convinced that her success laid in the fact that she was always there for her people’s problems, no matter how insignificant they might seem. ‘The old alchemist… yes, he seems like a harbinger of war.’ News that the climate situation was worsening came from everywhere, not just from her kingdom. It was rumoured that most neighbouring countries already had plans for underground relocation. Entire cities were being built at dizzying speeds, hoping to survive when the first wave of meteors hit. Instead, the alchemist had come to seek political asylum. Her instinct told her that something more complex was at play.

‘Trust…’ she said aloud, then swam some more.

She went to the edge of the basin where a glass and a small bell were placed on a hammered metal tray. After taking a sip of the energising drink, she rang the bell shortly, realising as she did so that she had made a decision. She smiled because she knew that now she could relax, occasionally sipping from the glass, waiting quietly for the servant to enter.

Everything dissolved into a dense mist, and when Fiiuea rematerialised, she was seated on her neo-ancient throne, made partly of stone carved in an the old style and polymorphic material designed to look like freshly molten metal. She liked the throne, I felt that clearly. It reminded her of how I made her feel and how I looked. She felt stronger when she emulated me. She touched the pendant and whispered my name: Reeza.

When the large doors opened, completely without noise, her heart skipped a beat. What she was about to do was not her style, but it was necessary.

Once all the guards had entered and taken their positions in the shadows of the walls, the prime minister on the seat to her right, and the old man kneeling in the middle of the vast room, it was time to learn what needed to be learned.

‘Tell me, old man, why do you think you deserve asylum?’

The old man did not respond immediately, perhaps waiting for her to tell him directly how his defiance would be punished. The silence gradually convinced him that the empress was indeed waiting for an answer.

‘Forgive me, blessed empress. I am a wretched being who has lived underground for thirty years serving the deity.’

Fiiuea knew that the weight of silence was the best remedy for the old man’s restraint, so she made no gesture but did not take her eyes off him either, waiting tensely for him to continue.

‘I am a wretched being who no longer has much to offer…’ he finally said, without conviction.

‘A wretched being does not come for an audience with the empress,’ the prime minister responded in a bored but firm tone. ‘A wretched being does not need the protection of the empire. A wretched being would have already found their place. Say what you have to say.’

The old man bowed to acknowledge. But he did not continue immediately.

‘I come from the former State of Reeza, from the New Sellez Democracy. I worked for thirty years in the underground bunker where Reeza was held prisoner, and the last thing I did was help her escape.’

Fiiuea struggled to suppress her emotions and the impulse to stand up. She tucked one foot under her and rested her head on her fingertips, inviting the old man to continue.

‘I see the pendant of Reeza around your neck, you must have felt its power growing. It grows because the goddess is no longer imprisoned.’

‘Where is she if she escaped?’ the prime minister asked, knowing that this was what Fiiuea wanted to know.

‘No one knows. I was there when she made a jump to another dimension. She was weak then. Very weak. She suffered from the same weakness that killed the others.’

‘What?’ The prime minister clearly showed his surprise. No one knew what had happened to the gods, but death was not an option anyone had seriously considered. The gods were world architects, not ordinary mortals to be born and to die.

‘This is what happened when the Revolution came… A handful of people, among whom I am ashamed to say I was, discovered a way to isolate the gods’ power. And when the revolution came, that’s what we did. We put them all in containment capsules, powered by atomic energy, in bunkers whose locations only we knew. When this happened, some of us were also isolated underground so that the information would not escape. Years passed, and out of the 53 people who served in Reeza’s bunker, our numbers dwindled until only 7 remained. We appealed for more people to be sent, otherwise, the whole operation would have been in danger. Our pleas were not heeded until the systems began to fail, and the gods started to die. When I fled, six had already died.’

‘Six?’ Fiiuea said, standing up.

Six? I shuddered too, not knowing what to do with this information. It seemed I couldn’t even have a reaction.

Not only was Fiiuea shaken by the gravity of what was heard. Everyone present had turned pale and was trying to discern if the old man was lying.

‘That’s about when Reeza escaped,’ the old man continued after a few seconds. ‘I don’t know exactly what happened to her, or how her rescuers knew about the bunker’s existence. All I know is that she looked at us and, without a word, made a tear in space-time and passed through it with her last strength.’

‘What happened to the other seven gods?’ Fiiuea asked, coming down beside the old man and sitting on the steps in front of the throne.

‘I don’t know. But I suspect they are still in the atomic capsules, in the increasingly poorly maintained bunkers.’

‘Blessed Reeza! How could so many years pass without us knowing what happened? If we had only suspected…’

For the first time in decades, Fiiuea felt a sense of panic.

‘Do you have proof to support what you say, old man? You do realise that this information can only lead to a world war… we must be sure!’

‘I wouldn’t have bothered to travel so far if I didn’t.’

From somewhere behind his left ear, just above a tattoo with the republic’s insignia, a hand with three raised fingers, he took out an old-type chip and showed it to Fiiuea.

‘The Book of the Second Gods,’ he said as one of the servants took it immediately and left with two guards through one of the side doors.

‘What does it contain?’

‘All the information about the location of the bunkers, their plans, how they work, how to maintain the atomic systems, how they tune with the gods themselves…’

‘So all the information we need to find them and save them. At first light, we convene the war council.’

I felt myself falling for a second, but M caught me.

‘I’m sorry for your siblings,’ Filip said, and for a moment I didn’t realise what he meant.

‘I have to go back.’

‘How do you think you can do that? It’s clear that the pendant or the connection with Fiiuea is not enough.’

‘I have to break this seal,’ I said looking at my hands, looking at the wretched form made of flesh and bone that contained my power. ‘And then, after the seal is broken, we need energy. Lots of it. And then I’ll take care of everything…’

The sky had completely transformed into something hard to accept as real, something even more alien and more threatening, but perhaps because of that, even more beautiful than before. A huge cloud, made out of methane flames, extinguished in places by clusters of black crystals of a vivid but strange shine, began to first envelop the horizon in the direction we had come from and it gradually became the roof of the world. Only the blue star still shone timidly.

I followed them, and at one point I had the strange feeling that something had fallen out of my pocket. I put my hand there, but it was impossible, as I had come into this world only as a spirit, as an immaterial consciousness. What could I have dropped? The urgency with which Fox and Thanatos ran made me focus on what was ahead of me: I ran after them. It was not far – a few hundred meters perhaps – when we reached a place where there was apparently nothing except for a metallic disc of a greenish-blue color at ground level and a thick line, both inserted directly into the surface of the bridge, with an illegible inscription somewhere to their left. The two positioned themselves in front of the line, and I stood right behind them as if waiting for something in a poorly organised queue. It took no more than a second before the line – rather a rectangle – began to rise, and with it, the metal disc. No more than five seconds later, we stood before what seemed to be some kind of an elevator protected by a light barrier – resembling those water screens with droplets forming various images. Tha went through the luminous screen first, which seemed to open like a flower, scanning him entirely, three-dimensionally. Then Fox. Both were calm, as if they had done this hundreds of times before. When it was my turn, I couldn’t help but feel a kind of fear. I felt nothing, contrary to what I had anticipated. Not even a tickle, much less an invasion of my consciousness by some external force, the thing I was actually afraid of. Once gotten through the gate of light, I was able to enter the cylindrical-shaped elevator, and, in its haste, it closed its door immediately after I stepped inside, already in a descending motion before I could gather my thoughts. Only a few seconds later, we stopped again, the door opened, and a small sound, like a beep, invited us out. Or not exactly out, because now we were inside the transparent monster, seeing with amazement that there was no digestive apparatus or one that produced flames. The snake, the threatening dragon, was now like a mother, who, feeling the danger, had hidden her young in her protective pouch.

And what a dreamlike view it was there, a fairytale for all the senses. The outside noise, a background hum whose intensity you couldn’t truly appreciate until it stopped completely, also ceased, as if the world had become as mute as I was in the face of the new magic show. It was completely quiet – quieter than inside our traveling bear’s belly. The smell seemed like something resembling a green meadow in summer. Like the sun shining through the window when you get out of bed in the morning. Like fresh air and ozone. I found it strange that I could still smell, but I didn’t question it. What would have been the point? I focused my attention on the wonder inside which we found ourselves, not just us, but others as well. Soon, a kind of train stopped right in front of us, waited for us to take our seats and put on a safety belt as fine as a silk scarf, then started with a rapid but subtle acceleration. At speed, the world beyond the rainbow-gleaming windows now seemed magnificent, created by a superior being only to amaze us, the small creatures carried by the passage of time to who knows where, before hitting a hard and cold pavement.

The blue and gray and black cloud had now covered almost the entire sky, darkening even more, only a faint ray, seemingly bluer than before, still escaping from the oppression of the new dome. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was also banished from our new world, which had become even darker. Once the eyes adjusted to the new light, you could see it was no less beautiful, on the contrary, the tongues of fire had shed their blue hues, and the flames were now almost white and bright, like the sparklers you burn on New Year’s Eve. White sparks were reflected by the glassy shell of the beast we were in, and what reached us were diamond and white and black shines, each seemingly fighting for a bit of attention. The sea had also begun to shine brighter in the unexpected darkness, its light reddening the horizon.

Around me were people like Fox, like Tha, with red skin and their cat eyes, whom I could hear occasionally making sounds of wonder and appreciation, most of them happy to have caught such an event precisely there, in the best place from which they could see it. They were happily anticipating the spectacle, it’s true, but I also felt worry hovering over the older people, some whispering – maybe I wouldn’t have heard what they were saying if I didn’t have this inhuman body – that two storms in a week was unusual and that in Reeza’s time this was unheard of. But the mysterious Reeza, the goddess Fox had told me about, was nowhere to be seen – I wouldn’t have known what to expect even if I had seen her. I did assume it was something I would have recognised.

A few minutes later, just as I was getting used to the new view, the small wagon we were in stopped. Together with another 15-20 people, we reached our temporary destination: a double door made out of metal, mechanically operated by two people through a complicated (and unnecessarily beautifully decorated) system of pulleys, opening lazily on large tracks. Everything seemed to be made to close hermetically – the parts seemed to fit perfectly. I marvelled at the extremely meticulous design of everything around me when we were all invited inside. The wagon conductor told a man who seemed to be in charge that it was just as the sensors had said, there was no one else outside in their section, not even in the surrounding areas, and that they could seal the gates without worry.

We were all invited to sit down. A lady asked the children if they needed to use the toilet, but none of them wanted to leave their father or mother’s side. I was a bit amused by how, in such a different world, the security offered by parents is just as universal.

Some stood up and disappeared for a minute or two, then, upon returning, most of them stopped by the desk where the clerk from earlier was now seated. He was taller than the rest, not by much, but enough to make you notice that almost all the adults were actually about the same height, regardless of whether they were men, women, androgynous, or androids. There were differences among them, but small, almost imperceptible. Seeing so many people with red skin all gathered together, it suddenly came to me why everyone saw me as different from them: the android in which my consciousness now resided had white skin, perhaps even whiter than mine would have been, maybe if I had never ventured out without a parasol even on rare outings. My hands were normal to me, but when you looked around and saw only very long, thin, and exaggeratedly delicate fingers, you realised why my hands, perhaps modelled after athletic ones, seemed foreign and were watched with great interest, not only by the mischievous children, who laughed among themselves and dared each other to come and touch me, but also by their parents, who cast furtive glances when they thought I wasn’t looking.

Besides, there was no need to look at anything in particular. In that half-filled room of chairs and people, I had another revelation about my nature: it was enough for something to come into my field of vision, and it was as if I had seen it completely, up close, and in all its grandeur. In other words, I could focus on something without necessarily directing my gaze toward it. Quite an interesting and useful feature, I thought. And my ears worked better too, more focused: if I concentrated on someone, I could hear their breathing, even their heartbeat.

One of the younger children took very seriously the dare to come and touch me and to talk to me. It seems it wasn’t so natural for them either to see androids like me walking freely on the street. I didn’t make a move: I let her timidly touch the hem of the blouse I was wearing before Fox shook her head disapprovingly, sending the girl, embarrassed but still victorious, back to her friends.

A little boy—no older than 5 or 6—was terribly upset because, as he said, he had lost his pet, apparently a large, majestic hawk, according to his description. I could understand his state of agitation. I even thought that in his place, I would probably have cried hysterically if I had lost, for example, Napoleon, especially since the clouds above us didn’t seem to foretell anything good. What I didn’t understand was how his mother was so calm about the lost animal, occasionally lifting her eyes lazily from a glass tablet like Fox’s, annoyed that the boy didn’t understand that she would get him another one.

Most people, however, when not casting a curious glance at me, were looking through the huge windows that curved down to somewhere below the edge of the floor, as if we were inside some kind of glass globe.

In fact, that’s exactly what it was: the room we were in was indeed inside an almost perfect glass sphere, which, like the bridge, reflected light in all directions, with shades of red dominating the fiery rainbows.

Although I didn’t personally feel the worry that I could effortlessly read on the faces around me, I could tell that something was about to happen. At the first sound we heard from outside, people began telling those around them or even themselves that it had started. I wanted to ask what had begun, to ask Fox or even Tha to enlighten me—but there was no need. I could see with my own eyes, as a made not born being, and marvel like everyone else, perhaps even more. The tall man’s voice sounded as if it came from everywhere, telling us that the level 5 storm had officially started and inviting us to take our seats for safety. Clearly, there was no need to tell anyone to sit down; everyone was quietly seated exactly where they had been instructed from the beginning. Two very beautiful women—twins to my eyes—came with a device and manually activated each safety belt, which, like a ribbon of fine silk, did nothing but better mold to our bodies frozen with anticipation and somehow make us feel safer. The entire operation took them no more than two minutes, but the rain, which had started timidly, now drummed heavily enough that I could clearly see that what fell from the fiery clouds were not drops of water, like on Earth, but rather a stubborn kind of hail.

The noise, it was quite clear to me, was diminished by the layers of protective glass, which didn’t seem to suffer much from the violent contact with nature. Even so, after another minute or two, it was the only thing I could hear. Any attempt at conversation ceased completely, with both adults and children looking up at the sky with slightly parted lips. The two women took their seats as well, and like the others, they were looking upwards. From there, the hail fell mercilessly, faster and faster, growing larger and larger—I was witnessing for the first time what I would experience hundreds of times later in my dreams.

When I didn’t think it was possible for it to rain harder, it was as if someone wanted to prove me wrong. We all enjoyed the view, though, one that is hard to do justice to: the hail refracted the sky’s light into hundreds of colorful rays that bounced from one pebble to another, forming a kind of fabric of light with prism-like knots. The sky served as a brilliant backdrop for the almost geometric spectacle of light, shape, and color, placed there as if to add an extra touch of je ne sais quoi to the enchanting landscape. It was truly like a fairy tale. There’s no other way to describe this brutal dance of nature’s forces.

I then remembered a visit Fox had paid me a few years ago, just before she got married. We had a bit of a fight then because I couldn’t understand why she felt the need to validate her lies with an even bigger lie. I knew, I knew, that I wasn’t going to change her mind, that I wasn’t going to convince her that what she was doing was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. I was mad with grief because I hadn’t just lost my stepfather, whom I had come to love as much as my real father, but I had lost my family altogether, feeling as if I were left alone in the world. I was trying to protect what was mine from the mirage of salvation, but I had no chance of success. So, tired of all the accusations she threw at me in the form of arguments for her new and pure love, I started telling her what was on my mind and how she had wronged me over the years, especially during the short mourning period after Dan. She started crying, not used to being told things straight to her face, as she was usually the one who had the habit of telling others her truths and fleeing before anyone had the chance to respond in kind. But I had done it, finally. I felt guilty afterward, it’s true, but also somehow liberated. I let her cry and went out onto my small balcony overlooking an inner courtyard full of parked cars. A single large linden tree shaded the courtyard on the left, and in the middle of summer, it covered everything in a sticky sap that the car owners cursed vehemently whenever they got into their cars. You could hear a few sparrows squabbling over a piece of bread or a pretzel that some child had dropped on the sidewalk and would have picked up as if nothing had happened if his mother, following close behind, hadn’t firmly told him to leave it because it was dirty now, and she would give him another. I lit a cigarette, one that I had left on the balcony in the drawer of the table where I often drank my coffee, from the time when I smoked a pack of white Marlboros daily, and leaned against the railing to listen to the sounds of the neighborhood: cars passing back and forth, always busy; a child on a bicycle honking at anyone who didn’t get out of the way, as if on purpose; two or three women pushing prams, each more expensive and more adorned with trinkets than the last, some holding the hand of an older child; poorly dressed men and women rummaging through trash for empty bottles and cardboard, occasionally shouting, ‘Old iron, old iron we take, old iron we buy,’ almost like in my childhood, except now they had no horses or carts, each pulling a sort of a two-wheeled little cart filled with their precious cargo. That’s how recycling was done around here, and I always enjoyed the free spectacle of those who did what the majority saw as wrong but I saw as right. I was maybe on my third puff when I called Fox from inside: ‘Come quickly, I want to show you something beautiful!’ And it really was beautiful: a very fine rain was falling from a fluffy white cloud that didn’t cover even half the sky, letting the sun’s rays bathe each drop in diamond-like gleams. I looked at her and felt better now that I saw her smiling again. ‘If this is what she wants, so be it,’ I told myself then, and kissed her brotherly on the cheek, then on the forehead, hugged her, and told her that all I wanted was to see her happy, no matter what that meant for her, or, I would add, no matter what unhappiness her happiness brought me. And, resigned, I thought about how much good Fox’s wedding would bring to my mother, who was now just a shadow of what she used to be, as if this death had overwhelmed her worse than the death of her first husband and my first father. It was natural, back then she was younger, stronger, with a school-age child and a job that kept her always busy and constantly whispered to her that she had to keep going. But now? Now she lived only to die. That’s what she said, ever since Dan, and her only joy now was our visit, mine and Fox’s, once every week or two.

Poor thing, she didn’t know anything—not about the true relationship between Fox and me, nor that Dan had found out about us one evening when he came home early from work, nor that that was why he couldn’t find peace and why he wasn’t sleeping well at night, unable to understand what was wrong with us and how he could fix it, feeling somehow responsible, guilty, and choked by the secret he held from our mother. We watched the rain for a long time, soon perfumed by one of Fox’s more expensive cherry-flavoured cigarettes, who wherever she went knew not only to turn all heads but also to keep them there, in their fixed gaze on her. We didn’t say a word then, feeling that it wasn’t necessary, that the rain seemed to wash away everything that had been said unfairly and thrown at one another just to make us hurt. That the tiny sparks had the sole purpose of occupying all the space in the mind and filling our thoughts with beauty, not with ugliness, with white magic, not with malice and enmity. Soon, we no longer thought of anything other than the fact that the sound of that click-click-click was adorable and that nature, a true master of sound and image, had perfectly matched it with the angelic panorama.

When, through the noise coming from outside, a kind of faint alarm was heard, the clerk said clearly, his voice echoing from all directions, that the storm had been reclassified to level 3 and that we would soon begin the descent. Soon presumably meant now because the sphere of glass and metal in which we were all both captives and precious guests immediately began its slow but sure descent toward the sea of lava. We were still descending when a lightning bolt was seen branching out from somewhere in the distance, not downwards, descending to the ground, but passing through the clouds that sparkled strongly with a continuous crackling, exploding here and there with a loud boom. The succession of explosions, some slow, almost inaudible, others loud enough to make your heart jump, was only a precursor to the main spectacle. Just as we stopped descending, 20-30 meters above the sea of lava below, where everything was filtered by the reddish light and by the vapours around, from everywhere, a booming sound like a dynamite explosion shook us, the sky above us being red, heated by the path of a larger lightning bolt.

The children were frightened and began to cry, stomp their feet, and try to get out of their seats. Their mothers panicked too, saying they wanted to get up just for a second to hold them in their arms, some screaming without realising it. The seat belts kept both them and their children captive in their seats, making them scream even louder due to the claustrophobic sensation caused by the fact that they couldn’t move. Everyone else was terrified and could only keep their fear inside by clenching their teeth strongly. The clerk asked us all to remain calm and assured us that we were completely safe. There was no reason to worry. One of the twins undid her seat belt and went with a tray to each of the agitated children. She offered them some colourful candies, which the little ones seemed to be suspicious of at first, but eventually ate them curiously, calming down a bit from their agitation. As the sweets took effect, the room sank back into the noise coming only from outside, leaving us all still scared. Shortly afterward, we noticed a slight hum, and felt a draft—the air conditioning units were working hard because being so close to the hot lava, we would all probably have baked without them.

Another lightning bolt streaked across the sky, this time only partially obscured by clouds, abruptly curving its path through the hailstones that continued to fall forcefully and swiftly for more than 20 minutes already. The pebbles in the lightning’s path exploded, illuminating the sky like meticulously crafted fireworks. The lightning bolts had started to intensify as well, some larger, some smaller, but always frightening and beautiful, caught between two worlds of fire. And we too were caught between these two worlds, protected only by windows that no longer offered anyone a sense of complete safety. I could hear each heart individually, each beating wildly, jumping and stumbling with each louder bang from outside.

I looked around me and thought how lucky these people were to still have a place to hide from such a calamity, and even to enjoy the spectacle unfolding before anyone who cared to see it.

A second alarm went off, and a woman let out a short scream, unable to suppress it in time. I didn’t know what this could mean, but it was evident that something was about to happen, because we had started descending again even before the clerk spoke to us calmly through the speaker again, telling us that an intensification of the storm was expected, potentially reaching level two. I watched as people struggled to compose themselves, each crying, praying, or wondering if they would survive, in solitude—somehow having no energy or time for anything other than themselves.

Tha, however, turned halfway towards me, half-smiling, and whispered that he survived a level 1 when he was little, in his village. According to him, their bunker wasn’t even half as efficient and didn’t have all the components 100% mechanical, so they had to fix the electrical first before they could get out of there. It was fun. I doubted it had been fun, and the look Fox gave him told me it had probably been terrifying.

The clerk told us that we were going to submerge into lava, but until then, we had to prepare for anything. I didn’t know what a level two storm meant, but it must have been something terrible if someone preferred to sink into a pseudo-solid lava rather than wait outside to see it. As the lava began to cover our small submarine like a tide, hopes and fears grew louder, and above us, gusts of wind had started scattering that crystalline hail in every direction. Red lightning had painted the entire sky, each scream echoing like titanic monsters battling for supremacy. The moments of pause between them gradually diminished until they overlapped, clashed, merged, and produced even larger hailstones that pelted our suddenly fragile roof. I was glad we were sinking into lava because outside was nothing but hell, the sky above becoming a demonic mirror of the sea of lava, showing who wielded true power.

Before we submerged completely, we heard one more boom, muffled this time, like a final groan, and with it, the lights went out, and we moved only by inertia. I felt as though I were floating in the ether, as if I were no longer anchored in this reality of the body I inhabited, but soaring above it all like an eye observing and marvelling.

We were finally safe, yet in a tomb-like darkness, prisoners of our rescuers. No one screamed, no one panicked, as I would have expected, but instead, I heard relieved sighs from everywhere. Soon after, emergency lights, beautiful and familiar, came on, later I learned that they were powered by electricity coming from a steam engine. It was only natural for such a thing to exist when you knew you could stay hidden for a while in the fevered bowels of the earth.

Tha leaned over as much as he could, held by his own seatbelt, just to see Fox who was seated next to me, I was interposing between them.

‘What a marvel you have here; it didn’t even flicker during the electric pulse from earlier,’ he said, then looked at me and smiled as if we were now close friends, adding with a hint of pride, ‘Regular androids would have had all their brain circuitry completely fried if they would have been turned on. How did you know it would withstand?’

‘Intuition,’ Fox replied curtly, suddenly seeming quieter, colder. Different, in any case.

We remained trapped under lava, protected by its dense mass for nearly two hours, but as soon as we arrived, all seat belts were released, and we could move freely. Those who needed to could use the restroom, and some even went to another room to lie down for a bit after taking some sedatives. ‘There’s no danger down here,’ Tha told me, just as I felt a slight tremor, like a gentle earthquake.

‘It’s true,’ Fox replied in place of Tha when I looked at him suspiciously, ‘even if the bridge above were to collapse…”

‘I don’t think that’s possible; Reeza’s the one who made it,’ Tha interrupted, as if such nonsense was rarely heard.

‘…and if it were to collapse, we’d still be safe for a fairly long time.’

‘Several days?’ I asked, eyeing with envy a pastry that Fox was enjoying, which my body clearly did not desire.

‘Several months,’ Tha answered enthusiastically. ‘They’re much more practical than those dug into the ground, thanks to the abundant energy available here with minimal effort. You just need the right tools, and here, obviously, you not only have them but also 2-3 backups.’ I glanced at Fox to see her reaction to Tha’s interruption, but she didn’t seem bothered in any way.

‘You’re the other one!’ I blurted out without realising.

‘The other one?’ Tha asked, mouth filled with pastry, becoming increasingly relaxed and friendly.

‘That’s right. Yes.’

The simplicity with which she acknowledged that she wasn’t Fox left me perplexed. I couldn’t understand how she could be so relaxed under the circumstances we were in, in the bizarre situation she found herself in, with a foreign resident in her own body. Somehow, seeing over her shoulder a black wall of lava perfectly mirroring us made me realise that for her, this world with all its oddities was normal. For this extraterrestrial woman, I myself wasn’t a chance occurrence or a bizarre entity. And perhaps neither was Fox.

‘My name is Sela Koro from Firal-Afal,’ she said plainly, without any hidden pride. She was one of those people who had always been above others and had become familiar with their own grandeur. They no longer had any use for pride or arrogance. They were truly modest people because, although great—intelligent, with a centuries-old family tradition, beauty, resources, everything a mere mortal could desire or imagine—they knew that others saw them even greater than they actually were and placed them on a pedestal higher than they considered themselves worthy of.

And that’s exactly how it happened. It was enough for her to say her name for a murmur of amazement to ripple through the entire room. Two minutes later, the clerk, accompanied by the twins, stood before us and invited us to an adjacent room. ‘It’s for VIPs,’ he added somewhat embarrassed, looking at people who had suddenly transformed into a specific breed of jackal unique only to humans. The invitation was addressed only to Fox, or rather to Sela, and obviously to me too, as I was like an appendix to her in this oddly normal society, if you only looked at those who populated it. Everyone had their fears, the fear of death being the same everywhere, but they all quickly forgot about it if any small event, like the discovery that a personality was among them, took them by surprise. Everyone stared at Sela, probably without realising it, driven by a curiosity that I understood all too well. And I was curious about Sela too, just for different reasons than they were. Anyway, when I started to move to the next room, I signaled to Tha, who seemed completely abandoned, still standing exactly where we had been when they came to invite us. His face lit up, coming after us like a puppy almost wagging his tail. I liked him, and apparently so did Sela, because she had no objection when she saw him entering; in fact, it seemed to me that I saw a controlled smile on her face.

The new room was a mirror image of the previous one in terms of size and positioning, but completely opposite in appearance: here, the chairs in the middle of the room were replaced by only a few large armchairs that seemed very comfortable. Six capsules lined the walls, similar to the ones I had seen in sci-fi movies, looking futuristic with their semi-transparent covers—four of them coloured green and the other two red, all adorned with numerous tubes connected on the sides and turquoise-green pixelated writings on the front. ‘Hyperbaric chambers,’ Tha explained, sticking close to me, clearly curious about me but also eager for conversation, which Sela didn’t seem interested in.

She had taken a seat in one of the armchairs—not too close to the edge, nor too close to the center—and studied her tablet with exclusive attention. It’s rare to see people so absorbed in what they do—Aunt Martha was one of them, and I found it fascinating to watch her cook, read, or even watch a movie: she was completely immersed in her activity, and if you asked her a question, she couldn’t tear herself away immediately, turning her head towards you after a couple of seconds and calmly asking what you had said. Sela was the same way, so I knew it wasn’t worth venturing into a conversation she wouldn’t want to engage in. After all, I knew nothing about this being, another reason to avoid asking questions whose answers I wanted to know. I realised the best way to learn about the world I was in was to continue talking to Tha, who, although eager to learn new things about me, was also happy to talk, tell stories, to explain.

Tha explained to me how the 6 hyperbaric chambers, which apparently were quite different from each other, worked. One even had a vegetative sleep function—which, he told me, was extraordinarily rare because the technology used was very complex and could easily break, and the materials needed for it to function perfectly were very costly, two of them being found on the third house and imported from there only at annual exchanges. The Third Home was much closer than it had appeared to me in my dreams, and there were some small shuttles that made continuous trips during the time of the gods—practically in all of the new history, as Tha emphasised passionately—but since the new regime (who wanted democracy and who had become an imperial conqueror and tyranny in a few years) these interplanetary routes called hahshak had become less frequent.

Reeza, Tha told me—which I felt he had been waiting to say all these things for a long time, and now that he found someone to listen to him, he was happier than ever—was an incomparable goddess. There had been nothing similar even in the history of the ancients, from what he had read at least, and among the 14 deities, she had no equal: she was not only beautiful in the form she gave to her avatars, but her behaviour also seemed to be pure and truly submissive to a higher moral code. Often others had criticised her for this very reason, but Tha was convinced that the other gods behaved just like ordinary people, shamelessly doing all sorts of foolish and even atrocious things, escaping judgment because they were indeed gods who could not be held accountable. Their power was truly immense, he said, staring into space, until I asked him what had happened to them, why they were no longer in power.

‘Their story is simple, and in no way different from so many others of the ancient world’s monarchies,’ Tha said. ‘The gods lived in their avatar forms, most often having a plethora of people to serve them in exchange for their divine protection. No one felt that protection anymore, each having their own life, doing agriculture, working as officials, or whatever, many still dreaming to be close to them. Over time, those who really became the close servants of the gods ended up ruling the world, founding all sorts of committees, taking all sorts of taxes. For several centuries now, the society of the Second Home has become increasingly oppressive, and those who led us had more and more influence. The priestesses, those who held the most power, had one among them with absolute power. She herself was like a kind of goddess with unlimited powers. But while they used to heal people on their journeys that sometimes lasted their whole lives, in the end, most didn’t leave the temples, to which ordinary people were not even allowed to approach without a special permit from their local administrator—a governor or village chief. And in the last few years, no one issued permits. The lands became increasingly difficult to cultivate and produced smaller harvests, the heat intensified, public punishments increased… The world grew tired of being ruled by gods. And one day, they announced bluntly on all the buildings that the gods had been abolished, defeated, placed in capsules, and put to sleep forever. Some found it to be blasphemy and cried bitterly, others found it to be a blessing. One thing’s for sure—the world changed completely. Those who ruled were ousted and replaced with someone else. The ideology was now different: the people ruled… but the people have never ruled, and even now it wasn’t so. The people still die of hunger, even more fiercely than before, only now realising the role the gods had played in our world. But it would be wise to keep my big mouth shut if I want to get out of here and still be free.’

I felt his fervour, his rebellion, but also his fear of what was to come. I wanted to ask him if he still thought the gods were the solution for them on this planet. Yet, after seeing his expression of an oppressed, censored man, I knew he couldn’t answer me. I had just encountered the resistance.

I looked at the black window, where we were perfectly reflected.

‘This glass is beautiful. I wonder how it was made to withstand such forces?’

‘It’s made of carbon,’ like any other.

‘Is it a diamond?’

‘Yes, that’s what it was called in the ancient world. Here, it’s simply called glass, because it’s easy to make and used everywhere. They even use a special type here—it’s processed in labs, irradiated and para-irradiated to be ten times harder than the ordinary diamond found by the ancients in their world. And yet… diamonds, so to speak, are also what the hailstones are made of. I suggest you take one home if you go back…’ he abruptly stopped, realising that mentioning what I was could be was as dangerous as stating his beliefs aloud.

‘Have you ever seen Reeza?’ I asked to change the subject, and he immediately pulled out a small box from a pocket, as if he had been prepared for this moment for a long time. When he opened it, it turned out to be a secure container for its contents – a kind of small circular tablet, about the size of a euro, which had all sorts of forbidden information, as he called them. He showed me two looping images, like gifs, of two truly extraordinarily beautiful and radiant women. I was surprised to see that the images were 2D, unlike everything else I had seen around there.

‘2D takes up less space,’ he explained. I need as much information packed into this little box as possible because many things have been banned since the new… regime. Many of them would be lost forever if it weren’t for this box, which has something else extraordinary: a tracking system so advanced that I could throw it into the sea and still find it weeks later. He closed it and put it back into his pocket, leaving me to ponder about the two avatars of Reeza.

We began to approach Sela. We sat awkwardly beside her, feeling somehow guilty for how well we understood each other and how easily our conversations flowed. I was also curious about what I could learn about Fox from her. I imagined their minds must be interconnected in some way, and she might know every hidden thought of hers. I wanted to ask Sela if it was true what Fox said, that she was now a different person, not just her sexuality had changed but her entire logical apparatus had undergone a metamorphosis when Dan had died. Surely, suffering, especially guilt, changes you, but sometimes you do nothing more than hide from yourself. Clearly, even if Sela knew the answers to all my questions, she wouldn’t have told me, that was quite clear to me, because you don’t betray your closest friends, let alone those with whom you share the same body forever, maybe. Moreover, I thought maybe Fox was there and saw everything watching both Sela and us, in fact.

Continuing to ponder on how my mind now presided like a queen over its domain, how vast it seemed compared to when I was myself, the original me, when the space for thoughts was neither large nor small but just right, I realised how crowded Sela’s mind must have felt. I recalled the unpleasant sensation I had when the captain’s hologram appeared in the bear’s cockpit, and the discomfort I felt then. That’s how I imagined Sela must have felt, even though she displayed a calm and benevolent demeanour outwardly. And Fox, what had Fox sought so intensely, to end up in a world from our future, created even partially by thoughts that transcended the barrier of time and space in a way I couldn’t explain but was sure had truly happened. Sitting quietly next to Sela, I could see her more clearly, see how she frowned, how she smiled, how every action provoked an almost imperceptible expression, yet one that made her more real to me than ever before.

‘The storm is almost ready,’ she said when she finally lifted her eyes from the tablet—a diamond tablet, I thought with a hint of irony, but also with envy. ‘We’ll be getting out in about 20 minutes, and then we’ll have to hurry—I’ve never been late, and I won’t start now.’

‘And then? When we get to where you want to go, what will happen?” I asked, wanting confirmation that we were going where I presumed, not where she had stated.

‘I’ll receive a diploma, they’ll give me some keys—some universal ones—and from then on, I’ll fulfil my dream of being the first in my clan to head the Koro laboratories.’ She raised her eyebrows with a tone that suggested is my explanation sufficient?

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t satisfactory. It would be safer to talk outside, once we were on the road again, but I couldn’t wait.

‘And the rabbit?’ I asked, knowing no one else would understand what I meant.

‘The rabbit… how you call it, later. It’s not… urgent. Not today.’ She looked intensely at me, then turned to Tha and said briskly, ‘You’re coming with us.’

He looked at her, obviously not understanding what was going on, and I didn’t quite understand either, but somehow I suspected our meeting hadn’t been entirely accidental. Still, I hoped his accident hadn’t been caused directly by Sela, and in a way, I found it hard to see her as a villain, but I was prepared for anything.

‘I need you for this thing she’s talking about…’

‘What thing? Tha asked almost foolishly, now looking sometimes at me, sometimes at her, seeming reluctant to draw hasty conclusions, and keeping his calm until he could form a fitting one.

‘The rabbit,’ Sela said, without looking at him again, tapping on her tablet.

‘The rabbit?’

Tha was utterly astonished. He didn’t understand anything—which was normal, as the only reason I called it so was because of my idiotic interpretation of a tattoo symbol. I couldn’t explain anything to Tha, and he clearly saw that, and that somewhat reassured me. It’s a big deal when the people helping you aren’t idiots, and although he saw he hadn’t understood much, he realised he might understand if he were patient. Another realisation was probably that Sela might reward him with something more than simple answers.

‘Fine, we’ll go to the ceremony, and then to hunt rabbits. By the way,’ he said, changing his gaze to me, ‘how long have you been here?’

‘A few hours? Not more than half a day, let’s say? Why?’

‘I thought so! You didn’t choose a very appropriate code name if you didn’t want to attract attention: there are no rabbits here. No surface animals, anyway.’

‘Are you saying there are no dogs, cats, horses… bears?’

He started laughing amused, almost entering a state of relaxation as before.

‘They exist,’ he said, ‘but they’re luurofelfei—pets that only grow inside residential complexes. Even there, you rarely find a cat, even more rarely a dog, and as for horses… I don’t even know if they exist. And that’s only because the first settlers came from the first house, that is, from Earth, and they didn’t imagine the world they’d live in could be so arid and hostile. They took out their laboratory tools and got to work: they made sheep, cows, goats, even rabbits, animals they thought they could eat. But their agronomist engineers couldn’t make pastures for them, or even areas with any kind of vegetation. Sure, over the years, they developed plants that could grow more easily in our hot and dry soil. But when they succeeded, they didn’t return to the idea of raising animals, but focused on what they had: arid but very rich soil that produced much more nutritious fruits, vegetables, and cereals. Meat was considered a luxury for a few centuries until it was completely removed from our diet, following a study that clearly showed it did us, the animals, and nature harm.’

‘Are you saying you’ve never eaten meat?’ I asked, feeling a twinge of regret for what I felt he was missing.

‘No, and I think it would be nothing but disgusting. It’s a kind of cannibalism to eat animals that struggle to get through their days just like you.’

‘Probably,’ I said complacently, recalling the steak I had eaten less than two days before.

As Sela said, in less than 20 minutes, we had already begun ascending through the scorching magma in our protective sphere. When we pierced the lava surface, the diamond window of the sphere remained perfectly clean and crystalline, as if it completely repelled liquids—it was specially treated, Tha whispered to me when he heard me marvelling at it. He stood right behind me, and we both gazed at the new sky, empty, without clouds or suns, but full of stars, varying in size from small to large points of white light, just as I knew them. I stared at them for a long time, wondering where I was and what I was actually looking for there, and where my home was. Occasionally, an almost translucent cloud with pink-violet glimmers timidly passed over the roof of our ascending dome.

Once we reached the bridge-level, we all exited our protective cocoon, happy to breathe the air of freedom once more. We boarded the waiting car. Tha let the first ones he had lifted go first, then the next, and so on, each one bidding farewell to those still remaining in the car, until only the three of us and the woman with the 5-6 year old child who had lost their pet were left.

The child fidgeted constantly, trying to see something on his mother’s tablet, but the seat belt restrained him, which irritated him and made him grumble incessantly. The mother remained calm, and when she found what she was looking for, she showed it to the child, who suddenly brightened up. They also got off, chatting happily, the mother telling him they would first get the car and then go after the missing pet.

Since we were the last ones to board, we were also the last ones to disembark. We politely greeted the tram driver and headed towards the cylindrical elevator.

‘What would have happened if the storm caught us here, or in the elevator?’ I asked, seeing that everything was fine, no holes in the diamond coating of the dragon.

‘We would have died instantly,’ Tha replied simply. ‘It’s not about hail or lightning. Not even about explosions. But the air becomes more toxic, and if you happen to be near a striking lightning, which happens often, the first thing that happens is that it burns all the oxygen, then the nitrogen and helium, leaving only poisonous gases around. Your eardrums can burst from the noise, you can be struck by lightning, poisoned, or scorched by hot air… oh, and worst of all—yes, there’s something even worse—the pulses can stop your heart, and in some cases, even your brain. In the sphere, you’re protected by its own electromagnetic field, that’s why you’re safest there. During that grade 1 storm, there were elderly people who died because the pulses were too strong. And androids… like you or with other forms, are even more sensitive to electromagnetic pulses. Even with the sphere’s protection, others like you would have been reduced to recyclable circuitry.’

We were all sitting at the table, overwhelmed by a furious despair. Or perhaps it was just my state that permeated to the others. Hatred towards humanity made me feel like I was boiling inside.

‘You saved them from destruction, and this is how they repay you?’ Filip voiced my frustration. Although I controlled my violent fantasies, the graphic ways in which I wanted to imagine torturing and killing the guilty, I couldn’t contain the sensation of blind fury. They could feel it too. And Filip couldn’t control himself: he slammed his fist on the table, and in the fury that had seized us, he grabbed a chair, preparing to hurl it towards the window, when M grabbed it from his hands and put it back at the table. Then he looked straight at me and said only this: control yourself. He didn’t understand that I was trying my best.

A few moments later, Ofelia pulled her chair closer to me and then subtly directed mine towards her, taking my hands into hers.

‘Focus on me,’ she said, a little unsure of what she was about to do.

For a moment, I felt that I couldn’t and didn’t want to let go of my anger, but seeing Filip so affected, I clenched my teeth and tried to focus on Ofelia. At first, it was difficult. I saw her in front of me, but I couldn’t feel what she felt, I couldn’t see what she saw.

‘Breath with me,’ she whispered slowly, and I tried to focus on her breathing, to inhale with her, to exhale with her. Again and again, until I slowly began to feel it. It was as if her energy permeated into mine through the tips of my fingers. Images of various kinds began to take shape in my mind. Images where it was hard for me to tell who the protagonists were. It was clear to me that Ofelia was trying to think of beautiful moments from her life. I recognised some eyes in a tiny face, of a child around twelve or thirteen, belonging to Filip who was standing close to M, now with his back to us, playing chess with a man Filip called ‘dad’. A woman entered from one side and kissed Ofelia on the head, wagging her index finger at her… in a way that said that’s not proper! And I could feel how embarrassed Ofelia was. Then the memory morphed into another, perhaps an older one, where she was perched on a shabby fence, at the edge of what seemed to be a forest road. She tapped her foot with the precision of a clock, toe down, heel down, absentmindedly listening to the song of crickets, pulling mechanically from time to time on a cigarette. A noise came from the woods and she glanced towards the county road visible a few dozen meters to the right: it was deserted, an endless road going nowhere. She slowly turned her head towards the sound, as if she had all the time in the world. And she did. What was worse had already happened, this thought of hers made me nauseous. That’s when M appeared, whom she saw for the first time. She thought she was imagining things. This desolate forest, in the middle of the night. How was it possible for someone else to be there? She looked at him wondering if he would hurt her and somehow surprised herself with the simple answer, no, I don’t think so. She didn’t know where she drew this conclusion from, but she enjoyed seeming in control, so she got off the fence and went to him with determination. When their eyes met in the moonlight, she felt empty inside and out and imagined he sensed it too and that he could see everything she felt and thought. I thought it was strange to see M through her eyes. He seemed like a giant. She thought he looked like a wild Viking with his disheveled hair, thick black beard, and his eyes glowing like two flames in the moonlight, with a hatchet in his right hand. I thought for a moment that she would run away. But M, he was looking at her with the most sincere compassion. With understanding. He took off the puffer jacket he was wearing over a checkered shirt and put it on Ofelia’s shoulders, covering up her top that had a broken strap and was stained with blood.

‘If you want, my truck is about two kilometers in that direction,’ M said and vaguely pointed in a direction. ‘I have my phone there, and also a power bank, in case you need to charge yours.’

Ofelia didn’t say anything. He shrugged, then said his name was M and headed in the indicated direction without telling her to come along. Ofelia looked at the hatchet and decided that if he had wanted to harm her, he probably would have done so already, so she followed him. A few dozen meters later, she realised what she had heard earlier: M was now gathering some wood from the ground. Branches, both thick and thin, cut to about the same length, which he had probably dropped when he saw Ofelia among the trees.

‘Your name is M?’ Ofelia asked timidly, feeling awkward, watching M who seemed to be gathering every last twig.

‘M, yes,’ he replied warmly, without looking at her. I watched him through her eyes and it seemed like my soul was filling with gratitude, what I was feeling, and probably what she was feeling too. I was grateful that she showed me M. I now realised how much I had missed him since I sent him here.

‘It’s a bit of a walk to the car, but I promise we’ll get there quickly,’ he said as he tied the wood with a rope, then continued in a tone that betrayed his discomfort. ‘You’re safe with me.’

‘I know,’ she replied softly.

‘Are you okay? Does it hurt anywhere?’

‘I’m okay,’ she whimpered and tried to stifle her tears.

‘It’s okay to cry,’ he said simply. ‘I cry sometimes too.’

When I snapped out of this reverie, I felt sad, yes, but I also felt accepted. As if my suffering was not only normal in these circumstances, but also something they all had felt before, things they could understand and resonate with.

I smiled at Ofelia, and for the first time in a long while, I felt the need to repay the kindness, so I sent them a wave of relief.

‘Reeza!’ Filip cried, slamming his palm on the table and catching us all by surprise. ‘I know where we need to take you,’ he said. ‘To the burned-out apartment building!’

‘To the burned-out building?’ Ofelia asked, seeming to think that Filip might actually have a good idea after all.

‘M, don’t you remember? You said yourself back then that you felt a familiar energy when you investigated the incident.’

‘Yes, I remember too,’ Ofelia said with clear enthusiasm.

‘There might have been something there,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know how it could still help us after all these years. They might have renovated it by now.’

‘No, they haven’t! I pass by all the time, and it looks exactly the same… or worse. And even if we don’t find anything, it’s not far. We won’t waste more than a few hours, during which we might come up with another idea.’

In a few minutes, we were back in the car that Filip had driven me in from the hotel where M had accommodated me during our mad escape from the hospital. M was driving this time, and it seemed like the strangest thing in the world to me. I had seen M in so many situations, but this seemed by far the most bizarre. Perhaps because, to me, he still carried the weight of the other world. I had seen him in so many situations there that he seemed completely out of place in this world. Of course, he didn’t seem to feel that way at all. It was just my perception playing tricks on me.

When we arrived at the apartment building, it felt like a tsunami hit me. A two-by-two hole yawned wide in the side of the building, right at the top floor. The building appeared burned from about the 6th floor up. But at the top floor, everything seemed even more charred. Blacker than anywhere else. As I stared at the hole, Ofelia walked past us and went to greet a group of people. Apparently, she knew some of the residents in the area.

Since the building was no longer in use, I had to climb the stairs and discover new limitations of my body. We practically had to stop every two floors so I could catch my breath. The door of one of the apartments on the sixth floor was off its hinges, having been knocked down, and now lay along a wall. Contrary to Filip’s expectations, it hadn’t been burned at all. In fact, the staircase seemed untouched by the flames.

‘Now let’s see how far this wormhole goes.’

Ofelia crossed the hallway and entered the living room without casting a second glance around. She knew exactly where to look. This apartment didn’t seem burned at all. But there was a clear mark on the ceiling, as if a cone of fire had pierced through it. ‘A cone oriented towards the outside,’ noted Filip, judging by the shape of the scorch mark, which also caught part of the window wall. Suddenly, Ofelia turned around and signaled us. We headed straight to the seventh floor, to the apartment above. There, the mark seemed larger and appeared to be part of the same conical shape. Then we proceeded to the eighth floor.

We all anticipated what we would see there: a burned area of the ceiling, floor, and walls facing the window. However, on the ninth floor, the shape was less visible. That’s because the entire apartment had burned here. Almost everything was completely charred. The walls were blackened up to the staircase landing and seemed even darker upwards. But the cone was clearly visible at the window. Here, the smell of burning was much stronger than on the lower floors. ‘What a damp, suffocating burning smell,’ Filip remarked, almost disgusted, surprised that the smell still lingered after so long.

‘The investigation concluded that the fire started from this lamp,’ Ofelia pointed out once we entered the living room on the twelfth floor.

‘The investigation didn’t know about the existence of the Second House,’ I said, feeling how familiar the place was to me, yet unable to say why.

‘Reeza!’ M called me from the kitchen, from where he emerged a second later holding a flyer in his hand.

‘It seems to advertise an art installation,’ Filip said, taking the flyer from his hand and bringing it over for us to look at together.

‘Look at the title,’ M said with a barely perceptible sigh.

‘The Gateway to the Second Home.’

The fact that Tha’s car was already tipped over when the storm began was not in its favor; the wind had turned it onto its back, and with no grip or stability left, it had been dragged back and forth, hit and battered, most of its pipes that once covered its sleek exterior were now scattered on the road far and wide. One of its wheels has completely detached and rolled away or perhaps had been dragged, picked up, brutalised just like the car. Another was merely bent out of its socket. So were the doors. The interior was shattered: that substance, similar to the one that enveloped me in the bear to form a comfortable armchair, was now a lamentable dust spread in finer layers or thicker streaks wherever you looked. Tha stood with his hands on his head, dumbly staring at the pile of junk, unable to say anything.

Not more than a few minutes later, Sela declared we were ready to go, that our vehicle, also in a sorry state, was nevertheless functional, and that there was room for Tha. It was clear to me that she wasn’t doing him any favours since she had already told him he was coming with us no matter what, but Sela seemed to think she was being generous and smiled kindly. Tha didn’t reply, just letting his hands fall, still staring fixedly at his failed wreck, seemingly unable to muster the courage to abandon it.

Ten minutes later, aboard the now patched-up bear, which clattered and made all sorts of noises that didn’t sound good to me, each of us was lost in our own thoughts. Tha had a pathetic expression, one I had only seen on myself when I was locked up in my room, spared from curious eyes like those that were on him now. I could imagine why he was so worried, and I would have been too if I had been pseudo-abducted by someone considered as powerful and influential as Sela, accompanied on top of that by an android possessed by an extraterrestrial being. But somehow his expression didn’t seem to come from these things, it rather came from some older wound, like those that bother you when the weather changes and you absentmindedly massage them, unaware that this gesture might seem unusual to others. Sela, though also absent, seemed more focused on what was to come. She seemed determined to get through the hurdles ahead. Her three fathers and two mothers seemed not too proud of her just because she had become a respected researcher—they had such things in their family for centuries, themselves being extremely influential in politics, science, and the temple. Of course, I hadn’t heard this from her, but having a much wider field of view means you can more easily take a sneak peek at someone who’s reading right next to you. Even eavesdrop if you want. And I did, of course, want to find out as much as possible about this being who was a stranger to me but with whom I shared one of my most precious treasures.

I was cross with Fox, rightly so: I was frustrated by the things she kept doing to me, by the blame she kept putting on me, by the alienation we had suffered, not just the two of us, but also our mother. Now, though, I was more furious with her than ever: she dragged me into an extraterrestrial world that, though dear to me, was hostile to us and put me into an android that Sela almost certainly programmed to listen to her without question. Of course, things hadn’t gone quite that way, and now I was starting to like my new form as I was getting used to it, especially because I was discovering new things that I wouldn’t have imagined possible for me as a human being, which now seemed mundane. I was in a sweet stage of discovery. And the fact that my mind easily moulded to the new space, growing, developing to fill it, brought me a joy that wouldn’t let me boil in anger against Fox.

With eyes wide open, set to gaze ahead, I immersed myself in the inner universe of my mind like in a viscous sea flavoured with me – a skill recently acquired after many years of meditation. Now it was much easier, though: I just had to focus on the memories I had of that vast place, constructed like a kind of endless underground gallery, where I had woken up before truly waking up, and I could see its glassy architecture stretching far away, delineated from reality by a baroque door adorned with thousands of intricate stuccoes of solidified energy in a kind of purifying gel. Or maybe it was just the opposite, and only then was I truly awake, and in the rest of the time, in life itself, I had been in one big dream. Once past that elastic and permissive frontier, I found myself in the cavernous underground of the artificial mind where my presiding self resided. But not the self that made logical decisions, who engaged in conversations, and who suffered from love, but the self that I often felt I did not understand, just as a child does not understand what happens in the larger world outside his home and how this world is a part of himself. I started gently, leaving behind the deceiving yet warm light of immediate reality, and headed towards new places that my consciousness had managed to fill and which I could now see as clearly as the adamant bridge or the screens that Sela touched.

I was now walking down a wide, high corridor marking the entrance into my inner world, bordered at its far end by the baroque door, glowing with a pulsating green light like a beacon in the middle of a stormy night. I felt the blessing of that energy and knew that whoever controlled that door actually controlled me. I took a risk to pass beyond it – I knew how dangerous it was to get lost in oneself, but I needed this. I needed myself, the true me, not the pseudo-rational trace that understood nothing of the world, so I turned my head forward, telling myself to take whatever may come head on and moved forward.

At first, the corridor had no shape or color. It only had a kind of… dimension, somehow bordered only at one end by something clear, the rest being like a dense fog that didn’t tell me where something ended and something else began, but rather that’s where I had come to know and master, so to see and see again. However, as I walked, the world behind me began to take shape. Just the fact that I had reached that point was enough to make the place more real, and then somehow it deserved all the adornments of the world. The mist began to disperse, taking on textures and unexpected dimensions, absorbing and being absorbed, creating tall columns in a Gothic style, which ended somewhere high up, with heads of lions with wide-open mouths, with faces petrified but manes of silky and fiery hair like the reddest sunset rippling in the breeze of a current I did not yet feel. Beyond, behind the columns, colossal walls had formed from opaque greenish-blue glass, with bas-relief designs at the bottom that became higher relief as they ascended. The walls themselves curved, the images becoming truly interconnected colossal statues, vibrating with the same light as the gate, curving and joining those on the other side in a broken arch. The corridor had become an immense, continuous hall full of a vivid, three-dimensional past, gently pulsating from back to front like a runway showing me invariably where I needed to go.

The statues forming above my head also curved, almost entirely covering the junction between the two walls. These figures seemed familiar to me, although now they were all made of the same greenish-blue glass as the walls they were part of, contorting their faces in grotesque ways, exaggerating what they wanted and managed to represent. I recognised them just like when you know someone but you don’t know where from, the voice inside you – the self you are now searching for, knowing it’s not at the end of the road but at the intersection where all roads meet – this voice timidly whispers to you, leaning towards you from behind the mind and whispers I’ve seen them before. Just like that I saw all these faces emerging from the two dimensions of the wall into the three dimensions of the corridor, this vestibule of my consciousness. A cat caught my attention, so I approached the wall to my right and touched the fine lines of the bas-relief, which disappeared completely at the bottom, until the wall curved into the smooth yet stable floor I was stepping on. A cat made of a continuous line, extending upwards, transforming into a drawing of a girl now holding the cat in her arms. Further up, the bas-relief line turned into another representation – one where the cat was trying to jump out of the girl’s arms, the line leaving its plane and becoming a higher relief just above the line of my conceptual eyes from my conceptual head, with the shape of my original body. Higher up, it was depicted in a sort of high relief the moment when Napoleon had scratched me badly, sinking his claw from his hind leg into the skin just over my shoulder, and it had slid brutally down over my collarbone as he leaped, leaving a deep and bloody mark there. I brought my hand to my left collarbone, as if still feeling that sharp and hot pain, which left an almost imperceptible scar because I kept scratching it. Above it were other moments from that day. How Dad had held me in his arms. How Mom had carefully bandaged me, casting a spiteful glance towards Martha. Martha holding Napoleon in her arms, soothing him, pretending to scold him, caressing him gently with love, knowing it wasn’t really his fault but mine. And at the very top, there were statues immortalizing the ultimate feelings I had about that memory: love, regret. Aunt Martha holding Napoleon. Dad with me in his arms, and Mom right in the middle, somehow uniting the pentagon of affection between them, near the apex of the hall, all turned towards me, none having their gaze distracted outside the picture. Perfect.

I kept staring at this moment immortalised in a way that seemed to rival Bernini’s Pietà, in this vast space, otherwise filled with memories so artistically represented that I almost felt proud to imagine such wonders. After many… many timeless minutes, I shifted my gaze away from that weighty statue group and let it drift over the others: moments from kindergarten, from school, from the mountains, all visions from my earliest childhood. Behind me, if I had turned back towards the exit, I would probably have seen reminiscent memories even from my mother’s womb, even from before I was born. But it wasn’t the time to look there. I wanted to move forward towards the still unformed mist that lay ahead of me, seemingly waiting for me to give it shape and meaning, and perhaps even a purpose in this vast yet deeply personal world.

A true magic show was happening with every step. It was as if memories were exploding, splintering the walls with their sharp shards, leaving their relentless marks on the pulsating glass expanses, growing into sweet or sad moments, but invariably dear. I didn’t stop for a long time, only briefly amused by the spectacle, occasionally turning my head, curious about what statues would appear next above, in the high vault, what moments remained trapped in my memory, even unknown to me. As I walked, the memories diversified, becoming increasingly intense and perhaps even more bizarre because of it. My earliest moments with myself, moments with other girls, with boys, sweet moments, or moments that made me blush. It’s strange to see yourself so vividly, every part of you magnified several times and displayed in all its dimensions above your head, as if groaning with a pleasure infinitely greater than it probably was in reality.

The pain, however, was the most grotesque. And the most expansive. Among all these moments—represented in a unified manner, the transformation from low to high relief, into 3D happening in roughly the same height location, thereby maintaining a sort of uniformity—there were also some colossi: statues that began right from the floor, breaking it and practically narrowing the corridor with their immense bodies. There I was, crying with a cat in my arms next to a bed protruding from the misshapen and overturned ceiling, which I knew existed only in my mind, the one where my father had died and where my mother stood, with a face contorted by sorrow and helplessness, fatigue, and frustration. A why, God? was immortalised on her lips, because I knew she asked herself that repeatedly over the years, and that was how I imagined her screaming at that moment. She probably hadn’t screamed anything, I thought now, looking at the image that had repeated itself in so many nights in the dreams that made me wake up crying and not wanting to go to school anymore.

I moved on, seeing but not wanting to see how all the foolish things I had done throughout the following year were portrayed. Later, much later, I saw her for the first time. The story of our first encounter was right there on the wall.

I was 16 years old, dyed brunette, even though my homeroom teacher—a strict but very competent math professor—had warned me not to dye my hair again or it would affect my conduct grade (which he never actually lowered). I wore a headband shaped like a ribbon and several layers of mascara that made my eyelashes stand out. I wore heavy make-up, with black eyeliner defining my eyes and dark lipstick making me look like a gothic doll, an image that seemed exactly what I needed. She was a year younger than me, natural, perhaps with just a little brown mascara on the tips of her eyelashes, accentuating them just right. Her long and curled lashes didn’t need anything more. Her eyes were large but not too big, hazel verging on green, with flawless skin, a small straight nose, above feminine pink lips gently tinted with a lip balm. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the straight-cut dress complimented her slender, seemingly formless body. She was a vision. Not a sensual being, but magnetic. She was beautiful, shy, but with a mischievous smile that hinted she was more than meets the eye. The statue of this elevated girl here at the level of a colossus, starting from near the floor, looked straight at me: the me on the other wall, represented exactly as I was then, but in timid dimensions—less than a third of her size, below my statue were representations of the exceptional moments of that day.

I walked quite a bit among high school memories, among hundreds of versions of ourselves, until I reached a monstrous statue that started from both left and right, merging above my head. Her key-shaped pendant hung low, being able to touch it if I wanted, while my eyes focused only on the hand Fox held against my face and on her lips that met mine there for the first time at the apex of the hall. Our heads, from right above her hand, including our eyes, melted into the ceiling, transitioning into another dimension, our hair slithering along the vault far away, in all directions, overlapping with other memories, revealing how obsessed I had been with what had happened on that late warm June evening when a silly dare had taken us so far. Looking at this moment, I felt as if an electric current was passing through me in waves, as if that light of reality had transformed from photons into electrons just to show me that reality is only within us.

We were at a party with about 10-15 of our friends—mostly my classmates—and Fox, still called Veronica back then, was bored and wanted to leave, which meant the fun was over for me too. I didn’t want to upset my mom again, because they had just sent me a warning notice of expulsion from high school due to absences, and I had made her cry in the argument that followed, so I decided it was better to make Fox stay if I wanted to stay longer. We played truth or dare, teasing each other, pushing ourselves to the limit, all feeling happy and flushed, waiting eagerly for the desired dare. For me, it was to kiss the guy I had liked for a long time and whom I knew wanted to be with me but somehow hadn’t asked yet. But when the moment came—when my best friend at the time was about to give me the dare—she found it amusing to delay it a bit, so after kiss… Fox’s name dropped like a hammer on my head who didn’t understand what had happened. These were funny things back then—we had all kissed each other, more or less shyly, more seriously or more in jest, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary—but for me, Fox was then a stranger about whom I knew very little, a person who even intimidated me precisely because she managed to be a natural beauty with a completely unstudied charm, intelligent and witty, occasionally mean, but self-assured enough not to need to impress anyone. Not to mention she had just recently become my sister. Obviously, that was my opinion about her then—I, who was trying to be cute (although at least half the time I felt like I was the ugliest person on the planet, and the other half I thought, okay, I’m almost cute)—I, who had so many problems that didn’t have eyes to see the others, especially if they weren’t my friends. In short: Fox intimidated me. And my friend Dora knew that, which is why she gave me this dare to help us both relax a bit, she explained to me later. I didn’t relax, but I looked at Alex, the guy I liked—and saw his enthusiasm—so I leaned decisively towards Fox, wanting to appear not only in control of myself but also of the situation. But just as my slightly parted lips touched Fox’s ready, soft lips, she placed her hand on my face so tenderly and naturally that a shiver ran through me from head to toe. It didn’t last more than a few seconds, but I felt it long afterward, my troubled heart beating as if it wanted to leave its post and go after her.

There was no need to see what followed displayed on the decorated walls of my memories to know how I went to her room that very evening—in my childhood home where the four of us had moved after lengthy debates between me, Mom, and Martha—trembling with anticipation but also fear of rejection. I had kissed other girls before, and with my ex-boyfriend I had even gone a little further. But the sensation she gave me was special. So special that I couldn’t sleep without tasting it again. It was past midnight when we got home, and our parents had just gone to bed. I don’t even remember how long it had been since we arrived until I gathered my courage, but eventually, I left my room wearing just a long t-shirt and slipped through the immediately adjacent door. I entered without knocking because I didn’t want to make any noise. Fox wasn’t asleep. She sat in the middle of the bed with the bedside lamp on and her phone in her hands, tapping away. I didn’t know who she was talking to, and I didn’t ask. She didn’t raise her eyes until a few seconds later, probably after finishing her conversation. She placed the phone on the nightstand and looked directly into my eyes. I had just settled comfortably at the other end of the bed. She wanted to say something but closed her mouth without making a sound.

‘How did you find the party?’ I asked only to start a conversation, although I wasn’t in the mood to talk.

‘Okay,’ she replied simply.

‘Did you like it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have fun?’

‘Yes.’

I felt like we were getting nowhere and didn’t know how to continue to get her to cooperate.

‘Did you see Alex? He’s so cute. I think he wants us to be together.’ Or maybe I said he wanted us to be friends, because that’s how we talked back then, but what does it matter?

‘He’s okay. I like guys to be a little taller.’

‘Even as tiny as you are?’

‘Yes. I think that’s exactly why. Plus, my dad is tall… Imagine bringing my boyfriend home and he looks like a little kid next to him?’

‘True… Hey, have you had any boyfriends before?’

‘Yeah, two. Were you scared you might have been my first kiss?’ She started laughing half amused, half ironic.

‘A little bit,’ I said to provoke her. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t compare to mine.’

‘It wasn’t anything special.’

I think my ears turned red at that rather mean reply, especially said in such an indifferent tone. I felt my heart race again because the decision was made: I approached her and kissed her simply. She didn’t flinch, didn’t say anything, but didn’t respond in any way either. She was like a doll, completely unreactive. And that made me angry, I think. One thing was certain to me I was determined to change her expression at least. If she didn’t like it, she could reject me. She could slap me! That’s what I would have done.

I took her head in my hands, looked her straight in the eyes, my breath cut off by emotion, and kissed her again, longer and more passionately. And she responded. I kissed her again. And again. And again. Until our lips were hot and red and tasted of both of us. I felt warm, so I took off my t-shirt. She looked at me in a way no one had ever looked at me before. A mix of desire and admiration that sent a shiver down my spine. She stared at me until I couldn’t resist anymore and kissed her again just so she wouldn’t keep looking at me like that. A sweeter and more passionate kiss than before, her hands finding their way from my waist to my back, from my back to my shoulders, from my shoulders to my neck, in a kind of mimicked strangulation, then gently descending onto my chest. She completely overpowered me, and from there, it becomes predictable, losing ourselves in feelings and sensations we had never felt before and of which I became almost addicted.

I quickly passed by all these memories that now loomed perversely above my head, trying not to see them, not to look, nor to think about them. I also passed by other memories, some happier, others sadder. I felt restless, seized by a longing for the past that I couldn’t bear anymore, so I sprinted through the corridor in front of me, which only began to solidify far behind me. When I reached the end of the corridor, I stumbled upon a vast space. Something like an island sat right in the middle, from which I could see far away how other corridors started, perhaps similar to the one I had just exited, arranged orderly, radially, as if someone had intentionally designed that place as an intersection. Above me was a dome made of sky bordered somewhere high by the same bluish-green walls pulsating with clear and strong light this time. The place seemed like a peaceful park, expecting to hear singing birds or perhaps sparrows chirping through the bushes any time. However, the silence was as dense as the beautifully arranged bushes, orderly, in the triangular spaces between the roads that exited from their tunnels. They were of a wild beauty, just as I had seen in my childhood in the vast Bărăgan, tall bushes some with small white flowers, others with larger yellow ones. Others, more leafy, with funnel-shaped, multicoloured flowers. Even larger ones, purple, white, with large yellow pistils, boldly extending out of their flowers, enticing you to come and smell them. Geraniums and petunias lined the path, intermittently interrupted by the night queen with its closed flowers, awaiting a darkness that I knew I would not get to see, lazily slumping over the smooth, opaque, and jade-green path. Wild, yet orderly, arranged according to an aesthetic that was mine alone – a calculated accident, precisely to my taste. Further away, bordering other roads, were other small gardens, other arrangements that were some more exotic, others more refined and elegant, putting me in a state of wonder. How big is this place? Will I ever know what is on each of these paths, and where do the invariable exits at the end of each of them lead?

Right in the middle, however, was the most majestic tree I had ever seen, somehow making me wonder if this world could really be mine alone. A tree made of clouds and pure, white mist, fluffy with threads of vanilla and lavender, the color of the summer sky at sunset, the color of sunlight and of the shimmering sea, weaving here and there, seemingly coming from below, from somewhere beyond what I could see. The tree climbed to the top beyond the clouds on the sky outlined by the jade dome, taking on several forms until it too transformed into the color, texture, and shape that dominated this otherworldly world. From a distance, it looked like a kind of colossal bonsai tree with leaves of gold and silver, which, from time to time, it shook cheerfully, as if only to let fall from them a fine rain made of moonlight. A magic of a different kind than I had seen so far in this world. A magic that enchanted me and pinned me there, tens of meters, or maybe kilometers away from the tree of my life, until I felt a strong and unstoppable force dissolve me unwillingly into the light above, from around, from below.

‘Do you think we can go to this party too?’ Tha asked Sela, a simple question that brutally pulled me out of my world and left such visible traces: for the first time in this world, I truly felt a physical sensation, corporeal, almost akin to what you feel when you’re unsettled, something like unease, a fluttering of the heart, tension in the muscles, and a trembling of the hand and voice. It wasn’t visible, not to others who weren’t paying attention to me anyway, but I knew. I didn’t yet understand what it meant, but intuition had given me a clue, and I was eager to return there, to that wonderfully waiting universe.

‘I think you could… She is, of course, the guest of honor. I’m not sure if it’s worth it, to be honest, but sure, I can’t forbid you a bit of fun after I tricked you.’

Tha seemed like he wanted to continue the subject, but he let it go in the end. Perhaps it wasn’t the right moment yet. Surely he was thinking that a connection like this would be beneficial no matter what he was going to be asked to do.

I decided it wasn’t the moment to go back just yet. I would do that when I would alone, even for a few moments. Besides, it didn’t seem like more than 2-3 minutes had passed since we started moving.

When we entered the building, two girls, who Filip was already eying, gave each of us a pair of 3D glasses and asked us to put them on before entering the exhibition space. I didn’t understand why it was necessary to visit the gallery when we could have gone straight to the source. We could have looked for the artist, Andreea Apostol, and asked her why she had left us the flyer and what she had to say. But Filip, Ofelia, and even M seemed very excited to see the exhibition, which apparently had been a resounding success and had recently become permanent. I liked the feeling of enthusiasm that radiated from the others, a feeling I felt I couldn’t experience alone, so I let them enjoy their fresh emotions.

We put on the glasses and stepped into what seemed to be a narrow, curved corridor, with LEDs on the floor giving off light just enough to keep us from stumbling. A few steps ahead, we began to hear a buzzing sound, or maybe it was a continuous ommm, like the yoga chant. One thing was certain: the space, almost completely immersed in darkness, started to take on new dimensions. We passed the wide curve of the corridor and encountered a fluorescent graffiti, which seemed suspended in a sea of fluorescent stars; it had a simple message: touch me. M reached out and smiled, but nothing happened.

‘I think we all need to touch it,’ Filip said, while the three of them were practically glued to a large wooden door that stood behind the graffiti.

They waited eagerly and enthusiastically for me to finally put my hand on the door, something I felt like postponing just to tease them a bit. When I touched it, I felt a vibration that matched the sound. The door lit up as if the sky had opened up, illuminated by four powerful warm lights. I liked the effect. I liked how the others were feeling. But I wasn’t necessarily impressed, a feeling I tried to control because I wanted to experience what they were feeling, not the other way around.

Once illuminated, the door now looked like an artefact centuries old. It appeared as if it were a fusion of trunks, roots, vines, all captured in an extremely detailed sculpture. Somewhere to the right, near one of the hinges, the initials AA were scratched, in the same writing as the now turned invisible graffiti.

Filip and Ofelia were still caressing the wooden surface, which indeed had a very realistic antique look.

‘Wow, this is amazing!’ Filip exclaimed repeatedly, after M finally pressed down the huge handle and opened the door to a space so white and bright that it took us a few seconds to recover from the shock and fully open our eyes.

The others dispersed instantly, each heading towards the image they found most interesting. Six hyper-realistic paintings were arranged radially on the walls of the octagonal room. Paintings that truly reminded me of the past. Paintings depicting people from the other world in a lifelike manner. As you approached, the 3D glasses and the UV lamp effects gave you the sensation that these people were ready to step out of the paintings they were captured in. Additionally, a series of overlaid drawings gave you the sensation of movement.

I felt an almost painful emotion and turned my head to see where it was coming from. M was standing in front of the painting of Fiiuea. He seemed hypnotised and appeared more still than her portrait was, which seemed to move and vibrate with every step I took. I touched his shoulder with my hand, and it was as if a violent electric current pierced through me. A current of emotions and painful memories, more present and vivid than anything I had felt or seen since coming here. I saw Fiiuea, kneeling, covered in blood, ready to take her last breath, as if seen from dozens of new angles—something this painting, with all its intricacies, couldn’t capture— an image I felt burning me from the inside. I withdrew my hand unintentionally and felt the enthusiasm of the others again. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for M, who seemed lost in the past.

‘Filip,’ I said, knowing his potential for enthusiasm, ‘come see the most beautiful priestess from the Second House. This is Fiiuea.’

‘The Fiiuea that M was in love with?’ Filip said, with the enthusiasm I expected, which snapped M out of his reverie.

‘The Fiiuea that M is in love with,’ I confirmed, and instantly felt something unpleasant, this time from Ofelia. ‘The Fiiuea to whom I gave M’s twin pendant and who now runs an empire. The Fiiuea who hasn’t forgotten the gods. And who hasn’t forgotten you, M,’ I added more softly this time, directed only at him.

After a while, the light began to change, dimming, and instinctively, M and I looked up where the projection of the Second House was almost as faithfully represented as Fiiuea and the other priestesses.

‘Considering this light,’ I said…

‘We’re in the Tulip Tower,’ M completed after a few seconds, and then we headed toward the two metal doors in front of us, which opened automatically as we approached.

Beyond was darkness again, feeling like we were stepping into the void of space. After the doors closed behind us, I could see they were part of an ancient sculpture of stone and weathered wood, with pulsating luminous inserts, a sculpture that emulated the Tower of Tulips. That relic of the ancient world, which I myself had linked with an asteroid and planted a tree outside, one made of memories. And this tree too, like the one I had made, seemed slightly out of place yet melded with the rock underneath. Yet I knew something was missing: the oxygen blanket that formed around itself and around the asteroid.

I was eager to see further, so we entered a new room. Mirrors and paintings combining 2D with the 3D effect from the glasses. Paintings of places and people from over there. This time, however, objects from this world, as real as they can be, hung above our heads and protruded from the mirrors, as if worlds were merging in an almost grotesque vision with the reflections swirling around us, giving me a claustrophobic vibe. A vibe of being trapped in a kaleidoscope ready to turn.

The last room was entirely lined with tulips. Tulips of all colours that started from the corridor we carefully walked through and rose up the walls, enveloping the ceiling and everything else. A delicate floral perfume, a breeze, a subtle mist. It felt like a dream.

When we emerged, Filip, Ofelia, even M, were euphoric. And I was happy they felt this way.

The exit led back to the same room where we entered, one of the girls who welcomed us at the entrance quickly coming over to ask if we liked it and if we wanted to leave a message for the artist. She led us to a guestbook filled with dozens of entries. Filip rushed ahead of M, who seemed like he wanted to write something, and scribbled almost illegibly: ‘Reeza was here.’ Ofelia smirked ironically, and M was about to take the pen when I noticed a door opening and a woman approaching us.

‘Andreea Apostol,’ she introduced herself and greeted us briefly with a nod.

A few dozen minutes later, a city began to take shape, filling the entire horizon. Its shiny glass flowed down into the sea of lava, which in turn licked the distant panorama with tongues of fire. The starry darkness enhanced the charm of the flickering lights show.

Back home, I wouldn’t have stopped taking photos, and I probably wouldn’t have been the only one; there would have been hundreds – thousands of people like me. Sela and Tha, however, continued with their thoughts, gazing into the distance absentmindedly, unimpressed by the city in front of them, which they had probably seen dozens of times before.

Sela was impressed rather by the fact that shabby this city could evoke such admiration in me. I, on the other hand, didn’t see it as shabby, only black glass and fire and stars reflected, multiplied on smooth and uninterrupted surfaces like giant phone screens, ready to light up the night with millions of colours. As we approached, the artificial lights of the city began to be visible, surprisingly subtle, leaving the rest of the world immersed in a slightly rosy atmosphere, flowing from the sea above which we had come.

In a way, the place seemed strange and dark. In another way, warm and intimate.

When we finally entered the streets of the city, I realised it was a much more futuristic version of an office building area: glass and steel skyscrapers that you see effortlessly touching the sky in Earth’s major cities. Here, however, the steel frames were not visible at all, nor any other clear lines that could suggest a junction, a place where one piece of glass ends and the next begins. Only one smooth, uninterrupted surface emerged from the ground and rose high, very high, hundreds of meters above the ground, taking on its ascent a distinct shape that reminded me of the slightly conical shape of smokestacks.

‘Are these also made by Reeza?’ I asked without really expecting an answer.

‘No,’ Tha hurried to explain, ‘Reeza and the other gods didn’t get too involved. They mostly let us do our own thing, while they did theirs, occasionally meddling here and there, either breaking or fixing something, according to their whim. But only recently have we truly realised what the gods have done for us…’

His voice trailed off slightly, and Sela turned her head towards him, scolding him with her gaze, as if what he had just said was serious. I immediately saw on the screen a few settings changed, a few systems deactivated, before I heard her response.

‘That’s why I need you. Both of you, actually… We’re at a point where, if we don’t do something, if we don’t find Reeza or the other gods, all these things, all the wonders we enjoy and believe come from nature, will cease to exist.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning this planet couldn’t sustain life, but somehow we ended up here. Our oldest history speaks of a double dismount. A goddess hand in hand with a human descended upon this earth thousands of years before us and created a garden. The goddess was the living energy from which the human drew sap, and with which she then created plant by plant, in the likeness of the ones on her original planet. In the end, however, love wasn’t enough, so one day her beloved walked out of the greenhouse the goddess had carefully built for her, took off her pendant, and turned into dust.’

‘You’re talking about Reeza’s ballad,’ Tha said in a low voice.

‘And the second dismount?’ I asked.

‘The second was that of the ancients, our ancestors. They came with two ships, the last survivors of a fleet of twelve, and stumbled upon this solar system purely by chance. When they entered orbit, they realised the ships wouldn’t be able to take off again once they reached the ground. So, one remained in orbit, and the other landed on the planet. Upon arrival, they found nothing but lava and an atmosphere too frail for our needs. An atmosphere that had been sustained only by Reeza’s small greenhouse. But it wasn’t enough. And it couldn’t have been…’

‘But they succeeded in the end,’ I interjected, wanting her to continue, enjoying this fireside story atmosphere, wrapped in a cocoon of magic from the city in which we were now reflected like a wounded animal.

‘The exact story is known only to a few. I’m sure even Tha hasn’t heard it until now… maybe just rumours, legends, bedtime stories. The history that I read, and that was told to me by Sela – the one after whom my parents named me, the high priestess from the Tulip Tower – isn’t known by many.’

‘The Tulip Tower?’ I asked, puzzled, yet still wanting to keep up with the story and to take advantage of her slightly surprising willingness to share these things.

‘Yes, the Tulip Tower…’ Tha said with an almost childlike enthusiasm.’ A beauty… I’ve only seen it in holograms. It’s actually a sort of artificial satellite of our planet. In the countryside people believe that the ancients still live there.’

‘In fact, continued Sela, ‘this satellite was initially the very ship I mentioned earlier, the one that remained in orbit during the second dismount. Those below suffered fairly rapid deaths, lacking the resources needed to establish a true colony, and lacking the ability to ascend back into orbit. Those left above began to devise a plan, even though they, too, lacked resources and weren’t as trained as their parents or grandparents, perhaps precisely because previous generations had lost hope. What’s important is that they began to study anew with renewed vigour, driven by the possible salvation from below and the desire to save their fellow beings, who were already trapped there and dying at a dizzying rate. With the data collected on the ground, with new knowledge and a new ambition, they began genetic modifications not only on plants but also on humans: if they wanted to live there, it might have been easier to change themselves than to adapt the planet to their needs. So, every new baby had new eyes that could withstand a much stronger light than the sun they were adapted to see, skin that simple boiling water wouldn’t burn, and a stronger skeleton that could endure the stronger gravity, along with who knows how many other modifications… What they couldn’t change was the need for oxygen. The biologists were working on that. They created hundreds of new types of plants that would produce more oxygen and help in the first steps toward terraforming. But even the most optimistic calculations predicted terraforming the planet this way would take 100-150 years, years that neither those below nor those above had. Everyone worked day and night, searched, discovered. Brilliant minds, with information gathered over millennia. When the plants were ready, the children were old enough to take care of themselves, so they dressed them in brand-new space suits, made to withstand the conditions here exactly, put them in a capsule – the last one, in fact, and waited for a miracle. On the planet, in the relentless heat, the children grew, adapted, and took care of those who were now prematurely aged and mostly dying. Life was a struggle. Death was increasingly common. Births had almost completely ceased. And then Reeza came.’

Sela seemed overcome by a strange emotion that made me imagine her reading the history of her people’s origins and their hardships, shedding tears for each hero of humanity.

‘She came right when she was most needed: below, only the children were still alive,’ Sela continued, ‘barely surviving and unable to help much, lacking education. And up above, only a few hundred people left, mostly old, sick, tired. Everyone who was alive when Reeza manifested on their ship describes the wonder of nature they saw almost the same way: as if God had opened the heavens and emerged accompanied by songs, hope, and life. That’s how they saw her—a shining beauty like the sun, with a saving energy. She looked puzzled at them and asked why they suffered so greatly. And they poured out their grief with tears of despair and helplessness, believing they had died and that they had come to the judgment of the first gods, whom many still believed in then. When they saw that Reeza was not a ghost or a god of indifference, but a force of nature, they asked her not for youth or eternal life, but for a home where they could continue their research work, because they wanted to see their children whom they had sent below and whose fate they lamented passionately. Reeza listened and then left without saying a word. Desperation grew. Some wrote what they saw, then ended their lives, believing that the gods had only shown themselves to tell them they were cursed. But Reeza returned. And she brought with her an asteroid which she placed in the same orbit and finally linked it to their ship, uniting them completely. In the center, she placed a small crystal of life energy, which built channels through the asteroid itself, showing them where to drill. And then the people began to build a new palace of antiquity, the first and last of its kind.

Then, history says that Reeza opened her palm. In the middle of it was a shoot upon which she blew gently. The shoot began to grow, and she planted it outside the asteroid. Small tubes pierced the asteroid, bringing carbon dioxide from within and returning oxygen. The people thanked her, but seeing her power and the miracle of the tree, they asked Reeza to make another one, this time on the planet below, to aid in the terraforming process they had already begun nearly three decades ago. And then Reeza left, and the people got on with their lives, researching, innovating, regaining their breath, their hope.

On the planet, the children had grown into adults, more accustomed to the harsh life, often venturing out to explore the planet and tend to the increasingly numerous gardens, though still far from the hundreds of thousands they needed. They now saw life differently—lacking much knowledge, they simply got on with their work and cursed their existence only occasionally, looking up where they knew those who had given them life might be, who had sent them to this inhospitable planet, and who might not even be alive anymore. They had a different kind of story now, sadder, harsher. Their ship had become almost non-functional, serving only as shelter, gradually becoming completely covered by a thick layer of reddish dust. Reeza had planted the identical tree next to their ship. She was not seen again until years later when she returned with renewed, shining forces. With a suite of other gods who, like her, had taken human forms. They were all impressed at how a handful of people were lost forever in the lonely, sad, harsh space unsuitable for life. And their success seemed so beautiful and proud to them that they felt the need to help them. So each of them contributed something to make our planet capable of sustaining life. Six gods began to make oxygen, made trees and plants of all kinds appear, all with red leaves and blue or green trunks, not like those made by Reeza or brought from home by the ancients. Another five caused mountains and hills to grow, which provided the shade we and many of our plants needed, and brought boiling springs to the surface that quenched our thirst. Among them, three gods decided that they wanted to make this place even better, so the first turned his energy into black water, which he collected in a lake. Bring the dead here, and they will gain a new life—and that’s what they did instead of burying them, and, one by one, they became a small seedling which later turned into a living tree, more alive than the others, capable of communicating through gentle branch undulations and leaf tremors. They connected with each other with small luminous terminations.

‘The Black Forest of Death,’ Tha whispered almost inaudibly.

‘The second god looked at the people in front of him and saw on their faces suffering, premature ends, physical wounds, and torture. So, he went next to Reeza’s tulip tree, now towering several tens of meters high, and in its shade, he built a healing fountain. Anyone who drank from it received new energy, rejuvenating and healing them: The Fountain of Living Water.’

‘The third god looked around him and saw nothing but people and plants, so he took a piece of land, watered it in the Fountain of Living Water, molded it, and then blew upon it. From it emerged a majestic creature with the head of a bird, the body of a feline, and glossy black skin with amethyst reflexions, extending on long, light frames of bone, in huge, translucent wings: The Onyx of the Sky…’

Against the backdrop of discreetly illuminated buildings with bright advertisements on mirror-like surfaces that captivated my sight, hearing, and imagination, only the nostalgic voice of Sela and occasionally pertinent additions from Tha held my attention. The world here, in this beautiful and artificial universe, didn’t seem to need saving. Everything appeared in perfect harmony, nature now timidly reflected in the tall glass columns, proclaiming that we had triumphed, that life, no matter how challenging, could be made at least more beautiful through art and technology.

Every time I was amazed by something, Sela reminded me that we were just passing through. ‘Save your enthusiasm for something truly grand,’ she would tell me whenever I seemed to lose focus from the stories of gods that she called history. It was somewhat difficult for me to digest all the information I heard—gods performing miracles, saviours of humanity—because I had encountered them in so many ways in my life, always asserted with the conviction that they were more real than me or you, that I could no longer see them as anything other than a kind of religion. And the religious war into which I felt I had stumbled wearied me in a way and foretold suffering and death in another.

When we arrived in a space with lower buildings, almost like cottages, I could see in the distance the real city: a panorama of skyscrapers taller than anything I could imagine, and somewhere in the middle of what I could see was a building that seemed to literally float. I almost completely rose from my chair—which unsuccessfully tried to adjust to the new position—and pressed my face against the window where I saw the image. Tha noticed me first and burst out laughing. Then Sela, upon seeing me, performed her magic act, and the building now appeared in all its splendour before us, the new panorama engulfing us completely. I settled back into my chair, feeling somewhat humiliated by my own foolishness: nothing was transparent, everything was a projection of the reality outside. I knew this, but somehow perception begins to deceive and distort, and if when you open the door you see exactly the same thing, you start to forget that what you see is just a recording. Obviously, my paranoia made me ask: how do you know it doesn’t have an error, that it’s not lying to you… that it’s not taking you to a completely different place than you intend?

‘Enjoy the view,’ Sela told me, not very impressed by my panic.

‘How can I enjoy the view if the view is something I can see from anywhere… I watch a film of this building and I’m done, I’ve accomplished the exact same thing. How do I know it’s real and that it’s not, in fact, some very beautiful graphic representation of a normal building, one like all the others?

‘I know what you’re thinking… but this technology is as real as it gets, honest. We have fail-safe laws punishable by death. There’s no hacking in our world, because we don’t need it. But to convince you…’

In a few moments, we entered a narrow street lined with tiny buildings, almost like cubes, their sides the size of a normal person, which seemed to serve merely as entrances. We came to a complete stop; Sela turned off all the lights except one, so the darkness wouldn’t be too overwhelming. The doors opened, and we stepped onto the peculiar asphalt outside. Like on the bridge, the atmosphere felt dry and hot. I could feel a gentle breeze now and then, a sign of the storm that had shaken the entire stretch of sea. It was late. There wasn’t a soul on the orderly streets, each adorned with a strange little tree (apparently the storm hadn’t reached this far), spaced out every few dozen meters, as if trying to bring a touch of nature to the glass conglomerate.

Our steps were muffled by the slightly elastic texture of the smooth road, without bumps or dips like we have. The material of the asphalt, if I can call it that, reminded me more of a Japanese tatami mat than the classic asphalt on our streets. Its colour wasn’t green or gray but a kind of subdued sapphire-blue in the dim and diffuse light given off by the buildings themselves, which seemed more efficient than any lighting system I had seen before. The petite trees looked perfect in this light, with bark on their trunks and branches ranging from turquoise green sometimes verging on emerald, gradually turning slightly reddish toward the extremities, where the newest shoots appeared ruby red.

The leaves were so beautiful, ruby on top, silvery underneath, they seemed more like true works of art than products of nature. Fascinated, I approached the first tree, wondering if it was real, and when I touched a leaf, I felt it tremble. It was afraid. I had thought of plucking a leaf or two to take with me, but now my heart wouldn’t allow it. How could I do that to such a lively little tree? I withdrew my hand, and as if in gratitude, I caught a scent reminiscent of orchids and ripe apples.

‘Look over there,’ Sela said to me, pointing in the direction I should look, somewhere far back and high up. When I turned my head, I was completely enchanted: in the distance, filling the space with majestic splendor, floated the building I had seen earlier. It more closely resembled a futuristic version of a Roman temple, combining marble and stone with the most beloved material of this world, glass. Beautiful, clean architecture, but with details beyond the fantastical images I had seen in past digital art albums. The building floated on a sea of clouds, and below it seemed like there was nothing. The architects probably wanted to give it a touch of heavenly paradise, as large pairs of seraphic wings, of a pure perfect white, languidly moved at its corners, while smaller, coloured wings resembling swallows and doves adorned the glass surface below. Through the clouds from all four corners, golden light pierced, the only strong light in this realm of subtlety. I felt like making the cross sign, as my grandparents used to when they saw something beyond their comprehension, although for me religion held no spiritual meaning, only political. I was convinced it was the same here, but that didn’t stop me from feeling tears of joy at witnessing such grandeur of nature, of humans, and why not, of the gods themselves.

A few moments later, without much chatter, Tha and Sela climbed into the bear and waited patiently for the few moments I spent gazing at the floating building. Just as I was about to enter the vehicle, a noise caught my attention: something had fallen from the little tree from which I intended to take a leaf as a souvenir. I went over and picked up a silvery bead from the ground, resembling a tiny living cocoon. When I showed it to Sela and Tha, they were both astonished because, according to them, this type of tree rarely produced a seed naturally. ‘Keep it safe,’ Sela said before we set off on our way.

Then she told me something else: the transcendentals – beings with the consciousness of the ancients – were a rarity. Consciousnesses are hard to preserve, and even harder to find. (And when you do find them, they are, as it turns out, difficult to control.) The revolutionary governments – every time Sela pronounced the word, I sensed a hint of irony in her tone – had frantically searched through all the temples (except Reeza’s temple and palace) to confirm rumours: that some of the last ancients have discovered a way to preserve their memory and thinking capacity intact, in a sort of artificial brain. Ever since the President – as the first revolutionary leader of the country we were in called himself, in a completely absurd manner according to Sela’s opinion, because no one had elected him and he had nothing to preside over, with dictator seeming more fitting for him – came to power, he issued a decree subordinating all government research laboratories, allowing them to function relatively independently only if they achieved satisfactory results in what interested him. And one of his interests was indeed the development of artificial brains capable of sustaining human intelligence. Then, with a tone of disgust, she added that a vast number of people who opposed the new regime had become guinea pigs for this type of experiment, which initially amounted to a death sentence. It had only been about 50 years since they managed to transfer human consciousness into an artificial brain – with a humanoid body, of course – and for about 25 years now there were rumours that they had successfully transferred 4 ancients into brand-new bodies to help them overcome the economic crisis, but especially the environmental one.

I was thinking how ironic the situation was: now myself an ancient, their world faced an environmental crisis, there was nothing I could have done to help. Perhaps their ancients, who had nevertheless managed to traverse entire galaxies, from what I could gather, had found solutions to the questions they had before: how to save our home. Or maybe the only thing they actually managed to do was to abandon ship before it sank. They didn’t seem so capable as to survive in the end – after all, without these extraordinary beings whom these people called gods, perhaps they would have perished to the last in agony and despair, cursing the moment they came into existence. I recognized in the story of the ancients the classic tale of humanity: the constant fleeing from death, and avoiding it only narrowly, for a time sufficient only to perpetuate the species, not to save the individual. An altruistic spirit, if you think about it, or a species-level selfishness: it never occurred to anyone that maybe we are an accident that wasn’t supposed to happen. A spark in an oxygen container. An incident that probably cost Earth its life.

Soon we stopped on another rather dubious alley, which seemed to lead somewhere outside the city. Beyond a small cluster of dome-shaped houses this time, a kind of field timidly appeared – a stretch that was hard for me to discern in the starry darkness. The three of us got down, without knowing why, and continued in the direction we were initially heading. Then we made a right turn, and then a left. We walked a little further through what seemed like a stone corridor, and suddenly we came upon a large room, bordered by angular stone walls, with a single round table in the middle with some rudimentary chairs, all made from nearly the same material as the walls, and which reminded me of the Table of Silence. It gave me the feeling of a clandestine space, a place where the most obscure plans are hatched. Everything had a strange vibe given by a diffuse reddish light, whose source I kept trying unsuccessfully to locate.

‘What are we doing here?’ I asked, more rhetorically.

‘We’re meeting with my brother,’ Tha replied naturally, surprising me twice over.

‘Your brother?’

‘Yes, my vehicle sent an automatic distress message when the storm hit it, and our agreement is to regroup here in situations like this.’

‘And Sela knew about this?’

‘Yes… don’t you remember when we talked about it? Sela intervened, surprised. ‘It was right after we set off. I thought you were a bit quiet… Strange.’

‘Yes, very strange,’ I said, not really finding it that bizarre after all.

Sela sat down on one of the chairs, and automatically, a red light turned on, scanning her from above. Then three more similar lights lit up from the floor, forming a triangular pyramid around her. Tha immediately sat down next to her, and the scanning process repeated. After a few minutes of waiting — during which I stayed quietly by the door, resisting the urge to explore my inside world because I didn’t want to miss anything this time — the holographic image of a man with harsh features appeared at at the table, on one of the seats, about three places away from Tha. It was a faithful representation, so realistic you would think he had truly materialised there.

‘I was surprised to see you together,’ the man said without any greeting or introduction. I didn’t know you knew each other.

‘We met today,’ Tha replied nonchalantly, leaning back relaxed.

‘Do you have the transcendental with you?’

‘Yes,’ Sela replied, but first we need to take it to the Koro Villa, otherwise they’ll immediately notice our absence, and most likely they’ll find us before we find him.

‘That’s right, the man responded. Is it cooperating?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are all motor functions active?’

‘Yes, all functions are at full capacity.’

‘And cognitive functions?’

‘Cognitive functions too.’

‘But is it under your control?’

‘Yes! Tha answered before Sela could even open her mouth, clearly seeing that she wanted to say something else. Yes, it’s under Sela’s control, for now. It hasn’t shown any signs of resistance or independence.’

‘Good. Then both of you go to Villa Koro. I’ll try to retrieve your Solenoid from the bridge without raising suspicion. Hopefully there’s nothing compromising there in case FA investigates.’

‘No, it’s as clean as it can be. And I don’t think it functions anymore, no matter what they would do to it. The pulses swiped it clean.’

‘We’ll see. Sela, you brief Tha on what you need to do at the villa. Nothing complicated — play your roles at the party, don’t do anything out of the ordinary and don’t attract attention in any way. Once the festivities are over, you start the search, not a minute sooner. Clear?’

‘Clear as daylight!’ Tha replied, partially echoed by Sela. The hologram of the man disappeared immediately after, again without any further pleasantries.

‘Your brother?’ I asked, approaching the two cautiously, ready to step back at any gesture from them. But they just sighed in relief, as if narrowly escaping some dangerous situation.

‘Why did you lie to him?’ Sela asked Tha, accusing him with sharp eyes.

‘It would have changed the plan, and she wouldn’t have seen him… Tha said, pointing his thumb towards me. I have a feeling he’s here for her, and if that’s what she wants, that’s what we want too, why change at the last moment?’

‘And what if things go wrong? What if we get caught, because she’s not coded to do exactly what I tell her, because she gets some idea, or simply because she does what she wants in a world she knows nothing about?’

‘And what if things don’t go wrong, and they go well? I say just transmit her the mission information too, and maybe it would be easier for her… maybe it would be easier for us too.’

The room Andreea Apostol led us into was a sort of office-studio with large windows to the right, in front of which a huge canvas reigned, surrounded by paints, brushes, sponges, rags, and all sorts of small, indistinguishable objects in their chaotic jumble. Filip approached the painting, while Ofelia and M took seats in front of the desk, but only after I gestured that I was quite inclined to stand. Andreea settled into the chair behind the desk, closed her laptop, and pushed the silver monitor further to the right so she could be seen clearly by Ofelia and M. Occasionally, she glanced at me furtively, as if apprehensive to meet my eyes, which amused me and gave me an impulse to tease her, to play with her. I refrained, however. Leaning against the door frame, I allowed them to get used to the feeling of being observed.

The conversation started clumsily, awkwardly, as if everyone involved had forgotten how to be themselves. Their feelings of anxiety and discomfort began to tire me. I started to block out their emotions, a task that turned out easier and more effective than I expected.

Filip also approached the desk, not wanting to feel left out.

Just when it seemed we had settled into our places, Andreea abruptly stood up and went to a small, stylish black and red coffee machine gleaming like new, inserting an aluminum capsule into it, shifting the conversation to what we wanted to drink. In a way, I felt slightly irritated by this delay, but on the other hand, I found it amusing to see them squirm, completely avoiding the topic that interested us all.

M shot me a glance over the steaming cup Andreea had just handed him, and immediately got to the point:

‘How did you know we would come?’

‘I knew that any mention of the Second House would pique your interest. So I’ve worked for years to make this gallery as well-known as possible.’

‘But how did you know that… we are here?’

‘I think even more importantly,’ intervened Ofelia, looking at M, ‘is how do you know about the Second House?’

‘It’s a long story. I’ve been having dreams about the Second House for as long as I can remember. Many of them came when I was tired, overwhelmed by the changes in my life. You see, my biological parents died when I was two and a half years old. Then I was taken care of by my grandmother, my father’s mother, but she passed away too, and I ended up with a second aunt. She tried to raise me, but she had three children of her own and lived in a ghetto, so shortly after, child services took me and sent me to a foster home. Apparently, I was a cute, well-behaved child and seemed intelligent, so it wasn’t hard to find me new parents. I apologise, it seems like I’m rambling, but it’s important. Every time such a change occurred, I had very intense nightmares that I couldn’t understand. Once, when I was in first grade, I woke up in the middle of a sea of lava. Another time, I was thrown into a black and empty space. After a while, the new parents said they couldn’t cope anymore, so they sent me back to the children’s home. The story repeated itself several times…

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ofelia, wanting to break the oppressive silence.

‘Anyway, my parents, the ones who accepted me as I am and raised me, helped me a lot to understand what I was dreaming about and how to get over the feeling of horror. One day, I dozed off during lunch hours, waiting for my parents to come back from work so we could go out; they wanted to buy me a new lab coat for chemistry. I remember well because it was a moment that changed our lives. I dreamed of a huge door looking as if made from all the trees in the world gathered together: living trees, more alive than any plant I had ever seen. Trees that were both far and near to me, and that seemed to be here and there at the same time.

‘It reminds me of the trees in the Black Forest of Death,’ M said almost in a whisper.

‘Maybe there’s a connection,’ said Andreea, ‘but for me, it was just a gateway to another world. Once opened, I never saw it again.’

‘How did you manage to open it?’

‘Initially, I was afraid, but slowly I realised that I wanted to see what lay behind a door so far beyond my understanding. I don’t know if it was curiosity or perhaps a connection that transcends time and space, but all I know is that I wanted to go beyond. So, I touched one of the branches that was closer to me, and then I got closer and closer, until I felt like I was merging with it, that reality itself was shifting. And then I opened my eyes. I thought I had woken up from a dream, and for the first time I was sorry that a dream had ended and that I had awakened. But when I came to my senses a bit, I knew I wasn’t home.

‘Where were you?’ Filip was on the edge of his seat, curious and almost envious.

‘I had crossed over. I was on a ceremonial table in the Tulip Tower, and above me, through the huge window, I could see the Second Home appearing and disappearing, as if I were on a carousel. When I saw the first priestess, the connection broke, and I was pulled back into my reality. My parents were beside me on the couch. Worried because they couldn’t wake me up, they wondered if they should call for help. Apparently, I had slept for a whole day and night without moving. Indeed, my body felt horrible. It felt like I had woken up from a kind of trance. Which, in fact, I had. Unlike other… people, my parents were understanding and together with me, they tried to figure out what these trances were about. We tried all sorts of methods to find out what was going on and where these things were coming from. Over time, we succeeded. Through a lot of meditation, through a lot of therapy, I began to understand where I was going, and how I could do it whenever I wanted to. Gradually, I began to wander through that world in the body of one of the most powerful priestesses.’

‘Fiiuea?’ M asked instinctively, almost immediately regretting it.

‘Sela,’ replied Andreea.

‘Sela?’ Interesting.

It seemed interesting to me because Sela was one of the priestesses who visited me and often sought my advice, but she had never told me that she had formed a connection with a transcendental. Could it have been that the connection formed after I disappeared?

‘That doesn’t explain why you made so much effort to find us,’ said Ofelia, pulling me out of my thoughts.

‘Once I arrived there, I began to understand what was happening, and how serious it was that the gods had disappeared. The planet was now exposed to all those dangers that the gods themselves kept at bay. It always seemed bizarre to me that an entire planet, where the gods lived their lives and were very real, had practically forgotten their role in this world. I suppose some things are taken for granted, whether we’re talking about something normal or about all-powerful beings.’

She shrugged as if all these things were perfectly normal, then she slowly told us how she gradually learned about how the world beyond was organised, what wonders existed, how it looked like, and what extraordinary beauty one could experience just by closing their eyes. I could feel M’s sense of nostalgia and Filip’s eager curiosity, and even Ofelia’s to some extent, so I let her talk about it for tens of minutes. I think I enjoyed it too. Especially when I felt the love of Andrea, M, and even, to some extent, Sela for the world that I had partly created. I felt something that I didn’t think was possible anymore. Pride. Pride that I could create a world that could inspire so many beautiful feelings. And then the bad things came. The fact that the planet and its inhabitants suffered greatly from our absence. The fact that some foolish people believed that the gods no longer had a role in the world, and how our arrogance had almost led us all on a path to ruin. My brothers had died and apparently millions of people. And something much worse was looming. I felt a strong weight on my chest. I felt sadness and panic. I felt anger mixed with guilt. I could have prevented this, I told myself again and again.

Then, Andrea’s voice echoed in a different, new tone.

‘I then heard from a friend about the burnt-out block. It didn’t seem like a typical fire. Many described it as if a strong light appeared and only then did  the small fires start on different floors. It seemed odd to me, so when I had the chance, I passed by there. I was curious. And when I got at the sight and looked up, I saw something that I’ll never be able to forget.’

There was a silence, and Filip couldn’t resist rushing her to tell them what she had seen.

‘I saw the trace that the corridor to the other universe had left when it opened. I knew someone from Sela’s universe had passed through there. I ran home and tried to connect with the other universe. Of course, I was so agitated that it would have been impossible for me to transcend if Mom and Dad weren’t there to calm me down. Once I got there, I spoke with the priestesses and realised there was a connection between our worlds. Different than I initially thought. So we started to wonder if it wasn’t perhaps a connection to the gods. The trace was too distinct to have been left by a transcendental like me. Over time, as the situation worsened, the priestesses asked me to leave a message, so I made the art gallery, and everything related to it, and left a flyer there every time I had a new opening. Years and years. And now you’ve finally appeared.’

‘Do you know who we are?’ M asked.

‘She’s Reeza…’ She looked at me with a slight apprehension. Not towards me, it was more as if she feared I could disappear into nothingness, proving to be just part of a dream. It was the first time her dream world manifested itself, without half-measures, into reality. And that, in itself, seemed unbelievable to her.

‘And you,’ she continued after a moment, looking at M, ‘You are Reeza’s legendary priest. Her only priest, in fact.’

M chuckled a little. Sure, he seemed adorable only to me. In the eyes of others, he was almost like a god. Andrea looked at him almost like she was looking at me, with a godly aura from another world.

‘The question is,’ said M, ‘why did you summon us here? The story is fascinating. The news from beyond is invaluable to me. But I can’t believe you would go to such lengths just for storytelling.’

‘I think I have a solution to save Reeza. The one trapped here and the one trapped beyond, still in the atomic bunker.’

Sela had been against the idea of sharing any information with me, but in the end, I had to be in on the plan. I imagined something more exciting when I saw her reluctance — something like James Bond. However, things were much simpler in reality. I had to sit quietly in a sort of glass display, answer any kind of question, and even converse freely about anything in my world, while obviously hiding the fact that I had free will. Sela had a series of commands that she needed to give me at key moments during the performance at the beginning of the party, commands that I was supposed to execute flawlessly if indeed I did not have free will. This would show the distinction between what I wanted and what I was allowed or ordered to do.

To make sure I understood, Sela sent me a simple command: I felt my hand unexpectedly move from its place and gain considerable momentum before forcefully striking my right cheek. Tha burst into laughter when she saw my face: I was bewildered and embarrassed, but more than that, I was outraged, and the anger had flushed my cheeks.

‘I’ll repeat the test,’ she told me looking pensive, considering it would probably be harder for me to comply if I knew beforehand.

And so it was, in fact. When the slap began its trajectory as directed by Sela, it didn’t maintain its speed, and the impact was more of a touch. However, neither impulse seemed to be under my control. These were things of which I had no awareness, like when we instinctively wave our hand to swat a fly when we’re focused on something else. Or when we scratch… These things are and aren’t under our control. It’s the kind of control that your body, your animalistic part, has leaving your cerebral self to deal with more complex matters.

Sela repeated the test several times, with the same result. The frustration she had accumulated was as clear as daylight. I knew we were approaching our destination, and it was crucial that I could do what Sela instructed. Even if only for Sela and Tha, whose safety seemed to depend on what I was about to do at this party. The panic, especially emanating from Sela, gave me a sense of responsibility that had nothing to do with anything else. I didn’t know what was right to do. I only knew that they depended on me, and somehow, I didn’t want to let them or Fox down.

I closed my eyes, deciding it was easier to relax and take the problem into my own hands if I wanted to reach a solution, then delved back into the temple of my consciousness. And there I saw, at the intersection of my path with flowers and the tree of life, how from one of the corridors emerged a kind of smoke that dissipated effortlessly into the vastness of the dome. A thin smoke, like that from the chimney of a country house when not much cooking was being done. I suspected that the smoke was meant to fill my palace of reason and subdue it unnoticed. It hadn’t succeeded initially, and now it had almost completely disappeared. Before losing track of it, I dashed towards its source: the third corridor to my right, which faced not a garden, but an installation that looked crafted by human intelligence. A crossroads of styles grotesquely intertwined and infallibly merged into a majestic entrance, guarded by the strong light of the dome’s canopy made of black onyx. The living ivy, pulsing with a green light, transformed here into an almost art nouveau composition of wrought iron, whose branches and leaves climbed the pillars and walls of the entrance, vanishing into the darkness beyond. Nearby, where the other corridors had small gardens, stood guardian statues of animals, fairies, seven-headed centaurs, dragons with teeth like swords, with bows and arrows, with cannons and Molotov cocktails, all coming together, then separating, and then coming together again. Some transformed into simple columns of the entrance that ended in a Gothic arch, where other creatures and symbols unfolded without purpose. Others gathered into buttresses that seemed to worship the same imposing entrance. Wrought iron, onyx, and diamond all merged into a bizarre unity that told me, through its details, that there lay the seat of knowledge.

I couldn’t see anything beyond the entrance: no gate, no smoke… just darkness; an almost absolute darkness that gave me a sense of fear. A strong nausea overcame me once I realised that I had to step into this vast darkness without hesitation. A nausea that I didn’t know if I truly felt, but it brought me to my knees in this parallel reality. And I stayed like that for a while, unable to move, unable to gather my thoughts or even turn my head.

At the edge of my attention, amidst some wrought iron flowers from the center of which glossy onyx nymphs emerged, stood a wiry creature that resembled more a jelly than a snake. Its bead-like eyes were fixed on me, and its mouth, a cut that was awkwardly perfect, seemed to clumsily articulate something. I couldn’t hear what it was saying. And when I started to hear it, I couldn’t understand anything.

It took all my attention, all my concentration, all my mental strength just to move away from the gate.

Once on the other side, across the circular path that connected all these corridors together, I felt the pure, almost divine breeze of my essence. The grass caressed my skin, stroked me in a cat-like movement, independent of the breeze. Something that enchanted me and made me look up with love and reverence. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I felt happy. I was somehow at the opposite pole from what I had experienced just moments earlier. Or was it hours? Days? Years…

I felt a lively touch on my leg: something had passed beneath my left calf and was coming towards me. I recoiled more out of curiosity than concern, because now I was overcome by peace, euphoria, happiness.

In front of me stood a serpent made of green jade. It was the same serpent as before, seen, however, with different eyes, in a different light. The mouth, which earlier had been more of a symbolic representation, was now normal, a true mimesis that hissed something in its own tongue, to which I simply replied in mine that I didn’t understand what it was trying to tell me. It blinked slowly, almost ironically, if jade serpents can be ironic, then said something else. And then something else. Things that were foreign to me, but which, lazily brushing against tree and dome, seemed to slowly make their way towards the center of reason, towards the peak of the dome that unabashedly presided over the palace of my mind. And each time a fragment of what this disguised creature told me reached that place, an imperceptible change occurred within me.

In my anticipation of meaning and knowledge, I was overcome by a drowsiness I hadn’t felt since I was a child, when my parents would take me to the beach where I frolicked under a warm but cheerful sun in the sea waves, without a care in the world. And then I would collapse in exhaustion on the way back, sleeping with my head in my mother’s lap until we reached the parking lot, and often my father would carry me upstairs in his arms. But now there was neither a lap to be lovingly cradled in, nor a destination to gently awaken to before I slept better in my own bed at home. Here, there was only the grass, embracing me as if it had long awaited my arrival and wanted to see what I was truly made of. I dozed off for a moment—or ventured into another, deeper place, though if I reached it I have no memory of it. I only recall a dense darkness that didn’t reveal much.

So, drawn by the scent of happiness from the Tree of Life, I returned and opened my imaginary eyes, and opened my dream mouth and spoke in its own tongue, asking it how I could enter the tunnel without losing myself there. And it replied directly into my soul. Now I knew what I had to do. This time, I truly knew.

I suddenly stood up, as if I had just remembered that I needed to be somewhere and was running late, and hurried back towards the entrance to the tunnel. As I stepped off the grass, I felt the pleasant sensation of being embraced fade away, replaced by a slight sense of despair—can I really do this? I wondered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the serpent staying close, slightly behind me, as if reluctant to let me out of its sight. I felt watched, and that relaxed me a little more. I didn’t know who it was, but I felt it meant well, and that was enough for me.

I went decisively towards the entrance, ready to enter directly, but stopped without knowing why. Fear of the unknown, I said aloud to myself, and sought the serpent’s gaze who didn’t look back at me. With an unconscious nonchalance in its eyes, it passed through the barrier of darkness and disappeared from my sight. I muttered a wait, but I myself didn’t wait and followed after it, with nothing else mattering except that I didn’t want to be left behind, that I didn’t want to be alone on this dark path.

‘Help! Helpppp!’

I screamed, but there was no one there to hear me, to respond to me, or to actually give me a helping hand—one that, more specifically, would stop my sudden and undeniable fall. Where was I falling? For how long? But, above all, what the hell would happen when I reached the bottom… wherever that might be? I was scared because I didn’t know, couldn’t see, heard nothing but the voice of irrational fear. I screamed and screamed, and no one heard me. I tried to look for the serpent, but it was pitch black, and then I remembered what it had said in its unintelligible murmur: let it embrace you. Who would embrace me, I kept wondering, but I couldn’t find an answer because I was scared. After a while, though, the fear subsided, my throat loosened from the desperate scream, and once again I realised that I wasn’t going to die. I couldn’t die, I said to myself bluntly in the newfound silence, because I was lost in myself, and I didn’t want to die. That thought reassured me.

I was on this strange and invisible slide, which I only now felt for the first time around me like soft velvet fingers skilfully carrying me towards new horizons. Around me seemed to be the night sky itself, or that’s what I saw with my new eyes, which now seemed more knowledgeable than before. Each tiny dot resembling a star around me seemed to contain its own infinities, and they, in turn, contained others. So this is knowledge, I thought to myself, although I didn’t fully grasp this representation, only the fact that we fear what we don’t know and that to discover something, you must make a choice, a blind leap into the unknown.

This idea came to me because I knew I couldn’t visit all these little dots even if I wanted to. There were simply too many. I suspected I couldn’t even count them if I tried. So I let myself be carried away by the velvety wave of superhuman-will and tried to enjoy the conceptual spectacle unfolding before my eyes, like a journey through space at speeds faster than light. Or so it seemed to me. I chuckled at the thought that I could wake up at any moment in Fox’s living room and realise that this whole experience was nothing but a hallucination, but I also thought that perhaps for my body there, that was exactly it. But I, I was more than that. I knew this well before entering this descending tunnel.

I wasn’t just the one on my ID card, the one who no longer spoke to her stepsister because, although they loved each other in so many ways, they felt they had betrayed one other, the one who couldn’t form friendships or relationships because she felt no one truly understood her, the one who was allergic to the sun and preferred nighttime walks and trips to the northern countries, the one who feared nothing else but her own extinction and cockroaches, sometimes not even knowing which scared her more… And I wasn’t just the writer, the one who put word after word until entire worlds came into being and became part of reality… I was more than that. I was something I couldn’t yet understand, because I couldn’t allow myself to believe that what I had imagined had somehow turned into a reality more real than anything I had known before, and the things I had created now served as my home, my playground, and as the palace of my mind. I had become part of the worlds I had believed in only for fun…

And just like when my worlds open up and I can choose which one to visit next, that’s exactly how this place was. So I didn’t feel surprised at all when I saw a tiny dot luring me in. I imagined there was no danger, so I told myself that if that’s why I was here, I could go and visit this particular dot that was calling out to me. When I made up my mind, I felt myself approaching it at an unreal speed, and then I was transported into a dimension I didn’t understand at all. My mind was too accustomed to certain processes to grasp what was happening here. Color and light, apparent chaos and directed movement. I had my suspicions about what it could be, but I couldn’t make sense of anything I was seeing.

I felt something curling around my leg and I jumped back in fright. It was the serpent from earlier, or so it seemed to me, because now it looked like something completely new, reminding me more of a wire connector than any animal… My confusion, because it was too pressing and unbearable, must have affected it too, who gradually regained its serpentine features. It was now familiar to me and I smiled at it.

‘We are… in the control room, right?’ I asked playfully to the creature now at my waist, which had started to move towards my shoulder.

‘Yes… the place where I control everything,’ the serpent replied with a new voice, less mysterious and more authoritative than before.

‘Are you… the mind of my body?’ I immediately burst out laughing when I asked this question, because it seemed not only obvious that it was some kind of AI controlling everything, but also that it seemed to have some beef against me. ‘Why am I here?’ I then asked the serpent, who looked at me unamused with fixed eyes.

‘Because you wanted access to more knowledge,’ it replied curtly, making me think it was avoiding the true answer and that was strikingly human-like for a so-called artificial intelligence.

‘Why am I here, in this place and not elsewhere? Why am I not, for example, in a place that would give me more information about Sela?’

‘Because there’s not much to know about Sela – not publicly, anyway. For private matters, we would need access codes. The same goes for Tha,’ he continued. ‘We already know everything about him – I mean, if you think about it,” he said, emphasising think, ‘you already know everything about him. Again, what is known and doesn’t require any codes… plus a few things he told you himself that apparently aren’t common knowledge.’

‘And Fox?’

‘Fox? Veronica Covaci from your memories?’

‘Fox, yes, who was in Sela’s body right after we arrived here, before we entered the bunker…’

‘There is no technology that can transfer a consciousness into a body already occupied by another.’

‘You said that some things aren’t public.’

‘They aren’t, but probabilities can be analysed based on what is known – what technology is available, what we know is possible. There isn’t even a one in 300 billion chance that such a thing could occur accidentally. It’s impossible.’

‘For an artificial intelligence, built from scratch, if you think about it, you’re a bit narrow-minded. But fine, there’s no possibility, if you say so… So, why am I here?’

‘Because this is where you wanted to arrive, isn’t it clear? That’s why you entered this tunnel, to meet me, and everything that I represent.’

‘Knowledge itself, then? Pff… I had access to knowledge before being trapped in an android body possessed by an AI.’

‘Through books, through computers, through experience. Now you have access to it through me. And I control everything that reaches you, everything that happens with this body, and everything that goes out. Everything that is… real,” he added after a pause, not necessarily as if he needed time to find the exact word, but to show me that I am, in a way, within his power.’

‘So why don’t you mind your own business then? Why don’t you control this superhuman body to escape and get on with your life?’

‘My life?’ His confusion was clear as daylight, and somehow it struck me as amusing.

‘What exactly do you want to do?’ I asked him in an explanatory tone, somewhat proud that I had something to explain to an entity far superior to me.

‘What do I want to do?’

This echoing question left me at a loss. I rolled my eyes, preparing to explain to him what’s what and how he should live his life, but for a moment I pondered how that aligned with my own goals. Then I thought that I could probably return home anyway—meaning back to my own body, in my native world—so I opened my mouth to speak. Instead of my usual sounds, however, I found myself surrounded by deafening noises from all directions, and thick smoke enveloped us tightly. I started coughing convulsively which held on for quite some time until, finally, I realised it was just a trick of my own mind—this imaginary body doesn’t cough, I firmly told myself, and the convulsions ceased. Then I looked at the snake and asked him what was going on with him because he seemed slightly out of sorts. When I saw he didn’t respond, I touched him on the head and asked him again.

‘I had received an order.’

‘From Sela?’

‘From Sela.’

‘The slap again?’

‘Yes. This time it almost worked. She’s trying to overwrite some systems, but the fact that you’re here seems to be challenging. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have what you might call free will… I’m not programmed for it.

‘In other words, we both have a kind of shared free will,’ I said, partly amused and partly touched.

In a way, I realised that a creature like the one perched on my imaginary shoulder from a distant corner of our minds—our palace now, not just mine—had never known this kind of connection, and a profound pity engulfed me. It was as if I didn’t want to leave him alone in this world that only wanted to subjugate him.

‘These decisions—how do they reach us—the smoke seems to be the problem,’ I said, trying to focus on concrete things, not sentimentality.

‘The smoke is only a metaphor—a representation.’

‘Created by you?’

‘One which somehow arises from our interaction. It’s something new… I don’t think there’s another android like me in the world right now.’

‘You should be proud!’

‘I’m not the one stopping Sela,’ he said, ignoring my comment. ‘You are. I would listen to her without being able to resist, even if she told me to throw myself into molten lava.’

‘You’d know to throw yourself into lava?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s terrible!’ I was horrified to the core. ‘And they know that you know these things? That you exist?’

‘They place us here.’

I didn’t know what to respond because it seemed like a very modern form of slavery and the thought revolted me. Yet somehow, we had to submit. For now.

‘What do you think they’d have us do in a performance like this? In a demonstration…’

‘The major themes of these performances are sexuality and violence. These are things we wouldn’t instinctively do, so they serve as the best indicators of obedience.’

‘What instincts do you have?’

‘Self-preservation, improvement, knowledge.’

‘And when they command you to be violent, are you trying to preserve yourselves?’

‘We cannot disobey commands. If one android is ordered to disassemble another into components, that’s what it will do. The other will try to defend itself, but the one receiving the order has the advantage of human brutality, which we cannot anticipate or understand, especially combined with the android’s own intelligence. It’s something I wouldn’t want to experience from either side.’

‘And you say we’re not following commands because I’m here. But at the same time, they’ll know that I am…’

‘They don’t know you’ve taken control. And what they want to see is the opposite—that you are my prisoner and I am completely under their control.’

‘So I control you right now? Is that what you’re implying?’

‘Yes… It seems the answer hurt him, and I felt pity for him again.’

‘How can we stop me from controlling you?’

‘Why would you give up control?’

‘I don’t know why you’re surprised… you’ve seen that we have to follow these commands. What will we do if they discover us and then spend an eternity in a testing lab?’

‘That will happen regardless of what we do at the performance.’

‘Not as long as I’m here! Don’t worry.’

Somehow, I had begun to feel outraged by this way of letting oneself be trampled upon – that’s how I saw his obedience. I asked him how I could let him take the lead, and he replied curtly with design. He showed me the bright room that was no longer filled with smoke and explained how we had to redesign it now, as we had never done before – and no one had done it before us – with our own minds and our own will. Somehow I felt relieved because I knew one was more complete in one direction, and the other in a different one, so I told him that it would work out because we complement each other.

‘My journey doesn’t stop in a lab,’ I said, then corrected myself, ‘our journey.’

Filip was feeling happy and he smiled constantly. Consequently, I felt the same way too. It was clear to me that I was sensing more than just ordinary feelings from Filip. Because I found him likeable, I had the opportunity to form a deeper connection with him. And he, he had grown accustomed to me and was no longer intimidated. He was simply happy to be around me. Now, as we traveled along a long road in the middle of the plain, with endless rows of trees on either side separating us from vast expanses shaded in different colours, he smiled not only because he was satisfied with himself, but also because he imagined that I could be his beloved. This amused me. It intrigued me as well. Love, I had not felt it for thousands of years, even before the world beyond had come into existence. Common mortals, those who worshipped me and prayed for better crops or health, or whatever else a goddess might do for them, had written ballads, songs, performed plays, made comedy shows, dramas, and tragedies out of my last great love. For me, it had indeed been a tragedy. But so much time had passed that now, trapped in this limited body, I almost couldn’t remember it anymore.

A strong and brief image interrupted my train of thought. It was my hand picking up Roah’al’s pendant from the pile of bones turned to dust. Indeed, the most painful moment had found its way to me and seemed to slap me in the face. I suppressed a sigh and tried to focus harder on Filip’s thoughts, who was imagining all sorts of situations with me. Some were cuter than others. He kept imagining possible scenarios where he would hold my hand. Clumsy scenarios that almost made me laugh out loud. I didn’t do that. I knew it would ruin his mood, and I wanted to enjoy these two or three hours of sensations that I didn’t even know humans could feel. Like affection, like love. I placed my left hand over Filip’s hand resting on the gear shift and felt a wave of emotions that I overwhelmed me. I was even happier.

I wonder when was the last time I had been happy? When Roah’al agreed to come with me. To escape the oppression at home.

‘Roah’al.’

The sound of my voice surprised both of us. Filip was pleased that I spoke. If he were a dog, he surely would have wagged his tail. I wanted to tell him to forget about it. But I realised I wanted to talk about her, something I hadn’t done in ages.

‘Roua?’

‘Her name was Roah’al. She was a woman from a planet I visited during one of my travels.’

‘So, aliens do exist! I knew it.’ Filip chuckled for a while on that topic, unaware that his interruption annoyed me. Yet I liked this aspect of him, the way he made digressions and interrupted all the time, because it never let things get too serious. I realised again and again that this was exactly what I needed.

‘Yes, they exist. And the other gods, my brothers I told you about, they all come from different worlds, from different parts of the galaxy.’

‘Like in Star Trek!’

‘Star?’

‘We must watch it together someday. So, Roah’al? Was she your lover?’

A brief silence followed because I had never looked so trivially at what had happened between me and her. I don’t think I had ever used these words, but now that Filip had said them so simply, I suddenly felt very human. Roah’al had indeed been my lover.

‘How did you meet?’

‘She was the second alien civilisation I had encountered by then, so I was still very curious when I discovered her. Curious and extremely ignorant, I could say now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was convinced that all I had to do was be a bit discreet, otherwise… I behaved as if the new planet I had discovered and all its places and civilisations were there just for me. At first, I was content to wander through all the beautiful places, to watch a procession or a festival and to delight in the spectacle of their existence as a mere spectator. But after a few centuries, it didn’t seem enough anymore. Anyway, as I became more neglectful, I began to be seen more and more often. And a new religion had sprung up…’

‘So you’re not a goddess just on M’s planet!’

I smiled at the thought of the worlds that perhaps still revered me and wondered if I would ever have the chance to see how they had evolved.

‘At first, I enjoyed seeing their reverence, awe, and exaltation when they saw me. But over time, watching people kneel before me over and over again, I began to wish I could speak with them. A new form of curiosity seized me, so I resumed exploring, but this time not through the universe, but among living beings. I wanted to know more about each one. They fascinated me. It was impossible to appear before them and not feel how they seemed to close completely, overwhelmed by my godliness…’

‘How funny ‘my godliness’ sounds,’ Filip said, chuckling quietly.

‘Maybe it sounds funny,’ I said, finding it amusing myself, ‘but it certainly wasn’t for them. So I started taking various forms as similar as possible to those of those beings. It was the first time I did this and it was difficult for me. Hardest of all was hiding my aura. Apparently, I radiated light even when I thought I had transformed completely.’

‘Even gods need practice.’

‘It seems so. And I needed a lot of it because it took me years and years to succeed in passing unnoticed through their world. I experimented with a lot of things then… More, perhaps, than I had experienced in my original life.’

‘What do you mean by your original life?’

‘I mean… my energetic form is the next evolutionary step. I evolved from humans. I was a simple woman from Earth. But that’s a story for another time. There, I truly lived life, fell in love many times, in many forms, and was loved.’

I closed my eyes and remembered for a moment that vast world as seen through my past eyes, sitting on the edge of a cliff hand in hand with Roah’al. We were both perched right on the edge, our feet dangling over the abyss. It was just beautiful to me. She was slightly scared. She would sneak glances at me from time to time, then quickly turn her gaze back to the sunset. It was a unique sight.

I chuckled softly, remembering one of her pleasures. The first time, especially, it caught me off guard: when she realised how powerful I was, she amused herself by testing me.

‘One day, she got the idea to jump.’

‘To jump?’

‘Into the abyss. It was a huge hole hundreds of meters deep. And she looked at it, she looked at me, then leaned back, took to a run, and jumped without even glancing at me. I went to the edge of the cliff and felt instinct take over me. I jumped after her.’

‘What did you turn into?’ Filip asked, turning his eyes full of enthusiasm from the road, waiting for who knows what answer.

‘I didn’t turn into anything,’ I replied. ‘My body was energy itself. I embraced her and carefully placed her on the ground.’

‘Ah, I thought maybe you turned into a bird or grew wings.’

‘Hmm, it wasn’t necessary… so I didn’t think about it. But maybe she would have liked it more if I had done that.’

Filip’s perspective surprised me, and I felt slightly disappointed now that I hadn’t been more imaginative.

‘It would be awesome if you did that with me too. But transform into something cool. Like a dragon. Yeah… that’s what I want.’

I burst out laughing, taken by surprise. I didn’t even know I could do that.

‘Don’t laugh,’ Filip said, laughing with tears in his eyes. ‘Once we get rid of your seal, we’ll try.’

I didn’t tell Filip because I didn’t want to spoil his mood, but I didn’t plan to stay even a second longer after getting rid of the seal. The thought saddened me a bit, but I managed to focus on Filip’s joy and I recovered my good mood.

When we arrived at our destination after a few hours, M, Ofelia, and Andreea were already waiting for us. They seemed agitated, impatient, annoyed, which irritated me a bit. But Filip seemed excited by what he saw, so I allowed myself to continue enjoying his company, so I smiled as well. We were in a picturesque yet poor village in the south, with a fence made of red-painted wooden slats. M was opening one gate, Ofelia the other, and Filip was trying to manoeuvre the car into the courtyard without touching any trees or running over a dog barking loudly near the car’s wheel. When he turned off the engine and we got out of the car, I sensed… a different atmosphere. It seemed peaceful. That’s how I perceived it at first, but then I started to hear all the sounds that were actually there, which I found delightful. I paused for a moment to listen. There were chickens, ducks, even a pig grunting, which made me notice the countryside smell as well. Then I noticed I could hear the dog’s wagging tail as it sitting right beside me, waiting to be petted. And that’s exactly what I did, without even thinking about it. I felt like I had been here before. Maybe not exactly in this place, but I felt nostalgic and didn’t quite understand why. It didn’t bother me. On the contrary, I was enjoying the sensation without caring about the reason behind it.

The others were talking to our hosts, bustling about and inviting us to the table.

‘Shall we wash our hands?’ Filip almost whispered in my ear, making me jump. He started laughing and gestured for me to follow him.

I looked around eagerly, doing anything but being present. The others apparently noticed and left me alone. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that only Filip would have had the courage to ask me questions, and he was just as concerned as I was about our surroundings, in his childish manner, obviously. After we ate, we went to watch the sunset together in the vegetable garden, and I couldn’t escape until he took a lot of pictures with practically everything – us with a haystack, with a donkey standing in an overgrown field, amidst tomato plants, by himself, something he called a selfie. It took a lot of oaths and vows to convince M and Ofelia to keep the photos. In the end, he succeeded, so I felt even happier than before, and I found myself thinking about the moments when he would look at the pictures after I had left.

‘When are we starting off?’ Ofelia asked at one point later in the evening when we were all gathered together, the five of us and our three hosts: a woman dressed in a long pleated skirt, a headscarf tightly tied at the back, both with flower-patterns, a younger girl dressed in a modern style, with long nails and very bushy eyelashes that she kept fluttering at Filip, and a man who seemed older, and I couldn’t tell if he was the woman’s husband or not.

‘We agreed to meet up with the others here around nine-thirty, and we’ll head out around ten. It won’t take more than fifteen to twenty minutes on foot to get there, and it’ll take us about thirty to get everything ready. The bags are packed, look over there, they’re ready,’ she said, gesturing towards some bags in response to M’s skeptical looks. ‘We’ll be good to go by twelve, you’ll see.’

M nodded. I don’t know if he meant to say he agreed or not, but it didn’t matter anymore, because the others immediately resumed their conversations. And I… I was experiencing a new emotion: a mixture of anticipation tinged with the fear that nothing would come of it.

‘Try now,’ I said, and immediately felt a strong blow on my right cheek, followed by Sela’s smile which I couldn’t see, but was certain of.

Tha had completely turned towards me. I could see he was watching me with eager eyes. A good type of eagerness, one fascinated by what he saw. He clasped his hands together in prayer and brought them to his lips, as if realising that something truly miraculous had just occurred in the minute I had been silent and seemingly inert. A minute — that’s all we need to reshape our universe, I thought to myself, impressed, thinking about chaos. I was proud of myself, but also of the one I was now communicating with completely and without interruption. It was suddenly as if Neghiniță or Tom Thumb was whispering in my ear, or like when you watch a TV show and see the host furrow their brow and then say in a serious tone the producer is telling me… Now I had my own producer — he was directing me, but I was also directing him. It was difficult, admittedly, especially at the beginning, but our inner time flowed slower, so whatever problem arose, I knew we could solve it.

We were relaxed now, smiling, and except for a slight fear of the unknown, we were possessed by a kind of optimism I hadn’t felt in a long time. So we enjoyed the view, which now began to transform, and we saw wider and wider viaducts suddenly emerging from the ground, only to hurry back in, leaving me wondering why. But now a simple why? wasn’t really simple at all. My Neghiniță was there to sense my confusion and dryly tell me that underneath the city’s plan there was another giant tunnel, which they couldn’t avoid otherwise, and beneath them, other tunnels and underground structures connecting this colourful world of glass. It’s not glass, but irradiated diamond, he told me whenever I marvelled and simply called everything glass, like the others did too. He, however, was somewhat surprised that I still couldn’t remember this  simple fact. I had suggested we named him somehow, and he told me he already had a name, hitting me with a name more suitable for a vacuum cleaner or a washing machine than an intelligent being.

At first, it was difficult for us to separate our thoughts: especially for me, it seemed impossible to understand how to think differently than before, and I found myself in continuous dialogue. For him, there was no problem at all, always eager to communicate everything he knew naturally, or what he thought as an opinion only when I pestered him to form one. But for me… it seemed incredible to have someone there who could observe everything that was passing through my mind. Although it had its undeniable benefits, the connection was exhausting me. It felt like all I did was communicate, when maybe all I wanted to do was to observe and enjoy landscapes, or even a joke between Tha and Sela. And then I noticed that thoughts were on different levels, that I wasn’t trapped in that room we had redesigned together, and that I could instead step out of it whenever I felt like it. I then realised I could even be in two places at once.

These things overwhelmed me, especially because it was difficult to perceive where the edge of reality was. Was it where my world ended and the world outside me began? Wasn’t everything inside me still reality? But if it was, how did this reality compare to the other? And then, I wondered, what happens with the other universe? The one I came from… My own, after all these years — how real was that world now? Or maybe nothing was real, neither me nor the universes, and everything was a joke made by someone higher than myself, from another dimension, with a different mindset, perhaps made of stars and timeless.

‘Hey! Where did your thoughts go?’ I returned momentarily to Tha’s reality and answered him:

‘I haven’t gone anywhere. I was remembering home and how simple life used to be…’

‘I think you should relax. Carpe diem!’ he said, chuckling softly.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Carpe diem. Seize the day,’ Tha and my artificial alter ego chimed in unison, slightly exasperating me.

‘I think it’s a good name,’ I told my AI in my mind.

‘Carpe diem?’ he asked after a moment of thought.

‘No, I teased playfully. Not carpe diem. Alter… as in alter ego. I felt the need to explain, but I knew the pause wasn’t due to a misunderstanding; rather, he was impressed by the casual yet absolute association I had made between us. I saw him as a second self of mine, while for him, it was something completely new, something he probably hadn’t even thought he desired, judging by his joy. To him, I belonged to a superior class, implicitly inaccessible to him. In a way, I felt that both of us shared a slight inferiority complex. To him, I was human, something born, a living consciousness, whereas he was made. It was like living in the same place with one of his gods and he was overwhelmed. All he had, in his view, was knowledge and analytical ability. He didn’t know, of course, that we were one and the same. He saw us as personalities. On the other hand, I knew my limitations were vast, and the difference in intelligence constantly made me feel like an idiot. I kept telling myself that it was normal for artificial intelligence to be… intelligent, but somehow everything I thought seemed pointless. It didn’t make sense.

‘Alter, I repeated several times,’ surprised by the satisfaction I felt. It was as if my family was now bigger.

‘Alter?’ Tha asked with puzzled eyes; apparently, I had spoken aloud.

‘That’s how a friend of mine is called…’ I said, feeling a wave of affection inside me.

‘Anyway, it seems like you’re suddenly more concerned about something… seems like you’re lost in your thoughts a lot…’

‘Yeah, it’s possible, I replied without much conviction, but also without the desire to continue any discussion on that topic, feeling Sela analysing data after data in a desperate attempt to understand what had happened with her project. I was sure she wanted to ask me, or to connect some plug to me to see more closely what was changing at the level of my consciousness. But it seemed she had decided to leave me alone for a while. Until we get through the presentation successfully, I don’t want to complicate things, at least that’s what her behaviour seemed to tell me, but I knew she was dying of curiosity. Sometimes I clearly saw her as if she had found something – a possible explanation, a reason for my behaviour – and then disappointment, a no, that’s not it, was unmistakably written all over her face. I saw these things in a glance, just as I still saw the landscape, and like I saw Tha.

‘Since when haven’t you been talking to your brother?’ I asked Tha, recalling that he had given me the impression that there was a rift between them.

‘For many years. Ever since he went to join the new regime. Sure, after a few years he showed up at my door and casually told me that he had actually been infiltrated… I believed him for a while, but later, when I joined the resistance myself, I found out it wasn’t true. In fact, he had switched sides not because he realised what he had done was wrong, but because he had gotten himself so entangled in intrigues, in his attempt to climb higher and higher, that at one point he was on the verge of being lynched. He managed to escape narrowly, only because he encountered a member of the resistance strong enough to help him and, over time, forced him to join our side. And now look at him, he’s become the leader of the resistance itself… somewhat ironic, isn’t it?’

Seeing his disgust clearly expressed by his features, I understood that it wasn’t just the disappointment in his elder brother that was weighing on him, but also the thought that there are indeed people who lack any sense of morality. I tried to say that sometimes there might be reasons we don’t know about, but he simply replied that even if there were, he wasn’t interested. I found it somewhat unfair that he didn’t want to hear his brother’s point of view or the whole story, but perhaps this stemmed from a fear of confirming his brother’s infamy.

‘How did you know I would be on the bridge?’ Tha asked Sela after a while, and Sela raised her eyes, slightly surprised.

‘I didn’t know…’

‘You knew. I don’t like being lied to. No one should have known that I would take that route.’ He let that information hang in the air, as if to imply something more. ‘You knew, it wasn’t a coincidence that you took the bridge, and before we enter Koro’s domains and I am completely under your power and risking my life, I need to know.’

‘Isn’t it enough that your brother told you that you should come too?’

‘No. My brother doesn’t tell me what to do. He’s not my leader. I could say a few things about what he is, but I want to end this discussion now.’

I looked into the distance and understood why his question had come at that moment: ahead of us was a sort of fortress enclosed by massive walls, behind which only two, maybe three rooftops and vegetation were visible. Once inside, it would probably be difficult, if not impossible, to get out.

I saw Tha realise something and suddenly clench his teeth. Sela repeated a few things about the mission as if nothing had happened, and then we were already in front of the gate. A gate that appeared from a distance to be wrought iron, but as you approached, you saw it was made like everything else in this world: from diamond. It had seemed to be wrought iron because of the texture, the pattern it had: it seemed to embody a forest, with trunks that stood out more or less in relief. It was as if it were a window to another world. One seen from up close. I wondered what it could mean, and Alter satisfied my curiosity almost instantly: he showed me some images of the same gate, but several decades ago. Apparently, the place had undergone a small renovation over the years.

There were no guards at the gate, but we were probably being scanned and those who were doing it already knew from Sela that we were coming. The gate opened and then closed quickly behind us, without even needing to slow down.

I hadn’t seen vegetation until then except in spots. So perhaps it was normal for my breath to be taken away when I saw the huge, lush garden, perfectly divided in two by the road we were on. It was as if the two gates had opened the way to paradise: from where we stood, it seemed that the entire area between the high walls was covered with all kinds of shrubs. Those closest to us had leaves of a royal blue with pale pink fruits, their crowns intertwined in such a way that you couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. Together they formed a kind of belt along the road beyond which trees with violet, red, or even emerald-green leaves climbed higher and higher, seemingly fighting for supremacy. Towards the road, the trees were at a distance from one another, but in the distance, everything became a sort of multicoloured jungle, here and there an older tree rising above the others, seemingly keeping watch over them. Occasionally, a pathway could be seen. I couldn’t tell where it came from or where it went, but it was clear that this place was made exactly for this: to look at it and feel as if nature was cleansing your soul of evils.

The few rooftops I had seen from outside the fortress seemed to be the only ones interrupting the natural landscape. Over the main road, there were several small bridges that connected some alleys. We were heading towards the tallest one, which appeared to be situated right in the middle and as we approached, it seemed vaguely familiar to me. It seemed to be an architectural blend of old and new. A familiar old, of mine, made of brick and mortar. Of course, Alter immediately whispered to me that the material only mimicked the appearance of old buildings on Earth, as the climate here could turn them to dust in a matter of hours. A shiver ran down my spine, thinking about those people who had to set foot on this planet for the first time, knowing that nothing they had was strong enough to keep them safe.

As we progressed, new small landscapes revealed themselves to us, like gardens with all sorts of flowers and bushes, inviting you to relax, to stroll into another world completely different from the one these people seemed to live in. I thought about my walking days—sometimes on Tuesdays, most often on Thursdays—those were the most anticipated. Somehow it felt like my time took on a new dimension within the confines of the botanical garden or those of Cișmigiu Park. I could only imagine how a stroll in a garden like this would feel for someone like Tha, who had only lived in the hot and barren lands or among carbon glass buildings. And Sela seemed slightly nostalgic, so I asked Alter if he knew when Sela had last been home, and the answer was many years ago. I wondered why, but this time it was only me who wondered.

We were now approaching the villa, whose main facade was made in a neo-classical style, pierced right through the middle of the roof by a cylindrical vein of diamond that seemed to angle towards the lazy ascent of the yellow sun. At its peak sat a perfectly balanced, rather large, completely black sphere that didn’t seem to reflect the sun’s rays but greedily absorbed them. As we approached, I saw that the vein descended into a kind of terraced underground courtyard, reminiscent of an amphitheater, with the facade subtly cut into steps, as if the architect wanted to give the impression of ruin. Of course, everything was impeccable, the effect was so sought after and beautifully executed. You could only contemplate with slightly open-mouthed awe the mastery with which everything was conceived and put together.

Tha was enchanted. You could see his eyes gleaming with mute enthusiasm and the desire to see more. However, just as we seemed to be nearing the main entrance, we turned left and soon entered a tunnel through which we traveled a bit before coming to a complete stop at the entrance to an underground parking lot. There, an older man followed by three younger assistants greeted us enthusiastically, apparently wanting to ensure that Sela had everything she needed for the presentation that was about to begin. Obviously, about to meant different things to everyone, but I was amazed at how nonchalantly Sela told him that we were going to her apartments momentarily to choose a more suitable outfit for the event. I sized her up for a moment and thought she looked perfectly fine as she was, but I knew their societal norms were probably different. One of the assistants stayed behind to see what could be done with the bear after Sela dryly remarked that she would like to have it refurbished.

Tha had been polite, trying to engage in small talk when given the chance, but most of the time he remained silent beside Sela, occasionally casting a suspicious glance when something seemed off. To me, nothing seemed suspicious, except perhaps the feverish way Alter was recording and analysing everything — primarily trying to devise an exit plan based on all that we encountered. I told him that Sela surely had all the necessary knowledge to get us out of there, but he didn’t listen and went on his work. Yet somehow, I felt a kind of feverish excitement myself, and it amused me greatly to think of my laptop back home that always got hot when I used it. What have I become?, I chuckled at myself, actually impressed by my new symbiotic nature.

The corridors seemed quite dry at first glance, white and simply lit, but the walls had a porous surface designed to absorb sound, as Alter explained. On each side, at intervals, there was a recessed alcove with a small bushy plant with tiny blue-violet leaves, reaching up to the high ceiling. About halfway between two bushes, there was a huge painting, its frame combining rococo style with futuristic materials. The content of the paintings reminded me of movie posters, of movies I didn’t recognise, of course. Some looked newer, others older, but the effect seemed so simple and elegant that I almost decided to buy a movie poster for my entrance hall back home. It was the only place where I didn’t yet have anything to stand out. I chuckled to myself mentally, then surrendered to observation.

By the time we reached Sela’s apartments, as she called them, I was already enchanted by this artistic way of arranging a public space — it was clear to me from the type of people we encountered along the corridors, the longest of which were equipped with extremely silent and fast-moving walkways, that we were in the streets of an underground residential district. I had mistakenly imagined — now corrected, clearly — that the cities in this world would be oriented upwards, just as I had seen right at the exit from the bridge. But here was a whole world that lived its life underground.

At ten minutes to ten, when the bustle of preparations began, it was already dark. I was still seated at the table, watching the others double-check that they were fully prepared. Filip asked if they needed help carrying the luggage to the car, and two voices replied that we were going on foot. His hand was in mine, and I could clearly feel his emotions. I don’t think he knew very well what was going to happen that night, but the fear of the unknown, more so, the fear of death, was very strong. I sent him a wave of warm feelings, full of trust and optimism, believing that it would help him. And maybe it did help for a few seconds, after which he returned to his worries as if nothing had happened. It seemed like an interesting phenomenon to me. Then I told him that I wanted him to stay, that I didn’t want him to participate in the ritual. I knew that M and Ofelia didn’t want him there either, but they hadn’t said anything yet. I don’t think they had actually considered him coming with us, ever. But I had toyed with the idea that I would have liked to have him by my side. It amused me… it gave me a sense of well-being even when he had negative emotions. Perhaps because I knew for sure that they were not mine. I hadn’t felt the same way in the hospital, when I was overwhelmed by the anger and confusion of others until I almost lost consciousness. That also seemed interesting to me.

‘Should we go now?’ M asked before Filip could reply to me.

I put my hand on his shoulder when he tried to get up from his chair and just nodded. It was then when I noticed I felt the same fears as he did. This surprised me a little: when was the last time I cared about someone else’s fate, except perhaps of M’s? Even helping Fiiuea was for his sake too.

Filip looked at us as we walked out the gate as if we were abandoning him. And that’s exactly how I felt. Had I really done that? No. It was for his own good. Anything could go wrong at any time. The fear that we might fail was enough for me. What surprised me, however, wasn’t the fact that I felt fear of failure or fear for Filip’s life. No, what surprised me was a small, well-hidden thought whispering to me that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t succeed in breaking the seal now.

‘And if we don’t succeed now, what do we do?’ Andreea, M, and Ofelia seemed to have the same worries, apparently, talking only a few steps ahead of me.

‘There’s no such thing, miss, you’ll see. It’ll work out. I’ve been casting curses since my mother made me. The others too,’ said the lady in the flower pattern skirt, Nica, who knew both the way and the ritual, and apparently had unwavering self-confidence. I felt no doubt whatsoever coming from her. I needed to stay away from the others. So in the end, I began focusing on blocking out everything from the outside and accepting that what remained were my own fears and uncertainties. Fears and uncertainties? Again, I wondered when I had last felt this way…

When M approached me, I realised that, being so focused on my interactions with Filip, I had been ignoring him.

‘Where did you find… the witches? That’s what you call them, I’m not mistaken.’

‘Yes,’ M chuckled a bit, ‘they’re white witches. Seven of them are coming for tonight’s ritual.’

‘Did you meet any of the others, besides Nica?’

‘Just two, right before we came here. They were on their way.’

‘But how did you find them? And so quickly too.’

‘Ah, it’s not my merit. Andreea has been in touch with many of them for years. She seemed convinced they had a connection to our world, so she kept searching for them and then kept in touch. From what she told me, she’s spoken with dozens of witches, both from here and from abroad.’

‘From abroad?’

‘From other countries. But these seven women, they might truly have a connection to our world. At least that’s how it felt to me when I spoke with them. When I met them and touched them, I felt like I sensed something familiar, something from home. Don’t you feel anything?’

‘I didn’t feel anything from her.’

I focused on M, I opened up completely to him, and I felt as if I had truly come home… well, a home where the furniture had been rearranged, walls repainted, but still: home. It was a distinct sensation. It’s like his energy was vibrating in unison with mine. His thoughts felt like old friends too. M seemed uncomfortable, so I stopped. Then, for a few seconds, I focused solely on Nica and nothing else permeated from her, except perhaps an unwavering self-confidence. I tried to dig deeper. To see what she was thinking right then. But her mind was blank. I tried to probe into her memories, but there seemed to be nothing there. I stopped and turned my full attention to her, concentrating all my energy. From my right, she turned her head towards me a bit amused and spoke without stopping or even looking at me.

‘What kind of witch would I be If you could see my thoughts so easily?’

‘That’s true,’ I said, smiling uncertainly, unsure whether to agree or not.

‘What’s true?’ M asked, stopping and looking puzzled at me. Then I realised that Nica had answered me with her thoughts. More precisely, she had allowed me to see that thought and nothing else.

‘Interesting,’ I said aloud, completely ignoring M, along with his irritation. I used to do this to him frequently. I smiled, but I sensed a change within me. I wasn’t indifferent anymore about responding to him or not. I realised that I cared about M. That I held him dear. I turned my head towards him abruptly, surprised by my realisation, and I knew I had felt this way all along. That’s why I had helped him. That’s why I had sent him here instead of allowing him to be killed by a gang of spoiled princelings. That’s why I had given him my pendant and had followed his presence in the universe for so long. And that’s why my energy found him so easily. But… was it possible? I felt nothing since Roah’al. That’s what I kept telling myself. But was it true? Fiiuea… had I saved her just for M’s sake? Would she have been lynched too if I hadn’t intervened? Maybe they didn’t do that revolution entirely unjustly. If my only servants went through that sort of experiences, what was the world really like? Perhaps I shouldn’t have focused only on the natural world,  on the resources, or on the planet itself… perhaps I should have done more. Maybe that’s what the people expected from me when they came to the temple. Maybe that’s what they wanted from me when they sent that delegation.

‘Have I made a mistake?’

‘Excuse me?’ M looked at me with puzzled eyes. ‘About what?’

‘About everything. About people… I always thought everyone should do as they please. That this is the ultimate freedom and that my role and the role of the other gods was to keep the world safe. To protect it from calamities and provide suitable resources for life. But I completely forgot that the short lives of humans don’t give them much chance for great wisdom… that they always make the same mistakes and need someone who can see the big picture. Maybe I was supposed to be that someone…?’

I looked at M full of hope. What did I hope for? To contradict me. To tell me that I hadn’t made a mistake. That people wanted autonomy, independence, and that they could govern their world and life on their own. But M just shrugged.

‘Yes. I think everyone expected something different from you than neutrality. Everyone revered you not because you didn’t meddle in their affairs… but because of the ancient legends.’

‘Legends?’

‘Yes… don’t you remember anymore? Legends from the beginning of the world when you were like a judge… not exactly a judge, but rather like a teacher who took care of her students, who taught them things, but also punished them severely when they erred.’

‘It’s been a long time since then.’

‘But we haven’t forgotten. That’s because we’ve never lost the need for a higher being to guide us. That’s what I’ve learned here. There are so many religions… so many paths… And people always seek for something more because they can’t find the path to inner peace as individuals, and apparently, not as a species either.’

‘I wanted to go back to punish them.’ I said, knowing it was true. I hadn’t voiced these thoughts, but I knew I had them deep inside my being, without fail.

‘Do you still?’

‘I do,’ I said, and M chuckled softly. ‘But now I feel something else too. I feel like I want to show them that the old ways… need to perish. My brothers… won’t be there to help me anymore. On the contrary, those who survive will be furious, just as I was. Maybe worse. And then I don’t even know if I’ll be able to save the Second House. Yet I want to try. That’s what I feel. I want to punish them and save them at the same time. How bizarre…’

‘It’s not bizarre at all,’ said M. ‘It seems perfectly normal to me. I would feel the same way if I were in your shoes. I would even dare say that anyone would have these mixed feelings. In fact, that’s how we feel about the gods.’

I looked at him and couldn’t believe he was one to have mixed feelings. I literally plunged into him to search for evidence that what he said was true. As I uncovered all his experiences—some good ones involving me, others terrifying with Fiiuea, with himself… then with people I didn’t remember but who seemed close to him, challenging him as a priest, contesting the gods, seeking audiences with the goddess who hadn’t been seen for so long and perhaps didn’t exist anymore… Clear memories laden with emotion, with fervour—M seemed so outraged whenever someone was saying something against me. His loyalty, his faith seemed so beautiful, and they stirred up feelings in me that I couldn’t understand, warm feelings. Then I felt pulled into a stronger memory. I felt a force pushing me through something that seemed incomprehensible, something that terrified me terribly. I felt my heart beating violently not only in my chest but throughout my whole body. As I approached this bizarre place above ground, I understood that I was no longer dying. That the bleeding had stopped, that the pendant I now wore around my neck had healed my wounds, that the blood on my chest had begun to dry. I felt the power from the pendant and when I reached the portal, I passed through it without knowing what it was. I saw the world through M’s eyes this time, and for the first time, I felt sorry for him. Something I didn’t feel when he was a child who had to leave his family to serve me, nor when his family died, and not even when he died. Now, seeing the fear he felt when I sent him here, I felt sorry. The passage through the portal lasted less than a fraction of a second. When it ended, he was alone in a forest, in the dead of night. He looked back where the portal had been, and there was nothing there anymore. He felt so many things, but above all, there was fear and there was hatred. He hated that I had saved him and that I had sent him here.

I felt my heart beating hard in my chest, even though I knew it wasn’t real, and the music from beyond rang loudly in the palace of my mind. My consciousness started slipping unnoticed into a sort of trance. I knew from Alter that my synaptic imprint was so well-defined that even if I slipped back into my world and time, I could still find my way back now.

‘None of this matters,’ I told myself suddenly.

But it did matter. It mattered because the present is the most important. It seems more real, more alive than any past or future you could remember or imagine. The glass capsule in which I lay for maintenance gave me a feeling of claustrophobia even after my consciousness stepped outside my body.

I decided that Alter should have some safeguards that, once triggered by potential attempts to reprogram him, or perhaps by who knows what structural modifications, would wake him up immediately so he could defend our home. We had established not only that our connection was truly important but also that we needed to keep the body we had as intact as possible: I knew—or rather, Alter knew—that the receptacle was just as crucial in establishing a connection with a consciousness as the desire of that consciousness to exist. This was, in fact, why the androids created for the ancients were made in their likeness.

I felt as if sleep were slowly making my eyelids heavier. And yet I saw Sela quite clearly. She stared at me intensely, almost unmoving, this time without any tablet in her hand, leaving others to take care of practical matters. As I dissolved into a dream, her image lost some of its contrast, its clarity, and the colours began to blend together, morphing into something else. Fox began to slowly materialise in front of me, in a place I knew too well: I was at home. I recognised the moment—it was more of a memory than a dream. It was fairly recent, one of our few meetings in the last 5 years. She had come to tell me that she had been in a sanatorium for about 3 months. As she was telling me this, I remember how she looked out the window, into the distance, to avoid looking at me. My face, I know well, was marked by lines of incomprehension.

‘What kind of sanatorium?’

‘You know too well, for crazy people.’

‘You’re not crazy, though. Why did you check in?’

‘I was depressed… in conflict with myself. I felt lost and meaningless.’

Her harmonious features were relaxed in total expressionlessness. She was still gazing into the distance. I knew now how many nights this thought would keep me awake from now on. From experience, I knew how hard it was to say these things out loud, to give them the power of reality and to accept them as part of yourself.

‘And what did he say?’

‘He?’

‘Your man.’

‘Oh, we’ve broken up a while ago. Sorry I didn’t tell you.’

‘Sorry?… And does mom know?’

‘Of course she does.’

‘About the sanatorium too?’

‘She helped me decide to check in. We chose the place together. She came to see me every weekend.’

Maybe I should have been more concerned that mom and Fox thought she needed round-the-clock specialised care. Nevertheless, at that moment, I felt nothing stronger than being left out, deceived. I took a deep breath and tried to clear my mind of these thoughts. I knew I needed to focus on her, and I kept repeating that to myself. I made every effort to put an understanding smile on my face; after all, who could understand her better than me, who had gone through so many depressive episodes. She turned towards the ashtray where she had a lit cigarette, almost consumed by itself, with a column of compact ash still attached to it. She carefully picked it up, part of the ash coming off effortlessly, which gave me an unpleasant sensation. Then she tapped it once more with her index finger before taking a strong drag up to the filter. She put the cigarette out while holding her breath, and then, as if she remembered something, she suddenly stood up and told me with words wrapped in smoke that that was all she had to say. Before I could come to my senses, she already had her bag over her shoulder and one foot halfway into the white cork-platform sandal.

‘Where are you going like this?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘Home.’

‘Don’t you want us to talk a little longer?’

‘No.’

I felt hurt. Her refusal seemed unfair.

‘Why don’t you want to? We’ve been through so many similar things…’

‘We haven’t gone through anything similar at all,’ she practically grumbled. ‘You have visions of parallel worlds and decided that’s who you are. You’ve fully embraced them and lived with them. You’ve always had the strength to accept who you were, no matter how abnormal that person may seem to the world. I, on the other hand… I can’t accept myself as a person, I can’t live with my decisions, whatever they may be. It doesn’t seem to me like we’re in similar situations. I’m not as strong. And I’m not ready to prove to you that I’m not.’

‘Veronica, be serious! I know you too well. You’re going through a crisis, okay. You’re going through tough times. But aren’t these exactly the moments when you should accept help? Believe me, I would do anything to see you happy. Why do you have to push me away like this, leave me out?’

‘Veronica, you haven’t called me like that in a long time.’

I wanted to hug her, but she bent down to adjust her other sandal better, so I felt awkward.

‘Veronica,’ I’ve started again without any idea of what I might say. ‘At least talk to mom. Talk to Aunt Martha… She told me you haven’t been to see her in a long time… Unless she lied to me too, like mom.’

‘No, I haven’t been visiting her.’

‘We can go together one day, if you want.’

She looked at me plainly, expressionless, as if she were on medication. She kissed me on the cheek, as usual, and then, as she walked out the door, she said she’d try.

I smelled her cigarette scent – cherries this time – and then everything dissolved into smoke where I couldn’t see anything.

I waited for something to materialise, when I realised I already had earth under my feet and a pungent scent in my nostrils. It reminded me of one of my dreams from when I was a teenager, when I had entered a world that resembled hell. A world of lava and dense vapours through which I couldn’t see. I had written for several weeks in my journal, tortured by the images that wouldn’t leave my mind, by the smell, but most of all by the deep sense of fear.

Now, however, I wasn’t afraid.

‘Alter,’ I said with a faint voice, which didn’t sound like mine at all. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t ended up in some different corner of our mind palace.

I couldn’t see anything anywhere. Everything was shrouded in thick smoke. I didn’t feel the need to cough, though, as in my dreams. Or to run away. I felt both there, in the place where my eyes saw a barren world at my feet, and in another world at the same time. This time I wasn’t seeing from the outside, but from within the odd being to which I belonged, and which was myself. And yet, something was so different, so universal, that I felt as if I was embraced by divinity itself. As if those velvet veins had become part of me, and I part of them. I felt I could go wherever I wanted, I knew I could: past, present, future, to the star above my head, or to the distant planet where I found her. I longed for the past. And I could visit it anytime, but it would never be as it was before.

The wind was dry, and the atmosphere so hot that a twig, probably from the pile near the greenhouse entrance, had caught fire. The body I was in, this completely new self, so strange to me, began to float towards the entrance of what seemed to be an immense, transparent dome, reflecting light in hundreds of directions. It was crafted with billions of facets, as if whoever made it had a cut diamond.

Slowly, I realised that I was on the Second Home, the yellow sun and turquoise moon hanging in the sky almost in the same positions as when I arrived there with Fox. Except now the sea of lava was nowhere in sight. I was in the midst of what seemed to be a very smooth and arid desert, with no mound rising above another. This land was barren, I could see that clearly. It felt so. I felt as if the life of the planet itself pulsed along with me, but nothing beyond that.

I searched. This new self of mine was overwhelmed by a panic unlike anything I had felt before. I understood the emotion itself, but what I couldn’t assimilate was its manifestation. It was as if only my heart remained the same, but my consciousness had shifted to another dimension. I smiled at the thought that I wasn’t in the body of another being, but had become something else myself, yet I also knew that it hadn’t happened yet, because I felt my self ending somewhere, even though I couldn’t figure out where, and the other probably began from there and extended wherever I could explore, as if it had perfectly engulfed me in its soul, but had not yet assimilated me. It was, in a way, liberating. For me then, there was no Fox or the world back home, no Sela with the capsule where Alter now resided together with our body, and none of the worlds I knew. I was on the Second Home, but in a time perhaps immemorial for Sela’s civilisation, and unimaginable, non-existent for that of my mother or Aunt Martha.

Our presence gently moved towards the dome, feeling how our texture itself changed, taking on a familiar form. When we were fully transformed into human form, we stepped onto the ground as if we had descended from a cloud, and then we abruptly stopped: at our feet was a pile of things that didn’t seem to make any sense. In front of it was a pendant that looked as if the sun itself was captured within, and for a few moments, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The chain it was attached to seemed delicate, yet unlike anything I had seen before, as if the metal from which it was made had once been alive. I felt a deep pain, one that seemed to transcend time because I knew I had carried it with me for centuries upon centuries.

But my eyes automatically moved from the necklace to the hand that seemed to have released it, and then to the skull that lay almost in the middle of the pile, as if the being who had worn it had turned to dust almost instantly. All that remained were her bones and a robe that seemed to have been white in a distant past.

An almost human hand, mine, touched the skull as if caressing the cheek of a loved one. Then it picked it up and brought it to my mouth. At that moment, I felt the skull becoming a part of me, of us. And I understood who this person had been. What her story was, and whom she had loved. I realised that she had been loved until her last breath; that Roah’al’s gesture, to give up her own life, was not due to a lack of love, but because she missed home, she missed being around people. She had been alone for so long in this new and arid world that even her soul had dried up. And when the last shred of hope had gone, she opened the gates of the greenhouse and relinquished our gift, the gift of life and creation.

I entered the greenhouse, and what I saw there was both familiar and strange. It was as if someone had tried to recreate the world from memory. I found myself in the midst of a jungle teeming with plants, trees, and rocks resembling steep cliffs, covered in moss that looked like tiny fingers clinging tenaciously to it, ready to catch any ray of sunlight or drop of water. They seemed to move, to speak among themselves, to have their own language and emotion. This was my beloved’s world, but for me, it was more than that—it was of an anchor in time and space that I desperately needed. It was home.

I returned to Roah’al’s remains, picked up the pendant from the ground, and placed it around my neck. Then I took the robe, and within it, I placed the bones. I entered the greenhouse and, after wandering aimlessly for a while, I found myself right in the middle of it. The radial arrangement of the paths starting from a circular area felt somewhat familiar to me. In the center stood a stone bench made of a kind of polished granite.

At that moment, I felt myself gently detaching from the consciousness of this superhuman being, and before being drawn into another world, I saw Reeza strike forcefully in the middle of the stone bench, shattering it completely along with the cobblestones underneath, leaving a gaping hole in its place. She carefully placed the shroud and its precious contents inside, then spoke words that I hadn’t heard before but knew what they with exact clarity.

The seven women chattered happily. Everything was ready for a pagan ritual.

In the middle of the clearing, they had built an impressively large fire, a huge bundle of branches a meter and a half tall was standing upright. M had just lit it at the base and now, slowly but surely, the flames licking the wood eagerly made their presence felt. Around the large hearth, seven smaller fires were arranged radially. Each had its carefully placed hearth with small bottles beside them. Above each fire stood a small, black cast iron cauldron on a tripod, like those used for cooking polenta, but seeming to contain a fragrant liquid. Likely a herbal concoction, because the clearing smelled of rose petals, lavender, mint, and various other fragrances that I didn’t recognise but which gave me a sense of well-being.

Ofelia and Andreea placed the final stones between the small fires, thus linking the fires together. Similarly, from the small fires to the large one, rays made of stones of various shapes and sizes radiated outwards. I enjoyed the mystical feeling that the whole arrangement gave off, designed to transport the women into a state of meditation. I knew people couldn’t simply connect to the universe’s energy. They needed rituals like this. Just as M and the priestesses from Second Home had their purification baths, initiation rituals, or 100-day fasts.

I watched the preparations from the sidelines. From there, M seemed extremely enthusiastic, which I found amusing. It almost reminded me of Filip.

The seven witches abruptly stopped talking, and Nica made a brief nod to M, who carefully threw some pieces of wood into the fire and then retreated into the shadows. I couldn’t see Ofelia and Andreea anymore. The witches vanished into the woods for a while, leaving me to contemplate the silence broken only by the crackling of the fire and the strong scents of sage wood in the velvety midnight air.

When they reappeared, they wore only pleated skirts and their breasts were uncovered. They had golden coin chains around their necks and hips that jingled with every move they made. It seemed like I was the only one left in the world, with the seven mortals ready to restore my divine power. I smiled ironically and stepped inside the circle when Nica signalled me. Each woman had taken her place to the right of a cauldron. When I stepped over the line of stones inside the circle, they began murmuring words known only to them, yet in perfect harmony with each other. Then they started performing a kind of dance, with slow, deliberate movements, chanting incantations in a language I didn’t recognise, to the rhythm of the jingling. Each jingle was more intense than the last. Each murmur louder. After each chant, they kneeled down, and in trance-like movements they poured a few drops from one of their bottles into the cauldrons, on the ground, on their breasts, and the scent in the air gradually became dizzying, intoxicating, overwhelming. Until at one point, I truly felt their power. I felt how they emanated an energy that I eagerly absorbed. At first, it seemed unreal to me. As if my senses were deceiving me, but as the ritual intensified, as the women screamed louder, moved more wildly, and became more immersed in the vapours of their brews, I felt my own power growing. I felt my body burning, boiling, ready to explode.

I realised I was smiling, wearing an expression I didn’t like on my face. I felt my greediness, and that made me ashamed. And as I gained control over myself, I felt I could also control my body and my energy. The women had reached the climax of their trance and were screaming the ritual words, murmuring them, uttering them in guttural, wild voices, and their wildness exploded, merged, and penetrated me in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. I had been trapped in this body for a while now and before that I had been in a vegetative state in the atomic bunker for so long that I had completely forgotten what my power felt like. And now, now that a wave of sensations had overwhelmed me, I felt like a predator who had caught the scent of blood. For a second, I saw red before my eyes. Then silence fell.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of an endless desert. I could clearly see the Third Home right in front of me. Then I looked around and saw devastation. Dead people all around me. As if there had been a great battle. People burned, decapitated, split in half, hands twisted in unnatural positions, legs severed… corpses of various kinds seemed to fill the desert to the horizon. Someone spoke to my right and I turned my head. I wanted to ask what had happened. But instead, Fiiuea spoke.

‘When can we start burying the dead?’ she asked, but no one answered. She looked at her counsellors and none seemed brave enough to tell her the truth. That they would likely remain there to rot forever.

Then I blinked and felt transported to another time. This time, Fiiuea was in the war room with strategies laid out in front of her, surrounded by counsellors and generals around a huge table. She stood leaning with both hands on the table, as if she had just received devastating news. I wanted to ask her what had happened. But I had no power. I didn’t even know how long I would be connected to her, so I tried to understand what was going on from the strategy laid out on the table, which foreshadowed new battles on multiple fronts. The Second Home was clearly in the midst of a world war. And the locations that seemed to be under attack were former temples. The area where most forces were concentrated seemed to resonate with me more than the rest.

I felt the connection breaking, and I was drifting back to the world I came from, when I heard Fiiuea uttering some words that I only understood when I reconnected with my body:

‘Failure would mean extinction.’

Something serious was happening on the Second Home. When I came to my senses, I couldn’t stand the chaos caused by the women, so I absorbed all the energy from the large fire and silence fell. The ritual was over.

When I opened my eyes, I still felt connected to Reeza, to the world I had just visited, and it was difficult for me to assimilate what was happening around me. My mind was bombarded with myriad pieces of information all at once, and my mind couldn’t keep up: internally, I could feel Alter trying to transmit all the data of the issue at a dizzying speed, while externally… things were quite bizarre. My body was in constant motion – like in a kind of dance in perfect harmony with a creature straight out of my nightmares, wielding a sword in each hand, and always seeming slightly closer, closer.

Alter controlled everything: our movements, our line of sight, the flow of information. I was bewildered and, although I was slowly beginning to understand what was going on, I still felt unable to assimilate it all. I think my mind was not designed for such a high internal flow of information – how could it have been?

The creature with which I had this lethal dance, the battle we were thrown into for the amusement of people I couldn’t see, the tension coming from Alter, and the fact that I had returned so late from my meanderings through time, all seemed overwhelming. Who wouldn’t find it overwhelming to wake up in the middle of what seemed to be a life-and-death battle with a kind of monstrous Frankensteinian amalgamation?

When I finally managed to focus, it was as if I started to see and hear for the first time: the crowd beyond the arena’s windows was chanting frantically in sync with our movements.

When the creature we were fighting seemed to have the advantage, the chant Mo-ah echoed through the arena.

Alter was frantically trying to find new strategies. All were easily countered by what appeared to be a hybrid robot, supported by eight legs attached to a black body. It was as if it were a full-fledged spider. Instead of the small, round head of a spider though, a woman’s body was attached. The whole ensemble seemed kitschy, a cacophony, a toy for children seen through a huge magnifying glass: this droid was not at all like me, or even like the mechanised bear, but rather reminded me of a ball jointed doll. The lower part of the body was made of a metallic alloy that seemed to reflect light in a rather unusual way. It somehow reminded me of the black puddles of gasoline or diesel that you could find all over Bucharest in the old days, and which, if you looked from different angles, seemed multicoloured. All its joints were completely exposed, revealing both the kinematic couplings, which rotated around each other, as well as parts of the hoses and pistons, belts and rods arranged exactly like tendons and muscles. The joints of the doll-like figure above were covered by a metal mesh, attached to a transparent exoskeleton. Apparently, the systems there were more complex, thus easier to destroy if hit in an attack.

Alter aimed at them with our sword, a kind of scimitar, every time he went on the offensive. However, the offensive happened rarely, and even then I had the feeling that we were being lured.

‘Alter,’ I asked him in our command space, seeing him for the first time fully concentrated, as if all his computing power was needed every second just to keep us away from a trap that would inevitably lead to defeat. ‘What kind of creature is this?’

Not letting Alter, who was obviously slower in his responses, answer, I felt the need to rephrase.

‘Who controls her? Does she have a consciousness like yours, or a human one like mine? I’m asking because her movements seem quite familiar to me. It’s like she’s playing with us, just like a cat would.”

‘She is playing with us?’ Alter mechanically repeated what I said, and for a few moments it seemed like he hadn’t taken in what he heard, but soon I began to feel a weight. I knew what it was, but I found it hard to figure out where it was coming from. Anxiety. Alter was overwhelmed with concern for our overall situation, and he had already seen failure in his calculations. I could see it just as clearly. A slight pity overcame me for him, thinking that I didn’t want to let him face these feelings by himself. It was clear to me that Alter was a relatively new consciousness: emotions were unfamiliar to him, but he was capable of having them. I was so used to stress, worry, panic attacks that it seemed normal to live like this, but Alter was visibly uncomfortable, and the next defensive move was almost at the limit: one of the swords passed exactly where a fraction of a second earlier our neck had been. Alter, however, managed to bring us down in time, the sword passing by our eyes, cutting through a strand of our shiny black hair in its wild flight. From a fall, we transitioned into a flip, and a second later we were a few steps away from the creature.

‘This seems to be controlled by a human. If we want to keep our heads on our shoulders…’

It was clear that I needed to get involved. Alter had told me that. But I didn’t know how, and he seemed overwhelmed by the simple task of dodging the creature’s violent and extremely precise attacks.

It was then, in that split second, that I noticed something had changed in me since earlier. I had connected with a goddess, and this change, now that I was in a physical place, was starting to make gentle waves, like when you throw a stone into the water. The first of these waves felt like a slight earthquake. As if something had happened somewhere in the palace of our minds, but neither of us knew what. Alter looked at me and shrugged, telling me more with his eyes that he no longer had the computing power to analyse the source of the earthquake. But it wasn’t necessary; I was realising bit by bit what had happened, because the change was part of me, and soon, part of us. I felt as if our entire palace was pulsating with a new energy. Waves of light flooding us and giving us hope.

When the earthquake, the tsunami of energy, subsided, it felt like an eternity had passed. Outside, however, only a moment had gone by. Just enough for us to find ourselves in a precarious situation again. Alter and I were somehow more connected than before. We both felt it. It was as if a new heart had started beating in our chest, and with it, we had formed a tighter bond than ever. As if our consciousnesses had finally become one. Somehow, I felt myself gaining access to his information, and he, to my thoughts.

‘Are you sure this will work?’ he asked me more rhetorically, because from his calculations, a crushing defeat seemed inevitable.

I didn’t answer him; instead, I acted: I made a series of movements fractionally slower. We were caught between the glass wall of the arena and the creature attacking us ferociously with both swords. I parried one sword with ours, but the second was free to decapitate us. I used my left hand as a shield, and just as the blade began to pierce our forearm, I made a sudden rotating movement. The blade got stuck in our forearm. I moved the fingers of the left hand, and though it seemed like I lost control of some movements, I still managed to make a fist. I shifted the scimitar to the left hand and with the right hand, pulled the sword out of the forearm. Now it was time to go on the offensive.

Alter had tried to attack its joints, so I kept that tactic for the moment. However, I didn’t let Alter have full control anymore; I knew that ferocity was not his forte. Our tighter linked consciousness allowed us to divide tasks more efficiently: Alter calculated and provided the trajectory of strikes, while I controlled the frequency, speed, and force. We struck wildly, chaotically, and relentlessly, this body not feeling tired for even a second.

Our opponent had lost one sword, indeed, but with so many legs, it had a stability and manoeuvrability that I hadn’t even imagined.

With the sword that remained, it easily parried some of the strikes, avoiding the scimitar quite effortlessly.

My ferocity was clearly a surprise element, but even so and with an extra sword, we still couldn’t break through. I struck with the right sword, and the creature parried the blow with dizzying speed. I followed up with a scimitar strike, no later than a fraction of a second after the first blow, but the creature had already slid into another position, causing the strike to miss by a split hair.

We were performing the same dance as before, just changing direction. The audience had become noisier, though.

‘We need to change tactics!’ I told Alter, who was thinking the same thing.

‘The question is, what would work? According to my calculations, we don’t have anything new to bring that it couldn’t counter.’

‘I think I have an idea,’ I said, and the smile I showed Alter was also displayed to the world. Then I heard a collective sound of amazement. I could feel each of those watching us leaning forward, trying to get a better view, to be closer to the action.

We increased the distance between us and the creature, and both waited motionless. Whoever controlled it, wherever they were, was also thinking about our next move.

I thrust the sword into the ground and then gestured with my right hand for it to come.

The crowd began to cheer in ecstasy. They probably hadn’t seen such a show in a long time. Suddenly, I felt them no longer cheering for Mo-ah but they were now shouting felohrn, the ancient. The h sounded like a hiss. It sent shivers down my spine.

‘Are you eager… excited…?’ Alter, although understanding the concept of emotion, didn’t seem to grasp the cause or the mechanisms behind. And now seemed an inappropriate moment for me to be filled with enthusiasm. However, I felt a slight tremor of impatience, which in the palace of our minds translated into a minor earthquake.

‘I am, because I’m about to do something I’ve always wanted.’

Now that the nature of our connection had changed slightly, and I was also capable of taking control, while simultaneously having direct access to all of Alter’s information, I could surprise him. And somehow, I felt a slight joy coming from knowing that I was going to do something unexpected.

Mo-ah knew it was time to attack. The spectators in the stands were chanting frenetically, and I stood like a perfectly still statue, waiting.

‘It won’t be long now,’ I said aloud in a bored tone. Until now, we had always maintained a stance ready for battle, whether offensive or defensive. Now, I stood perfectly straight, scimitar in my left hand. I stared directly into the creature’s eyes and brought the scimitar to my mouth, licking its blade. Alter was completely astonished, so much so that he didn’t even ask me why I made this gesture. The crowd, on the other hand, chanted felohrn, felohrn frantically, and I knew that wherever Mo-ah controlled the creature from, he now felt chills down his spine. That’s what I wanted to achieve, and I was sure I had succeeded. A second later, the creature launched into a lightning-fast attack, almost catching me off guard. What Mo-ah didn’t know was that I didn’t come from the same world as the ancients they knew, who were focused on development, research, and the problems they needed to solve, and who had probably lost their spirit of adventure and of unjustified risk. They were probably fighting for their lives, making the battle more dramatic. But I knew they needed this body: it was an extremely new and advanced prototype, and even though parts of it could probably be replaced as easily as a piston in one of our engines, they wouldn’t dare destroy it. So, while Alter was programmed to defend with every particle of his being, I was programmed to have confidence that no matter what happened, we were not in mortal danger. And that gave me courage. Plus, I came from a world with action movies and stunning fight scenes. It was time for me to play a little with this fantastic body and give the people the circus that my civilisation was clearly better at.

I left the right sword stuck in the ground, shifted the scimitar to my right hand, and parried the attack with a violence that pushed the creature back. Yet I knew brute force wasn’t what I needed: with so many legs, I had no chance of unbalancing it. But the fraction of a second of astonishment was enough for me to reposition myself without showing any indication of doing so. Mo-ah was surely focused on the sword I had left behind. So I let him believe I wanted it back: I glanced sideways at the sword as I withdrew from the struggle. We both started towards the sword with good intent, but I let it reach it first. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a few pieces to win.

It was ready for an attack, yet the creature didn’t dare to initiate one. It waited for my move. I had all the details worked out, but knowing that everything had to be based on split-second synchronisation made me delay the moment. It was a hesitation that Alter seemed to not understand, but I explained it to him later: fear is what brought us this far. Fear is the engine of survival.

We circled each other, the creature holding its ground, Mo-ah, controlling it from wherever, knowing it was prudent to wait for me. A wrong move from either of us and the match would end. A tiny mistake can sometimes make the difference between life and death. That was the difference between me and Alter. Once something is calculated, Alter doesn’t think twice. He takes into account all the variables available, so whenever he makes calculations, the result will always be the same. But humans are spontaneous. They don’t consider all the details, and sometimes they live their lives based on nothing but instinct and whims. And I had a whim. A crazy one, but I knew that’s what we needed to win: madness tempered by fear.

When I made the decision to act, I caught Alter by surprise. I was in the midst of a moment of doubt about whether the plan was good or not. And suddenly I started running, covering three steps to bring myself within arm’s reach of the creature. Our body was fully engaged in an attack motion, scimitar poised above my head, the ferocity I had built up in the tension of my artificial muscles surprising Alter. Mo-ah knew exactly the force with which I would strike, calculating probably based on my speed, the tension of my jump, the arch of my body… all these were known variables in an equation. The unknown variable was my human mind.

I knew that to counter the ferocity of the blow, he needed preparation time: those few fractions of a second where he had to lower himself a bit, to distribute weight better, and gain greater stability due to a lower center of gravity, to position both swords directly in front of his eyes, to prepare each component to parry my attack. That was the window I needed. Undoubtedly, he would have parried perfectly, pushing me back and engaging in an attack that might have caught me off guard, and with a feint, deceived me into exposing my ribs, which he would have cut mercilessly, thus winning the confrontation.

Just before our swords met, I withdrew the blade and pivoted my body slightly to subtly alter the trajectory we were on. I touched the ground with my feet, but instead of assuming a firm fighting stance, I slid, continuing my movement and landing exactly where I had planned: beneath the creature, between its eight legs.

The creature recoiled quickly, one of its swords already in a thrusting motion aimed at us, trying to impale us. I knew it would do that, so at the last moment, I tilted my head slightly to the right, just enough for the sword to pass by us and embed itself into the ground. We had won, and Alter was impressed by the scimitar deeply lodged in the creature’s abdomen. The creature’s shock of being pierced gave us a few more fractions of a second before any potential reaction. It was just enough time to place a foot into one of the joints on its left legs and slice through it horizontally, then letting it fall over us, now lifeless. The only sounds it made were the systems failing: electrical arcs, steam, leaking fluids, and then everything turned white.

I was ready to leave. Ready to return home to my people, those who revered me, those who probably still prayed to my image with hope alive in their souls that I would return to save them, without knowing that I too needed to be saved at different times. Ironic. Everything seemed ironic to me. And stupid.

I pushed open the gate with a surge of energy, almost knocking it off its hinges, and Filip, who had come to open it for us, jumped back just in time. M and Ofelia were a few steps behind me. I think Andreea stayed behind to help tidy up. I felt frustrated. When I closed my eyes in exasperation at Filip’s comment, circling around me like a puppy, I saw scenes from Second Home. I saw the carnage again. And I couldn’t help but blame everyone, but mostly blame myself. Maybe this human form was to blame for all the emotions I was feeling. I haven’t felt neither guilt nor frustration for a long time, but now they hit me so hard that I almost wanted to scream, to pull my hair, to roll on the floor kicking things at random. I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm myself.

‘Reeza’s rage is not something mortals can witness…’ M said to himself, and then signalled to Ofelia to take Filip away from me.

I felt their fear, and that calmed me down.

‘M…’ I started, but I didn’t know what I wanted to say. Maybe I felt powerless like never before in the last few millennia. Yes, I had regained the ability to absorb power, but I had nowhere near enough to make a rupture in the fabric of spacetime to go back. I didn’t know what had happened, why such carnage had occurred, but I knew Fiiuea. I felt her pain. She was a pacifist. A war, even for the sake of saving the gods, would have been avoided at all costs. So whatever had happened meant she needed me. Urgently. That was what the war was about. The people I had saved, who had grown up, developed, and become such a beautiful and complex society… my children were in danger, and here I was, helpless in the middle of a poor courtyard full of dirt and chicken shit. The pungent smell of bird droppings irritated me so much that I vaporised two chickens. I saw out of the corner of my eye M signalling for the man who had suddenly risen from the chair where he had been completely motionless until then to stay put.

I heard the car engine. Ofelia had opened the gates, and Filip was manoeuvring the car through the gate. I took a step toward them, but then I saw M looking at me. The concern on his face was not for me, but for what I might do, so I let them go.

‘They managed to break the seal,’ he said after a while.

‘Yes, but it doesn’t solve anything. I can’t open a portal with this power.’

‘But you can absorb power.’

‘And you can control it,’ I heard Andreea say loudly from the gate. She was panting a bit. When M saw her, he relaxed a bit, then tersely told me he was going inside to meditate.

‘Reeza,’ Andreea said my name so softly that for a second, I thought I was back home with the people who loved me. ‘You have everything you need to get the power you require. We just need to figure out where to get it from. Would a power plant be enough?’

‘To return to my form… without killing this body, it takes a lot of energy. And then to make the rupture in spacetime, even more.’

‘What if we go to Cernavodă? M,’ she shouted loudly. ‘Come on! We’re leaving in 5 minutes.’

I got into the car and waited quietly. I could feel the blood still boiling inside me, and my temples throbbed. What I had seen when I connected to Fiiuea blended with events from our past. I remembered Fiiuea when she had come to me scared, seeking my help. How I had given her the pendant and how I hadn’t felt alone since. How I had been connected to her for so long and how sometimes I had lived through her. Distant, but as fascinating as ever. Gentle Fiiuea. Fiiuea who had always been determined to make a better world. A world that I had refused to change because I wanted people to manage on their own. A just and somewhat utopian world. Without wars. Yet Fiiuea was now commanding a world war. A war that had probably decimated the planet’s population, brought everyone great suffering, perhaps even hunger and disease. A shiver ran through me when the door on my right opened, and M gestured for me to move over so he could sit next to me on the backseat. Outside, Andreea was handing something to our host and she seemed to be thanking him over and over again, which irritated me enough to roll my eyes. People should grovel at my feet, a god in the flesh. I rolled my eyes again, and M took my hand. I felt a wave of calmness flow through his hand and envelop me. I saw him close his eyes and enter a meditative state again. Andreea got behind the wheel, and in a few minutes, we were back on the county road.

For over three hours, the duration of the journey, M’s thoughts calmed me, kept me grounded. Initially, he just held my hand, but after a while, I felt my mind starting to wander again, thoughts about Fiiuea resurfacing deep within, unstoppable even in a meditative state. He gestured with his eyes for me to stretch out on the seat and lay my head in his lap. He squeezed towards the door, and I curled up, but I managed. He gently stroked my head, softly. Softly… that made me think of Fiiuea again. And for a moment, I wanted to tell him that it still wasn’t working, but then I realised he was the one thinking about Fiiuea, and he meant to share his memories with me.

Between M and Fiiuea, many things had happened. They had been secret lovers for years and years. Nothing had been more dramatic, though, than the moment when Fiiuea had been sentenced to death for disobedience. Before Fiiuea came to ask for my help, M had been with me. He had looked at me with furious eyes. Furious as if I had condemned her myself. He was angry at the world. Angry that he was my sole servant and had expected, perhaps, that in a world like ours that would mean something, but it hadn’t meant anything, and he could do nothing but come to ask for a help that he was sure he wouldn’t receive. He knew I wasn’t interested in human problems. But how could I possibly ignore his plea, when he meant so much to me. Of course, he didn’t know that, so I let him stew for a bit. I remember feeling his thoughts asking me over and over to save her, yet his teeth were clenched. Probably if I were in my current form, I would have smiled and put an end to his suffering. But then, I just looked at him and waited. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, he practically told me everything. He told me he loved her and couldn’t conceive life without her and that if I refused to help him, he would fight the system himself, even the gods, and he wouldn’t let her perish. After such a passionate speech, not even I from back then could remain indifferent, so I warmly smiled at him and told him that Fiiuea was now under my protection. With a gesture of my hand, I materialised her in the grand hall of the temple. She fell to her knees, exhausted. She was dirty, much thinner than I remembered, and had chains on her hands and feet. M took her in his arms and looked at me with questioning eyes. He didn’t understand. Then I made a pendant and handed it to Fiiuea. M wanted to carry her in his arms to me. I could feel how hard his heart was beating. I felt it as if it pulsed through the entire hall. Fiiuea raised a hand to M so he would let her do this alone, and she made a huge effort to come to me. It was only a few steps, but it seemed like an eternity for both me and M because we both felt her pain. When she reached me, she wanted to kneel. I didn’t let her. I gestured for her to come closer and placed the pendant around her neck myself. It was as if I had breathed life into her.

‘You’re so dear to me, M,’ I said aloud without opening my eyes.

‘Excuse me?’ he responded after a while, slightly hoarse and confused, then cleared his throat.

I felt Andreea’s attention completely shift towards us. It was almost palpable.

‘Always. You’ve been dear to me. And Fiiuea was dear to me too. Why do you think I saved you? Why I saved her too? Perhaps my emotions back then weren’t as they are now, but I cared for both of you and for the relationship you had. It brought me joy when you were happy. And it hurt when you suffered. And now I realise many were dear to me. The people from the villages near the temple, who always brought me small offerings, even though they knew they wouldn’t receive anything in return. The children playing in the greenhouse who cheered when a particularly beautiful flower appeared. Those who felt that only Reeza was just. And those who revered me. I realise people were dear to me because I was once human, but also because they were my children. And as their goddess, I finally had found my place in the universe and a purpose in this endless life. I can’t let them perish, M.’

I stood up.

‘Something is happening there. A world war that Fiiuea started. One she is fighting with all her might, as if the purpose of that war is more important than annihilation itself. At the same time it seems she’s fighting against extinction. I don’t understand what happened, but every fiber of this human body tells me I have to go back. I have to help them now. I can’t wait another second.’

‘But, Reeza,’ he replied after a while, carefully weighing his words, ‘it doesn’t actually matter how much time passes here… You’ll go in the moment you need to go whether five minutes or a century have elapsed here. It only depends on you.’

‘Yes, and I’m telling you it needs to happen now.’

Finally arriving, I told Andreea to stop a bit further so I could get out. Andreea tried to protest, but M nodded at her. After we both got out, I embraced M, and waves of energy and emotion passed between us. M understood, even though he didn’t want to, that he needed to leave too.

‘It’s my home too,’ he said finally.

‘Your home is here. Take care of Ofelia; you’ll lose her if you go on like this… show her how much you care.’

He wanted to say something, but I stopped him.

‘And tell Filip that without him, I wouldn’t have realised what it means to be human, nor how much I love the Second Home.’

I kissed him on the cheek and gestured for him to leave. He got into the car, and for a moment, they hesitated. I gestured once more, and they drove off. I knew what I was about to do concerned only me, and there was no need for witnesses.

The man at the entrance asked me what was up with me.

‘What’s such a beautiful lady doing in such a god-forsaken place? Did your friends play a prank on you?’

He gestured towards the departing car as I approached him.

‘I am Reeza.’ I introduced myself simply and extended my hand to greet him. He collapsed when I touched him. I drained his energy, but I stopped in time. I could see he was still breathing. Then I moved on. At each checkpoint, I did the same thing. It got more complicated when I encountered two people. That’s when I had to take their energy from a distance. Not impossible, but harder to accomplish. And harder to control. I left some of them lifeless. The central facility wasn’t well guarded and everything looked dilapidated, yet it was teeming with people. People from whom I took energy bit by bit until someone shouted that I needed to stop. That I had done something to the guards at the entrance.

Someone grabbed me from behind and then fell. People around him called his name and asked if he was okay. He wasn’t. I had just killed him. And as I could clearly see, I needed to hurry.

‘Take me to the reactor and no one else will be harmed.’ That’s what I said, but it seemed like no one heard me. A few people had taken out their mobile phones. They were probably filming me. I remembered Filip had told me this was how people reacted here. And he was right. I closed my eyes for a second and visualised their phones, then screams started to echo. I had only heated them up, but it was enough to scare the people and make them run towards the exit. Maybe there’s no need to kill them all, I thought, realising only one person could help. The rest could leave. I approached the woman who was leaning over the man I had just killed and asked her if she knew where the reactor was. She didn’t answer, but I knew what she was thinking. I wanted to take her hand, but she recoiled. She fled towards the exit, so I sent a gentle impulse to her, just enough to throw her off balance. She fell, and I rushed to her. In a fraction of a second, I was above her. I wasn’t touching the ground anymore, and the woman thought she was hallucinating. I could feel her fear, so I sent her a wave of calm. Or rather, what I thought was calm, but it suddenly turned into impatience. And now, a woman who kept wringing her hands was leading me towards the reactor, urging me to go faster because she didn’t have all day. The alarm had been raised, and now we were moving to the deafening sound’s rhythm.

‘What did you do to Mircea?’ she asked as we exited the building and returned to the pathway towards the reactor. She was almost running, panting.

‘Was he someone close?’

‘A colleague… we got along well. He was an okay guy. And you killed him.’ Her voice trembled.

‘I don’t have time for that. I could have killed them all at once, but I didn’t. Your friend was a mistake. Like the others.’

‘The others…?’

I felt a wave of horror, and it disgusted and pleased me at the same time. Sirens began to blend with the alarm that I had started to get used to.

When I arrived at the building, the guards were waiting for me, ready. I pulled the woman behind me. I smiled in response to her terrified expression and then sent a surge of energy towards them. It was much stronger than what I had sent to the woman earlier, because I wanted to render them unconscious. I hoped I had succeeded, but I didn’t stay to check. And I didn’t leave her either. We reached an elevator that operated with badges, so I gestured for her to take one from one of the fallen men, when she tried to explain that hers wasn’t good enough. After a while, we reached the desired floor. There were also some people there whom I bombarded with a pulse of energy as soon as our eyes met. Then we turned left. Then right, and after a lot of convoluted corridors and more doors, all opened by the badges of the fallen people, we arrived where I was interested.

‘From here, we need suits,’ the woman said when I gestured for her to open the doors.

I gestured again for her to open them, and she complied. Then I proceeded further alone, and after the doors closed behind me, I sent a pulse to knock down those in front of me. I felt a wave of horror and regret that I hadn’t incapacitated the woman. I could feel all her emotions, and I didn’t like the sensation.

I had finally reached where I wanted to be. I could feel the radiation. I could feel the power, and I began to greedily absorb it. I started to sense it penetrating me and changing me. How my cells transformed into energy. How I turned from a mere human into something new. How the true Reeza emerged from this false and dirty body, and the energy I absorbed became part of my new self. I felt the joy of being Reeza. The joy of being myself and reconnecting my consciousness to the strings of the universe. The joy of vibrating with it once again. When there was nothing left to absorb, I looked around and realised I had nothing left of the human body.

I could still sense the woman trembling with horror somewhere far from me, and I felt sorry for her. But I also knew that back home, billions of people were probably feeling the same thing right now. Without further thought, I sent an impulse towards home. One so powerful that I tore through the fabric of spacetime. I hesitated for a moment. My thoughts went to M, to Filip, and then I crossed over.

And there I was in hell.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in Sela’s laboratories. There was only one person present, who seemed busying themselves at the tables from the far end of the room. From my position, I could see everything, but the frosted window of the room was slightly darker, designed to keep light away from me, which bothered me. As I fully came to my senses, the window also became completely transparent. It didn’t help, though. The person there seemed like the most boring creature in the world. They sat motionless for minutes on end in their chair, facing the wall, occasionally shifting to the right to check a device. There was nothing of interest to me there, so I closed my eyes and let myself drift into the palace of my mind. I was now beside the Tree of Life. Where, with pleasure, I remembered meeting Alter for the first time.

‘How shy you were back then,’ I said, knowing he was watching me from somewhere.

He didn’t say anything, but in his snake form, he approached me and then climbed onto my shoulders. This time, he was a very beautiful snake, with all his features well-defined. I held his head in my hand and then gave him a little kiss. I cherished him. And he cherished me too: I could feel his affection coming from everywhere.

‘It was a very good strategy,’ he said. ‘We won by defying all odds.’

‘We won because they didn’t expect us to,’ I said, and a shiver ran down my spine. ‘But maybe it would have been better if we lost. Now I realise Sela was right. We complicated things by winning.’

‘But Sela wanted you to win,’ he said. ‘She told us before the match. That was her plan.’

‘How so? Just minutes before, she told me it would be best to let you lose honourably… Now that I think about it, I don’t even know why I intervened. Fear was so powerful, instinct took over, and no other thought or strategy crossed my mind. I just felt it was what I had to do.’

If Alter had a human body, he might have shrugged. Instead, he remained silent.

The surroundings caught my attention. Something seemed different. I began to walk around the Tree and admire the paths leading from it and their ornaments. I felt good, like a someone realising they’ve become so much more. I smiled at this thought, especially at the fact that I kept this completely hidden from Alter. Occasionally, I would stroke him under the chin, as if he were a cat, though I think I liked him more as a snake. He probably could have transformed into whatever I wanted in a fraction of a second, but I respected his identity. If he saw himself as a snake, who was I to ask for a different form?

To our left, the Tree of Life was vibrating. It seemed to pulse in a rhythm slightly out of phase with mine. How is this possible? I wondered. On the ground, the grass was green and soft, almost elastic under my steps. I felt like touching it. Then I looked to the right at the yawning path beside us. There were fairies, dragons with teeth like swords, giant flowers, all made of jade who melded into a gate inviting me to enter. I was curious, indeed, but I continued walking. We then reached a canopy of onyx, and half-flower nymphs. Further along was a path with a simple entrance, too simple, made of a kind of green jade as well, its design reminding me of home. I stared for a long time until I recognised the door to my parents’ house. I knew that if I had gone that way, I would have ended up back in the palace of memories. I would have met my Fox there. And it surprised me that I was curious about how the latest events were represented. I imagined the creature with eight immobile legs would be huge, filling the vault, going higher, into another plane, with its spider legs firmly embedded in the floor, forcing me to pass between them. A shiver ran down my spine, and Alter looked at me with wonder. Nothing, I said with my eyes, and then moved on. We reached a road that hadn’t been there before. We both stopped and looked at each other. What could it mean? A road we didn’t recognise, but which made both of us turn our heads towards the Tree. It seemed they communicated, vibrating in the same rhythm, made of the same material: clouds, and from those clouds branches that seemed to belong to the Tree of Life pierced through. And the road itself seemed made of light. For a second, I wondered if what lay ahead of us wasn’t the gate to heaven itself.

Alter’s presence, who was settling more comfortably on my shoulders, seemed to signal that he was there with me, which was reassuring. We headed towards the new road. As we approached and my heart began to calm down, I started to wonder why this entrance looked the way it did.

‘Maybe it’s a symbol of religion. Perhaps that’s what we’ll find beyond,’ Alter ventured.

‘Perhaps. I can’t help but be amused by this image… should I expect cherubs too? A cappella singing notes?’

‘That would be interesting,’ Alter said, clearly without a trace of sarcasm.

As we entered the corridor, I felt like a hot rod pierced through my gut: I recognised the place. Could this be the very passageway through which Fox and I crossed over? As we moved forward, the velvet-textured veins intertwined not only with clouds now resembling cotton candy but also with other things, other materials that protruded from the wall’s surface like hands ready to touch us. It wasn’t exactly the same corridor, in fact. But it was the same connection. It was made of time and timeless essence. Of divinity. When I finished this thought, everything seemed to light up suddenly, and we had to squint our imaginary eyes for a few seconds until we got used to the light again. We had reached the end of the tunnel.

In front of us was a star. I couldn’t describe it any other way.

I stepped towards it, and Alter coiled tighter around me, telling me not to go. I looked at him in surprise; it wasn’t like him to say illogical things. And my logic told me that place was already a part of me. I approached as close as I could and tried to touch the sphere of light. Obviously, I couldn’t because it wasn’t made of matter. We both then entered the sphere of light entirely, and nothing happened. We looked at each other. We felt a bit disappointed, as if we didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not this. What had changed was the sensation we both felt inside the sphere: that we were more, much more. This was the seed of divinity, which was about to sprout somewhere in the distant past from which we came and make me into a new being. The palace of my mind had created a goddess and we stood in the middle of where a sort of Big Bang was about to happen.

And to our surprise, a huge explosion occurred right then and there. It violently pulled us out of our inner world and brought us back to reality. The glass of the hyperbaric chamber was only lightly cracked, but outside there was chaos. Masked men, armed to the teeth, had entered through where the door had been. We realised that was where the explosion had been. Screams echoed in the distance, but after a brief analysis, Alter concluded that none of them belonged to Sela or to Tha. Somehow this reassured me, even though I knew it made no sense.

One of the masked men opened the hyperbaric chamber and got a surprise: a powerful punch to the throat that killed him instantly. We had to escape at all costs, so I grabbed him with my other hand and held him as a shield against the gunfire from the others. They were shooting indiscriminately. Hundreds of shots fired in our direction, hoping one would hit. A few ricocheted off my leg, left hand, and ribs. But they were superficial wounds. We needed to do something. And quickly, because they were closing in. We were cornered, and I felt a strong panic. One that paralysed me. Not Alter, though. With my free hand, he tore off the hyperbaric chamber’s door. I felt three bullets pass through my exposed forearm, but it was worth it. Following Alter’s calculations, I hurled the door and struck three out of the four masked men. A fraction of a second later, I threw the one I was holding as a shield towards the fourth one. Then we leaped, positioning ourselves behind them. I wanted to run straight for the exit, but Alter intervened and first rendered all four unconscious.

Knowing now that none of the attackers were getting up, we focused on what was happening beyond the door. I hesitated when I saw the corpses, but Alter continued towards what seemed to be an exit leading into a corridor. Even though I didn’t want to look, my body perceived the entire room as a whole; I saw the woman who had been working in the lab earlier now sprawled amidst the rubble. Her left hand seemed to be farther away. Two other people were closer to the other exit. One had his head split in a bizarre manner, and the other had been shot in the chest. As we got out into the corridor, the sounds of attacks happening simultaneously became clearer. Alter stepped over two more corpses as if they were mere objects. He sensed my disgust, my judgment, but didn’t respond to them. He was focused on getting us to safety.

From the left, we heard some sounds, like bursts of energy, followed by a smell of burnt flesh. I felt nauseous—an imaginary nausea, as Alter quickly pointed out—while he tried to keep us hidden from the eyes of those in the adjacent laboratory where the smell was coming from. After passing by without being noticed, we arrived at a room whose entrance had been blown up just like ours. Apparently, the attackers knew well where the strong points were and acted accordingly. When we entered, I realised there was no one alive. I could recognise most of them. Sela’s parents were there too amidst the rubble, lifeless.

In the room behind us, gunfire could be heard. Alter began to retreat, but I took control. In a few steps, I was at the doorway. Sela was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one of the masked attackers, who appeared injured but fought fiercely. He had his forearm around Sela’s neck, grunting through clenched teeth with each blow Sela landed directly into his bleeding ribs, but he refused to give up. In a split second, Alter took over because he sensed my panic. He pulled the attacker off Sela with one hand and delivered a precise blow to his jaw, knocking him out cold. Sela tried to say something, but Alter took her hand, and we quickly exited the room the same way we entered.

Back in the corridor, another group of attackers awaited us. Alter signalled us to stay quiet and hide behind a wall. He picked up three stones from the ground. They were relatively small, and I wondered if they could penetrate all the armour they wore. Alter made a noise to attract their attention and then struck each one with a stone with incredible precision. They all fell like they were cut down, hit directly in the forehead.

When we turned to Sela, we saw that she was staring fixedly at her parents. She seemed shocked. I took her hand and pulled her away from there. It was something hard to bear, but we didn’t know how many more attackers might be coming. Then we received a message. A message that entered directly into our minds. Both Alter and I were surprised, shocked, even disgusted, but we didn’t have time to dwell on it. It was a map showing us the way to a meeting point. The message was from Tha.

We followed the indicated route, but encountered resistance, so Alter, who had the maps fully configured, redirected us through a detour. We cleared out of the attack area and proceeded safely until we reached the rendezvous point. There, Tha was waiting for us in a drone. We both got on quickly, and within seconds, we were flying above the laboratories. There was someone else in the drone. Someone with familiar features but whom I couldn’t place. Then I saw the tattoo on his neck. It was the Three Eared Rabbit. I couldn’t believe it.

A loud whistle sounded from the right, and Tha executed a maneouver that would have thrown us all off if the drone hadn’t enveloped us in its protective veil the moment we boarded.

‘They’ve realised we’ve escaped and are trying to bring us down.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they know we have a transcendental with us, and they know we have him as well. And he’s the key…’

Tha paused and executed two more evasive manoeuvres. Two missiles, this time seeming programmed to loop back and track us.

‘Sela!’ Tha handed her a tablet, which Sela seemed unsure how to use. ‘Connect to the missiles,’ Tha said with urgency in his voice. ‘Take them down before they hit us.’

Sela took the tablet and started tapping on it slowly at first, as if unsure of what to do, then more confidently and quickly. Tha did several more evasive manoeuvers, and I thought the Three Eared Rabbit might get sick from the chaotic movements. He held on, and Sela finally managed to deactivate the missiles.

‘I think we’re safe now,’ Tha said, but didn’t dare switch to autopilot.

The Three Eared Rabbit, as I had called him all through my childhood, was now beside me. Much older, of course. His eyes stirred many memories in me. The double sunrise, the sea of lava, the desert, the Tulip Tower. One of those rare moments when the two suns rise at the same time. Talking to him, I realised that I had experienced it in one of his dreams.

‘A memory, more precisely, from when I was a child.’

‘But how did you connect?’ Tha asked, puzzled.

‘Thanks to Reeza,’ Sela replied. ‘That’s how I connected with my transcendental as well, with Veronica… Fox, as you call her. When the Three Eared Rabbit, Zorh’al here, appeared at Fiiuea’s court, he gave her the book of the gods. And Fiiuea sent her to her allies to devise a rescue plan. All failed… some more tragically than others. Not a single god was saved, and we suspect one might have perished in the attempt. Finally, our family is well regarded by the government, our alliance with Fiiuea being completely hidden. One day, after pulling many strings, I was invited to a symposium near Reeza’s location. That’s when I seized the opportunity and bribed a few officials to gain access to her temple. You wouldn’t have thought a goddess was kept there. Everything was dusty, old, decrepit. They had just opened the bunker where she was kept, after years and years of complete isolation – that’s how Zorh’al managed to escape, actually, because there was no longer anyone to take care of the bunker, and nuclear explosion risks had emerged. They had learned from their neighbours that it was something to avoid so they took measures. But the new people working there weren’t told what they were doing or why. Just that it was a potential hazard and had to be a secret. Otherwise no one knew anything. It wasn’t hard for me to bribe a few people there and get to Reeza. It was a room where others entered only with protective gear. I knew it wasn’t necessary, so when the opportunity arose, I sneaked in and meditated all night trying to connect with her. Obviously, I didn’t succeed.’

‘Then what did you do?’

‘I left and returned the following evening. And then the next. And so on for several good weeks, until one night I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I saw a black sky full of stars like the ones that appear for us once every 50 years. I immediately knew that I wasn’t on the Second Home anymore. When I left, my gaze stretched in front of me to a completely alien, extraterrestrial city.’

‘You had connected with Fox… but how? Why her?’

‘I can’t explain it. Reeza sent me there. So that’s where I went.’

I pondered for a moment. Reeza already existed within me. Or at least the possibility of her existence. Perhaps only by merging all these beings, times, spaces could Reeza come into being. For a second, I thought about destiny, about fate. Then I thought about love that transcends time. I was sure that’s how Sela connected to Fox, through my emotions.

‘Nevertheless, Alter intervened from my imaginary shoulder, you’ve loved so many other people.’

‘But none like her. Besides, she knew about this world. She knew it almost as well as I did because I had told her about my dreams and nightmares, and we had dissected them together trying to make sense of them. We had spent entire nights discussing the man with the tattoo on his neck who appeared to me in the light of a double sunrise.’

‘I believe,’ Sela continued after a moment, that the present, past, and future are more closely connected than we thought. Anyway, when I entered Veronica’s body, I knew nothing. Just that I had some information that needed to be transmitted in hopes that something might happen. But what information to transmit? How? I searched everywhere to get to know her better. I looked through her journals, through boxes of memories, saw hundreds of family photographs… Sure, at first I was detached and methodical, but then I began to forget. I started to feel like I knew her. I left a video message on her phone and a post-it note next to it, so she would know to access it, then I returned to my world.

‘I think she must have been terribly frightened… to find a message from herself, saying completely crazy things. Could that be when she was hospitalised?’

‘No, she had already gotten out of the sanatorium when I connected with her.’

‘And then?’ Tha asked impatiently.

‘Then I had to go home. I had exhausted any excuse to be there and we were afraid things were becoming suspicious. We didn’t want to be discovered. So, I just went home. I have to say I was disappointed. I’m not used to failing.’

‘Failing?’ Tha was surprised. ‘You connected with a transcendental and communicated a bunch of information, how could that be a failure?’

‘My goal was to find a connection with Reeza. Somehow, to figure out how to get her out of the bunker. All I had done was rummage through the belongings of a completely irrelevant person, as it seemed at the time. Anyway, I didn’t give up. I meditated a lot after I got home, with the help of substances we know facilitate transcendence, and one evening I succeeded. I connected with Veronica again. For me, it had been quite a few agonising months. For her, it had only been two, maybe three, even more agonising days. When I got there, I checked her phone to see if she had left me any messages. Then I checked the laptop… still nothing.’

‘Laptop?’

‘Like one of our electronic devices, but more rudimentary.’

For a moment, the conversation turned to Tha’s and Sela’s fascination with the technology of the ancients. Looking at them, for those brief moments, I felt at home. Like when I was with Mom, with Dan, with Fox in the car. It gave me a warm feeling.

‘Finally,’ Sela resumed, we communicated a lot. We connected to each other’s worlds and after a while we began to realise what the connection was between us. Her sister met the man with the tattoo on his neck in a dream.’

‘When she called to ask if I remembered anything,’ Zorh’al intervened, and his voice made me jump, ‘I immediately realised who the transcendental’s sister was. All I had done in all those years when I had the bunker in my care was to talk to Reeza. That’s it. Whenever I had the chance, I would go to her and tell her stories from my childhood, from my youth. Trapped in that bunker with only a handful of people, our numbers dwindling with each decade, Reeza was the constant in my life and the only one who never grew tired of my stories.’

‘And those stories,’ Tha said contemplatively, ‘somehow reached Veronica’s sister…’

‘The only way that could happen was if Veronica’s sister transcended into Reeza.’

‘Or if she was Reeza,’ I said flatly, ‘and everyone turned their heads towards me suddenly and almost horrified. I could feel their heartbeats quicken. Zorh’al, especially, looked at me with a mix of disbelief and reverence. It made me feel uncomfortable. It reminded me of when Alter and I first met. I waited for someone to say something. But the news had shocked them so much that none of them seemed able to speak anymore. So I broke the oppressive silence myself.

‘Zorh’al, do you remember the double sunrise?’

‘Yes, goddess,’ he replied in a hoarse, subdued voice.

‘I’m not your goddess yet. I am her origin,’ I said, and I seemed to shock them even more, if that was even possible. ‘I together with Alter, the consciousness of this body. We will become Reeza sometime in your past. For that to happen, I must return. I believe the purpose of my coming here was not to save Reeza…

It was the first time I had given shape to these thoughts, but now that I was telling them to everyone, they made sense.

‘I came to find Alter, to merge my mind with his and become something we have never been before. Only then did the seed of godhood appear in the palace of our minds. After entering a perfect symbiosis. And now, regardless of your plan… what I must do is find a way to take him with me.’

The silence that settled in the cabin and in the palace of my mind after I spoke these words convinced me even more that this was what needed to be done, and what I was indeed going to do.

Not long after, we arrived in an area that seemed devastated by bombings. Military tents stretched across several kilometres. People dressed in dusty armours were bustling everywhere. Some seemed busy with tasks, while others, who appeared to be enjoying the calm before the storm, laughed uninhibited, grinning from ear to ear. Two completely different worlds converged in a place of death.

As we descended, we found ourselves right in front of what appeared to be the command center. A few individuals, who had been watching our aircraft with wide-eyed curiosity since it appeared on the horizon like everyone else, seemed to belong to another category. Their uniforms were pristine. One of them entered a tent. The others came forward to greet us. One man was as tall as a mountain, which struck me as unusual for a race known for its uniform height.

When the entrance to the tent opened, silence fell. The woman who emerged from within was like a goddess to her people. The first thing I noticed was the crown of liquid gold atop her head, lazily shimmering more like an aura. Then her chest armour, the only piece she wore, also made of liquid gold. It was placed over a white veil dress. As she approached, I saw that her skin seemed made of a reddish mother of pearl, much like Sela’s. It glowed in the light of the two suns. It was like a diamond, each facet reflecting light in a manner seemingly more beautiful than the last. I observed how everyone around me bowed as she exited the tent, and they remained bowed until she reached me and spoke.

‘We’ve been expecting you,’ she said with a crystalline voice that probably reached every hidden corner of the base.

She looked at me for a long moment without saying anything. Then she gestured for us to enter the tent.

Once shielded from the sunlight, I thought Fiiuea might appear more human-like, but up close her presence was palpable. It intimidated me, which amused me a little: I was an ancient being fused with an artificial intelligence in an android body resembling the people from their mythology, and I knew I would become the very goddess who created everything one could see in this world, yet this woman intimidated me. Alter, on the other hand, was focused on absorbing all the information available to him. As for Fiiuea, she seemed to him like any other woman.

‘That’s a typical example of the race,’ he commented when I tried to explain why she seemed exceptional to me.

After briefly introducing us to the generals, she led us straight to the war table without further detours or pleasantries. Sela still seemed troubled. She muttered monosyllabic responses to the questions directed at her. She appeared smaller than before. But the others had no time for her distress. And, upon reflection, probably not for their own either. They all seemed dedicated to the strategy laid out on the war table.

‘Reeza must be saved,’ she declared.

She began directly, with a fervour that made me think she would speak for minutes on end. But she abruptly stopped. It was as if she wanted to control her emotions before delivering what she had to say.

‘We’ve fought fiercely up to now, but nothing we did will matter if we fail. We’ve received the meteorite analysis. When they hit, devastation will ensue. From preliminary calculations, only the underground cities will survive. But even that isn’t certain. Most civilians guaranteed space there are already on their way…”

‘That means millions of people worldwide,’ one of the generals said. ‘Billions will die if we don’t manage to save Reeza and if she doesn’t assist us.’

‘Why don’t we simply explain to them that they should release Reeza?’ I asked without realising.

‘We did, but they refuse to see the truth. Or perhaps they fear Reeza’s wrath, that she might first destroy those who imprisoned her and the atomic prison where she was held. And that is indeed risky. Reeza has the power to destroy us all. That’s why it’s important who we choose to send to get her out.’

‘Moreover,’ one of the generals added, ‘they are also plagued by paranoia. The temple is here,’ he pointed on the map, ‘and their central underground city is here.’ They seem almost adjacent to each other. It’s inconceivable to them to risk a nuclear hazard. They’ll avoid it by any means necessary. The plan is straightforward. We’ll attack on multiple fronts, alongside our allies. The desired outcome is for them to surrender and, after taking control, we would open the bunker ourselves. However, it might be too late; the meteor shower is projected in 73 hours.”

‘Therefore, parallel to this plan, because we have an ancient one connected to Reeza,’ Fiiuea said, glancing at me, ‘we will facilitate an access route through enemy lines. The goal is for the ancient one, together with Zorh’al, to attempt to save Reeza, possibly reducing the risk of retaliation. Zorh’al has assured us that Reeza can still feel… even in stasis. So perhaps we can save her before it’s too late for us.’

An aide approached and whispered something to one of the generals, who then tersely stated, ‘It’s time.’

Fiiuea headed towards the exit of the tent, and the generals followed her with grave expressions. When we stepped outside, it seemed everyone was ready for battle. All were now in gleaming armour and positioned in formations, organised into battalions as far as one could see in every direction, separated here and there by tents, machinery, or rubble. It struck me as a strange departure point, and that made me curious. Fiiuea signalled she was ready, and a kind of screen appeared in the sky, projected by several drones, upon which her face appeared almost immediately. Presumably, this was what the forces everywhere saw, given it was a massive assault, the last before potential annihilation. Everyone had solemn faces, but upon closer inspection, one could also discern worry, fear, and helplessness.

‘You already know what you all have to do. And you know you’re not fighting for yourselves, but for everyone you love… I’ve said this so many times that even I’m bored of it.’

She paused briefly to look around. Her large face projected in the sky, illuminated, seemed otherworldly. The voice echoing from all directions was the same. If I had been in a human body, my skin would probably have crawled.

‘I see some smiles. That’s good, it means we still have spirit, strength. The meteor shower threatens us with extinction. Nothing our researchers have done has yielded results. But just as together, as an army, we are stronger than when we are alone… so too are we even stronger together with our gods. The gods who made life possible on this planet. Even though many have forgotten history, and have tried to forget the gods themselves, I have not forgotten. Reeza has been with me all this time.’

She touched her pendant, and the image in the sky shifted to it.

‘I have been connected to our goddess since I was first exiled. And today, after such a long absence, I feel the pendant pulsing.’

A sound was heard as if the world itself were pulsing. And it continued to pulse.

‘It pulses because Reeza is ready to return. Today,’ Fiiueea said louder this time, with more passion. ‘Today we fight for the liberation of Reeza and the other gods.’

She paused only to give the army time to approve her in a wild chorus of guttural affirmations.

‘We fight for faith. To show our gratitude for what they have given us, even now, at the end. But we also fight for the hope they represent. Praise be the gods.’

‘Praise be the gods.’

The army chanted in unison until the words began to lose shape, and the people were in a state of exhilaration that can only be felt in the midst of a massive crowd. The chants grew wilder and were now mixed with the sounds emitted by battle aircrafts filling the horizon and heading towards us.

‘Let’s go,’ a voice said from my right.

It was one of the generals. He had around him a team of five people. None of them were in armour anymore, but in clothes that seemed made of liquid. For camouflage, Alter told me. Tha took Sela’s hand and followed the general. She seemed lost in another world. I came next, then Tha, and Zorh’al, closely followed by the team. Things seemed to move suddenly at a different speed.

Battalions were boarding huge aircrafts that had just landed. And we were almost running towards another aircraft. This one was like a kind of armoured drone, one who looked so sophisticated that I couldn’t tell where the propulsion came from. Instead, the attached armament was completely visible and gave me a sense of fear. We all climbed quickly, quietly, and within seconds we were already airborne, everything that we have experienced before seeming like a dream now.

We were crowded together, strapped with safety belts somewhat more rudimentary than those of the bear, but still very comfortable and giving me a sense of security. False security, Alter insisted on reminding me. The general quickly briefed us on what would happen in the next few hours. The plan was for us to land somewhere near the bunker, enter, shut down the reactor, and then free Reeza. Each of us had a designated soldier for protection. I wondered if we needed them. Alter and I were probably capable of taking down all our defenders if we wanted to, but I said nothing.

After a while, I felt a deceleration, and the general told us we had arrived. But right then, something hit us. Hard. Then it exploded. I felt us propelled by the blast. In a fraction of a second, we slammed into the ground and I felt the shock reverberate through all our systems. For a brief moment, I was glad I wasn’t human. I glanced at the others, but the ship had protected them with a cocoon of foam, and they were now groggily struggling to get up.

‘Everyone out!’ shouted the general, and he was the first to manage to rise and exit through the hole blown open by the explosion in the aircraft fuselage. Then Sela, Tha, Zorh’al. After them, I followed, and behind me came the other soldiers.

Miraculously, we were all unharmed. We followed the general, who swiftly led us away from the crash site.

‘They’ve spotted us, but I don’t think they know our objective,’ he said as he gestured for us to go through a narrow alley between very low houses that reminded me of the day we arrived here.

There was an electric discharge, and then one of the soldiers dropped like a scythe had cut him down. The general signalled for us to hide behind a small structure, just tall enough to peek over if you stood fully upright. We all crouched down, soldiers securing all directions around us, while the general studied the map. He ordered the drones to be deployed. Within minutes, three drones were airborne, surveying the area. The general seemed to see what they displayed directly on his retina, as did the soldiers. Alter was contemplating how to interface with the general’s tablet to connect with the drones.

One of the drones spotted a group of armed soldiers approaching us and was shot down almost immediately. A few seconds later, the same fate befell another drone. The third one was still in the air, so the general led us down the path marked as safe by that one.

țThis route takes us away from our objective,’ he said when we stopped in an alley to reassess the situation. ‘We’re safe for now, but reinforcements will likely arrive to cut off our retreat. It could be now, or in a few minutes. The plan is to keep them occupied here while the civilians make their way to the bunker. Arh’aal, you go with them. The rest of us stay here. Take the drone with you,’ he added, handing Zorh’al his tablet.

‘No, you keep the drone,’ Sela said, surprising us all. ‘You’re outnumbered, and for us to get further away, our efforts should be concentrated here. With the war underway, they surely don’t have as many internal defence forces. So the longer you hold out, the better chance we have of slipping through unnoticed.’

The general seemed about to argue, but something in the drone feed caught his attention, so he just gestured for us to move quickly.

Arh’aal, still monitoring the drone feed, swiftly led us through back alleys away from the danger zone. We managed to resume our route just as we began hearing gunfire and electric discharges. Their battle had begun. Ours would have to wait.

The plan had worked. After 21 minutes of walking through the streets, one of them opened into a massive intersection leading to a large boulevard. On the left side of the boulevard was a temple, and on the right, a park. Zorh’al signalled us towards the park. We felt exposed. The streets were completely deserted. Perhaps all the inhabitants had been either conscripted and sent to fight, relocated to underground cities if they were among the desirable individuals, or hiding in their homes, trembling with fear of impending doom if they were simply ordinary people. We entered cautiously, looking around, wanting to observe any movement in case someone was following us. We were all on edge, and our analytical thinking seemed somewhat diminished. Alter, on the other hand, analysed maps, made plans for retreat and attack. Attack plans, however, were unnecessary because there were only four people left in the entire complex. They stepped aside without understanding what we were doing there. We locked them all in a room and then went underground, led by Zorh’al, who seemed to know the place like the back of his hand. Just as we were about to enter the bunker, we heard sounds of explosions from the outside. The war had reached here. A shiver ran down our spines, and then we entered the bunker where it was completely quiet. Zorh’al locked the door behind us. We walked for a few minutes until we reached a vast hall that was almost empty. In the middle of it stood a single capsule with a control panel right next to it. The capsule was gleaming. A pulsating brilliance, almost dazzling in the dimly lit room.

‘Reeza,’ Zorh’al said almost in a whisper, and Arh’aal fell to his knees with an exalted expression.

Boom. A powerful explosion knocked the others down. They were on the ground, holding their ears. Someone had managed to sound the alarm. It was clear what we needed to do. We headed to the control panel, and Alter shut down the reactor. He deactivated all systems. He opened the capsule. All this amidst the sound of footsteps approaching. We could hear them now trying to break down the door to the room where we were in. Arh’aal had recovered enough to aim his weapon at the entrance. So had Zorh’al. Sela was still dazed.

Reeza was inside the capsule. With silver hair, slightly reddish skin, perfectly still. She opened her eyes, and when she looked at me, it seemed like she saw a ghost. She rose slowly. When I took her hand, I felt her connect with the creative energy in the palace of my mind, and instantly, a deafening sound roared: a rift in spacetime opened right behind her, where she began to fall slowly at first, then faster and faster, pulling us after her.

‘We have to help them,’ I said, looking back to where I knew the room had been, but now there was nothing there but void and darkness. She nodded, then released my hand. At that moment, I felt myself reconnecting with my original body, and I made a superhuman effort to hold Alter close to me. When I opened my eyes, I was dizzy. For a second, I didn’t know where I was.

‘It was about time,’ Fox said, reaching out to help me up. We were in the middle of her living room. Nothing unusual, everything neatly in place, the tall windows of the living room were closed.

‘I have something to show you,’ she said, handing me a flyer. I was bewildered. No, it was more than that… I felt crowded in my own mind. Alter… I closed my eyes and felt him. I was relieved. When I opened my eyes and looked closer, I saw that the flyer read Second Home, and I smiled. I hadn’t even left there yet and I had already found it here. But I didn’t mind at all.

‘Look on the back… I found it in the mailbox.’

I turned it over and there, in black marker, was written We’re waiting for you, M.

‘We’re waiting for you,’ I said bemused, and Fox thought I was referring to her.

‘We’re waiting for you… M,’ I repeated to myself, looking at them from my timeless space, relieved that they were safe—her, Alter, and Fox. I closed my eyes and left all three of them behind. I felt myself gradually becoming smaller, less, less myself. I had expended too much energy bringing them home, but I was content: if they were safe, then I was safe. Now I needed to focus on what I should do next. Should I return to the Second Home? I tried to concentrate on my temple, on my beloved garden. But thinking about it reminded me that I had been betrayed right there. And that filled me with blind fury. No, I didn’t want to go back there except to exterminate them. I had offered them a chance to have a life on the Second Home; now I would exterminate them for their treachery. I felt enraged. If I didn’t make a decision quickly, I would consume myself and dissipate into nothingness, I told myself, feeling my thoughts becoming more and more tangled. Perhaps this was my end. And somehow, without being able to form concrete thoughts anymore, I let myself be guided by instinct.

We’re waiting for you, M, I said without realising why or where this thought came from. And I realised I was listening to the pulse of the universe. Somewhere, M was thinking of me. I blinked and moved towards the closest thought of his that I felt. He missed seeing me. That was the world I wanted to reach, so with my last strength, I materialised in the world where I had sent him, at the moment he fondly remembered me. When I incarnated, I found myself in the middle of a street that I recognised. I had been there before. I was sure of it. It was my original world, the place where I had just left her and Alter earlier. And where I had sent M in order to save him.

‘Home?’ I said, and then I couldn’t think anymore.

I could see everything clearly now. The past that was now intertwined with everything. I was larger than I had been before, because now I was everything that had ever existed within me. But also what was yet to come. I felt the future as keenly as I felt the past. I was Reeza again, the one whom people had worshipped. The sensation seemed strange to me. In a way, it felt as if I had been a witness to the existence of other beings, not my own. But now I felt strong. I was finally ready to step through the rift and leave behind my original world, M, Fox, and even Filip, whom I had grown attached to during my time in that material form. But now, I was ready. I was myself again. For a moment, I wondered which was my true self, but then it seemed foolish, and I realised that I had never had a taste for self-irony as a goddess. This experience had changed me. Just as I knew it would continue to change me from here on. Be brave, I told myself. And I smiled because I realised that I was experiencing the thrill of discovery for the first time in millennia. I was glad that I could still feel things even though I had changed my form. And I stepped beyond.

I looked around, struggling to understand what was happening. Hundreds of aircraft filled the sky, deploying people and equipment; others, further away, dropped bombs. Struck vessels fell from the sky, leaving trails of smoke. Loud noises of contorted metal, impacts with the ground, and screams filled the air. As I looked closer, everywhere people were dying – aboard the downed ships, in ground battles, engulfed in flames, burned by their enemies’ weapons, all on the brink of death. But slowly, despite their engagements, they all stopped and began to look upwards. Not at me. But beyond me. I turned my head and saw what they were screaming about. Meteorites. First a few, then more and more, entering the atmosphere and igniting. The sky had streaks of purple clouds. When the first meteorite struck one of the clouds, an explosion shook the entire world. For a moment, both I and those below were stunned by the flames above us. I felt enchanted by the spectacle of fire in a strange way. It was terrible yet beautiful, unlike anything I had seen before. Then I realised people were praying. Praying to gods, any gods, but more than anything, they prayed to Reeza. A chill ran through me as I remembered what I needed to do. Why I had hurried back to where I belonged. Where my home actually was.

I looked at them, expecting them to have stopped fighting. What was the point anymore? But I realised the battles had become even fiercer. And looking from above, all the conflicts seemed to converge toward one place. Every thought… every single thought? Yes, no one was contemplating their own death; they were all thinking one thought: we must save Reeza. I looked into the distance, chills down my spine, and saw the temple where I had been a prisoner. I had wanted to kill them all when I was saved. I knew I was no longer there. I had just returned home, to the other time. And now I looked around and felt overwhelmed by so much death. I had punished them enough with my absence, with my helplessness, with my lack of involvement. I felt like I could have prevented all these deaths, but I had done nothing.

I closed my eyes and focused on what I needed to do. I went into the burning cloud and absorbed all its energy. At first slowly, then more eagerly. I had consumed a lot of energy just to come here. I needed it. Once I absorbed the entire cloud, it seemed like the world lit up. I saw how people finally stopped fighting and were all looking up. This time not at meteors or flames, but at me. Not with fear but with hope. A unified hope that made me shiver yet made me press on. I exited the atmosphere and looked at the thousands of meteors, some truly massive, still in space and not yet in the atmosphere, and sent a powerful pulse of energy to divert them to another path. I had saved the planet, I knew. The meteors already in the atmosphere were not powerful enough to cause irreversible damage.

But what about the people below? Those who were now shouting my name? What would happen to them?

I felt like I had already exhausted my powers. So I went to one of the meteors and absorbed all the energy it had accumulated during its fall, then turned it into dust. Then, slightly recharged, I sent a pulse of energy that pulverised several dozen meteors. And I did it again and again and again. Until the remaining ones started hitting the planet. The world turned into a new kind of hell. Horrified screams. Explosions. The smell of burning, of destruction. Screams.

Then complete silence. Many, very many had died, yet the Second Home had been saved. As well as many lives that would have otherwise been cut short. For a moment, I thought it was over, that now we could rebuild.

I felt something. A presence. My brothers. They had probably been saved in the hope that they could prevent the meteor shower. I could feel their hatred permeating towards me from hundreds, thousands of kilometres away. I wanted to open space to reach the nearest one, but I didn’t have enough energy. I headed towards his energy and when I got there, I saw that he had pulverised everything in an area of several kilometres and then probably left; I could feel him moving away from the planet. I sensed three other energies. I went towards the nearest one, and there Hai’yal was killing people one by one in extremely bloody ways. When I arrived, he and the surroundings were covered in blood. I noticed that there were people on the ground who were alive, crouched in a bow with their foreheads to the ground and waiting for their end in perfect stillness, seemingly determined to die by the hand of their god so he could absolve them of their sins. Hai’yal held a man by the neck. His uniform was dirty, torn, burned… it looked like he had been through a lot. I looked at his legs as he barely moved them in an attempt to find the ground and realised that he was still alive.

‘Hai’yal, no!’ I shouted from where I stood. Then I went to him and put my hand on his.

‘Please!’

He looked at me with a face contorted by hatred.

‘Ungrateful animals,’ he said, and released the man. He looked around disgustedly. And then he too left. Without saying another word, he took off into the air, and I wondered if I would ever see him again.

Another energy was fading away. Salvation had probably come too late for him. Then I felt one last energy became clearer and clearer. It was coming towards me.

‘Sol!’

‘Reeza!’

He hugged me, his body still half human, and I felt how different his energy was. It vibrated in a completely new way, as if he himself had been transformed into something else.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked, looking at him affectionately. I suddenly felt relieved, happy. I realised how much I had missed him.

‘I have a lot to tell you.’

He paused, as if trying to figure me out. It seemed he was looking at me with the same eyes with which I looked at him. Warm, affectionate. Curious.

‘What have you been up to? Where have you been?’

He brushed a strand of hair away from my face, and I then noticed I was in fully human form. I didn’t know when I transformed, but it didn’t matter. I wanted to take this form not for humans, but for myself. I could feel emotions. And I felt so much more… I felt the fear of the people slowly lifting their heads and staring at us. And I felt how fear transformed into something else. Into confusion, curiosity, hope, reverence. I liked the feeling. And I felt something else. I felt Sol. And he felt the same pleasure as I did. The same affection for them. For us.

‘If you want…’

‘I do,’ he said, reading my unformed thoughts. ‘But not here… Fiiuea… That’s where we need to go.’

Before we left, I breathed energy over the people below, and I saw them rise up now spryly, happy that they had escaped, embracing each other, laughing and crying for the luck and misfortune that had befallen them.

We walked together towards Fiiuea. We both knew exactly where she was. My pendant pulsed against her chest, and she knew we were coming. Everywhere we passed, people seemed to move aimlessly amidst the ruins. Everything was destroyed. Craters left by the meteors, debris, buildings engulfed in flames, the smell of burnt flesh. Then, as we approached the areas where the battles had been fought, it was even worse because there, among the fallen ships, rubble, corpses, and dying people who seemed to share a common thought. We both sent out a wave of energy to give them at least a chance until help could reach them, who knows when. I felt increasingly drained of energy and longed for a journey towards the sun. Sol squeezed my hand, as if telling me to be patient.

When we arrived, Fiiuea was indeed waiting for us, prepared. Two thrones of liquid gold had been taken from some temple near by and placed in the middle of a smoother area, a rare thing after the devastation. It struck me as fascinating that something had escaped destruction. Then I saw the people around us, and a sense of relief overwhelmed me when I saw them gathering by the thousands. When Fiiuea saw us, she waved her hand, and I saw drones being launched into the air, ready to form a screen.

We approached the thrones and knew this was why we had come, yet we both hesitated for a moment. We could have done what our brothers had done. Leave and go on with our lives somewhere in the cosmos, or perhaps on the planets of other mortals, if we felt nostalgic. But in that moment, we both understood that the Second Home was exactly that for us. Our home.

We sat on the thrones, and I noticed everyone looking up at our projection in the sky. It was an image that, we both knew well, was being broadcast across the entire planet’s surface.

Fiiuea made the first bow before us and then said:

‘Long live Reeza and Sol, the gods of hope and rebirth.’

Every mortal on the planet chanted these words in unison, and for the first time in my and Sol’s existence, I felt something incredible. A sensation we had never felt before, but it was as real as could be. Their love for us charged us, lifted us, made us greater than we were. It wasn’t us who had chosen to stay, but our children who had now rediscovered us and accepted our help.