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An odd child had married into his family.
She was quiet and withdrawn, her smiles never met her eyes.
Unsurprising, it was a political marriage, not one of love. The only thing expected of her was to bear children and continue on the Abraham line.
In the nights, she would vanish as though she was a ghost. And in her place, soft strikes of metal against metal would ring out.
Bethel Abraham turned a blind eye to her activities, and so did the rest of his family.
It was the full moon.
Bethel tore his gaze away from the crimson moon, towards the gardens where that child would often start her din.
It was silent.
Curiously, he walked out to the gardens.
He saw a world filled with light.
The child sat before a bright star, staring at it, touching it and her fingernails would clink against the glass shell.
“Useless.” She said as the star died, shattered into common glass. “Tungsten, tungsten… Wolframite? No… Volcanoes…” She mumbled to herself and picked up a piece of charcoal encased in wood. Scritch, scritch, went the wood on paper.
After a while, she stopped and looked up at the moon. Her eyes seemed to narrow and her mouth twisted with a contempt he couldn’t understand.
“It’s the moon. Not Mars or Venus.” She scoffed and shook her head. She picked up the stack of paper, gathered up the shattered pieces of glass, remnants of that too-small, artificial star. And then she stopped, staring at him with wide eyes.
Her mouth fell open. She closed it, swallowed and opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out.
Bethel walked closer. The child stiffened, held the papers closer to her. The bits of glass tumbled down the sudden slope, tumbling against her chest.
Bethel pressed down on the stack of papers, forcing the child to show him the remains of what was clearly a failed attempt.
This close, he could see metal coiled around glass, thin strings of metal and… a lemon?
“What were you trying to make?” He asked.
The child looked down at the shattered glass, lifted her gaze to his hand, then looked at his face.
“Light.” She said. Her expression was guarded, hints of resignation peeking through.
“A lantern could have done.” Bethel said.
The child hesitated. Then, her expression firmed and her eyes looked straight at him defiantly. “A lantern isn’t bright enough to conquer the night.”
Ah. How interesting. How amusing.
A human child with such ambitions.
“Is that all you seek to conquer?” Bethel couldn’t help but tease.
Unexpectedly, the child glanced at the moon. “One day, humans will step foot on the moon.”
Humans. Not angels.
“What a dangerous feat.” Bethel said. Leaving this planet for the cosmos would make ordinary humans nothing more than fodder for the existences that lurked in the darkness.
“I know.” The child said. Her fingers were trembling, yet she continued to stare at him, staring at a being close to the throne of gods.
“Do you wish to walk amongst the stars?” Bethel asked.
The child turned her head towards the moon. Longing flashed through her eyes. “I’ll conquer the moon. I’ll conquer the stars. I’ll rebuild that—I’ll rebuild it for the future.”
What a foolish, ambitious child.
The next time Bethel saw the child again, she was surrounded by stars. He waited, seeing if they would shatter.
They didn’t.
The garden was lit up, shadows driven away to hide beneath the darkness of leaves and grass. If it wasn’t for the stars above them, it would be reminiscent of a foggy, dreary afternoon.
“Have you conquered the night?” He asked.
This time, the child didn’t startle. She turned to him with a bright smile. “This is just the start.” She said, then seemed to remember who she was talking to. She drew back, stopped short and gave him a little bow. “Thank you for your gift.”
A mere bit of coin could reap in such rewards?
Bethel touched one of the stars. It was warm; scorching, perhaps, to a human.
“Good job.” He said.
The child paused, seemed to consider her words, and asked if he wished to light up the manor even in the darkness of winter.
A darkless night. What a beautiful thought.
The child was growing ever bolder with every gift he gave her.
The value of each gift was less than the Beyonder characteristics he had given to his family members, less than the gems he had once given to those he fancied.
And yet, all of a sudden, in came winter without chill, summer without heat, even music that could be played without a person or instrument.
How fascinating.
“Father! I made something new again!”
…Really. How bold.
“Please don’t call me father.” Bethel said. “What have you made this time?”
The child brushed over his words with practiced insolence, and shoved a strange box in his hands. “A camera! It won’t take anything in colour, but it can still take pictures!” She said, as though that was meant to explain anything to someone who couldn’t peer into her mind.
Each invention the child made was stranger and even more outlandish.
Sometimes, looking at how the manor had changed, Bethel would wonder if he had walked out from his journey to the stars, into another world altogether.
“I’ll conquer the moon.” The child had once said.
Now, he no longer thought her a fool. If it was her, perhaps… No. The existences that lurked in the cosmos were far too strong. Impossible to counter, even for gods. How could a human, though brilliant as a star, overcome that?
The manor was silent.
No, it would be more accurate to say that the entire manor had been deafened.
With each step he took, Bethel could feel his hearing returning to him. Habit brought him to a door in the basement. He opened it and found his child sprawled out on the ground, looking dazed.
She blinked at him, blinked a few more times, and Bethel concluded that she had been blinded.
“What did you do now?” He asked.
His child held up a hand, removed the cotton in her ears and the dark glasses over her eyes. She blinked a few more times before recovering. “Flashbang.” She said, as though a single word was enough to explain everything.
At his unimpressed gaze, his child coughed sheepishly. “Accident. It’s fine, nothing was destroyed and no one was hurt.”
Managing to deafen an angel for a few seconds was not an easy feat to accomplish, much less be done under an excuse of an accident.
It was the fifth time this week his family had begged him to stop his child’s experiments, or at the very least, relocate her lab somewhere far away from the manor.
He supposed he could see the logic behind their reasoning.
The explosion that had happened last week had taken out the foundations of the manor and killed the hapless demigod that had accidentally intruded into his child’s lab.
She had been inconsolable. “The engines! My tools! My inventions! The chemicals!”
That aside, Bethel was more concerned over what she had been working on that could kill a demigod by accident.
His child had lit up at the sight of the mansion.
Though it was significantly smaller than the Abraham manor, it would undoubtedly be much more spacious than the workroom she had insistently lived in, ignoring all other members of the family.
…She had married in, Bethel recalled abruptly, and had yet to even lie with his descendant – her husband – even once.
Not that it mattered now that she was moving away from the manor.
He doubted that his child would ever look at any person, male or female, the same way she did for her experiments and the stretch of stars above them.
Idly, he wondered which she longed for more – the exploration of the stars, or stretching the limits of the potential she could reach here within this planet.
As if sensing his thoughts, his child turned to him and beamed. “Don’t look so worried, father. I’m definitely going to dig out every last secret of this universe.”
…That was exactly what he was worried about.
The manor was much quieter now that his child had moved out.
Bethel made the appropriate arrangements for his descendants and prepared to set out on his journey amongst the stars once more. He had been kept within this world for far too long, stayed much longer than he had intended to.
Watching the growth of that child of his was… entertaining. It had curbed his wanderlust, the endless ideas she had pulled out of the vast, strange place her mind must be, into reality.
Ah… that child. He had to ensure she would survive without his presence.
The world shifted around him as he was brought to the mansion his child now lived in. He knocked on the door.
He focused his hearing and listened as a woman, a maidservant if he remembered right, talked, and his child replied… regarding the state of her dress…?
All of a sudden, Bethel was very glad he hadn’t just teleported right into his child’s lab the way he used to.
He waited outside patiently for a few minutes. Then the door was opened, revealing his child wearing a long white coat, simple with none of the embroidery that nobles often preferred, hastily buttoned.
“Father!” His child greeted him, looking delighted. “Are you here to see my newest invention?”
He was tempted.
But the stars called for him…
He considered for a few moments, before giving in and nodding. It shouldn’t take too long.
“This is the prototype of a cell phone!” His child said, placing the clunky machine on the table. “It converts sound into radio waves, transmits that to the other cell, which converts it back to sound!”
It seemed rather underwhelming compared to the prior inventions she had already made.
His child looked at him. “You look distracted, father.” She said candidly in a way few others would when speaking to him.
Really, how insolent could his child be?
“I intend to explore the stars soon.” Bethel said.
His child tilted her head. “Teleporting?” She asked, a hint of envy in her voice. That rare emotion was quickly wiped away in favour of curiosity. “Which galaxy?”
“…Pardon?”
“Which galaxy are you exploring? You probably looked over the entire Milky Way… Definitely our solar system.”
Again, his child was speaking of things beyond his understanding.
“A galaxy is a cluster of stars.” His child said, elaborating more in the face of his confusion. “Our solar system is… hmm… The sun, Mercury, Venus, this planet we live on, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.”
Names, some of which had once passed the lips of his child, corresponding to eight planets… Eight planets that he had once seen.
His child laughed. “Maybe I’ll draw a map of stars for you sometime.” She said brightly. “I’ll even throw in a guide book of all the weird planets out there that you should definitely see.”
Impossible. His child was… impossible. How could she know so much without peering into the cosmos, walking the stars the way he had for so long?
Bethel smiled. “I’ll look forward to it.” He said.
He came back from his visit to the stars, shorter than his usual trips.
He teleported into his child’s mansion, outside her lab and frowned.
The scent of blood…
It was… oddly disconcerting. Usually it would be the scent of ash or some acrid smell that had almost permanently clung onto his child.
Bethel opened the door.
His child, sitting on the floor, turned her head to look at him. A bloodied bandage had been wrapped around her head, over her right eye. Her fingers were pressing down on a tube attached to the inside of her elbow.
“Oh. Hi there, father.” Perla said.
Bethel cast his gaze over to her workbench where an eye was lying in a cylindrical glass dish, bloodied tools and stained rags scattered around it.
“What did you do now?” He asked.
“Took out my eye.” Perla said. “In retrospect, there were better ways of doing it, but I was short on time.” She paused, turning to the contraption holding a bag of blood. “Also, I might be suffering from blood loss.”
She hadn’t known.
His brilliant, genius child who knew too much of the world and the universe – she hadn’t known of the dangers lurking in the cosmos.
He didn’t warn her, hadn’t found the need to warn her then, and she made something, a device that allowed her to peer into the cosmos. She looked at the moon and saw something she shouldn’t have.
“I thought I could see what made it different.” His child said. She smiled, but there was an odd twist to it that spoke of fear and anger.
He had never seen this expression on her before. Not one so intense.
His child was shaking, shivering as she clutched at the blanket draped over her shoulders. She took a breath and the shivers slowed.
Was it fear or anger that had stricken her heart so deeply, or was it both?
His child spoke, but it was a garbled form of the language they spoke. She took another breath and tried again. “Father…” She said, soft and haunted. “They tainted it… They tainted the dream that I—I wanted to see, but it wasn’t…” She stopped, took a trembling breath, wiped away the tears that rolled down her cheek, dripping from the only eye she had left. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We weren’t supposed to be—we weren’t made to be trapped in this world, but they did it! They forced us down, made us hole up in this small planet and took the rest of the universe for themselves!”
“Perla.” Bethel said.
“It’s Perry!” His child snapped and immediately recoiled as though he had struck her.
“Perry.” He conceded. “What will you do now?”
His child fell silent, her fear and anger fading away. They weren’t gone, lingering in the edges of her expression, but she was no longer trembling.
He watched as fear gave way to anger and anger gave way to madness. “I’m going to blow up the moon.” His child said, her teeth bared in a facsimile of a smile.
His child had always been childish, her attentions flickering as quickly as his own. She dove from one topic to the next, always moving, always changing and learning.
Her expression now was darker and heavier, with an unseen weight forced down on her.
What had she seen?
No human could survive looking straight at a god, but his child wasn’t exactly normal.
He could ask. His child would answer.
He watched her silently, observing her single eye narrowing in concentration as she poured over her notes.
She would answer, Bethel knew, this silly human child who looked upon the endless stars and shared the same dream as he.
His child turned away from the notes, either ignoring him or having already forgotten his presence.
“Three hundred and fifty-something thousand kilometres… At least twenty thousand kilometres closer…” She mumbled. “Gravitational field? Or is it a problem with the moon?”
She raised a hand to cover her right eye, a habit that she had recently developed.
Her fingers tapped against the eyepatch that wrapped over the injury.
“Strongest explosive… Thermonuclear… Hydrogen? Heavy water… needs time… Uranium? I’m gonna have to find a deposit… But mining uranium…”
Bethel deliberately coughed once.
His child blinked and turned to him. “Father? When did you get here?”
On second thought, he didn’t feel like asking anymore.
Bethel heard his child praying to him, an invitation to spectate another one of her works.
A quick teleport brought him to the outskirts of her mansion.
It was ridiculous how far he had to retreat from her residence now. Leisurely, he made his way to the gates and a quick scan proved that there were several barricades set up around strange blocks of metal.
The front porch had been cordoned off; some bright cloth draped over a box that blocked the door. He really should remind his child to keep her workspace neater.
He meandered around the gardens and found his child lying on her stomach, adjusting a stand similar to a cannon with a careful hand.
Seemingly satisfied with whatever adjustments she had made, his child stood up and haphazardly dusted herself off. She perked up at the sight of him.
“Father! I didn’t think you’d come this quickly!” She said as though she had forgotten he could go anywhere as he pleased in the blink of an eye.
“What have you made now?” He asked, looking her over. She seemed to have returned to her normal self.
“Fireworks! My depth perception’s pretty much fucked, so I needed to get down low to make sure I got the angle right!”
Bethel wondered if leaving her alone was a wise choice after all. There were servants around, but they had to answer to Perla first and foremost.
“Anyway, fireworks are only nice when viewed at night. Father, father, are you free for the rest of the day?” His child asked, looking at him expectantly.
There were matters he did have to attend to… but he supposed he could put them off for later.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had dinner together.” Perla said, idly playing with the soft cloth doll shaped like a dog – “My emotional support puppy!” – in her hands, giving him an unsubtle look.
This child… Angels didn’t need to eat.
“Margaret made macaroons for dessert! She’s really good at them even though it’s a new recipe! Oh! And Sebastian’s gotten really good at gastronomy after I made those kitchen tools!”
His child’s interest in inventing extended to cuisine, it seemed.
Very well. Since they were products of her inventions, he supposed he could partake in them.
Dinner was… different from anything he had eaten thus far.
Strange, but delicious still.
His child’s table manners were… terrible.
Of course, she ate most of her meals in the confines of her lab, so it did make sense why she no longer bothered with most etiquette.
From the tired look of the servants, they had attempted – and failed – to correct this oversight.
His child continued talking happily.
Bethel scanned the room. Devices had been installed on the walls or displayed to the sides. Some were familiar, others less so.
“Have you considered selling your knowledge or your inventions?” Bethel asked, interrupting his child’s tirade on the generation of energy.
Perla blinked at him.
She raised her right hand, tapping on her eyepatch in thought.
“Some inventions are too dangerous to be sold.” Ah, so his child was indeed aware that her inventions were dangerous?
“The complete overhaul needed for the generation of electricity… I’d rather not.” Perla said. “Well, in the end, that’s up to you, father.” In other words, she was dusting her hands off the problem now that her inventions had been made and her interest had faded.
What a capricious child.
At the first hints of sunset, his child grabbed the entire tray of desserts, ignoring the maidservant’s weak protests and scurried out into the yard.
She did such actions far too often, it seemed.
Bethel followed her. His child set the tray on a chair, popped one of the sweet confections into her mouth and fiddled with the strange cannon.
It went off with a loud puff.
Bethel froze. If his child set off a cannon and it hit any of the nearby houses, the other noble families would be knocking on his door requesting an explanation. Mentally, he drafted up several more vacations to be had until the hypothetical scenario smoothed over.
His eyes followed the small projectile shot out. It did look too small to cause much damage.
Then, the projectile exploded, bursting into a shower of orange light.
Against the darkening sky, multi-coloured lights hung in the air for seconds before fading away.
He tore his gaze away from the scene and turned to his child.
He found her seated on the grass. Her lips were curved upwards, but they were more a silent challenge than a smile. She lifted a hand and reached for the blood-red moon backdropped against the light show.
“I haven’t forgotten.” She said softly. “You’re next.”
It had been months since his last visit to his child. Since that time, more servants had been dismissed at a worrying pace, leaving only a single maidservant and a chef.
“It’s too dangerous to have people around.” His child had said, and more hesitantly, added a request for him to limit his visits.
When all the staff within the mansion had been sent away, Bethel decided to pay his child a visit.
It wasn’t surprising that she could function by herself. His child was rather independent in that way.
What worried him was what exactly his child deemed dangerous enough to send others away when she happily held inventions and experiments that had the capacity to kill a demigod back when she had still been living in the Abraham manor.
His child was lugging around a barrel when he popped in.
“Father?” She blinked at him. “Why are you here?”
“If you had kept the servants, you could have them handle this work for you.” Bethel said.
His child set the barrel down and shrugged. “It’s too dangerous. They don’t know what they’re handling.”
“What exactly are you handling?”
His child looked down at the barrel. “Once I get this going? Something that can kill me a thousand times over.” She bared her teeth, more a grimace than a smile.
“What do you intend to do?” Bethel asked, a quiet fatigue settling under his skin as he watched his brightest child fall to darkness.
His child closed her eye, made to touch her face but stopped short. “I already told you… I’m going to blow up the moon.” She said, but her voice was listless, nothing like the enthusiasm she had when talking about her inventions, no matter how terrible she was at explaining.
After ten long months, whatever frenzy his child had worked herself into finally came to an end.
“It’s done.” She had said, but there was no sense of accomplishment that often accompanied the reveal of her invention.
He arrived at the mansion and stopped short at the tower nestled in the overgrown yard.
A quick glance around the plot of land revealed noticeable splotches of yellowed grass, as though a poison had been dripped down on them.
What had his child gotten up to?
Bethel looked back to the tower, taller than any palace ever built. It was likely on his account that Solomon refrained from sending ‘His’ subordinates to cease this disrespect of ‘His’ divine kingdom.
“Perla.” He called out.
His child walked out from behind the tower. “…father.” She said in greeting. Her expression was subdued.
“What is this?” He asked.
“…You’ll see soon enough.” Perla said. There was no smile, no light in her eye. She seemed blank, as though the creation of this tower-like construct had drained everything out of her.
The disrespect was normal, but the flatness of her tone wasn’t.
What exactly had his child made…?
A scorching heat poured down on him.
Bethel looked up.
The moon... the moon was on fire.
He was distantly aware of his child laughing.
He had never doubted her genius before, but this was...
A primal fear shouted at him, telling him that this was a threat, a danger to himself.
He turned to his child.
She was laughing and laughing, with no signs of stopping.
“I told you. I told you I would kill you!” She said through gasps. Her cheeks were wet with tears of hysteria.
Bethel tampered down on his instincts and turned his gaze back to the moon. It was burning, and there were distant screams as the great being on the moon shrieked in pain.
Another scream joined in. The mass of fire shifted as something plunged into the fiery moon, an opportunistic enemy taking advantage of the primordial moon’s weakness.
Something in the world shifted.
The Primordial Moon had died.
“I killed it. I killed it... Hahahaha... no... what did I do...” Slowly, his child fell silent. She raised a hand to her right eye, touching the eyepatch that covered her empty socket. “What have I done?”
“Perl- Perry.” He corrected himself, switching to the nickname his child often insisted on being called.
His child failed to react, instead curling in on herself. “I made… What did I make? No… I… I made a weapon… I made…”
“Perry.” Bethel said again.
His child looked up at him, her single eye wide with horror. “I killed it.” She said.
“…You did.” He said slowly, uncertain if that was what she wanted to hear.
His child lowered her head, looking completely lost. Then, a change seemed to overcome her and she scrambled onto her feet, dashing into her lab.
Bethel followed after her, half out of concern and half out of curiosity as to what she would do next.
He watched as she scanned her lab, grabbed a flask of fluid and splashed it over the entire room.
…He had a bad feeling about this.
Then, she took another flask, hustled him out of the heavily-fortified room, threw it onto the ground and slammed the door shut.
There were a few seconds of silence, before a series of explosions sounded out, shaking the entire building.
Bethel grabbed his child and teleported out of the mansion before she could get hurt.
“Your inventions were inside.” Bethel noted.
His child nodded wordlessly.
“Your materials, chemicals and manuscripts were inside too.”
His child nodded again.
“You destroyed everything you made with your own hands.”
His child closed her eyes and nodded. “I…” she started and paused to sigh, “I made something I shouldn’t have.”
When the fire finally cleared, having burnt away all traces of the great old one that had once lurked on the moon, instead of the repulsive shade of red he had grown accustomed to, a hint of silver peeked through, bright and pure.
Silver…
For the first time in his long life, Bethel Abraham looked up at the sky and saw a silver moon.
His child looked upon it, not with that strange contempt he had seen the first time he had chanced upon her, nor the awe that so many others held. She simply stared at it, as though greeting an old friend.
She had known, Bethel realized, that the moon, free from the taint of the Mother Goddess of Depravity, shone a beautiful silver.
As always, he wondered how.
And as always, he didn’t ask.
Clang!
“Shut up.” A voice muttered. “I killed you, so shut up already. Aren’t the dead supposed to stay dead?”
Bethel stood by the door. His child had taken to talking to herself lately.
There was a soft rustle, then the sound of an engine being activated.
“Fuck you.” The voice said, slowly growing in volume. “You underestimated me and I killed you! So fuck you, and shut the hell up!”
There was a loud bang. The engine spluttered and everything fell silent.
“You tried.” The voice said, softer. “You tried to kill us all, but you failed. You knew that humans could kill you, and you were afraid. Well you were right. A normal human killed you. I have nothing for you to take, no Beyonder characteristics for you to manipulate, or special powers for you to twist to your own whims. When I die, I’ll take you along with me and you’ll die knowing that it was a human who killed a god.”
Bethel eased open the door. His child was seated on a cushion that had been pulled away from a chair onto the floor.
“I killed you,” Perla said. Her lone eye was glazed over, and Bethel knew that she couldn’t see him. “You corrupted me so I killed you. I ripped your cells apart, twisted them so that they were no longer yours. I did to you what you tried to do for me. You cost me an eye, my revenge cost me my lifespan, and you’re dead.”
“Perla.” He called out and she blinked, her gaze darting to him.
“Ah… Yes… Did you need something, Lord Abraham?” She asked with a perfunctory smile.
He would have preferred her disrespectful address of ‘Father’.
It was one thing for a king of angels to defeat a god, and another thing for a normal human, brilliant as his child’s mind was, to do the same.
The shocked peace the land had fallen into was slowly fading, and the proof of this was the person who had invited him to ‘His’ palace, with an invitation Bethel had no excuse to refuse – not with tensions frayed as they were now.
His child’s presence had also been requested, but her absence could easily be waved away with excuses of sickness or preoccupation with certain, time-sensitive operations, excuses that a king of angels couldn’t make, no matter how much Bethel wished he could.
Everyone knew that the thing that had struck the moon and enveloped it in fire had come from his child. She made no secret of her dwelling, what with how eye-catching some of her inventions could be.
Everyone knew that the Tamara child who had married into the Abraham family was an eccentric.
…Tamara.
Perla was a Tamara who had married into the Abraham family.
He had forgotten, what with her casual address of him, but she was not of his blood.
If Solomon ‘Himself’ contested the marriage, forced the Tamaras over to ‘His’ side…
No, that wouldn’t happen. The Solomon he knew – the Solomon he knew then hadn’t yet descended into depravity.
What a mess.
The only good news to come out of that meeting was that there was no mention of the Tamaras.
The bad news…
Whatever Perla had made, Solomon wanted a piece of it.
All her inventions, her manuscripts, everything. All of which had been burnt into ashes by whatever explosives Perla had rigged her lab with.
Save for the creations Perla had equipped the Abraham manor with, intended for comfortable living, just about everything she had made was gone.
Second of the bad news… Solomon wanted to meet Perla.
His brilliant, mad, insolent child.
Whatever self-control Perla had had vanished ever since her accident. She no longer hid behind timid smiles and a veil of fear.
She surely wouldn’t hesitate to speak out against a true god. She regularly cursed at what she believed was the ghost of one, after all.
Her etiquette as well… All of it was gone, or mostly forgotten. Solomon tolerated informality – enjoyed it even – but not to the point of casual disrespect that his child often took to.
Third, the Mother Tree of Desire, the being who had finished off the Primordial Moon in ‘Her’ moment of weakness, was suspected to hold a fraction of the sefirot that once belonged to the Primordial Moon.
The moon was now free of foreign influences, but it didn’t mean much given that there was now a stronger enemy watching them from the cosmos.
“Tell ‘Him’ to go fuck ‘Himself’.” As expected, his child responded immediately. She paused, then added, “respectfully.” As though it would make her words any less offensive.
The engine she had been tinkering with a few days ago had been dismantled. His child toyed around with one of the scrap pieces of metal. He had forcefully brought her back to the Abraham manor. It was too risky for her to live alone after she had showed the world just how dangerous her mind could be.
“What else did the king say? That can’t be all.” Perla said idly, bending the metal further and further until it broke into two.
“‘He’ wishes to have the notes on everything you have ever made… including the weapon that weakened the Primordial Moon to the point of fatality.”
His child went still. “Of course.” She said with an acidity that rivalled the tone she had used the day she declared that she would destroy the moon. “Of course, that’d be what anyone ever wants! Death and conquest, power and weapons! No one ever cares for anything other than that! That place was exactly the same! You keep forcing rules and regulations down people’s throats and keep expecting them to love learning the way they did when there was never a threat of—”
He saw his child’s eye widen as she bit on her tongue, cutting off the rest of her words. Her hand reached for a tool, grabbed it and stabbed at her covered eye.
He caught her wrist before she could sink the sharp tip in.
“That’s enough.” Bethel said.
“…Father…” Perla said, but she wouldn’t look at him in the eye the way she used to. Her fingers clenched tighter around the metal tool, before relaxing, the object falling onto the floor with a metallic clink.
She turned her eye to his hand, still tightly held around her wrist, turning her hand white, and Bethel let go. She worked her hand until blood flowed back to her palm and fingers.
“Kill me.” She said, with a resignation Bethel hadn’t heard from her since the day he had talked to her for the first time. But this time, she wasn’t looking at him, and there was no longer a fire driving her.
“No.” He said.
Perla lifted her head, looked at him in a way few others dared to, and she smiled. “Sorry,” she said, “that was too much, wasn’t it?”
“You once told me that you would conquer the night, the moon and the stars.”
His child tilted her head. “Two out of three isn’t that bad.” She said, the corners of her mouth quirking upwards in a mischief he hadn’t seen in far too long.
“You spoke of a vacation amongst the stars. That you would make a map that even I have yet to make.”
“I was young and arrogant,” Perla said. She raised a hand, touched the eyepatch that covered her right eye. “Space pirate might be a good look on me.” She said with a little laugh, referencing knowledge Bethel didn’t know how to begin learning. Her smile slowly faded as she stood up and picked up a telescope.
“Making a star chart isn’t that hard.” She said. “But I don’t feel like losing my other eye so soon.”
There was a spark of interest in her gaze again.
“Virtual reality could solve that problem… but I’d need a computer… data storage, CPU, monitor… Ahh that’s too much work.” She sat back down next to him, cradling the telescope in her arms. “I wish you could have seen it, father. That world of stars.”
I have, Bethel wanted to say, but he doubted it was the same place she was speaking so fondly of.
Solomon was getting increasingly insistent on seeing his child.
Bethel burned away the third invitation of the month. There were only so many times he could decline the invitation with the excuse of ‘she’s not feeling well’.
His child wasn’t in the right mind to meet anyone. Not when it would end up with her shouting at thin air, or even Solomon ‘Himself’.
…It was unlike Solomon to send multiple invitations like this. Normally, at this point, ‘He’ would have sent ‘His’ subordinates over.
If not Solomon, who else would want to meet his child?
The True Creator?
“Hey father… if I die, run away, okay? Far, far away, maybe a city, maybe an entire country.” Perla said.
Bethel turned to her.
“There are two ways for people to get the knowledge inside my head. Force me to reveal my knowledge, or kill me and force the knowledge out from my ghost. I can’t do much against the first, but I have a dead man’s switch installed for the second.” His child’s smile faltered for a moment, before it came back up, wide and filled with a foreign rage that he would never get used to. “If I die, I’ll take them all out with me.”
She tilted her head, as though in thought, and numbers flowed past her lips, incomprehensible and beyond the realm of his understanding.
Then, she nodded slowly. “Yeah… I won’t be able to kill an angel, but the failsafe should at least be able to kill a demigod. Especially if they’re waiting to channel my spirit.”
His child was slowly regaining the spark in her eye.
She would call out to him as she often did in the past, showing off her little inventions, much tamer in comparison to the things she had made in the past.
These were – toys. Clockwork, springs and gears, ones that an Artisan could make in a single breath.
And yet, something about these, they made his child smile.
“If only I had a computer.” His child complained while fiddling with the clockwork mouse in her hand. “Then this little guy could actually stop running into walls – like a real mouse.”
She then looked at him expectantly. “I want a computer.” She repeated, as though he could materialize something he had never seen before or even understood out of thin air.
“I feel kinda bad for asking this,” his child said all of a sudden one day, “but I have a husband, right?”
“I’m impressed you remember.” Bethel said dryly.
“Ah. That’s good. Well, a given definition of good. At least that means that part of my memories weren’t insanity-induced hallucinations.” His child trailed off, and tilted her head. “Hey did I ever sleep with him?”
“…No, I don’t believe so.” He said slowly. For all that his child had gotten better – less liable to talk to herself, it seemed that the disrespect and nonchalance was here to stay.
“I plea for insanity.”
Bethel slowed down his steps as he passed by his child’s lab, a habit that he had developed and never quite stopped.
Was his child talking to herself again?
“Everyone knows insanity-induced actions can’t be charged for in court.”
Her voice was light, as though talking to a friend.
His child never spoke to herself so kindly.
“Look, all I’m saying is that I’m missing so many things. I’m good with my hands, but I can’t replace the work of machinery at that kind of level. All I’m asking for is a CPU board. And memory chips.”
A pause as his child presumably stopped to listen to someone talk.
“We both want computers, what’s new?” His child asked, her voice taking on a sharper tone.
A long pause.
His child sighed.
“Manual construction of rockets doesn’t require a computer. No programming required since it’s all mostly hard-wired. There’s exactly one function, and that’s to fly straight up and never stop.”
…There was someone with his child. No one in the Abraham family was capable of escaping his notice. An outsider, then.
“I wasn’t thinking, obviously. I relied mostly on calculations. The margin for error was so small that I’m surprised the rocket even lifted off.”
An outsider at the level of an angel, or someone carrying a high-levelled Sealed Artifact.
“I appreciate you doing this for me, but I’m serious. I want a computer. I want to reprogram Minecraft and play my damn games.”
How long had his child been talking to this outsider without his noticing? Given his child’s recovery… someone of the Spectator pathway?
“I’ll even throw in Pokémon or Tetris, or whatever it is you guys used to play in Russia.”
Why now? If whoever was inside was capable of entering and staying within the manor undetected, why did this effect suddenly wear off now?
“Of course I asked father—Huh? Oh, I call ‘Him’ that ‘cause ‘He’ is kind of my sugar dad— stop laughing, it’s not that funny.”
…To send a message. Whoever it was wanted to meet him.
Bethel opened the door.
His child was lounging on the floor, atop some cushions. She was, thankfully, wearing clothes.
She turned her head to look at him. “Father! You don’t usually come by this late.” She said, not sounding the least bit guilty at getting caught. Did she even know that she was in the wrong for interacting with a potentially-dangerous intruder without telling anyone?
A golden-haired man in simple white robes sat close to her. At Bethel’s entrance, ‘He’ lifted his head and smiled.
“Perla. Why don’t you go to your room?”
His child blinked at him and slowly got up without protest. She walked out of her lab, giving him a bewildered look as she bypassed him.
“Did I just get grounded?” He heard her mutter as she left.
‘You owe me.’ Adam hadn’t said. ‘He’ hadn’t needed to when he raised the proposition.
Perla wasn’t his by blood. She was distant from the Abraham family, hardly ever spoke a word to her husband. She wore her heart so openly, a person so far removed from becoming an angel that it was laughable.
Yet, the steel in her eyes, that burning spark reminiscent of that tiny, burning star she held in her hands that night…
When had he fallen in love? He couldn’t remember when Perla had stopped being the wife of his descendant and started being his child – his daughter.
Adam helped his daughter, so Bethel would overlook ‘His’ trespassing, ignore whatever relationship ‘He’ had built up with her, and listen to ‘His’ request.
Join a revolution. Overthrow Solomon.
It was an open secret that Bethel never worshipped Solomon, even to Solomon ‘Himself’.
Solomon had never been his god, but ‘He’ had once been his friend, companion and king.
…So be it.
The winds were changing which way they were blowing. Even if Adam hadn’t involved ‘Himself’, his allegiance would have shifted anyway.
Countless blueprints, schematics for buildings were scattered all over the desk and floor.
His child sat on a chair, staring blankly at the paper-strewn wall.
“No one will remember who I am after I die. They will only remember the things I made and the contributions I made to improve humanity’s grasp over technology.” His child said abruptly. Ah. He was wondering if she knew of his presence.
She set down the pencil in her hand.
“It’s not enough.” She said softly, sounding more tired than a child her age had the right to be.
“What is not enough?” He asked.
“…Everything. There’s too much to do. I want to usher in a new age of technology. I want to make solar-powered factories, windmills, geothermal plants. I want computers, smartphones, game consoles. But in between all that, I need crude oil, which doesn’t exist anymore.”
His child always cast her gaze too far. When flight was but a distant dream for non-Beyonders, she had looked upon the faraway stars and said so firmly that she would one day travel amongst the cosmos.
“Why do you need crude oil?” He asked, even if he had no idea what that was.
“To provide large amounts of electricity.” His child said blankly. “Electricity…” She repeated slowly. “Batteries? No, that wouldn’t be enough… Even if I could set up one that could charge through lightning, the upper limit of the strongest battery… I’d need hundreds of thousands of that to even generate enough.”
“What do you need electricity for?”
“To power up factories for mass-production.” His child gave him a long, deliberative look.
“I forgot,” she said all of a sudden, “that Beyonders existed.”
…Sometimes his child worried him.
“Father, do you have any artifacts from the Tyrant, Sun or Red Priest pathway?”
Another invitation from Solomon…
There was hardly a point in putting it off any longer.
Bethel paused when he looked through the other letter – a request from an acquaintance.
For ‘Him’ to lower ‘His’ head and ask to learn from his child, a normal human…
“That’s great!” Perla said when he raised the topic. “I was tired of working on all these alone. It would be nice to have someone working with me.”
“Even if the person in question is an angel?” Bethel asked.
“Why does it matter?” Perla asked. “Sure, there might be some knowledge that’s better off unseen, but in the end, knowledge is knowledge, and science is science. Before it, no matter if you’re a god or a human, everyone stands as equals.”
How naïve.
“And Emperor Solomon’s invitation?” He asked.
His child made to touch her right eye but stopped short. “Can I squeeze funding and resources out of ‘Him’ if I go?” She asked.
“…”
Bethel sensed Adam visiting again. As always, ‘He’ was in his child’s lab.
Perla had seemed incredibly reluctant to spend time away from her workspace, and Adam hadn’t bothered to disagree.
A quick teleport, and he was outside his child’s lab. As benign as Adam appeared to be, ‘He’ hadn’t kept ‘His’ status as a King of Angels by being as gentle as 'He' seemed on the surface.
“You overestimate yourself.” He heard Adam say, more a casual observation than a critique.
“Huh?”
“A nuclear bomb, no matter how strong you made it, is incapable of killing a true god, much less a being that exists above the sequence.”
His child fell silent.
“I didn’t kill it?” She asked. He wondered if it was regret or relief she wore on her face.
“No. All you did was tip the scales. You weakened the Mother Goddess of Depravity enough for the Mother Tree of Desire to kill ‘Her’.”
“…Oh.” His child said. “Okay. I didn’t ask, but, okay.” Or so she said, but her voice sounded lighter.
Death weighed too easily on his child. Killing a god was an accomplishment any human could boast of long after death. There was no need to feel relief of one less life felled by her hand.
“What do you intend to do now?” Adam asked.
“Father said- That King Solomon, uh, Emperor Solomon wanted to see me. Oh! And some angel wanted to work with me.”
“You agreed?”
“Well, having another source of funding is good. So’s working with another scientist. I’ll just ignore any and all probes towards weapons.”
“You can’t avoid that forever.”
“…I know. I can’t stop that natural inclination towards destruction. But what I can do is keep walking forwards and have them scramble to keep up with me. And maybe when all my knowledge’s exhausted and I can’t science anymore, the world will be in a state of peace with no reason to point all these stupid weapons at each other.”
Naïve.
“Your optimism is remarkable.” Adam said, though Bethel could clearly tell that ‘He’ was of the same mind as he.
“Just call me stupid.” His child scoffed. “I know I am. But I want to hope for a better future.”
There was a long silence. Bethel wondered if Adam had left.
“Thank you.” His child said abruptly, breaking the silence.
“…Don’t thank me.” Adam replied, ‘His’ voice taking on an odd tone that Bethel had never heard from ‘Him’.
“Do you ever feel homesick when you’re out wandering the universe?” His child talked to him one day, and for the first time, the conversation was not about another one of her inventions.
“No.” Bethel replied honestly. “There are far too many stars for me to explore. This world is – merely a safe haven for me to recuperate.” And one that contained his anchors tying him to sanity.
“Do you miss your family on your travels?” His child asked again.
“No. On occasion, I wonder if they still live. But it’s fine if they have lived to their fullest. Death is a natural part of humanity.”
His child fell silent. Then, slowly, she mused. “We live such short lives.”
“Do you wish to become a Beyonder then?” Bethel asked.
She shook her head. “There’s no point in that.” She said. “I’ve done everything I could to the best of my ability. I just have to trust that it will all be enough.”
At times, his child was far more cryptic and difficult to understand than an angel.
As if sensing his thoughts, his child smiled. “I’ll leave behind a legacy for the entire world.” She said. “Father… When I die, I want all my notes and inventions to be free for everyone to look at and study to their heart’s contents.”
“All of them?” Bethel had to ask.
His child smiled. “I don’t make weapons anymore.” She said, raising a hand to the right side of her face. “It has to be enough.” She repeated softly, to herself. “So that all the secrets of the universe can be laid bare before us… so that we could do the impossible… that was how humanity prospered.”
“I want to go home…” His child said, her voice dreamy.
“Where is your home?” Bethel asked.
“…I don’t know.” Perla looked up at the starry sky. “Twinkle, twinkle little star… How I wonder what you are.” She sang softly. “Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky…”
Inexplicably, a wet streak of tears rolled down her left cheek.
His child lifted a hand, wiped at her face, breaking the trail of tears. “I miss everything.” She said, her eye glazed over as though she was looking at a dream.
“Ah.” She said all of a sudden. “But the apocalypse came and destroyed it all. The only intact proof of our existence… the probes sent far, far away for our dreams of exploration.”
His child let out a sound caught between a sob and a sigh. “Lonely voyager amongst the stars…” She murmured to herself. “How far from home you are. Which star marks your journey’s end, or are you still drifting aimlessly in space?”
She continued to gaze up at a distant place that he couldn’t identify. She continued to do so until the sky lightened and the first hints of dawn peeked through the horizon.