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Emmanuel
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Veni, Veni, Emmanuel — Libera
Veni, veni, Emmanuel captivum solve Israel
Qui gemit in exilio privatus Dei Filio.
Were it not for the humming of the Transmission, indistinct but not quite gone, there would be two sounds within the bowels of the Signal Tower; of the first, the enormous respiratory and circulatory systems of the creature Itself, delivering Its blood and recycling Its waste; of the second, a subdued sort of breathing, of a little child.
That child was called Mono.
Many times he had left the chair he lay enthroned upon. Many times had he gone and explored the distant reaches of the brainscapes of flesh and blood all around: had visited the cavernous stomach that lay in the depths of the earth, where a liquid nutrient broth would sometimes issue from a nipple for his nourishment; had seen the mass of neural tissue that was Its unfathomable brain; explored every single centimeter of the gigantic bony framework that was the Tower's own skeleton.
No matter where he went there was something—not quite new, but not as familiar either—to look upon. To satisfy the curiosity of a child.
Now he sat quite motionless. Not at all like in the beginning, when he had pelted It with questions unending while squirming in discomfort. It, of course, had answered them with exceeding patience. But there were some questions that could not be answered. In time he forgot about them—after all, if they were not meant to be answered, then why keep them in mind?
Humming through his own mind was the Transmission, a marvel of technical engineering and psionic ability. The creature that was the Tower—that addressed him as “father”, “son”, and “husband” from time to time—had no answers for the Transmission’s origin, only that It was grateful to him for providing it from the beginning. This should have been the first clue that this was not, in fact, something created by It, but was rather something It had appropriated for Its own usage. But this was not an important question to linger on, for if there was no answer then it should not be asked.
It tickled at times; at others the Transmission burned him through and through, subjecting the boy to pain unimaginable. Oftentimes, and there were many, he would pass out from the shock. In these instances the creature took pity on him and released him from the Transmission’s tentacled grasp, undoing the electronic suckers and unhooking the psychic claws that were entwined with his nervous system. Sometimes the boy would cry out in spite of himself, begging for relief. Relief would be provided, but only ever temporarily. Because he was still yet a boy and not a man full grown, the creature that called him “father” and “son” would dote upon him like a worried daughter caring for an invalid, like a concerned mother who checked upon the boy’s temperature and pulse. Never as the wife who worried for her partner’s health and wellbeing.
There were limits to be observed, after all. The boy was only human. The only human left in the whole world.
And She was determined to keep it that way. The innocence of a child was something very dear to Her. Many times had She been forced to watch him grow up beyond his years; never once did She see him mature naturally, even under Her own care. It was during those times when he sobbed and wept for death—only a mere boy! Her mind would interject—that She would sometimes consider granting that wish.
She would never do it. Could never do it. It was impossible for Her to terminate his life. His essence, his spirit, the very metaphysics of his teleological existence were permanently impregnated into Hers—for as long as She endured, he would remain.
After all, he had created Her.
Sometimes She had wondered what life would have been like without him. For, once upon a time, there had been a world without Her. Before the Cataclysm Shattered the planet into so many fragments. Back then She was only a mere spirit—had She truly been one of those mewling things? Her mind wondered—reduced to a nothing, fleeing from… something dreadful. The name, the identity of whatever it was that had once terrified even Her was lost to Her own prodigious memory, She who remembered the World That Was before it all was rent asunder.
The Transmission was the instrument that let Her wring the thoughts and dreams and memories of a billion billion billion souls and concentrate them into weapons of defense. For She was the shield, the sword, the nuclear launcher and warhead that protected them all. For there was a war—a nameless, eternal war fought beyond all memory, beyond the planet itself—that threatened daily, hourly, down to Planck units of time, their complete and utter annihilation.
She was an invisible participant in this great war, the edges of which permeated through the Shattered world, a minor player really. The two primary warring powers were things/nothings that were like Her and yet not Her. Two distinct alien entities, not quite corporate beings nor exactly individual gestalts, who/which paid her Her no trace of mind, locked in nameless combat. Neither entity could be called gods, as their influence and power surpassed even the mightiest of those creatures that ruled entire empires and vassalages of realities, timeframes, and existences bound under a singular instance of probability. Neither could they be called civilization, although this was closer to the truth, for distantly—through ancient vessels She had left behind before fleeing—She could see numberless, infinite armies marshalled in all the realities that were their unwilling battlefield.
The sad truth about Her efforts is that, ultimately, they may be all for naught. Her greatest, constant and consistent fear was that any one of their lesser combatants could turn at a moment's notice—at any instance of time/not time—see Her tiny fiefdom of sanctuary, and obliterate it with but a mere sliver of an offensive thought and not have the slightest semblance of impressions it had done so.
That would be the kindest fate possible. It was this fear that kept Her going.
If She could survive but a little bit longer, extend the timeless Loop just that much further along, enough to where She could finally, ever so finally, assume the ontological reins of this little fief, this lonely plane of existence affected by the tremors of a war that did not know of their existence—then, at last, it would be worth it all. Then, only then, She could give her father, son, husband his much needed rest from his labors.
The boy twitched, a first in his long stretches of silence. One of Her Eyes opened, observing him from below.
He was a handsome boy, She thought. Dark haired, yet fair-skinned; dark-eyed, yet with full lips in spite of their lack of color. A shame there was such a large difference between his growth spurts. She liked him best when he was small, it made Her feel warm inside—almost, just almost, as if he were Her baby forever.
But, alas, all men grew up, and this one in particular grew. He would become so tall that, were it not for his duties atrophying his body in the process, he would be the largest and most healthiest man, of his size, in all the world. Quite impossible without Her help, however—no living man was proportionately built at ten feet, not without mimicking a giant, and those unfortunates who did reach such heights died before they even entered their third decade.
Another of Her Eyes opened, a long stalk of flesh coming down from the heights of the flesh cavern the boy called “home”. It slowly weaved its way through the moist, flavorless air to stop just a foot from his head. From this vantage point She could see every hair, every flake of skin, every bead of sweat. She did Her best to keep him clean, but he was not without his protests. Such a child, even for an eldritch abomination like Her to handle.
He stirred again. This time it definitely was actual movement, not residual aftershocks from the Transmission playing havoc with his brain.
Her Eye withdrew, mindful of his presence. He hadn’t yet become adjusted to their unnerving, uncanny existence. But it watched, blinking quickly, careful not to miss a single moment. Call it vanity, call it self-indulgent, but each new “cycle”—each new birth, more like—was in its own unique way something quite new. And She treasured each one.
The boy raised his head and looked around.
The Eye observing him from below obligingly closed; two more opened their gaze, suspended by tendrils of flesh, out of his line of sight. It would not do to frighten him.
Look at him, Her mind sang, just look at him sitting there so kingly upon that little wooden chair. He was beautiful. He is my father—the man who raised me into the woman I am now; he is my son—the boy I so lovingly cherish and adore; he is my husband—the man who I love with all my being, the man who has given me so many children, and many more besides…
Something was wrong?
Her Eye watching from above curled around, circling about the boy, watching carefully. His expression was downcast—even more so than usual. His eyes, slowly greying as the Transmission sapped vitality from them. His mouth curved ever so slightly downwards, a more permanent resting expression than would be normal. His chest, heaving, seemed to sigh with more than emotion.
Of course it was impossible to completely shut out the doom and gloom, that was but an unfortunate side-effect of fighting an eschatological war that tried ever so hard to dissolve reality into a battlefield. Every single living thing, from the Glutton Queen that stalked the Pacific oceans, to the Beast Lords of the Eurasian continents, down to the tiny children that scrabbled for a living—all of them were affected by it.
But this one was… wistful?
Her Eye leaned in close, forgetting all decorum. It moved in so close that if he were but to breathe in its direction it would recoil away out of reflex.
She could not read his eyes. Though they were heavy, they were not afflicted by the usual emotions that She felt keenly in Her own great body. No, it was something else—a melancholy that defied Her ability to figure out. The weight of the world, perhaps? Or was this something more than adult sorrow?
Was it something I did? She wondered. She searched the depths of Her vast mind, seeking through the endless years, decades, centuries, millenniums, eons of memory. She found nothing.
How could this be? She questioned. Is it the Transmission?
It was a finicky thing by itself, not even She could truly divine its secrets; that was left to the boy, when he grew up. But no—when She examined its metaphysical connections to the boy all She saw were the usual. So it was not that either.
What then?
His pupils flickered, meeting Her gaze. Her great heart skipped a beat—it was audibly felt in the cavern, a momentary distraction. They were so… so… sad. They blinked once, twice. The expression, could it even be called an expression? did not change. She wanted to speak to him, but feared that would accomplish nothing. There were some things no one could verbalize. If Her mind could not answer it, if his mind held no secrets to discern, then why bother?
After all, if there is no answer then there is no question to be asked.
The creature that was, and yet was not, the Tower dithered. This was a question that could not be asked without distorting the expected answer, a kind of Schrödinger's cat.
Before She could muster Her courage to ask, the boy opened his mouth—and began to sing.
All at once the hum of the Transmission stopped. The blood coursing through Her mighty veins slowed, and Her lungs relaxed.
The song that came from his mouth was not elegant or pretty. It was ugly. There were many places where he stumbled over the words and mangled their pronunciation, for these were no words any child should know. The tone varied in pitch and he fumbled with his breaths, stuttering as his lungs gasped for air. His body instinctually straightened as he forced more oxygen inside.
But he sang still, pressed onward in spite of all difficulty. The errors gradually resolved, the stumblings disappeared, and his timing became perfect. After all, he had nothing to do except learn whatever he set his mind to.
This time he surprised Her.
The song was a call, a cry, for help. It was a plea that She soon realized was not directed at Her—it was directed to something, somewhere, beyond Her. Yet in its plaintiveness there was the recognition that there would be no answer.
This was not right, She thought. With a burst of clarity She understood all of a sudden his sorrow.
He was giving up.
After all the billions of cycles, of the endless reincarnations of the staunch Broadcaster—the Man who Saved the World—this was the breaking point. At long last, the gloom that so infected the world had finally found its way to him, and had poisoned him from within.
Mono was dying.
He began a second stanza, this one a plea for someone long dead, long forgotten to come and guide the lost back home, a living key to open a door that She knew was barred shut. A third stanza, of a group of tribes huddled beneath a mountain. A fourth stanza, a healthy sun to spread forth its robe of light and cleanse their blackened planet free from all sin. A fifth stanza, a plea for all strife and division to cease.
On and on it went, Mono’s final capitulation.
She started to panic. This was not happening—Her Mono should not die, no! He cannot die, he cannot die, he cannot die—
She fumbled for the Transmission, cursing to Herself that it should stop working in this instance. Only Mono had the true power over it, as he had been its inventor; yet She was its source, its transmitter, its propagator. She bothered not with the niceties of activation—She seized it head and foot and threw it at him.
Mono stiffened as it returned to him in force, yet his singing did not abate. He was starting to repeat the song over and again; his voice began to echo in the cavern of flesh. The sign of his degeneration.
All at once Her consciousness spread itself throughout the vastness of the Pale City—across the vastness of the silent ecumenopolis, through the many uncounted leagues of wilderness that marked the stretches of the impossible world, to every television and screen within Her grip. They all turned back on, summoning all that were slaved to them to approach.
This was going to be a mighty work, She resolved. If Mono was going to die, then it would be by Her own terms. He will not die alone, She resolved. My poor boy has suffered so much, it is the least I can do…
The strains of Mono’s song sounded from every screen, from every speaker. These were not the comforting strains of mindless entertainment that kept the Tower’s lifestocks docile, complacent while She welded their minds into weapons—these were unadulterated and pure, full of Mono’s agony.
And everyone who heard—sang with him.
From Her solitary position as the central nervous system of the ecumenopolis, the heart of all Her property—of all his people—She heard it all. Great dishes that once listened across the cosmos for distant radio signals that indicated life now listened, and heard, the song of Mono.
It swelled and billowed, like a sea that had been at calm but was now disturbed by the fury of a great storm. From this maelstrom of emotion, all of it Mono’s, came a surge of energy such as She had never felt before.
It filled Her reservoirs to overflowing, so much She had to shunt it into Her bloodstream. The nucleonic reactors buried deep in the earth beneath Her rumbled to life—for the first time in uncounted years. Great banks of battery cells were charged up in an instant. The power feedback flowed outwards from Her to every building, every shack, every home within the city, supercharging everything.
What is happening? Her mind “screamed”. This was not the flailing death rattle of a man-boy who had been stretched far beyond his natural span. It defied all rational explanation. How was this possible, at all?
Her attention refocused back upon Mono. Some color had returned to his cheeks—were those tears flowing from his eyes?
She longed to dab them away, they were marring such a pretty face, but restrained Herself. This was something wholly of Mono’s doing, somehow, and all She could do was watch.
It was around the seventy seventh refrain of the song that Mono finally finished speaking. His voice had cracked, his mouth dry of all moisture, and his breath was haggard. The great crackling of energies that had bedazzled the cavern still lingered, the Transmission sparking all about, but were slow in the fading. The Pale City began to return to its normalcy, slowly. But forever changed. All of Her vassals and wards would be asking the next day what had happened.
Would She have an answer for them?
As Mono sank back into his chair, She leaned in, Her Eyes anxiously darting their sight all about him. He looked sick. Enormous beads of sweat poured down his face like rivers, further whitening his skin into a deathly pallor. After all this exertion, would he even survive the night? Oh, right! The Transmission. With a belated, silent apology She disconnected him from its clutches and watched, Her heart fluttering, as he collapsed in relief.
As he sank back, the hard wooden chair he slumped against began transforming. Its unyielding substance warped into a mattress, so soft he could sink forever in yet supported with a firm, comforting grip. Pillows aplenty popped into existence as She willed portions of Her flesh to change, one sliding beneath his head as he fell back. Last of all, a huge blanket stretched over, a fabric shield to guard against cold
With a sigh, Mono descended into sleep.
It was then She heard him speak.
Her Eyes withdrew, replaced with an “ear”, one she seldom had to use. There it was again. She strained Herself, bringing forth more to hear.
“Thank you…” Mono said again, his eyes fluttering as he fought back sleep.
Oh my poor boy…
She then decided to do the one thing She swore She would never, ever do—not to him, not to anyone. There were illusions, and then there were shattered fantasies. She would never do to him what he did to that girl.
Slowly, silently, softly, She gestated forth a body. The body was female, average in appearance, almost a perfect clone of him, if he were to grow up without his exaggerated gigantism. Into this vessel She settled herself into. It was an interesting sensation, but it was one she was going to get used to.
A tendril came down from the ceiling, holding her body as attached from the back. It set her body down carefully, disengaging from her, leaving behind nothing to mar her human skin. Freedom of movement. She walked over with light steps across the brainscape of flesh, feeling for the first time the uniquely alien sensation of walking across her own tissue. It felt like a waterbed, in some respects, but with more firmness as the muscle beneath pushed against her steps.
For the first time, in forever, she looked at Mono through the eyes of a woman in human cloth. She deliberately had fashioned the body to be that of a woman on the cusp of adolescence, not trusting herself to keep control. That had happened before, in the distant past. Each of those moments had weakened the both of them, and sometimes to her great cost. But she had learned since then.
He lay there, at peace. He was in no danger of death now. Somehow, by broadcasting his singing to all, and having them repeat it back at him, it had staved off his degeneration. And with it…
Oh, no, no, no, her mind chided her. It would not do to have this body become aroused. He was still just a boy.
But she remembered that surge of energy. It was far more in an instant than she had ever collected over the span of a thousand billion lifetimes. There was still so much that even if she shaped all she could into her armies and weapons there would be enough left over for more.
Why? she wondered again. Why give in to despair… only for this?
Then remembering why she had created the body, she leaned over and kissed him, on the cheek, before conjuring a cloth to dab him dry.
The kiss of a daughter to her father, who was tired after a long, thankless day at work. The kiss of a mother to a son, who had only just broken his fever. The kiss of a lover to her fiancé as he lay, exhausted to the bone after driving her home. The kiss of her devotion.
“I love you, Mono,” she said. “I love you more than life itself. I will not let you do this to yourself again.”
He did not answer her. He was already fast asleep, untroubled by even the gloom that lay outside his bed, nor stirring to her ministrations.
He needs a friend, she realized. Someone to confide in. She could not be that person—she was already his daughter, mother, wife. She could not also be a friend.
And that song… that song he had sung. This was something beyond her. Mono needed not only a friend but a confident who was not her. She already knew him intimately—yet what was such intimacy when the intimates could not even speak about things neither could voice to one another? For now she understood that, even with the benefit of timeless mortality, there were some hidden parts to the human soul she could never truly penetrate.
What could possibly drive her Mono to plead with God himself for relief?
She resolved that he would never be alone ever again. It was time to release him from the Tower’s womb and let him stroll through the city. Earlier than normal. Already her mind cycled through the various personages, monsters like her really, who were vassalized to her, searching for one who could possibly see what she could not.
There was one, she knew, that Mono—that the Broadcaster—had known before this incarnation, but that was an adult relationship, of a superior and an underling. It was better than nothing. Mono needed a mentor.
The good Father would be a perfect mentor; perhaps one of his acolytes would be of further assistance. There were some questions she could not answer, but that did not mean there weren’t others who held the answers to them.
“Good night, Mono,” she said again, her hand touching his cheek lightly as she finished wiping his face dry. “I will help you, to the best of my ability.”
For it was her duty, her charge, her infinite promise to him. One day, Mono would save the world a second time.
It was her job to keep him alive until that day.
O come, O come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear…
Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!
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