This a peice of fiction written for Alan McNevin’s Dark Obsidian RPG’s one and only supplement. It’s about a mage or wizard’s moment of understanding.
The sound was terrifying. Screeching metallic engines grounding madly. The smell of grease and oil was intoxicating. I was naked, lying on my back on the rim of some sort of metallic cog that slow inched its way backward.
Wires lay across my body, lying across my breasts and stomach. They moved and crawled over my arms, pulling them over the edge of the cog. The wires were alive as they slithered over my feet and the top of my head entangling themselves in my hair.
I tried to shout but the sound came out as some sort of human scream lost in digital static. The wires crawled further and pierced my eyes as they covered my legs and attempted to enter my Virginia.
I awoke. I had cold sweat dripping from my forehead. I got out of bed. The dream. Was it a vision?
I poured myself a glass of milk in the kitchen, while trying to relax. My name is Sandra. I’m a Mage of the Book of Machines. A Technology freak. This dream I had was something important? Why had been so terrifying? So fearful?
I had asked for further understanding in the Temple yesterday evening. And this is what I had received? A Nightmare of violating machines? I fell asleep there in the kitchen. My head buried in my arms.
The hovercraft was light. Its engines made next to no noise. It was constructed by one of the best of the Book of Machine Mages. There were four other passengers but they were all quiet. I had a lot to think about. We were leaving Nevermore; the hidden city of the Mages. A City that had been lost during the Great Fall, the apocalypse of Mankind. When mankind started to rebuild itself, the Mages hide and claimed the dead poisoned cities and converted them into places where we were free from detection or persecution.
It had been my home for a long time. Ever since I started my studies into Magic. I stared out of the window of the Craft as it rose. People of all sorts wandered around between the low buildings that surround the small port. The yellow dust of the desert land spiralled around as the engines pushed us up.
I had come to a strange stage. I was no longer any sort of apprentice but I could not consider myself a master. I was empty, alone. I was still not fulfilled or satisfied. I had studied so hard and read and built till I had driven myself to despair. So I had asked for a dream.
I was going to Nevermore. The last great City of man. My first teacher lived there. Perhaps, I felt, by going back to my roots I would find a new path, a new way to continue.
The four elements, Fire, Earth, Air and Water. The constructs of all reality. Fire was the power and creative birth of all living things, it was the fuel that drove the spirit that was so powerful it was also so violently destructive. Earth was the source, the base, and the practicality. It was the machine that the fire fuelled. Air was the mind, the intelligence, and the design. It was the control and the reaction, the emptiness and the breath. And water was it’s instinct and it’s cleansing, it’s sensitivity and it’s life. I had studied them immensely for so long, pondering on them. The further afield I went, the sooner I came back to the four symbols, the four constructions of the World. Yet I seemed unable to escape them. They were the square and I stood at the centre. Yet nothing else revealed themselves to me. I had gone in a circle and never found the corners.
It had driven me into madness. I had lost my way, the other Mages had sensed it and were wary of me. So now I stood alone, walked alone. My thoughts ran in squares for answers that led to the centre and questions.
We were crossing the great desert, the Outlands. A dry acrid like place, devoid of most life. It was a bright yellow. The sun beat down on it through a cloudless sky. It’s radiation so painful and unhealthy for human people.
The other occupants of the craft were quiet. One was working on his laptop. Another was asleep, leaning against the window. They were of no real interest.
So I watched as the sad desolate land pass away beneath us. Soon I fell asleep too but the dream did not return.
When I awoke, the craft was passing between the giant buildings of Evermore. Huge glittering towers that reaching incredibly high. Like huge blades of grass from the garden of God. The sky was lost among them. So was the ground. I could see people walking through semi-transparent tunnels and large windows. They reminded me of ants in a glass cage, scurrying about in their tunnels while their homes were open bare to human inspection.
Other crafts floated around, of so many different variations; huge juggernauts to small speedy crafts. Their seemed to be no organisation to them, no direction, yet there was. Everything moving in a different direction, yet all was moving in one.
The craft landed on an open air pad jutting out of one of the towers. We all disembarked here. I stood for a while on the rim of the pad and watched as the craft left, rising up off the pad and speeding off into the spiralling chaos of the traffic overhead and below.
I found my old teachers place with ease. It was high up in the towers. A place of great prominence. He wasn’t home at the time, but the butler allowed me to wait in the main room. “A drink perhaps Ma’am while you wait?” he offered. I shook my head and he left me alone.
One side of the wall was a huge window, an elegant view of the Evermore City. Crafts flew by in steady streams, other towers glittered in the distance.
”Sandra!” his voice was so gentile and warm. Meaningful. I turned to view my old teacher, my old friend. He was tall and thin. He was bald with a tiny bit of a very dark beard. One of his eyes was not real, a large cybernetic piece replaced it. He smiled and the lines seemed to glow with welcome.
He wore a long coat that looked more like a gown that old monks used to wear. I embraced him with all my heart.
”I’m so glad to see you Petersburg.”
”I’m just as glad to see you. You have come all this way from Nevermore? you should have warned me, I would have prepared a better welcome?”
”I was afraid to risk your rejection?”
”But I would never have disagreed. What is wrong?”
”I am at a loss. I’m confused and fear I’m losing my mind.”
”Tell me.” He motioned to sit on the large comfortable couch and we both sat. He face was of genuine concern. It was him that had awoken me to Magic and to its presence in Technology. It was him really that had prompted me down this life.
”I fear I’m stuck. You once said to me that we never stopped understanding, we can never know everything. But now I’m stuck, I can see no way to proceed and it’s swallowing me whole.”
”I see. Tell me more, tell me what has stumped you in such a way?”
”The four constructs. Fire, Earth, Air and Water?”
”Symbols my friends. Meaningful symbols but nothing else.”
”But they are more then that?”
”Only if you believe they are?”
”I know. And I do. My studies, my experiments have lead me to these four again and again. I see myself at the centre of the square and yet I can not escape it’s confines.”
”Symbols can be changed, their meaning is dynamic. There something you are missing.”
”You can help?”
”I think I can see your path. You can not see how they are linked, how they are linked to you. If I follow your system?” he paused briefly, “the missing link, I think, is probably Technology.”
”I don’t understand.”
”Consider Technology to be the fifth construct. It is the layer through which we, as Mages of the Book of Machines, interact with the Four other elements or constructs.”
The Dream. I was speechless. He has shown me the way, something I was terrified off. A new way. Technology was the gateway between us and control of our environment. But?
I had loved technology. I had studied it and used it in my magics. Merged with tiny machines and gigantic computer systems to understand them. But they were cold, inhuman, pure logic. I was human, emotional, spiritual. I realised my fear. I realised my path.
”Sandra?” His voice was smooth and low, “What is it?”
”I believe I understand my fear.” Petersburg remained quiet, patient, waiting for my answer. ”Technology is the Gateway as you describe it. It has been my tool and my study in my path for enlightenment. But it is inhuman, it is empty. It violates what man is about. But? the combining of both human and technology is to understand, the emotional and the intellect, the chaos and the design. It is the spirit and the body, the purpose and the construction.
”I thank you Petersburg. You’ve opened my eyes with one sentence.”
But my old teachers face was gravely serious instead of joyous. He had a look of dead understanding.
”I generally don’t believe in fate as some of our other Mage brethren do. But I think your coming here and realising this has a purpose.” He bowed his head forward so I could see the back of his neck. A small device stuck out there, the nape of his neck, the top of his spine. He touched it and some small goo comes out. “I believe you are ready for the Merging. In my hand is a fresh Archon symbiote. Do you know what that is Sandra?”
”Yes, I’ve heard of them, a mechanical Symbiote. The merging of two entities, a human host and robotic mind.”
”Yes. And this is your gateway. This is the merging between your chaos and it’s intellect. It is the balance you have been looking for.” He places the goo in my hand. “It is your choice. You are afraid of it and I understand. So was I. But I am whole, it has not violated me as a being, I have become something more but still human. Rub it into your hands and the symbiote will be absorbed through your skin.”
The dream was pounding through my skull as I spoke. I was open to him, I was naked to him. He was the cog. And the wires were my fear, madness and the past. I was trying to scream as I rubbed my hands together. I felt a slight tingling as the robotic symbiote pierced my skin.
The End
Comments (2)
Hi Tony Huynh @ wasup_dude_dudetes@hotmail.com
Are you aware that “Sandra” is just a character in my short story and does not actually exist?
i understand sandra, i would like a talk with you through msn messenger. i’m asian and 14. maybe a bit young for your age, but i have something important i want to discuss with you. thanks. trust me.