Ad Infinitum
Faveat infinitas in nobis.
Ave Infinitas!
– Prayer to Eternity, the Twelfth Holy Book of Infinitude
***
Infinity is big. Like, really big. In fact, the very concept of “really big” is to infinity as a child’s sugar-induced scribble of half a memory of a dream of a cartoon bang is to the implosion of a star. Such things were not made for mortals to perceive, and yet infinity is a curious obsession of our race.
Perhaps the closest one can ever get to seeing the full breadth of eternity is to see the view from the Interdimensional Tavern. Or, at least, it is the most convenient place to see it, being as it is equipped with inimitably large quantities of alcoholic drinks to cease the inevitable existential reflection that generally stems from half an eternity being laid out upon the panels of one’s mind.
Jenny Everywhere had seen more of eternity than most could ever dream of. Therefore, it was perhaps unsurprising that she was starting to tire even the usually-indefatigable waiters of the Interdimensional Tavern. She looked into her drink and idly wondered whether it was supposed to be that colour, or if she’d had more to drink than she’d thought. For that matter, was Cthonic Veedlevum even alcoholic?
“… And then I knew the blighter was a Martian,” Doctor Omega was saying in his harsh nasal voice, “So I picked up this rock that happened to be lying about, and bashed him over the head with it – once, twice thrice, like so!” (and on each counted syllable he rapped his silver-topped cane on the floor – once, twice, thrice!) “And all the blood squirted quite beautifully out of his head, and he fell – quite dead – to the floor. And so I said to him…”
Jenny sighed, and looked from the small, sinister figure with the sparkling eyes to her now-empty glass. Hrm. Perhaps she needed another drink.
She looked around at the other customers inhabiting the Tavern: a Froxbanian, an unusually large Smeen, a couple of humanoids she didn’t recognise, a couple she did but didn’t care to speak to, a red-haired woma – Jenny’s heart skipped a beat. But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t. Stupid Jenny. Stupid.
Jenny’s chest felt very heavy.
She definitely needed another drink.
She was just about to call over Tpxszum when she was affronted with a strange chanting noise that simultaneously seemed to be emanating from the inside of her head and from some great distance away.
“Can you hear that?” she asked Doctor Omega, but he seemed much further away than he had been before, and the words fell out of her mouth like putty. In fact, everything seemed much further away than it had been before, and receding at an alarming rate, and all the while the chanting grew louder, despite the intensifying feeling of cotton wool in her ears, and indeed all over her body, pressuring her and pushing her further into oblivion, until at last everything crescendoed, and she disappeared from the fire-lit tavern altogether.
“… ‘You’re no son of mine!’ I cried, and with that I leapt up onto the rock and bashed his head in!” continued Doctor Omega, “My, but you should have seen the look on his face. Not that you could very well, of course, what with all the blood, but you know…”
***
Cardinal Aleph Null hesitatingly knocked on the door that stretched up into eternity.
“Come in,” said the cold voice from within, and the wooden door that was taller than the mind could possibly fathom creaked slowly open.
Cowing before his superior, Aleph Null bowed and scraped along the cold stones tiles patterning the floor, and entered the room within.
“Your holiness,” he began.
“Yes, Cardinal?” said Cardinal Aleph Omega.
He winced. He had known the Cardinal for a thousand years, and for a thousand years before that, and for longer before that than the mortal temple of his mind could even begin to recollect, but even so she never failed to intimidate him. Things had always been this way, so long as he could remember, and they would never, ever change, because things never did here. Things must have been different once, he sometimes reasoned, but the Annals of Infinitude said that such a thing was impossible. Still, he had dreams, sometimes. Half-snippets of memories that told of places he had never visited, and people whom he had never met, and things that seemed entirely alien to the way he had lived for an eternity. He did not know where they had come from, but sometimes he wondered. And then immediately stopped that wondering, what with it being heretical and all.
“Well,” he said to the tall woman who moved like water, “The ritual is completed.”
The Cardinal’s ancient eyes scrutinised his for longer than he was entirely comfortable with. He turned his face away.
“Good,” she said, “This is very good.”
She drummed her fingers on the wooden arm of her velvet-coated chair.
“You are dismissed,” she said, and Cardinal Aleph Null went back to his room to dream dreams of a world that he hadn’t known in a billion years.
***
The sun was a dappled blanket on their bodies. Jenny looked up into the sky and saw her heart in the whispering whirls of the clouds.
“If you loved somebody more than anything else in the whole wide world,” said Laura, “What would you do?”
Jenny’s heart was beating very, very fast. She sat up.
“This,” she said, and leaned in to kiss her.
Their hearts melded together with the twirling clouds.
***
Jenny Everywhere woke up and ached all over. She pushed herself up off of the hard floor and surveyed her surroundings. It seemed that the room which she now found herself in had not been disturbed in a long time. No mould, however, had entered the space, nor dust; even they did not reach to this apparently sacrosanct place. But the wood of the rafters and the workbenches and the faded velvet chair held the air of a great age. Presumably the wood had once been part of a tree, and seen the world grow and change about it for a thousand years, but for many times that it had seen nothing but the dark and the dust.
It was not completely dark, however; there was a candle on the desk whose light curled and flickered. It was a real candle, not an electric one, but its length did not seem to wane as candles’ do in the normal course of things, but stayed eternally the same. No wax dripped off its brim, or pooled in the plate at the bottom. There was not even smoke emanating from its flickering flame. It was as if the room had staved off entropy itself with its seclusion from the rest of reality, and caught, frozen in time, between one eternity and the next.
Jenny looked around behind her, and gasped. She had thought the room was quite big for its type, but until now she had not even begun to fathom its enormity. The walls curved outwards, outwards and outwards from where she was, and carried on into infinity. And it was infinity; that she could be certain of. There was no event horizon, and it did not curl in on itself, it just carried on and on and on, with nothing but air between her and eternity. Only the Void – that conceptual realm inhabited by those who would criss-cross the streets of the multiverse – and the Infinite – that place so dear to so many of her, which connected her with her counterparts and showed her the way to travel between worlds – were comparable (indeed, the latter had it in the name), but in those places infinity was not so contrasted with finitude, and it seemed somehow far less acute. Jenny felt as if her eyes were being torn out of their sockets. Though the alcohol probably didn’t help with that.
The wood and red velvet of the first part of the room she had seen suddenly felt oppressive, and she felt a desire to get out. But not into that infinity that made up the rest of the room, no, never that. That infinity contained no possibilities, no probabilities even, just stagnant staring nothingness.
There was a door in the first wall that she had seen upon entering the room, and she achingly staggered over to it. She hadn’t ached this much since that time she’d spent all night arm wrestling with the Glarzletwort of Snompshoonia. She wrestled with the heavy door, which didn’t wish to be opened at all. It was strong, but Jenny was stronger, and she soon forced it to open.
Limping slightly, she headed into the corridor outside, and the door which had not been opened in a billion years slammed shut, leaving the infinite room and the aching wood and velvet that framed its body to another eternity of sleepless numbness.
It was perhaps an understatement to call it a corridor; it had the width of a small motorway. But its length continued on both ends into eternity. A thousand lifetimes could be spent wondering up and down it and a thousand more and they would not have even begun to scratch the surface of the corridor’s length. At least the walls stayed the same distance apart here, so that they contracted to a point in the far distance, and there was not the terrible blankness of infinitude staring at her. Jenny looked up, and immediately regretted it, feeling a terrible sense of vertigo. (The alcohol didn’t much help with that, either.) The walls rose and rose and rose and rose up into eternity, again causing them to converge on a point, but how much more disorientating this was than the horizontal distances!
That eternity could stretch so far boggled the mind, even the mind of Jenny Everywhere, which was itself both infinite and eternal.
But come to think of it, Jenny could hear no thoughts of her other selves, no feelings, no knowledge, no traces of the infinity of minds that made up what one might call, for want of a better word, her family. Her multiversal counterparts. Those whom she shared everything with, because she was them and they were her. It was a strange relationship that had taken some getting used to, but she was now rather fond of it, and found it quite a beautiful thing to exist in her mind. But now there was nothing, and the emptiness rattled about her head like pickles in a jar. There were no memories in there but her own.
Which she kind of wished she didn’t have.
She tried to shift to another reality. But the memory was gone. She didn’t remember how to. How did she not remember? How could she not shift? She tried and she tried, flipping every switch that she could find in her brain, but nothing was right. Nothing came even near to being right, to even approximating that feeling which came with shifting between realities. She could feel herself panicking. What if she was stuck here? What if she never got out? Was this hell? Was this purgatory? Or someone trapping her for nefarious purposes?
No.
Pull yourself together, Jenny, she told herself, We’ve got work to do.
If this was hell, she reasoned, she probably deserved it. If it were purgatory, then, hell, she could do with a good purging. If somebody had trapped her and held her to make her life hell, then she would hunt them down and there would be a reckoning such as none they had ever known.
And if she never got out? Well… she would think about that when it came to it. If it came to it.
But nonetheless, she couldn’t dispel the creeping sense of panic that fizzled in the back of her brain.
Calming her beating heart, she listened beyond that, and heard only one noise, in the very faint distance. She heard the sound of chanting, though a different one to that one which had dragged her through the coarse fabric of existence into this external membrane which, she thought, she had no possibility of fathoming.
She gave a deep sigh, and began slowly to walk down the corridor in the direction from which the ethereal music was emanating.
***
There was a garden. It was finite, which Aleph Null ought to have found awfully claustrophobic, but somehow it instead felt strangely comforting. And anyway the infinitude of the sky stretched above him, which served to dispel any other discomfort he might have felt. The garden was lit by a great lantern that flickered and hung in the sky brighter and more brilliant than any he had seen. It should have been frightening, for such a giant ball of fire to be suspended there, but again it felt curiously familiar. The colours of this place were the purest and most brilliant imaginable. There were so many sounds.
There was a man, sitting opposite him. He was garbed in the strangest clothes, unlike any the Cardinal had seen. He did not appear to be a Cardinal, or a Novice, or any other rank of the Church, and wore his hair long, which was forbidden by various of the rules and regulations. How young this man was! He had the youngest eyes Aleph Null had ever seen, younger than the youngest Novice, but they held a certain gravitas nonetheless, and an air of wisdom. Aleph Null couldn’t help but smile at the face, even as his heart felt as if it were being torn into knots. He didn’t know why either of those things happened, but they felt right, somehow.
“Are you alright?” asked the man, kindly.
“Yes,” said Cardinal Aleph Null, though he knew that it was a lie.
The man took the Cardinal’s hands in his soft ones, and his heart fluttered terribly and wonderfully.
“Nothing is eternal,” he said, quietly, “Nothing can last for ever.”
Aleph Null woke up, and stared at the ceiling receding into eternity from the hard bunk digging into his spine. He felt tears trickling down his cheeks and wished they wouldn’t come so even as his heart fell out of his eyes and it felt like the most perfect, awful thing in the world.
***
Jenny had walked long distances before. She had walked far longer distances than she had so far. Yet it was not the distance, rather the monotony of the walk that tired her. It was impossible to tell whether she had come a mile or a metre from the place she had first set off from. She just walked, and walked, and walked, and one step was much like the other, and the corridor stayed exactly the same as she walked along and along it. Sometimes, a door would appear in the distance, and would grow gradually nearer before she walked past it and it receded into the distance further and further until she couldn’t see it any more if she looked back. Once, she opened one of the doors, but there was nothing beyond it but infinity. In all directions. She had closed it very quickly, and decided not to open any more until she came upon the one from which the chanting was emanating. With chanting came people, and with people came answers, or at least the promise of answers. If she didn’t talk to anyone she thought she would go mad. But then it was a sort of madness, the walking, where one step was much like the other and no matter how far one had plodded on there was always further to go. There was no landmark to aim for, nothing to stop the dreary monotony that tore at Jenny’s soul.
The chanting was getting louder, though. That was something. She was getting nearer to her destination. But the monophonic chanting gave little respite from the weariness; it too was infused with a strange weary madness that clung to one and pulled one down and filled one’s thoughts with cotton wool until one could not think, could not breathe, but only walk onwards, placing one foot in front of the other, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four.
To be alone with no thoughts, though, was perhaps better than being alone with one’s thoughts. It meant one did not have to think of anything, least of all things that one would rather forget, and purge one’s heart and mind of, so that one could not feel the pain of them. Sometimes Jenny wanted to rip open her chest and tear out her aching heart from its sockets so that she did not have to feel.
But how beautiful it was, to feel! How lovely to feel warm, and safe! How wonderful to love!
These things were far away now, though. There was only the grating, incessant, unceasing chanting that bore into the mind and tore away one’s humanity so that one was but a machine walking along the endless corridor.
Jenny did not know how long she had been walking when she came to the door where the sound was coming from. She shook herself out and caught hold of herself again. God her legs ached. She hadn’t noticed it before, but they really did. It wasn’t nice at all.
She winced, and pushed the door open. Beyond sat another infinity, with only one wall and the door leading to the corridor. The floor and the wall were black and shiny, and there was nothing on them.
Nothing, that was, except for an old-fashioned gramophone seated some five metres or so into the eternity, playing a record of ethereal chants on loop.
Jenny could have cried. She nearly did, but she told herself she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t.
Instead, she laughed. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed until her sides ached and she slid down the doorframe to the harsh black floor.
She was fine. Everything was fine. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t let them see her cry. She bit her tongue to try to hold back the tears and the rising panic.
Right. Look on the bright side. She was alive. Probably.
Was that a bright side? She hoped it was. Uhh… Oh dear.
She doused the upwelling tears with fire. She would find whoever had done this and she would make them pay. She would, damn it all, she would.
Out of curiosity or sunk cost fallacy – she wasn’t sure which – she crawled over to investigate the gramophone. She had seen plenty in her time; Ginger Rogers had once come over to her apartment and they had danced the night away to one, once. She didn’t remember what she had been doing in 1930s America, but she assumed it was something important. Had she taken Laura there? She didn’t even remember. Gods, she didn’t remember.
No. Focus. To all intents and purposes, it seemed a perfectly ordinary gramophone. It and the record showed no signs of wear, but she cast her mind back to the room with the eternal candle and reasoned that this gave no indication to its age. Anyway, it felt old, as if it had been sitting in the room for an eternity, playing and playing and playing. It felt as if it had grown into the room, or out of it, or the room had grown around it. It was a part of the room, at any rate.
She stopped the needle on its unvarying turn, and the record stopped its unceasing song. She breathed a sigh of relief.
If this was hell, she thought, then Satan had gotten overly fond of Western Christian iconography.
But what now? Where did she go from here? How in the world was she going to get out?
“Oh, hell’s bells,” she said.
She rubbed her eyes, and suddenly realised that she was incredibly tired. She’d already had a long day before going to the Interdimensional Tavern – Fenrir and Odin had been arguing again – and the long, long walk down the corridor hadn’t helped. She decided that going to sleep was probably a reasonably productive use of her time. If she were stuck here forever, putting it off would only make her more emotional, and less reasonable, and she reckoned that things would probably look better after some sleep.
The room was not cold, which was a start, at least. She curled up on the hard floor and stared at the now silent gramophone. Wasn’t it funny, how things turned out? God, but she was in a bit of a state. Did she really care? She thought she probably ought to. She looked at the intricacies of the gramophone that had been torturing her: the way the wood curved; the way the shining metal sat; every facet of life that had been poured into it. It was so beautiful, the way it sat, and curled, reaching up for sunlight it could never know, playing music it could never hear for a billion billion years. What a beautiful, intricate tragedy sat there!
“Why is everything so beautiful even when you aren’t here?” she murmured, and she felt the tears rising again with the softness of sleep that fell over her like a blanket from her chest.
***
If angels and archangels and all the company of heaven had forever praised her and sung “glory glory glory” she couldn’t have been happier. It was not a bombastic happiness, though, but a soft happiness, an insidious happiness, that crept like molten gold into one’s every pore and flushed away imperfection, so that one wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
They kissed, and the world melted away behind them, leaving only a shadow of the black-grey city that was called life. Whether it was a city or a prison was in the eye of the beholder, but it was a bleak thing, largely, all angles and fear and oppression, leaving only the denizens to provide light. But oh, there was light! A star burned in the quiet kitchen as they kissed.
“I love you,” said Laura quietly, red hair dancing about her sparkling face like the rays of the sun.
Jenny held her gently.
“I love you too,” she said.
And the rain tumbled down as the sky reached desperately for her lover the ground.
***
The book was old, and it let you know it was old. It was more than old – all things here were old – it was aged. And aged quite thoroughly, at that. Books guarded their words carefully, and refused to succumb entirely to immortality. Entropy gathered about the words clustered on the myriad pages of the library like moths, and Cardinal Aleph Omega knew she could not stay long.
She wondered why the books would not stay eternally sometimes. Surely words were the most eternal things of them all? Yet their pages faded over the millennia, slowly but surely. Why would they not stay? Why must they fade?
There was a reason that book access was a privilege given only a few, and the Cardinal knew that thoughts were dangerous. That was the trouble with words. Even as they stayed the same on the page, their meanings would change, and change, and change, and the words would seep insidiously into your thoughts and change the way you thought. Words were a terrible thing, unless kept carefully.
There were worse things, to be sure, but words got on her nerves. She was always careful with them. It was so easy for things to go wrong.
But she sought knowledge. Particular knowledge. Knowledge that would not be found anywhere else. She had spent three hundred years, give or take, looking through the shelves of the library, one after the other, for this book, and at last she had found it. The Book of the Shifter. The answer to infinity.
The Infinite. What a beautiful name! What a tantalising idea! What a find for the Church! She had heard of the Shifter, of course, everyone had. And at last she had found the key to it all. The key to infinity.
The text, however, was proving irritatingly obtuse. (And moreover heretical, but one got used to that after a while.) It was all vague prophecies and platitudes, nothing concrete, no instructions. To make matters worse, portions of the book seemed newer than others, and some seemed missing entirely, or irrelevant to anything the rest of it was saying.
How to go back to the Infinite? To restore infinity to the races of the worlds was her dream. And all would become infinity, and infinity would become everyone. Everyone would be happy. Everything would be perfect. Everything would be right. This was right. What she was doing, it was her duty.
Yes. She would revolutionise existence. She would show them all that the perfect harmonious eternity could be achieved. An eternity more perfect than even this, an eternity where even the words would stay eternal. She was so close. So very close.
Through the Shifter, this Jenny Everywhere who was even now crawling along the infinite catacombs of her Church, the chosen ones would rise to eternity, and death would have no dominion.
Never again, she thought, and went back to poring over the words dancing upon the yellow pages. She didn’t care to notice the tears pooling in the corner of her eyes as she clenched the pen and the stiff fabric of her robes with her fists.
***
When Jenny woke up, she was in a bed, with a sheet over her, and had a hell of a hangover. She winced. Her head was going up and down and round and round and up to Leicester via Covent Gardens and stabbing with pain. She groaned, and pushed herself out of bed. She wondered if last night had been a dream, and was swiftly disabused of this notion by the empty infinity that confronted her sleep-dust-ridden eyes.
There was a girl looking at her, dressed in what looked like nuns’ clothes.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
Jenny looked blearily at the girl.
“You don’t happen to have any water, do you?” she asked.
Luckily she still had her clothes from the previous night, even if they felt rather fusty, and she swung herself out of bed to receive the water the girl had gotten her.
“Who’re you?” she asked, between gulps, wishing her head would stop feeling like an elephant had taken up lodgings there.
“I – I’m Novice Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring,” she said, “I was told to meet you here when you woke up, and see if you wanted anything.”
“That’s nice,” said Jenny, “Very hospitable.”
She got up, slightly unsteadily.
“Ma’am…?” began the girl, then stopped, “You are a ma’am, aren’t you?”
“Last I checked,” she said, looking around the more finite areas of the room for escape routes, possible dangers, and snacks.
“Ah,” said the girl, “Just you were wearing those odd clothes, and your hair’s very short, so I wasn’t quite sure. Just, I was wondering… Who are you?”
Jenny contemplated showing the girl the eternity that laid within her mind, the darkest recesses of her memory, the unknowable and immense reality that underpinned her existence, and the truth of her infinite self, but remembered that non-consensual telepathy was morally iffy, and thought better of it.
She flashed the girl one of her more charming smiles.
“I’m Jenny Everywhere,” she said, “And I’m here to kick arse.”
(Not her best one-liner, that, she thought, but she quite liked it. She made a mental note of it for later.)
***
There were records in certain rooms of the Church of the Golden Lemniscate, infinite rooms that curled round with brown files brushing one another, round and round in spirals into eternity. Aleph Null knew where they were, but was strictly forbidden to access them. It was assumed that one dedicated enough to be a Cardinal would stick to the rules of the Church, and not go peeping into the myriad filing cabinets that were enough to drive the most dedicated archivist mad. Aleph Null wondered where the records had come from. Was there, too, an infinity of archivists, scuffling between the words like so many mice, or did the records form miraculously into existence with every change to the order? (Sure, the Church was not supposed to change, indeed it was heresy to suggest it did, but it did, however little, despite all the efforts to prevent it and keep the Church in perfect eternal harmony.) Or had the records been there for eternity, before everything – insofar as anything here had a before – with notes of the eternity that would then come to pass, and they simply following in the steps of the prophesying records?
He knew that he should not think such thoughts. There was a reason the archives were off limits, just as all but certain books were. But he could not help but think them. And he had to know.
He had to know why he felt this way. He had to know why he had such dreams. He had to know why any mention of eternity – the central tenet of his very being, his religion, his everything – filled his heart with this infernal wretched longing that made him want to curl up and cry until his heart melted with the hot tears and fell out of his mouth to lie limp on the black floor.
He ran up a million stairs, and a million stairs more, scouring records for his name until the hot breath that seemed to be suffocating him and his burning legs forced him to collapse on the gentle curving ivory steps. He had to know. He had to.
He dragged his wretched body up another stair by his arms, and another, and another, and pulled himself up to a shelf. There sat the file titled “Cardinal Aleph Null”. With trembling fingers, he began to read:
Maurice Green, born 17 Feb. 1957 in Harrogate, Earth, Universe 10283495784 (M.), fell in love with Ali Khan in his early twenties. When Khan was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986, Green was heartbroken, but stayed with Khan until his death the following year. Seeking something eternal, he discovered the Church of the Golden Lemniscate, whom he took his vows with, and over the next three trillion years in the Church ascended to the title of Cardinal, becoming Cardinal Aleph Null. For a further billion years, he upheld the rules and norms of the Church, all memories of his prior life being long since forgotten. However, eventually the memories of that which he used to be began to resurface in dreams, and after seeking out this record his life was ended, he having betrayed the ideals of the Church.
Aleph Cardinal Null stared at his life written out in half a paragraph on the page before him. He had forgotten that death existed. He had forgotten that the possibility of death existed. Was this all his life amounted to? Half a paragraph of writing?
Death. Oh infinity. Oh lord. Oh god.
He… he… he couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. It was his life written on the page there, his whole life, and he remembered it. There was so much, so very very much of it, and so little of it had been happy. Oh such a little portion. But in that portion he had been happier than anyone else in the world. Why had he done this? Why? Why?
Death. Oh god, death. He was going to die. He was going to die.
He remembered, though. He remembered seeing Ali die, and the smell of lilacs. He remembered. How could he have forgotten? How could he have ever forgotten that? He had thought that memory engraved eternally in his mind. But he had forgotten – oh dear lord – he had forgotten that look.
Nobody had known him but Ali. He had danced on the edge of society, waiting to be let in, wanting so dearly for somebody to notice him, to know him. And there was nobody. Not in all the infinite Cardinals of the Church. Nobody but one, one who had fallen out of existence like snow in the thaw before he had even had time to know him.
He saw Cardinal Aleph Omega stood over him, a spiral of steps above him on the infinite stairway. There was anger in her eyes: harsh anger, cold anger. But he did not care for her anger any more. He did not care about her. Stupid thing. What a stupid thing she was, seeking eternity. As if such a thing were possible. Oh, but if such a thing were possible… If, if, if.
If we had enough ‘if’s we could put Paris in a bottle, he thought, smiling in his delirium.
The Cardinal was staring at him. Oh, but he was a Cardinal no more. He remembered now. He was Maurice. Maurice!
“Maurice,” Ali said, “I love you.”
“Why do you have to make everything so much harder?” asked Maurice, tears trickling down his cheeks.
Ali took his hand and held it, tighter than anything in the world.
“Because that is love,” said Ali, “It is beautiful, and fragile, and hard. Harder than anything. But it isn’t eternal, you must never make that mistake. Nothing is eternal, Maurice.”
“You’re wrong!” Maurice cried, “You’re wrong!”
“You have betrayed the Church of the Golden Lemniscate,” said Aleph Omega, and her voice betrayed no emotion, but her eyes said everything, “You have betrayed infinity. You have betrayed the dream of eternity which keeps this church running. You have taken the world which is eternal and you have broken it into tiny little pieces, snapped everything which is worth living for. You have betrayed me.”
She spoke simply, but cold enough to freeze the Sahara. Maurice did not care any more.
“If you spurn eternity, than so too shall eternity spurn you,” the woman continued, “Those who would break the laws of infinitude and trample them under their feet do not deserve to drink from its breast. As you have broken the law, so too shall the law break you. You do not deserve eternity.”
Monologue over, she raised her hand in the air, and snapped her fingers. With all the grace of anticlimax, Maurice fell dead to the ground. And only he knew what he thought in the last seconds of life.
Aleph Omega looked at him with a grim satisfaction, her cold, burning fury having given way to emptiness. She walked off.
***
There were a hundred equations scribbled on the paper, half-scribbled, crossed-out, contradictory. Jenny couldn’t understand any of them, though she thought she probably could have if she’d borrowed some of her other selves’ memories.
It was late, far too late, and the lamp was low. Laura was still scribbling, using up sheet after sheet of paper with the equations that danced and fought and rode upon the page.
“You need to sleep,” Jenny said, cuddling her from behind. She smelt of coffee and pencils.
“Shush,” said Laura irritably, “I’ve nearly got this. Nearly. I’m so close, dammit.”
Jenny looked at Laura.
“Laura,” she said, “You’ve got bags under your eyes. Have you eaten?”
“No,” Laura said, “No I haven’t.”
Jenny sighed and went to the kitchen to get some food. When she returned, Laura was sprawled out on the desk, dead to the world.
“Oh Laura,” she said.
***
Novice Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring looked at the strange woman. She asked so many questions. How pretty she looked! How beautiful her form…! But no, those were bad thoughts. She shouldn’t think such thoughts as those. Down that route lay sin, and mortality, and the cessation of eternity. She should be pure, and good, and love infinity as it loved her.
“I don’t suppose you have any toast?” asked this Jenny Everywhere.
“There’s plain porridge?” she answered.
The woman made a clicking sound with her teeth that she assumed signalled disappointment.
“That’ll do,” she said.
Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring got her the porridge from a tray on a lift that stretched down to the kitchens. Often she found herself on kitchen duty, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing for hours on end, but not today. Today she could enjoy her porridge for once.
She sat at the little wooden table opposite the woman and failed to make conversation as the warm porridge sat in her chest. She was quite awestruck by the woman. She wondered if she were an Outsider. Mother Square Root of Two Multiplied by Seven Plus Three said that she was being irrational, and that she should not believe in such things, but Six Hundred and Twelve Point Three Six Five Recurring said that a friend of a friend had seen an Outsider once, and that they were absolutely real. Mother Square Root of Two Multiplied by Seven Plus Three said that that was heretical, and threatened her with a beating, so she had acquiesced. But she wondered. She did wonder. And what else could this woman be, who was not a Novice, or a Cardinal, or a Mother Superior, or any other thing, so far as she could see? But it was not her job to wonder. She simply had to make sure the woman was happy.
Jenny Everywhere was staring into the remnants of her porridge. She wondered what she was thinking about.
“Why do you wear your hair short?” she asked, though she hadn’t meant to.
The woman looked up at her, and smiled.
“Because I like it like that,” she said, simply, then added, “Why do you wear your hair long?”
“Because the rules tell me that I must.” was her reply.
Jenny cocked her head. It put her in mind of some animal.
“And why do you do what the rules tell you to?” she asked.
“Because otherwise Mother Square Root of Two Multiplied by Seven Plus Three gives me a beating,” said Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring.
The woman looked at her, and then looked down at her porridge again. She didn’t seem to be quite sure what to say. Her eyes didn’t have quite the same sparkle as they had had before. After a while, she spoke.
“Tell you what,” said the woman, and she was smiling again, even if her eyes weren’t, “Why don’t we go and see and your Mother Superior, and she and I can have a little talk?”
Novice Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring felt a strange sort of excitement in her stomach.
“But,” she said, “I’m not supposed to let you out of this room.”
“No buts!” cried the woman, getting up and grabbing hold of her arm, “Let’s go.”
So, protesting, but reasoning in her head that if they were caught she could say that the woman overpowered her and forced her to, she led her through the twisting maze of infinite corridors until they reached the quarters of her Mother Superior.
Jenny Everywhere did not knock, but simply wrenched open the door by its handle. The novice’s stomach buzzed with mingling anxiety and excitement.
What was the woman going to do? She didn’t much like the Mother Superior’s beatings, sure, they hurt like hell, but the Mother Superior was… well, alright, she supposed. She just wanted to do what was right for them. She just wanted them to know what was right, even if it hurt, even if they screamed and cried. She just wanted infinity for them. She was a good woman.
She thought she was a good woman. She supposed she must be, at least, if she were a Mother Superior.
A good, infinity-fearing woman who just wanted the best for them.
But boy did she make her scared.
“Mother Square Root of Two Multiplied by Seven Plus Four?” enquired Jenny.
“Who’re you?” cried the Mother Superior, “What are you doing in my office? Why are you wearing those clothes?”
“I’m Jenny Everywhere,” she snapped, “I am hell.”
***
Aleph Omega was shaking.
She wished she weren’t. Every time she stopped one hand from trembling, the other would start up again. Perhaps she should sleep. She hadn’t slept in a hundred years or so. But she didn’t need sleep. Sleep was for mortals. It was wasteful, immoral. But somehow her eyelids were hanging down, even as she tried to keep them open.
There was so much to do, so much to think about. This Shifter business was getting on her nerves. It would be worth it, though. Oh, it would be worth it. She would hold eternity in her hand and it would bestow upon her infinite life – true infinity – and she would be a god. More than a god. She would be everything.
There was a knock at the door.
She managed to still her trembling enough for it to be unnoticeable.
“Enter,” she commanded.
In came a tall, gaunt fellow with a pale complexion and unusually large canines. This was Cardinal Aleph Three Hundred and Sixty-Four, known to some as Cardinal Dracula, a reference she failed to get. But she thought it a harmless enough nickname.
He leaned over and whispered something in her ear.
“She’s done what?” she cried, composure breaking for the merest second.
“If you please, your holiness,” said the man known as Cardinal Dracula, “I wondered if I might… see to her, if you know what I mean.”
“No,” she snapped, “By no means. I need that woman alive.”
What a nuisance this girl was! An irritant, an incendiary. But it was from the irritants in the shells of the clam that pearls were formed, and what a pearl this would be; one to rival the finest pearls on any world, one which would bring the worlds crashing down and revolutionise existence, bringing reality to its final form, its zenith. And she would be the one to do it.
“You are dismissed,” she told the dismal Cardinal. He skulked off, looking far more disappointed that she would have liked. She would have to deal with that man, one of these days. One of these days… But perhaps it would not be necessary.
At any rate, that was not important right now. What was important was dealing with Jenny Everywhere. Oh, she would deal with her. She would deal with her, alright.
***
Jenny Everywhere was turning cartwheels. She frightened her.
“So,” said Jenny, as the turn reached its zenith, “You’re free, now. What do you want to do?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Jenny stopped with her legs dangling in mid-air.
“What do you want to do?” she repeated.
“I – I don’t know,” said Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring.
“Fair enough,” said Jenny, and the cartwheel continued.
Everything felt so strange. It was like she was floating, like this strange woman had come in and snapped the umbilical cord tying her to everything that she knew, leaving her floating in some strange limbo. That just a morning could change one’s life so utterly was odd, but here she was. And she didn’t know what to do, or who to trust, or how to feel. But she wanted to feel safe, and warm, and cosy. She wanted – she didn’t know what she wanted, but it was a feeling, just outside her grasp. Sometimes she would catch glimpses of it, half-echoes of it, like when she and another novice had hid, giggling, in a cupboard and told each other stories all through the night. She hadn’t even known the other girl’s name, but it felt right, somehow. The girl’s face in the dark had been so beautiful. They had shared body warmth until the night was over. There had been an echo of the feeling then. But it was not the full feeling. That was the thing that she wanted. But she did not know what it was, or how to find it.
The mad woman had managed to hook her toes over the edge of the door frame and was dangling down, looking at her with her upside-down eyes.
She couldn’t help but smile.
“Why are you upside-down?” she asked. She would usually have been scared to ask such a direct question, and would likely have been punished for it in the normal course of things, but this odd woman hanging the wrong way up somehow emboldened her.
“Why are you the right way up?” grinned Jenny.
Well, she didn’t have an answer to that, so simply laughed, and Jenny laughed too, and everything was happy. And – there was the faintest glimpse of the perfect feeling that she sought. But only an echo.
Jenny seemed to have been thinking.
“Tell you what,” she said, as she ended the right way up, “Why don’t you come with me, leave this place. I can show you infinity – proper infinity, not the empty eternity they peddle here – I can show you worlds that you could never even begin to imagine, places beyond the frame of the mind’s eye. I can show you peace, and war, and warmth, and ice, and everything in-between. All the possibilities of infinity are laid out at my fingertips. Wouldn’t you like to see that?”
Her eyes were sparkling dangerously.
“I guess?” said Novice Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring, but she wasn’t sure.
“Hrm, well,” said Jenny, “I can’t shift at the moment anyway. But have a think about it. While we’re at it – who runs this place, anyhow?”
“The Church of the Golden Lemniscate is run by the grace of glorious infinity,” she recited, “But the Cardinal Aleph Omega’s in charge. Nobody’s allowed to ever see her except for the other Cardinals.”
The woman smiled again, and she thought it the most dangerous smile in all the world. She wanted to run away from it.
“Well then,” said Jenny, “Take me to your leader.”
***
The mortal is the most dangerous of all categories of life, for it cannot afford to be complacent.
So professed Studies in Infinity, and so, thought Aleph Omega, proved this Jenny Everywhere. She was volatile, a chemical, a strange thought that buzzed in the back of one’s head. A paragraph of words that meant everything and nothing. The woman fascinated her, though she would never admit it. She was so inextricably tied to eternity, yet she fought it at every turn. The immortal mortal. A bundle of contradictions in an outdated pair of flying goggles.
Everywhere pretended to be a woman, but really she was just a girl. Just a stupid little girl.
“What’s that girl doing? Don’t she know that yelling won’t do anything? She’s just making things worse. Stupid little girl.”
Mary ran and ran and yelled, and the men ran at her as everything was taken away, away, off to the graveyards and the dumping pits and who knew where else. They ran at her, and she ran away, and hid her shame and sorrow in tears in the straw of the barn. Stupid little girl. That’s all she was. Nothing more. She couldn’t stop them. Why had she thought she could?
Aleph Omega shook her head viciously. No. No, she wasn’t that any more. Mary was dead, and in her place sat Cardinal Aleph Omega, the most powerful woman in a billion worlds. She had grown. She was strong. She had risen to the top of the pile, dancing on the flame like a phoenix in the night; she had been reborn, and she would rebirth eternity and nobody would have to cry ever again. Nobody would ever have to cry in her world.
Was that what she had become? Complacent? But no, she knew what she wanted. She would not stop until she held it in her grasp, and reality bowed to her, as she made it. She had built infinity from nothing, and from infinity she would build reality, and the silk-swathed, coruscated dream in which mortals and immortals had dwelt alike would be no more.
There would be no more tears. No more tears.
Everything was perfect.
So why did she want to cry?
***
Jenny walked into the apartment, slowly.
“I’m sorry,” Kim said.
“Fat lot of good that’ll do,” said Jenny.
“I’ll make you a cup of tea,” said Kim.
Jenny collapsed onto the couch, and felt the warmth of the sun dance across her skin.
“Fuck,” she said at last.
***
“I – I can’t do that!” cried the poor novice, “I’m just a novice! I’m not allowed to see the Cardinal.”
“Bollocks,” said Jenny, “You’re allowed to do whatever you want.”
“But I don’t want to see the Cardinal!” she snapped, “I just want to – I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want to go gallivanting around on some mad adventure! I want to live my life in peace! And if it’s scary, then it’s scary, and if it’s boring, then it’s boring, and if it’s lonely, then it’s goddamn lonely! But I can’t just run around upending the world like you do! It’s not who I am. It’s not who I want to be.”
Jenny went very quiet, and looked at her quite calmly.
“And who do you want to be?” she asked.
“I don’t know!” came the wailed reply.
“Right,” said Jenny, “Fine.”
And she started looking awkwardly around the room.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “But I want to blow something up around about now.”
“Good for you,” snarled the novice.
“I’m going to see this Cardinal of yours,” she said.
Novice Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring was staring into infinity where, in other worlds, a wall would have been.
“Fine,” she said, but her heart was twisting around itself.
“Well,” said Jenny, “I’m going, now.”
“Well, go on then!” cried the novice.
Jenny turned to the door.
“Fine,” she said.
“Fine,” said the other.
And Jenny left.
Novice Ninety-Six Point Two Seven Five Recurring sat down on the floor next to the wall and cried and cried and cried. She wished she knew why she was crying. It felt good, and achey, and like it shouldn’t be there, and she carried on crying until her heart had dissolved into the salty water of her tears and she sat there staring into eternity, thinking nothing and feeling nothing, but simply existing in this place they called reality.
***
Jenny Everywhere ran. She ran and she ran and she ran, because when her legs were burning and her lungs were heaving she had to think about nothing but the pain and forcing herself to go on, and not about anything else. She kept her mind on the running, and simply ran, down and down the infinite corridor. She could have run for an eternity. It would have been better than stopping. There was no end in site, there would never be an end in sight, because it went on forever. That was what eternity meant. It was what it meant.
Damn it all. Damn the whole bloody lot of them. Damn whoever had trapped her, damn this stinking Church that suffocated everything it got its grubby little fingers on, damn the whole goddamn lot of it.
Her nails were digging into her palms deeper and deeper, carving red rivers and valleys in the light brown earth, but she didn’t notice or she didn’t care.
She squeezed her eyes shut and looked at the colours dancing across the black of her eyelids as she ran. She ran and ran and ran down the corridor until she tripped and lay, heaving, on the floor.
“So, Jenny Everywhere,” said a silken voice from above her, “We meet again.”
Jenny looked up through her tears.
“Cardinal Dracula!” she gasped, “So you’re who’s behind all this!”
The vampiric figure looked slightly taken aback.
“Uhm,” he said, “No, not quite. But I knew that eventually you would come here, and that then I could seek my revenge on you for what you did to me!”
Jenny smiled up sardonically at him.
“Oh, Cardinal Dracula,” she said, “You really think you can overpower me?”
“You are defenceless, Shifter!” he cried, “You have no weapons, no powers, only your bare hands. You are no match for me!”
He flung himself at her, and he was all limbs and teeth, and suddenly Jenny realised that what he said was true. He had only to reach her neck with his teeth and she would be done for. Fear hung like vomit in her chest, and pushed her hands to the neck of the Cardinal. If she could just keep him away long enough, then… then what?
Think, Jenny, damn it! Argh! Panic gnawed at her stomach, and Dracula’s clawed hands clawed at her own, trying to pull them away. He was surprisingly heavy, and wriggled his way closer to her. She could smell his foul breath as his chest heaved up and down with her hands. She wondered when he had last brushed his teeth, and reasoned that it must have been a while. But she was getting distracted, and in this business that could mean death. She couldn’t shift, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t do anything. Cardinal Dracula’s head was inching nearer to her neck. Nearer and nearer it drew, until she could feel the warm breath upon it. In and out on her neck. Nearer and nearer, until…
Snap!
Cardinal Dracula was dead in her hands.
Her heartbeat slowly went down, but she couldn’t stop looking at the lifeless eyes of the corpse whom she was now holding. In something of a panic, she threw it away from her, onto the floor, and suddenly it wasn’t heavy at all. There had been nothing tying the Cardinal together but thoughts and hatred, and now that he was dead his body was shrivelling up like a raisin.
“Stupid beast,” said a voice from above her, “He could have ruined everything.”
Jenny followed the contours of the sound until her eyes met with those of Cardinal Aleph Omega.
Her breathing slowed. She grinned.
“Your holiness,” she said, “How do you do?”
The tall woman who ran the world looked down at the solution to everything. She took in every inch of that body: that impertinent face, that unseemly mop of hair, the clothes that were by now thoroughly battered and worn.
She smiled.
“Jenny Everywhere,” she said, “Get up.”
It was not a request; it was a demand. Jenny acquiesced in the most irritating way she possibly could, and slouched before the taller woman.
Grasping her chin, the Cardinal pulled her head up so that their eyes met. Jenny looked into the cold blue eyes of the Cardinal and saw something which seemed familiar to her, yet simultaneously so distant she could barely see it. She didn’t know what it was, but it was so very familiar. If she could only place it…!
Much to her surprise, the Cardinal grabbed her by the shoulders, swept her into another infinite room, and leant over her mouth to kiss her, probing into her mouth.
She was helpless. She couldn’t do anything. Recovering from the shock, she slapped her, and Cardinal Aleph Omega reeled across the room in shock. Jenny stared at her in anger.
“Feeling feisty, are we?” said the Cardinal, rubbing her cheek.
“You have no right over me,” said Jenny, “Leave me be, return me my freedom, or I will ruin you forever.”
Aleph Omega laughed a full, cold laugh.
“You have no power here,” she said, “And I shall not return you whence you came, indeed I cannot. You are too dangerous for that. And too full of potential.”
Potential? That sounded worrying.
“You can do nothing with me,” Jenny said, but she wasn’t so sure, “I will not comply.”
“See how the girl fights,” smiled the Cardinal, seemingly to herself, “But she can do nothing. Through her I shall have eternity. She shall bend to my will, as all things must, and all do, in this place.”
The woman was mad. Well, Jenny had been expecting that. It would perhaps have been more alarming had she not been mad; sane people were so very difficult to deal with. But she was getting distracted.
“You seek eternity?” Jenny said, “What eternity would that be? A homogenous stasis where all things are the same eternally, and nobody changes, where things which do not fit to your norm are erased? A place with no possibilities, no hope of change, no dreams or hopes or fears? A place where everything is always the same, forever and ever?”
“Yes!” cried the Cardinal, “Don’t you see? Don’t you long for something which never grows old, never changes, never dies? Don’t you long for eternal life?”
Jenny thought of Laura’s hand on her cheek, of their bodies intermingling with the sun and the moon, of the emptiness that clung like snow to her body and soul. She knew that there were worlds where she had lived forever, where they had lived forever, happy together in the cradle of the world, happily ever after. Didn’t she want that?
“Yes,” she said quietly, through her rising tears, “Of course I do. Of course I bloody well do.”
“Well, then,” said Aleph Omega, “Who are we to throw stones?”
She pushed Jenny down into a chair, and Jenny did not resist. The chair was soft, and she was tired. So very, very tired. Her head hung heavy on her neck, and it was all she could do to look at the fuzzy shape of the Cardinal. There was a candle, behind her. It was one that did not burn down, but defied entropy and stayed its wick and wax in one length. The Cardinal moved around behind her, and leaned over the desk and the candle to her head.
“So,” she said, “Tell me the secret to eternity.”
“You would ask me?” Jenny said, “You who have built an infinite palace outside the realms of existence, defying the natural laws of reality to grasp eternity in your ever-youthful palm? You have cut me off from my other selves, so I can garner no secrets from them. Why, then, do you ask me?”
“Tell me,” she whispered, “The secret of the Infinite.”
Jenny laughed, and pulled herself up out of her chair with her aching muscles. She swivelled to look Aleph Omega in the eye.
“Stupid little girl,” she said, not unkindly, “Don’t you know?”
Aleph Omega was shaking terribly. She grasped Jenny by the shoulders, and tried to shake her. She had to know, she had to. She had to know the secret to eternity.
“What?” she cried, “What!?”
“You think that the Infinite will grant you eternity,” said Jenny, “You think that you will revolutionise existence with its power, and in your mercy bring eternity to the masses. You think that all the infinite, intricate lives that dance among these realities may be conglomerated into a single, harmonious, monotonous existence, and that you may rule them all with infinite power. But you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. The Infinite is only a metaphor, a dream. It is a way of perceiving infinity that does not break the mind. It is not a consciousness, but it may bring consciousness to one’s self. The Infinite is possibility. Is is the possibility of possibility. It may show us the structure of reality, in all its majesty, and allow us to see alternate paths. Do you see? Alone, it can neither change things or keep things the same, but nonetheless it is the antithesis of your dream, for you wish for nothing but the foreclosure of possibilities. And that’s what you do, isn’t it? You tread people down, grind them into the dust, kill dream after dream after dream, all for your hollow, longed-for eternity. Your way is not that of infinity. Your way is the way of one. One. Single. Person. And that person is you, because you are too small-minded to notice anybody but yourself. You think you work for the purpose of the many, but that is just a lie to stop yourself from feeling guilty. All you ever worked for was yourself.”
The Cardinal was looking away into infinity, so that Jenny couldn’t see her face.
“Get out,” she said quietly.
Jenny stared at her, making no noise.
“Get out!” roared the Cardinal.
“No,” she said, simply.
The taller woman pivoted to stare once more in Jenny, and in those ancient eyes Jenny saw nothing but a scared little girl who was far, far out of her depth and floundering in the cold inky waters.
“I will not stand being lectured on selfishness by a girl who works for nothing but her own gain!” cried the Cardinal, “Did you write up that little speech beforehand, anyway? If you had the keys to eternity you would use it for your own purposes, too! You and I are the same!”
“You and I are nothing alike,” spat Jenny, but there was doubt in her heart.
“I’ll kill you!” cried the Cardinal, raising a hand in the air.
Jenny looked at the Cardinal’s hand. Perhaps she should have felt fear. She didn’t.
“I am not of your domain,” she said, “You have no power over me.”
She saw in the Cardinal’s eyes that she knew it to be true. The woman slumped down, onto a chair and the desk.
“What now?” Jenny heard her whisper.
But something had changed.
Jenny licked a finger, held it up to the air, and grinned.
“Feel that?” she said, “The wind’s changed.”
Jenny had an idea.
“There is no wind in the Church,” said Cardinal Aleph Omega.
“There is now,” said Jenny, “And you know what wind brings?”
The defeated eyes of Aleph Omega looked up at her.
“What?” they said, or seemed to say.
“Fire!” Jenny roared, and knocked the candle over, onto the desk covered with paper. The flames licked about the paper, spreading like water from one blackening document to the next. Their words would never again grace anybody’s eyes, as they dissipated into smoke and ashes.
The Cardinal leapt up, flames in her eyes. It had been a long time since she had seen fire.
“Mary!” yelled the girl, “Mary, the fire!”
But Mary could not move. She was transfixed, staring at the burgeoning flames.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered. She could feel the heat on her skin.
“Mary!” yelled the girl again, “Mary, run!”
The fire was getting closer. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, she could only stare at the smoke and the flames.
“What have you done?” she breathed.
“If you had made another eternity,” said Jenny, “Perhaps I would have been more lenient. Had you created a world where possibilities were encouraged, rather than quashed, perhaps I would have let you live a little longer. But nobody can have eternity.” Tears were pooling in her eyes, and she told herself it was just the smoke blossoming from the oakwood desk. “Nobody can have eternity,” she said, quietly.
“But you will die, too!” cried the Cardinal, confused.
Jenny was staring into the flames, deeper and deeper. The Cardinal wondered what she saw there.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, “But you reminded me of the secret of the Infinite. I remember how to shift.”
And she was gone.
The fire spread. It spread and spread and spread. It caught Aleph Omega and pinioned her against the wall and she was trapped. She saw the fire, and knew it was the end, and fell to the floor with smoke in her lungs. So much for eternity. How funny to think of the end, after all these years! The two final words on the last page of the book, that would wrap her up in their corset and strangle her until she could not breathe, could not think, could not move. So, falling to fear, she looked upon the sky, and saw in it an empty eternity, and its emptiness made her fear, so she turned to her heart and saw in it but another empty eternity, and both were of her own making. She screamed as the fire licked at her empty heart and soul and burnt it like a witch in the night.
To outrun the fire was possible; it moved slowly. But it was persistent; it would follow you to the ends of eternity, and every time one slept it grew a little nearer, and a little nearer, and a little nearer still, until eventually it would catch up with you in the depths of the night and you would succumb. Some set off into infinity far, far away, off alone in the empty dark, and went mad, for they could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing.
The fire did not destroy the entirety of the Church; how could it destroy infinity? But sometimes a running Cardinal would turn a bend in the corridor whilst running from the fire and come across fire from the other direction, with no indication of where it came from. There were those that accepted death, and caught it in their bosoms, and there were those who came to worship it. But death had entered the Church of the Golden Lemniscate, and it would never be the same again.
People were free. They did what they liked. Some assisted in the destruction, because they were hurt. Some fought it, because they were hurt too. There were those that found themselves, and those that didn’t.
Perhaps from some of the wreckage came life. Once a novice came across a charred ground where flowers were growing from the blackness: green and pink and blue as the sky. It was the brightest thing she had ever seen. She sat for fifty years tending the flowers by herself, and they formed a coffin and a shroud around her corpse.
Perhaps, too, something beautiful was lost with the rigidity of the Church. A bleak beauty, perhaps, an intricate shining thing that could not quite be described, like a polished nut that has just emerged from the shell. There were those, inevitably, who had found in the quiet of the Church a great peace, and in that infinity had come to love the bleakness of the beauty, and with the loss of eternity so too were they lost.
With death came life, and suddenly life was precious, or it wasn’t. Some cared and some didn’t. Everyone died, in the end. That was how it always went.
Novice Ninety-Six Point Two Five Seven Recurring died in the first fire, and never knew the feeling that she longed for, the feeling called love.
***
Laura woke up with the empty tears of the previous night still clinging to her eyelids. She thought she felt a hand on her cheek, a familiar hand.
“Jenny?” she said, though she knew it couldn’t be, of course it couldn’t be.
She rolled over, and looked into Jenny’s eyes. They were awful to see.
This wasn’t the Jenny she knew. This wasn’t the Jenny she had known.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Jenny, “I thought… I thought I could… I thought everything could be all right.”
“Oh, Jenny,” said Laura, “Oh, Jenny.”
She brushed her cheek, and it felt exactly like she remembered.
They were both crying.
“I’m sorry,” said Jenny, “I’m so sorry.”
She disappeared, leaving Laura with nothing but the empty bed and the sheet which she hugged to herself tighter than anything. But it wouldn’t fill the emptiness. Of course it couldn’t fill the emptiness.
***
Jenny hugged the bed as if it could provide some comfort. It did, a little, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Boy was she tired. She smelt of smoke and sweat. She needed a shower, and a change of clothes. Oh, but that was difficult. Maybe she would just stay like this. Maybe she would just stay here forever.
“Jenny,” said Kim, from the window and the night, “You’re drifting away.”
“I know,” Jenny mumbled into the bed.
Perhaps she would just stay here, become like the seed of the sycamore and drift away on the morning breeze, fall upon the concrete and shatter underfoot. Perhaps she would die. Death had to be better than this.
Anything had to be better than this.
Kim walked over to the bed, and saw that Jenny was sleeping.
“Sleep well,” she whispered, “Sleep well.”
And the silence of her mind carved from the city of life a peaceful eternity.
Go back