He Who Controls the Transporters

The room flickered and the lines of the underground chamber were replaced by those of what appeared to be an empty parking bay. Everyone had vanished except the woman Chizuru had described as the restistance’s leader, who stood at the foot of a ramp in front of them, her hands behind her back. Rinako saw now it was the female Alter they had met with Salamon.

The sound of footsteps came from the top of the ramp. A blonde-haired, suited figure descended, clapping his hands.

‘Kurogari…’ said Kurama.

‘I hope you enjoyed our little show.’ Said the young president. He looked around. ‘As you can see, it needs a little work.. but so much potential.’

He stopped in front of the woman. ‘I apologise for the disturbance but it was the only way—you really are a stubborn man, Kurama-san!’

The woman turned to him and whispered something. Kurogari leant toward her then nodded.

She turned to walk away then stopped for a moment and looked at Kurama. ‘You used to be heading somewhere.’

Rinako glanced between the pair.

Kurama stared at her for a moment then looked down, smiling. ‘Guess I remembered the place that matters.’

She looked at him for a few moments, then walked off toward an exit at the side.

Kurogari looked between them excitedly. ‘Well, that was awkward wasnt it!’ He began to pace around the bay. ‘I still cant quite get used to it. The transporters nowadays are really something.‘ Rinako noticed that his voice echoed with a strangely metallic tone given the concrete walls.

He turned back. ‘But I really can’t take the credit. Most of it was your own creation. You really are both very imaginative.’ His arms were stretched out either side of him. Rinako saw a smile flicker on his face like interference on a holoscreen.

‘We had to know, you see. Which of them had been talking to you.’

‘Salamon.’ Said Kurama.

Kurogari span toward them. ‘Right! And you were mosssst descriptive.’ He laughed and shook his head. ’Really, thank you.’

As he looked at them, the lines of the bay again flickered and became those of an executive boardroom, a long marble table at its centre. He paced at the front of the room.

‘Do you know that my father used to work on the transporters—in the VisAge hotels when I was a boy. Of course back then they were far simpler things.’

The room again shifted, this time becoming an imperial-style court, with curtained windows and a low wooden table replacing the marble one. Rinako ducked instinctively, glancing around. There were several bodies strewn around the floor.

Kurogari looked back at them. ‘Not as a technician, of course. He was an attendant.’ He laughed. ‘We hadn’t much money, you see. Back then the transporters required an operator, an unskilled worker employed to press the buttons like the old bellboys. He used to stand there all day, silently taking instructions from the guests, shuttling them up and down.’

‘There was no one else at home so sometimes he’d have to take me with him. I loved going up and down in that thing. It seemed magical to me, looking at all these rich businessmen, women with their jewellery and furs. Part of some exotic land far beyond my own.’

‘They never really spoke to my father. Just told him which number to press. And I had to be silent, of course. He was very strict on that—rules, you see, etiquette—meant a lot to him.’ He paused. ‘One day, one of the ladies, an elderly woman smothered in expensive labels, came in. She took one look at me, leant away and said what a frightful child.’ He laughed.

‘Do you know what my father did?’ He smiled, his eyes shining in the bay lights. ‘He apologised.’

The room once again shifted. This time they were in a black chamber. A vast blue sphere floated in the distance, reflecting like a circular pool on the floor.

Rinako panicked for a moment, feeling as if she were floating in space. Am overpowering hum filled the room. The surface of the sphere roiled with energy like the turbulent oceans of a sun. A black promontory led toward it. White dots of light were floating all like ashes after a conflagration.

‘You are probably wondering where we are.’

‘It had crossed my mind.’ Said Kurama

Kurogari smiled. ‘This is what you might think of as the power room. But that would be doing it such a disservice. You see,’ he looked around. ‘This is where all the vanguard exist.’

Both Rinako and Kurama frowned.

‘The suits you see are not really them. They are what creates the illusion of their separate existence. Machines, generating mathematical forces powerful enough to bend reality.’ A cluster of lights floated beside him

‘Do you know what happens when you create something that is not true? It generates a force, like a body of water resisting an object pushed against it. A force that can be steered, manipulated. Desire, hunger, pain, love, loss… hate. It’s rather like the election campaign.’ He crouched suddenly and made a dramatic face. ‘The will of the people!’

‘But why?’ said Kurama after a pause. ‘Why do this? You’re already president. You own most of the city. What reason could you have—‘

‘President… ‘ said Kurogari. ‘What is that… ? King of a dream.’

‘Do you know how light-space is made? The conversion process does it let you see a new reality. It reduces you, blinds you to all the others—a lot like your filters.’

‘When my forefathers were first exploring s-light, they didn’t realise they weren’t creating new realities but reverse engineering the old one. All life is just a form of blindness, the obscuring of a larger truth… like a sculpture, its form the remains of what has been removed. Of which it is the ignorance.’ He paused. ‘We are all ghosts of death.’

‘The psychological transplants changed all that. We can now alter what the self is. Overcome it. Scale the walls of the individual.’ His eyes narrowed as he gazed at the great blue sun. ‘See... everything.’ He turned and his eyes blazed blue, as though they had taken the sun’s reflections with them.

‘This is where it is all stored. People’s components, what they are, memories, urges, wishes, dreams. Here they are all one.’ They looked at the vast blue circle, its currents swirling, contorting, mingling.

‘To know a god...’

He turned to them. ‘There are races out there, theoretical species you can’t imagine, just beneath our existence. All they want is to become.’ He turned his glowing eyes upon them. ‘And they want it very much.’

Silence filled the chamber.

After a few moments there a sound came from one side of the hall, quiet and singular. Kurama was laughing.

‘Ahh, I’m sorry.‘ He said. ‘See, for a while I was worried you were genuinely powerful. Some kind of demon.’ He shook his head.

‘Now I see… you’re just a broken junkie.’