Codrin Bălan#Castor — 2325

After their ‘deaths’, such as they were, Dear cackled madly and ran about the still roaring bonfire, prancing and leaping, forking dozens of copies as it went. Its sim had been set up in the Launch Systems, both Castor and Pollux, precisely as it had in the L₅ System, down to all of the decorations and flames. As soon as they had transferred themselves over to those Systems — something which they had been told would take several minutes across the micro-Ansibles connecting the three systems, but which was as subjectively instantaneous as any normal transit — they were alone. The crowd was gone, the singing was gone, and any chance of reversibility had gone with them. There was no way that Codrin or Dear or Dear’s partner could ever go back. The transit was one-way. “There is no going and there is no back,” Dear had been saying for months now.

“It is done! It is done!” the fox hollered. “It is done and those poor saps did not even get to finish their song! Oh, to see their faces! Crumbling sim, friends forever cut off!”

Dear’s partner also laughed, hopping to their feet and chasing after the fox in a drunken dash, leaving Codrin to sit and smile and watch and think.

There was no more Codrin in the L₅ System. Ey was only here. Ey couldn’t remember being there, for were the sims not the same? And if ey had never been there, had ey ever really existed there? Ey was only memories, and perhaps that is all ey had ever been. Navel gazing and existential crises mixed with the (admittedly drunken) glee of having actually done something. No longer just the passive amanuensis, but now the active participant.

Or, well, nearly so, for it was Dear who talked em into this, as it was so good at doing.

When Dear and its partner finally collapsed into a laughing heap amid the dandelions and shortgrass, Codrin stood, raised eir hands to the fire-dimmed sky, and addressed fox and human and flames. “Hwæt! We great three have made it! We have made it to safety and sanctuary!”

Dear rolled up and immediately focused on Codrin with a singular intensity that ey had seen countless times before and yet never gotten used to.

“We three, the heroes, the shield-bearers of Elf Hive had long since sought the beast. It lived in the caves, they said. It dwelt in the fields and disguised itself as tall grass, ready to ensnare the traveler. It was as large as a mountain and crouched beside the valley, unseen, traversed, summitted, and still it claimed lives in its hunger. Who knows the truth, now, but us three? None who met its gaze had ever lived to tell the tale, and none now will ever hear, for we are the only ones who have seen it face to face and lived, and yet we escaped only by jumping from the world up to the heavens.

“We sought it by night until we realized that it was not there–”

“We sought it!” Dear shouted, hoisting a tankard that had appeared in its paw.

“We sought it by day, supposing that that is where it must be hiding–”

“Sought but did not find!”

“We looked to the morning, supposing that it might dwell between the two, but morning is the time of creation! The beast of destruction cannot live there. And so we sought in the evening gloaming and there we found the slavering teeth–”

“The jaws that bite, the claws that catch,” their partner chimed in, lifting their own tankard.

“And we braved them. We braved, but though we tried, we could not best them. There was no fight to be had–”

“No swords could cut it!”

“No spears could pierce it!”

“–and all we could do was hold off its attack to run away until true darkness fell and we could finally rest. The next morning we would take off running, and hope to gain some distance, but always the beast was there, ready and waiting–”

“Ready to pounce!”

“So we grew weary, for nothing we did could not be undone by the beast. It did dwell in the grass! It did live in caves! It was the mountain! It was all these things and more.”

“So much more, yes.”

“So, the best that we could do,” Codrin said with an air of finality. “Was to leave behind the earth, the realm of the physical, to leap up and up–”

“Up and up!”

“Up and up!”

“–and ascend directly to the heavens to live as gods!”

The three of them all lifted their newly created tankards high, spilling spruce beer and laughing as they shouted, “Hail! Hail!” before drinking deep.

“You, my dear, are quite drunk,” Dear’s parter said, grinning.

Codrin giggled. “That I am!”

“But that was delightful! Much better than signing a waver that we might be lost and then waiting for the appointed time.” Dear paused, tilted its head, and adopted a sly grin that surely meant trouble. “But I do not think that that is actually what happened, for when God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature’s wants to direct it to that place.”

Codrin sat down on the ground as the other two had and awaited Dear’s version of the events.

“I knew that because from the moment that God opened up the heavens and reached down to touch me on my crown and opened my third eye–” It forked into a version of itself which had such a feature. ”–that I was to seek far and wide for those who saw the world as I did and guide them into a fullness of being that no one had ever seen before right up until that ordained moment of my death.

“In short, I began a cult.”

Its partner laughed. “You might well have, given the chance.”

“Shush, you. I began it in all good intentions. I had seen the truth as revealed to me by God itself — for is not God made in the image of me? — and certainly the best that I could do to help my fellow man was to lead them to the truth. The truth is beautiful and cruel. We are not meant to own a thing! We are meant only to suffer, and by suffering, be purified, and by being purified, ascend from this mortal plane through the cosmic vibrations to something akin to ecstasy!

“Power, as the tired saying goes, corrupts, and I bore power. Eventually, I attained absolute power, at least among my followers. I was their prophet, was I not? We were not meant to own a thing, yes, but as the ephemeral physical items passed through our lives, I sampled the greatest among them. The truth may be cruel and we are meant to suffer, but is not even the highest pleasure a form of suffering of its own? Orgasm is called the little death, is it not?”

Both of the fox’s partners laughed.

“And so I took what I wanted and did it all in the name of suffering and poverty. I believed it as hard as the rest of my followers, though. There was no cynicism, back then, down in the physical plane, where all is tainted by evil. I was a prophet and the prophecy applied to me, as well.

“There was no hope of a grand death, I knew that. I knew that I would die in the agony of flames–” It gestured at the bonfire still roaring. ”–and I knew when, so I was expecting the hammering on my door and the shattering of its hinges. I was expecting my team of tame Judases to come crashing into my meditation chamber. My followers! Some of the greatest and best among them! They all came for me, and I let them in full knowledge haul me to my feet by my very scruff — grab me there and I go limp as a kitten!”

Both of the audience members grinned at this. Both knew it to be true.

“I let them drag me to my pyre, my last great possession, my last great suffering, and I wept with joy at the beautiful, terrifying, and irreversible agony of that final moment. Even my screams contained ecstasy!

“The cosmic vibrations welled up within my heart and my mind and my soul and my body and when there was nothing left of me but ash, I found myself here, surrounded by love and peace and all that I could possibly desire!”

With that, it bowed dramatically and sat back down amid the applause.

When both Codrin and Dear had stared at their partner for a long few seconds, they finally held up their hands and surrendered to the pressure. “Fine, fine, but I’m not the storyteller that you two are, so you’ll have to forgive my tale.”

“Pish and also tosh, my love. I look forward to it.”

“You are also very drunk, fox.”

“But of course!”

They clambered to their feet and stretched their arms upward, then nodded. “Alright. My appearance here began shortly after Dear’s. Its gift of prophecy was accurate more often than not, and, at first, it was humbler than any single one of us could possibly hope to be.

“That, you see, was the secret to its power. It was not simply that it would think of others any time a choice was presented between itself and them, though that was surely true, but that it seemed to exist without ego. Completely without. It would forget to eat. It would forget to drink. It would even, though I am happy to count this as a rarity, forget to breathe. Why would it? In its mind, the self was non-existent, and by that point, breathing had come under its own control, such was its mastery of self, and if it was always focused on the betterment of others, it could neglect itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if its heart would forget to beat some day.

“This is the source of the passion in its followers. When one sees that total reduction of the self in the service of others, that does not inspire greed in nearly as many people that you might suspect. Instead, they are unable to help themselves before that one. It’s almost impossible to resist the paradoxical allure of one such as that, and perhaps some more primal need draws one to try and equal that nadir.”

For as much as they had downplayed their ability, Codrin was pleasantly surprised at the fluidity of their telling, and ey sat as rapt as Dear.

“I had a gift of prophecy, myself, though I had not understood it until joining this cult – and yes, it was a cult. It was during a nine-day fast and I had been meditating for at least thirty six hours straight, and in that, I received word from God in the form of a vision: our dear leader’s death, it cackling in the flames, and I saw the reason why.

“It was after that that I started to notice it, the slow regrowth of its ego. It started with little things, at first, a morsel of that required food more than the rest of us received, or an extra smile of particular friendship between it and one of the others.

“I kept this to myself, at first, but eventually it began to grate on me more than I cared to admit. The strange thing about anger, though, is that it has the roots in the self, and so I felt that it was keeping me anchored where I made no further progress on my journey to utter selflessness.

“So I did what any other acolyte would do and began to talk with the others in secret. I was not the only one, it turned out, though I was the only one who had seen the inevitable conclusion. When I mentioned this to my co-conspirators, though, they immediately grew wide-eyed and listened to what I had to say. I didn’t put the pieces together at the moment, but soon enough I began to feel the subtle nudges toward assuming the role of prophet.

“I don’t know who began the mob. Was it Aya? I think it was Aya. I think it was her who began the chant and then began the roar. It was her who battered down Dear’s door and dragged it, strangely limp, strangely smiling, out to the bonfire, and it was her who threw it on, for it had become a slight creature long ago.”

“It was! Aya, that bitch.”

“And then, of course, it was her who grabbed my hand and thrust it up into the air, proclaiming me as the next prophet. It was unanimous. I was to be the one in charge.

“And you can surely guess my fate. You can surely see that it had come much sooner too, as all of those little luxuries that Dear had accumulated were now mine, and I succumbed as I knew I must to temptation.

“Weird though. They skipped the fire and went straight to beheading!” They finished with a bow and sat down grinning at the hearty applause. Both Dear and Codrin leaned in to give them a kiss on the cheek.

There was silence for a while as the three of them sat and drank their ale and looked at the fire or looked at each other or looked at nothing. Perhaps they left to walk the prairie. Perhaps they huddled by the fire in shared warmth. Who knows? It did not matter in that moment. They were home, and they were together.

It was only later, when Dear and Codrin had curled together in bed — Dear’s partner having fallen asleep on the couch — that the fox elbowed Codrin in the side, and ey could hear the grin in its voice. “Beowulf? You are such a nerd.”

Codrin laughed and buried eir face in the fox’s scruff. “Did you doubt that I knew of Beowulf?”

“Oh! I did not doubt, but the fact that you pulled that out to start a story time makes me giddy. How long had you been planning on doing that?”

“It wasn’t planned. It just struck me in the spur of the moment.”

“I knew there was a reason I loved you.”

Codrin poked a finger against the fox’s stomach, getting a yip in return. “Did you doubt that, too?”

“It is always nice to have confirmation.”

“Happy to oblige.”

There was silence for a bit. Codrin began to nod off.

“Codrin?”

“Mm?”

“When you write back to Ioan and May Then My Name, will you send those stories instead of what our actual reasons were?”

“Don’t they already know those?”

“The surface ones, yes. Not the emotional ones, though. Not the ones from the heart. Not the drive to get out, get away.”

Codrin nodded, silent.

“If you can do me a favor, Codrin, can you send only the ones from tonight?”

“You don’t want them to know the real ones?”

“No.”

The finality of the word brooked no argument, and Codrin left it at that. “I’ll get them sent over in the morning.”

“Thank you.” Even the fox sounded on the edge of sleep. “I think May Then My Name will enjoy that too. She is probably already poisoning Ioan with talk of myths and legends, if I know her.”

“Ey’ll rise to the occasion, I’m sure. That’s as much up eir alley as history is.”

“You two do make good storytellers.”

“Well, your clade does seem to attract quite a few stories.”

Dear laughed and wriggled itself closer against Codrin leaving space for its partner when they would inevitably crawl back to a real bed.

“Do you think that Codrin on Pollux did the same?” Dear mumbled.

Ey was awake only enough to say, “I hope so.”