Guest blog - short story by JP Sebastian
A Queen slumbered in orbit high above the planet’s surface in a perpetual state of hyper-sleep. A Seer and Alchemist trained from childhood to channel Divine Prophetic visions. Ensconced in the heart of a satellite large enough to be considered a small moon, the pitted surface grown over with high altitude algae, littered with crystalline structures, pyramids and statues erected by the Queen’s worshipers its ancient visage reflecting indigo light on the planet below.
The Queen was an exceptional beauty but none dared look upon her in hundreds of years because all who did went quite mad. The cost that came with her prophecies; a soul for a future, the Universe always requires balance. Many tried to circumvent the price with various cheats, sacrifices and rituals over the millennia of the Queen’s repose but only one; the Marquis St. Jermaine, was said to have managed to escape the temple with his soul and his future intact. The numerous and conflicting tales as to specifically how he accomplished this feat remain shrouded in mystery; a bargain struck on the outskirts of time perhaps and an inevitably approaching swansong, no one really knows for sure.
Suffice it to say that in the intervening centuries no one managed to duplicate his result and the Marquis didn’t exactly have the time to leave explicit instructions on his exit from the galactic stage but that is a story for another day.
It was rumored that the Marquis and the Queen knew each other in their youth before he had acquired his title; perhaps that had something to do with his singular success.
In any case the sensible penitent let the Queen’s Acolyte serve as intermediary between petitioner and the Queen. Exorbitant tithes paid in exchange for the Order’s interpretations of the Queen’s Prophecies, even secondhand her foresights toppled empires, made Kings out of rebels and drove the foolhardy to madness.
The Acolyte who served the Queen were synthetic life forms. An AI singularity consciousness interfaced with multiple android avatars. They/It were able to educe and interpret the Queen’s prophecies without suffering the maddening affects her faculties had on organic life forms. No soul, no disturbance in the Universal ethers or perhaps the AI was already quite mad.
Whisky Jack found himself a most unlikely petitioner; sent at the behest of his employers, waiting tensely for the results of his query. Things had to have gone badly; astonishingly badly, for one to risk the consequences of coming to this place.
And things had indeed gone very wrong. The all too recent memory of shock troops storming the capital, the Senate fleeing for their lives replayed on a loop again and again behind his eyes. It was a story as old as history, moneyed elite and Generals thirsty for power, add a dose of corruption and the odd natural disaster and you have the perfect cocktail for revolution.
The part of Jack that could still find things funny was laughing hysterically at the endless futility of it all. Humanity had spread its grasp across three galaxies but our daddy issues never seem to get any better. That part of Jack was very small and ruthlessly suppressed in the dark cavern of his subconscious, sealed in with lifetimes of training and an unyielding will.
Jack allowed himself the luxury of pacing the length of the Penitent’s Gallery. The ancient marble floor as smooth and pristine as the day it was set in place echoed under his boot heels as he strode down the mosaicked gallery large enough to house several regimen. Ornate mosaics featuring every color of the rainbow, some even more exotic than the pale spectrum of visible light lined the walls. When Jack tried to focus on one section of the mosaic the images danced and shimmered, forcing his eye and his stomach to disagree on the proper order of things, waves of vertigo clutching at his belly. The momentum of his muscles and years of low orbital skirmishes was all that was keeping him from tossing his cookies all over the nice shiny floor.
The Basilica of the Queen’s Temple was pristine, seemingly untouched by time in contrast to the pitted surface of the satellite crusted with centuries of ancient ephemera. If one were fortunate enough to survive the gravitational distortions at the entrance of the Temple crossing the threshold felt like taking a hard left turn off the main stage of the Universe. If one looked keenly enough the secret workings of the Cosmos would succumb to your scrutiny, madness would surely follow.
Jack had no reference for this sort of thing. He knew the business of soldiering, killing, collecting a bounty. He left the philosophical ramblings to those who had the luxury to indulge such things.
His eye was repeatedly drawn to that damn squirming mosaic. He sucked in a ragged breath, reversed course and paced back down the length of the gallery. 6, 7, 8 strides, turn, don’t look at the opal and crimson tiles threatening to transform into the twisted visage of the carnage he’d left behind on the battlefield. The fallen. The lucky ones dead. Stride 6, 7, 8, turn, parade rest, stride.
Jack had spent his fair share of time on interstellar craft. He knew as well as any Spacer how to deal with close quarters but this place was different, something twisted waited here, something old and hungry, cousin to the abyss-that-hungers-for-all-things. Something that got more likely to come calling the longer he remained in this wretched place. No wonder his employers dispatched him to retrieve the Queen’s prophecy rather then come themselves. Even with the cybernetic and genetic military upgrades, enhanced strength and endurance beyond that of a normal human he felt weak and exposed in this place. It was not an experience he was used to and not one he enjoyed.
His nano-tech was behaving oddly. The microscopic bots in his brain and visual cortex lent him a preternatural ability to assess the variables, make speed of thought course corrections in high-G and formulate tactics; in essence allowing him to leap frog the future by gaming the probabilities of any scenario but in this place it felt like that part of his mind was traveling at a different orbital velocity than the rest of him which had come to an unintended stop in front of the midsection of the crimson and opal inlaid mosaic.
It was hypnotic, the shifting tiles, the colors liquefying and swirling under the smooth as glass surface. He felt the dopamine flooding his brain. He was seized with the intense desire to touch the colors, to drink them, to dive in and roll around in that field of azure and crimson and pearl.
Damn! The Acolyte had slipped a hallucinogenic into the air recyclers! It was the only explanation for what he was seeing. A sliver of the mosaic stretched out into an opalescent snake about 8 feet long. Its delicate oval head set with emerald eyes; not emerald colored eyes, but eyes of faceted gems of the deepest, most vibrant emerald you’d ever hope to see. Gems so pure and hypnotic Jack didn’t notice the snake detaching itself from the mosaic and extend itself cobra-like, rising out of the frame to regard him face to face.
He took a startled step back tripping on his boot heel, toppling over backward. The snake darted forward lighting quick, coiled itself around Jack, undulating softly along its length to set him back on his feet. He steadied himself against a meditation bench and seriously considered collapsing, only years of military discipline kept him on his feet; not that he imagined he’d win a foot race with this thing.
“I’m damn well hallucinating.” he said to no one in particular.
“You’re damn well not hallucinating, Jack.” said the snake.
“Oh, well I’m convinced then.” Jack quipped, sarcasm being one of Jack’s favorite pastimes.
The snake regarded him with its jeweled eyes. “You came here to ask a question.” it said.
“Not me.” said Jack “The ones who sent me.”
“Oh, the fate of the Universe not of interest to the famed Whisky Jack? Just an errand boy for your betters after all…?” Sarcasm was also a bit of a passion for the snake apparently.
“Fate of the Universe?” Jack answered back; not to be outdone by an uppity hallucinatory reptile no matter how other-worldly and shimmery it was. “Sorry, but if you really knew my rep you’d know there’s only one thing that interests Whisky Jack and it ain’t no hero saving-the-Universe flux, that’s for sure.”
The snake darted forward, in the space of one breath to the next curled around Jack’s body feet to head. It radiated heat and light like a living plasma field, its coils becoming uncomfortably hot constricting around Jack. Its face darted close to his neck, little green tongue tickling his ear.
“We know you Bartholomew Winslow Harcourt.” it rasped “We know what lurks in the untested reaches of your soul. We know the one you left behind, the one you can’t escape, you changed your name to Whisky Jack but you carry her with you everywhere you go.” The snake flowed around and over him and up onto the ceiling as if gravity were just a quaint notion for lesser beings. It slithered along the ceiling and back down the border of the mosaic, dipping in and out of the pattern as if it were a three dimensional portal. “Would you like to find her again?” it teased.
“N, no, you can’t, she’s….” Jack stammered helplessly trying to regain some sense of sanity. The heat from the snake’s body still washed over him, enwrapping him in a sense of euphoria, an almost visceral pleasure.
“Dead?” the snake chortled. “What’s that got to do with it?”
Jack had never considered that a snake could laugh but Jack was swiftly realizing that he’d never considered a lot of things. His knees felt weak and he sat down gracelessly on the meditation bench.
“No, I came here for the message…” he began.
“Whose message Jack?” The snake dangled above him from the edge of the mosaic.
Jack was reminded of an ancient tale about a cat in a tree and all you could see was its smile or something. He couldn’t for the life of him remember if the parable meant you should follow the advice of the smiling cat or not follow the invisible cat’s advice.
“The Queen’s prophecy.” he said, trying vainly to clear his head.
“You would give up your heart’s desire to fulfill a bounty?” the snake eased down onto Jack’s shoulder, sliding across his chest, wrapping itself around his left arm looking up at him like one of those children’s toys you could program with lifelike movements. It regarded him for a long moment then unwound itself, sliding across his thigh and down his leg, leaving a trail of warmth and a rising sensation of pleasure that was as intoxicating as it was disconcerting.
Somewhere at the back of Jack’s brain the part of him that still found things funny broke loose and sent a hysterical giggle bubbling up the back of his throat. The giggle grew as it rose into a full throated laugh which brought more of its kind until Jack was supine on the marble clutching his sides at the absolute absurdity of his situation. He, Whisky Jack; notorious mercenary and bounty hunter, responsible for no less than 6 regime toppling revolutions on 4 planets, was tasked with retrieving a supposedly Holy prophecy from a sleeping Queen in order to save the Universe. It made no fluxing sense! Jack laughed until tears rolled down his face and he gasped for breath.
The snake surreptitiously lapped at his tears pooling on the marble floor.
It curled itself into a perfect circle on the meditation bench, subtly pulsing luminescent light along the length of its coils causing the mosaic to shimmer and flow in response.
Jack slowly regained his breath.
”Creature” he said once he was able to speak again “you sing a sweet song but my employers sent me here to retrieve the Queen’s prophecy. The empire is falling and quite frankly a lot more people are going to die if we don’t get the information we need, so if the dead need reckoning it will have to wait for another day.”
“Empires are always falling.” but this last did not come from the snake.
Jack whipped around to see the Acolyte standing at the entrance to the gallery.
“She wants…” the AI paused for what was an inordinately long pause for an AI, as if it were chewing over something particularly bitter that it wanted to spit out rather than swallow “…you to retrieve it.”
Jack straightened up attempting to regain his composure; not entirely unexpected but his least favorite of the possible scenarios he’d prepped for this mission. He strode down the length of the gallery toward the Android Acolyte. Its alabaster pale skin and too symmetrical features impassive as a glacier but Jack sensed its seething anger; not the mood you want in an AI occupying a hundred android bodies even on the best of days. It turned its back without another word and led him down a long narrow corridor 90° off the entrance of the Penitent’s Gallery.
They entered the central chamber of the basilica through an ornate portico onto a balcony running the circumference of the chamber. The huge oval cavern seemed larger than it should be. Jack could barely make out the shadowy outline of the Queen resting on a crystal dais 25 feet high in the center of the chamber. Pulsing with iridescent light the central dais rose up from the oblique floor far below, a column of enormous crystal ensconcing the Queen in a shimmering halo of light at the exact center of the temple.
The snake was here to; or rather a much, much larger version of it. The behemoth was curled about the chamber cozy as a kitten in a basket its massive coils draped over balconies and outcroppings. Its colossal head obscured by the shadowy recesses of the chamber’s heights. Jack didn’t know how but he knew that it was a perfect duplicate of the smaller creature he’d encountered in the gallery. Its coils pulsing with the same luminescent light but its eyes would be of the deepest sapphire.
“Did you ask her to accompany you?” the AI asked, breaking the silence between them.
It took Jack a moment to realize that it was indicating his green eyed inquisitor from the gallery keeping pace with them as they walked the circumference of the balcony toward an ornate staircase carved into the wall of the chamber. Jack looked down at the emerald eyed creature and back to the AI in surprise.
“Uh.” He replied eloquently, both relived and suddenly horrified to realize that he had not been hallucinating the creature.
“Choose.” The AI indicated the staircase. The pattern of gilt loops and swirls along the banister reminiscent of his reptile companion.
Jack looked back and forth between the AI and the snake once again, not entirely sure any rational means of decision making would apply to this situation.
“The past is down and the future is up.” quipped the snake, wrapping itself around the ornate gilded banister “Whichever way you choose leads back to the center.”
The Cheshire cat! Jack suddenly remembered the Cheshire cat gave confusing and contradictory directions to someone on a journey but he still couldn’t quite remember; in the end did it help or hinder the hero to follow the cat’s advice?
“Um, I’m not sure I understand.” he said turning to the AI, its impassive face somehow conveyed seething hatred.
“Choose.” It said again offering no further clarification.
Jack sighed and turned to the snake “Well, kid you’ve been obtusely annoying and no real help at all, so…” he set foot on the landing and mounted the first step going up. When you don’t know the terrain, take the high ground. It might not be spiritual or imaginative but it served him well enough in 180 years of surviving the impossible. The snake let out; what could only be described as, a chortle of delight and practically skipped up the banister ahead of him. Jack wasn’t sure if that meant he’d chosen well or chosen poorly but rounding the next turn he came face to face with the sapphire gaze of the behemoth.
Stepping quickly to the side Jack edged up the final three stairs pressed flat to the wall, slipping past the sleeping beast as stealthily as he could. He glanced back to see that the AI remained on the balcony below. So this was the part where he went it alone; although not as alone as he wished at the moment. The enormous head of the giant snake blocked the stairwell leading farther up, as well as the corridor running south, so he turned north and continued down the moss carpeted colonnade.
Vaguely ivy-like plants lush with purple, green and gold foliage draped from the gallery above creating a verdant screen along the length of the passage. The light shimmered green and gold and the temperature rose as if he were entering a tropical zone.
The little snake kept pace with him, darting between clumps of ivy, occasionally snapping up what might have been an insect or flower petal. A crystal outcropping marked the nose of the egg shaped chamber, as they approached it gave off a deepening purple and blue light. His companion grew very still and Jack took that to mean they had arrived at whatever he was supposed to find.
He examined the crystal carefully and saw that just behind the outcropping was a small door set into the wall of the chamber completely obscured from view unless you happened to stop and examine the back of the alcove housing the crystal. He stooped down and managed to squeeze through the low opening, the little snake remained outside.
The chamber was a smaller oval just barely 4 ft. high and extended back farther than he could guess. He had to crouch down to keep from scraping his head on the ceiling. It was lined with multiple cubbyholes, each one containing an ornate jade or gold or obsidian tube. Inside each tube was a prophecy channeled by the Queen and dutifully collected by her AI Acolyte for centuries.
Jack considered his options. The mercenary in him wondered if he could manage to take them all, imagine what they’d be worth on the black market. The soldier in him calculated how likely that move would be to wake the sleeping behemoth which he dearly hoped to avoid. As he considered the scrolls the purple and blue light from the crystal pulsed more brightly drawing his eye to an ornately inlaid onyx and mother-of-pearl tube near the entrance of the chamber. The light coalesced along its length, the surface of the canister seeming to absorb the color.
Jack reached out for the scroll half expecting it to transform into another wild figment of his fever dreams but the canister stubbornly remained solid as Jack retrieved it from its resting place. It slid free easily. He tucked it into his belt and ducked back out of the antechamber.
The little snake was still in the corridor. Coiled in a perfect circle it regarded him with emerald eyes, head tilted slightly as if sizing him up for the first time.
Jack considered returning the way he’d come but the thought of dodging the sleeping giant a second time drove him to continue on around the other side of the massive oval chamber in search of another way back to his ship.
Passing the egg shaped end of the chamber he glanced down at the Queen. The curve of the chamber affording him an unobstructed view of the dais from this vantage he saw that she was floating above the crystal pedestal in a column of iridescent light. Her long auburn hair spread out around her in a silky halo undulating gently as if wafted by soft underwater currents, the light silken nightgown highlighting her supine form rather than concealing her. Jack felt his manhood begin to rise in response to her voluptuous curves.
The AI acolyte; naked and sexless as a mannequin, approached the dais. Jack couldn’t tell if it was the one that escorted him earlier or one of its identical brethren. It held out a synth-glass tablet carefully placing it just beneath the Queen’s floating hand, as her fingers brushed the surface of the synth-glass sparks danced along her fingertips gaining in strength until her whole body was cracking with electricity, this display continued for several moments as she writhed and moaned in ecstatic fury. The AI android struggled to keep hold of the tablet, taking several intense electric discharges in the process. The procedure would certainly have killed an organic life-form as it was the android wasn’t faring much better.
“How often do they do that?” Jack muttered under his breath.
“More often than they should.” the snake replied.
Shaking himself out of his reverie Jack dismissed the insanity accruing at the back of his brain. The ship Jack, get back to the ship. Get off this Godforsaken satellite. Save the galaxy. Right, he sternly thought to himself, forcing his boots to move along the colonnade toward the descending staircase. He took the stairs two at a time desperately wanting to be out of that place as quickly as possible. Not waiting to see if the emerald eyed snake was still keeping pace with him Jack hurried along the central balcony. He had a vague idea of where his ship was docked and he intended to make a b-line right for it before anything else… well, just before anything else!
The main access corridor was just in view when Jack felt the coils of the behemoth shudder and convulse behind him. The beast let out a mournful sound no natural reptile could utter and swung its massive head into his path. The Queen set loose another somnambulant-erotic lightning storm but now the discharge wasn’t being absorbed by a synth-glass tablet or an android. Fat streamers of blue and white electricity leapt from the supine Queen striking the walls of the chamber leaving smoldering lines of charred rock and the stink of ozone hanging in the air.
The behemoth convulsed, its massive coils smashing the columns of the balcony, throwing Jack off his feet. He rolled to the side barely dodging another convulsive thrust of the massive reptile. Scrambling for cover he ducked into another alcove, this one turned out to have a door at the back of the antechamber which he plunged through without checking to see if he were being followed.
The inlaid onyx and mother of pearl canister still tucked securely in his belt; he made it to the airlock and shrugged into his spacesuit in record time. The little emerald eyed snake was nowhere to be seen. He paused momentarily entertaining the thought of going back for her but the sound of AI footsteps pounding hard down the corridor convinced him it was time to go. He cycled the airlock and was just ten feet from his ship when the Acolyte jumped him.
He grunted with the impact rolling to the side trying to draw his weapon but the AI was on him lightning quick. Its enhanced android frame and not needing to breath made it a deadly opponent. In moments it had Jack on the ground, pounding on his helmet. He would be dead in seconds if he caught a lungful of the caustic atmosphere of the satellite. Before Jack could reach his second weapon the little snake launched itself at the Acolyte, wrapping the android in its coils unleashing an electric discharge like he’d seen the Queen exhibit moments earlier. The Android Acolyte stiffened and fell to the side inert.
Jack approached the now still android and the little emerald eyed snake curled around it. The snake was gasping for air, asphyxiating.
Jack tried to reach for it but it was still crackling with electricity. It turned its emerald gaze to him.
“Go.” he heard in his mind. He hesitated a moment longer desperately trying to think of a way to save her.
“Go!” he heard more strongly “or this will all have been for nothing.” She turned her head from him, the light swiftly dimming from her elegant coils.
He stumbled to his feet and boarded his small, fast, heavily fortified ship and launched. Once he reached the transit window without any sign of pursuit he keyed the autopilot and carefully removed his spacesuit. The chest plate was heavily dented where the AI tackled him. The face-plate of his helmet struck through with a jagged crack. If the little snake hadn’t given her life to save his he’d be eating stardust right now. Why had she saved him?
The auto-doc recommended a sedative but Jack opted for a sonic shower and an analgesic that would leave him clear headed; enough mind bending shit had just happened to last him the rest of this lifetime plus a few more. He’d just as soon keep his senses, what was left of them, unencumbered. He rolled gingerly into his bunk, favoring the ribs which the AI had broken and let a fitful sleep overtake him.
A stow-away also slumbered onboard. In a utility compartment under his bunk, nestled in the folds of a thermal blanket, a silver egg with an iridescent shell lay hidden, within that egg rested a little snake with emerald eyes and a sarcastic sense of humor.
About the author:
JP Sebastian is a fiction writer who resides in the Pacific Northwest while writing her next book, downloading too many Kindle books and taking orders from a very bossy orange kitty. Connect with JP on Facebook or Twitter @realJPSebastian