The SONG of SHIVA (38 page)

Lyköan wanted to believe. Simply understanding what Sun Shi was trying to tell him would have been a start. Unfortunately, Master Sun’s stream of Zen illogic felt more like metaphysical smoke, and was just as irritating as its physical counterpart.

“Can you be any more confusing, old man?”
he asked with genuine exasperation.

“We exist in a domain currently ruled by what Dr. Pandavas chooses to call the Artifact,” Sun Shi replied. “This has forever been true, this or that artifact and a multitude of others of its ilk. But Pandavas is limited in his understanding. Beyond those limits lies an inexhaustible progression of possibilities, inhabited by beings both sublime and diabolical. Now that you have crossed the initiate's threshold and have experienced those other realms, you have begun to experience a spiritual transformation, is this not so?”

“If you mean my inability to trust any of my senses anymore, maybe you're right,”
Lyköan replied, referring to his recent shift into a surreal perceptual reality
. "But what good is it doing me?"

Sun Shi smiled knowingly. “Do not think this altered state serves no purpose. Though it may feel like an onslaught of shifting chimeras, providing nothing you can really hang your hat upon, those feelings arise from your own current limitations. Right now, you are only experiencing the shadows of these augmented powers, not those powers in their fullness.”

“And that's possible?”
Lyköan asked.

Sun Shi grinned. “Of course, my boy. Why on earth do you think I am telling you all this?”

“I thought maybe to scare me off. It is dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Yes, there is. But keep in mind, as the
Bhagavad-Gītā
assures us: ‘You cannot now die, nor ever unto the end of time’. No mortals possesses such authority.” Grasping one of Lyköan’s tightly clenched fists, Sun Shi spoke with complete earnestness, “But the passage is simple, now that you know the way.” Prying the fingers open, he added, almost as an afterthought, “No more difficult than opening your hand…”
 

The words drifted away in a swath of sunlight that was then pouring through the chamber’s window slats, illuminating the master’s form and dashing it into a quintillion distinct pixels. With hurricane force, sunlight and shadow were driven hard into Lyköan’s flesh, piercing his eyes with painful both brilliance and darkness. The outline of Sun Shi’s body flickered for an instant, before becoming one with the immutable continuum of all existence, no shade of difference between the human being who had an instant earlier been seated before him and the air surrounding his physical form, exposing in perfect clarity the underlying structure upon which all things are suspended.

From somewhere within and behind the old man’s flickering visage, the palette of existence had opened its total depth and breadth, sounding out a resonant, regular pulse, the very heartbeat of the universe. With a start he once again fell into the boundless depths. Eyes squeezed tightly, he braced for impact, but none arrived, only the sensation of accelerating speed.
    

“Open your eyes,” Sun Shi commanded. “We are passing into the universal field ― moving out,
way out
of this world. We are no longer limited by any temporal context ― every false sensory input. We expand, become broader, deeper and fuller, complete in both concept and attribute.”

Lyköan was terrified, but through force of will he meant to drive through his terror.

Sun Shi grew silent. The sensation of movement and expansion accelerated. Lyköan’s thoughts multiplied, radiating out into the abyss, only to return with an unfamiliar, distorted resonance. Angelic forms hovering on the periphery of his perceptual horizon, responded with mocking laughter to the Tanner that now seemed absolutely exposed, directing his passage ever onward. Accompanying the motion, a vast multitude of beings, each the size of a heavenly constellation, composed entirely of pure brilliance, flitted through the visible spectrum, emitting in joyously sublime voices a rhythmic chorus that reached Lyköan’s five senses simultaneously. In deft harmonies, divine music accompanied these great beings, announcing by their song the great measured expansion of the infinite.

In the great gaps between the multitude of angelic forms, enormous dark-winged, terrifying Escheresque creatures intricately filled the varied emptiness between the light beings, edge to edge, sweeping darkly to their own separate but sympathetic, rhythmic pulse. Emanating from this dark but equally-resonant multitude, an inverse baleful moan arose, perfectly harmonizing with the sweet voices of the angelic choir.

“All of existence is eternally perched mere seconds from ultimate extinction,” a metamorphosed Sun Shi Being bellowed as the sonorous dual melodies tolled across the cosmos.

“Individual identity is not fixed,” the interloper boomed to a backdrop of extinguishing galaxies. The angels and the dark beasts had flown. “It is constantly being manipulated by experience and perception, by external stimuli, by every vagary brought upon us by irresistible desire, random loss and hard won achievement.

“All of physical creation is but metaphor. A fleeting wisp. A mere bastard of reality. Delicate and discarnate; a feeble, paltry and discorporate thing. Separated from the spiritual ― and far more malleable ― this reality we find so solid in our impermanence is no more than a soulless cloth thrown haphazardly over a priceless sculpture. In the hidden depths, however, it is We who control every aspect of its motion. It is Ours. It cleaves to us, You and I, obeying Our every whim. Our longstanding agreement with the Other permits this, allowing Us unlimited freedom to do with it as We wish, but only when and
if
We wish.”

When had Sun Shi been replaced by this dark and bloated Entity bubbling menacingly at the center of existence? It was as if a bit had been forced cold and hard into Lyköan’s consciousness, a hook anchored fast into his thoughts, inexorably reeling him in, removing every reference but this single aspect of creation that, like an enormous black hole, the shiny dark abdomen of a gigantic spider, was spinning from itself the infinite courses of existence, pumping out the panoply of disparate realities.

Was he right? Was this thing actually offering him personal divinity? If that were true, why did he feel so threatened?
He felt himself being irresistibly drawn towards this dark entity, like a spiritual magnet or gravitational force, found its wondrous power beautiful, awesome and irresistible, but at the same time, utterly terrifying.

Desperately, he took a totally intuitive tack. Circling the alien core of this über-reality, Lyköan began moving faster and farther in what he hoped was a tangential direction. Slowly, by sheer determination, he was able to withdraw from the darkly erupting central figure.

Then, by folding one potential of the infinite potentials lying before him into another, with shudder and shake, he began truncating the great expanse of the ever-expanding fullness, short-circuiting space at its terminal generational point, the precise instant where and when the ever-flowering multiple present blossoms into being. The very instant that creates the multitude of futures from which all of the individual, discrete physical universes spring and ever onward eventually direct themselves. It was there at that portal, he realized, that the creature dwelt.

Drawing farther and farther from the taint of what he now understood was a dangerous lure, he stretched desperately for the nether reaches, progressively extricating himself, one membrane of non-physical depth at a time, until he was no longer being drawn by the wiles of Its hypnotic snare. Having recognized the danger ― he had managed to survive.

“Ah-hah, I see you have finally found the courage to open your eyes,” Sun Shi said approvingly as the familiar world crystallized again around Lyköan’s single-reality consciousness. “It was only toying with you. Putting you through your paces. Sizing you up. And, I suspect, deriving some twisted pleasure from the exercise. Hard to know. But a common experience for first-time initiates, confronting you with one of its infinite personae. Sampling the exposed soul’s reaction and if possible, usually by subterfuge, absorbing the its spiritual essence. If successful, the poor unfortunate never returns. A dangerous business. But you performed exceptionally well, and without my help. I was ever at the ready if you had stumbled. But you performed wonderfully, didn't weaken, even for an instant. The mark of a true intuitive. Welcome to the club.”

Lyköan considered Sun Shi’s words, thought he understood. “So does this mean I now have
two
sworn enemies?” He meant Pandavas and now this
Other
thing. “Isn’t ‘the enemy of my enemy’ supposed to be my friend?”

“Not always,” the old man chuckled. Somewhere deep within the jumbled intricacies of the infinite multiverse, another supposed truth had lost all meaning.

* * *

In the aftermath of what had been another utterly satisfying bit of intimate human interaction, in its own way as core-rattling as his most recent descent to the center of creation, a lovemaking sequence worthy of legend, like Zeus and Leda, Lyköan lay completely spent in Nora's arms. To hell with any tug humility might have exerted as he bathed in the throes of an exquisite afterglow, the experience had been soul searing. For some still unfathomable reason he had sought this out with wild abandon ever since the cosmic spiritual encounter of earlier in the day had ended. The ambiance of their luxurious Ayutt Haya suite had been absolutely perfect; the light, cool touch of sumptuous silken sheets; the dusk’s sultry tropical sunlight dancing pleasantly through the floor to twelve-foot-ceiling windows; all of it.

In the afterglow, Lyköan was feeling particularly comfortable, blissfully confident, almost courageous. Full of, what was the word? Gumption. Brave enough perhaps, to finally, at long last ― it had been an unbearably heavy burden for far too long ― reveal the complete and unadulterated truth about what had really transpired during his confinement in the Node. The appropriate opportunity had never presented itself before. Perhaps it never would. But for some unknown reason, he felt particularly courageous at the moment. 

“What?” Nora asked, seeing to his clouded expression.

“This may not be the perfect moment sweetheart, but it has to come out sometime,” Lyköan began, then hesitated.

“What has to come out?” Nora asked.

“I haven't been entirely honest with you,” he began, swallowing hard, “haven't told you every sordid detail about myself; confessed that I am not at all the person you think I am. In fact, I am now, have always been, pretty much a complete fraud. If you were to peek under the hood, there's not even a hint of derring-do. No Captains Courageous or E C Gordon. Not even temporary, like Achilles. In fact, when I was given the opportunity, I proved myself capable of hopping for the tall grass like a goddamned cotton tail and was quite willing to sell out, at least abandon, everyone and everything I claim to hold dear, if it meant preserving my measly little life.”

“What are you talking about?” Nora asked. Although she had seen this look before she had never learned what it might portend.

“I never told you the whole truth about what happened during my sojourn in Pandavas’s basement lab. Not the really important part.”

“Well, no one’s stopping you now.”

They were both lying naked, almost nose to nose atop the bedcovers. Lyköan rose on one elbow and began to speak between shallow breaths.

“This life we live, that we find so ― maybe not comforting, but at least ― solid… well, Pandavas proved to me ― as much as anything so insanely counterintuitive
can
possibly
be
proven ― that it is nothing more than one of an infinite number of
potentials
― not even potentials, but authentic realities that exist right alongside the one we are experiencing. And while we may think ― may in fact
be
,
in some metaphysical sense, trapped in this one existence ― with every second that passes, an infinite number of other, just as real and concrete realities, are constantly being created. And in many of those realities we lead far different lives than in this single reality that only appears to hold us fast.”

“Okay, so much for the synopsis,” Nora agreed. “Even if I accept your screwy hypothesis ― you certainly seem to ― how does that make you a coward in
our
reality?”

“Because Pandavas let me visit one of these other ―
uchronia
was his word ― and in that other life, that other existence... things were ― I mean
are
― different. Hell, Karen, my dead wife is still alive. The two of us are still living together in New York, apparently happy as clams.”

“Even if I take your word for all this,” Nora replied, for the moment willing to accept his admission of cowardly guilt, “that you honestly believe what you’re saying ― isn’t it also possible that Pandavas was manipulating you, somehow staging all of it to get what he wanted out of you?”

“Sure, anything’s possible,” Lyköan agreed, “but that's not the point. The point is, that when I was forced to choose between the alternatives ― well, discretion immediately became the better part of valor.”