Ahab Alhazred
That bastard Whitey.
An evil god? What kind of vicious slander was that to sling at a perfectly decent brain in a jar?
The moment I let a flicker of displeasure show at that absurd smear, Whitey clamped his mouth shut.
Not that he mattered. What mattered now was hardly the likes of Whitey. It was my precious candidate for a contract.
"Grrk...!"
For crying out loud. Look at him — he can't even pull himself together. That sound is nothing good. Don't tell me he's frothing at the mouth. A fine mess. I'd thought that with a fair measure of spiritual aptitude, he would endure this much just fine, but it seemed I had rated a mortal's mental strength far too high. Should I have tuned the psychic wave a little weaker?
He can't break on me!
Community addiction. That was the root of it. More than ten thousand years as a shut-in, keeping company with no one but the regulars of G.A.L.L.E.R.Y., and my common sense had gone dull. This is why a person has to step outside now and then. I fretted like a child who had only meant to cup a curious little insect in his hands for a moment, only to watch it start dying — and in the end I decided to step in myself.
A low resonance swelled through the dark. I poured ether into the words — a shard of omnipotence — and, recalling the moment I myself had found light while wandering in darkness, I spoke to the mortal words vested with the power to let him rise on his own.
"......!"
He flinched, then steadied. The mortal dropped to his knees, thrust both arms high toward the heavens, and cried out.
"Yes. Now I see it clear. You — you're the Lord of the Closed World!"
Tch. This time, though, I had nothing to say back. From what the regulars had told me, a divine name — the thing that fixes one's identity in the material universe — is never something you can coin on a whim. Better, they said, to forge a name that reflected the life one had lived, and yet still carried a mysterious air. For a brain in a jar, the only naming that satisfied every condition was that one. The other candidates had been things like Drifter of Eternity, False Immortality, or Will Bloomed from the Abyss. Among them, this was still the mildest and most neutral. I hadn't had a choice.
"If you truly are a great being — an omnipotent existence beyond mortals — then you already know why I came here!"
Well. Look at this one. He had seemed thoroughly hard-boiled from the first impression, and the longer I watched, the more his manner proved to be anything but ordinary. Finely sorting the ranks of Transcendents, the way the regulars do when they run a power-balance God Cup on G.A.L.L.E.R.Y., is something only Transcendents bother with among themselves. To mortals, any Transcendent ought to feel like an infinitely omniscient, omnipotent god. Faced with such a being, he knelt — the barest courtesy — and yet he had not cast everything he was aside to cling and weep and beg that a wish be granted. If anything, he was testing me in return.
An interesting fellow.
It was fine. Better an unbending man like that than one plastered to the ground, begging a god for everything. Even if he was a little insolent, he needed to be closer to a hero than some ordinary man — otherwise, how was he going to spread my fame across the universe later? I was glad to answer his provocation. Cracking open a memory was nothing. Quick work. It would probably be finished before he even registered it.
A low hum rose. I cast out a mental net and raked through the inside of his head in an instant. The brain is an organ akin to a universe; its possibilities are endless, but ability differs wildly from one being to the next. So long as one was not of the Serially Reborn, analyzing the brain of a mortal who had lived a single life at most was, for me, far too easy.
Alright, in I go~
Invading a mortal's mental world was no different from stepping into a house whose door stood wide open. And who was I, anyway? A brain in a jar, aged more than ten thousand years. There were likely few beings in this universe who understood the organ called the brain better than I did.
And so, in a span that by the material universe's clock was not even a thousandth of a second — a mere instant — I read the whole of the mortal's life, and let a low mental murmur of admiration slip free.
Oho...
As expected. This mortal had lived a rather interesting life, just as he appeared. Now, at least before this fellow, I could put on the act of an omniscient, omnipotent god. I already knew everything about him. More than he knew himself.
"...!"
When my telepathy abruptly recited his name, the mortal visibly startled and drew back.
"How do you—!"
"Are you... are you truly a god?"
I condensed the whole of Ahab's life as though it were a lantern-reel of memory, and let that summary flow, unchanged, back into the man himself through telepathy.
"Aah..."
Ahab had lived a life paved with hardship and adversity until he was a man sick with suspicion. Even so, perhaps evidence this certain was beyond even him to deny.
"You truly, truly are a god."
Ahab's manner grew visibly respectful. He had knelt long ago, and yet, absurdly, his back and his head had stayed rigidly straight. Now he was fully prostrate, forehead to the ground.
Well. A mortal, in the end.
Over something like this. Marveling at the fruit of a simple peek that could not even be called a miracle, nor a divine power — a glance that had not taken a thousandth of a second. Not that I was particularly disappointed. Mortals are infinitely frail beings to begin with.
Even sharing a mental link, he did not know precisely what I had done. It had happened in a span close to an instant, and it was hardly impressive enough to boast about besides.
Anyway. The preparations looked complete, so I decided to proceed with the contract in earnest.
I already knew what Ahab wanted, having read every memory. Even so, a thing like this ought to be heard from the man's own mouth. It was an old unwritten rule, and precisely because it was old, a sorcerous, symbolic weight had settled into it. What a human wanted, after being toyed with by others and by fate until he stood at the end of despair, was obvious.
Ahab trembled as he slowly opened his mouth.
"What I desire is vengeance."
When I sent a psychic wave laced with doubt and mockery, Ahab suddenly tore off his visor. Laid bare without concealment was the gaunt, scar-riddled face of a middle-aged man, stained with fatigue, distrust, and a madness he could not hide.
"Khack— khack!"
In the distant past, terraforming had been completed here, but ages had passed, and Golgotha's atmosphere was now too fouled for humankind to breathe. Exposed to it without protection, Ahab coughed violently. He dry-heaved; bloody tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. Even so, the mortal's eyes blazed wide, and he shouted in a voice gone thoroughly hoarse.
"Ruin!"
Now. This was the fork.
There is a common delusion many intelligent beings share. Intelligent beings are truly arrogant creatures. They convince themselves that they, of all things in this universe, are valuable and special above everything else. And so, now and then — no, rather often, from what I hear — mortals appear who pray an absurd wish: I will offer all that I am, so destroy the universe. That sort of inflated self-regard helps neither the one who prays nor the one who answers. Among the complaints vented on G.A.L.L.E.R.Y. by regulars whose contracts with mortals had gone sour, absurd demands competed for first and second place in frequency.
I don't even hope for the commendable act of knowing one's own worth exactly and setting it on the scale. But when one asks Transcendents for a deal, it is a hundred times better to request that they make the opening offer. Then, as a rule, they will do their best to meet you — if not because of causality, then because of pride.
Yes.
"I will offer all that I am, so bring a ruin worthy of them upon those who destroyed my life!"
Exactly like that.
I answered, feeling a deep mental rapture.