The Blind Gods
Copyright© 2025 by Wau
Chapter 108: Additional Questions
The Heir of Caliban said nothing more. It would have been ambitious to claim that everyone had understood-and for those who had understood, that they truly grasped it. When some minds both understood and realized, the vertigo was such that thought itself became elusive.
In the sky, other great luminous spheres were being towed, and they were multiplying across the surface of the planet.
- “Your plan was based on sending a human to the far end of the universe, having him activate a temporal beacon, then come here with a messenger ... and an Armor, to activate the Form of Three?” Andréi asked. “That seems terribly complicated. You are superior minds ... why not simply create a machine? After all, the Beacon of the End of Times was one.”
- “You are a machine like any other,” the Heir replied simply. “But you have one advantage over machines of metal and electronics: you want to live, to survive, you exist within mutual-aid societies. You are resilient to everything. Moreover, when faced with a mission, when faced with danger, you analyze and know how to adjust course. Finally, through mysticism, you are capable of giving your lives for a purpose. No machine is more robust than a sentient society endowed with a survival instinct.”
- “All right, but why activate The Empyrean Gates in the past? Why not do it at the End of Times, where you were?”
- “For one material reason and one philosophical reason: the Tower is an amplifier that extends perpendicular time across the entire universe, and it requires considerable energy that does not exist in the future. Moreover, we needed everyone to be here ... we have Transients who disagree with the natural course of transcendence ... and we had to bring them back to us before leaving. We all leave, or no one leaves, because each one is necessary for the final journey.”
The Wau, still seated, pointed to a luminous sphere in the sky.
- “Is that them?”
- “Exactly. We need everyone, including the one you saved within the Simulation.”
- “And the Transients the Aleph killed?”
- “The Pilgrim? He did not kill any Transients. He is the Pilgrim.”
Silence. These gods did not know everything.
- “You are at war with the Transients, then?”
- “We are Transients of Transients. We have transcended multiple times. Wau, Armor Bearer, we know your parable of the dog and the rifle, so allow us to complete it. There was a time when we were Transients among Transients. Some of us before the moment you are living, others after, others precisely now. In our previous attempts, we exposed our plan to our Transient peers through temporal probes sent into the past-but some rejected it. Some opposed it. Some refused the path of further transcendences. And some did everything in their power to ensure our project would fail.”
- “Previous attempts?” Gulmira asked.
- “Our universe has gone dark and reignited many times already through interactions with other universes, and we have made many attempts-and all of them failed. However, we succeeded in communicating from one Big Bang to the next by configuring, at the last moment, the arrangement of matter, so that within the cosmic microwave background one could read the instructions for improvement with each attempt.”
- “I don’t understand,” someone said. “The Transients who oppose you-won’t they go into the future? Aren’t they among you?”
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