The Blind Gods
Copyright© 2025 by Wau
Chapter 90: The Hall of the End of Time
The field team, led by an indefatigable sailor with black hair and eyes named Enlil-second lieutenant under Momoko-returned two hours after Ada and her companions had departed. In the chart room, he spread out his own 2D survey, which clearly showed the finely drawn geometry of the Xeno city: concentric circles around a funnel-shaped structure.
“Like an inverted tower, but hollow,” he said. “Our attention turned to the center-the deepest point. There isn’t a single Xeno down there, yet access isn’t forbidden either.”
“Don’t make us wait any longer,” said Andreï. “What did you find?”
He turned his head toward Pallas, but she only seemed tired.
“A vast and solid structure.”
He displayed a photograph: a circular bunker with seemingly thick walls. A double metallic door appeared to seal it hermetically. Enlil stood before it, dwarfed by the sheer scale-the door was three times his height. At a glance, the bunker seemed about fifty meters in diameter.
“We probed the interior. There’s a wall roughly four meters thick, made of concrete with chemical binders from the planet, and an airlock of another four meters, with a new door and a new wall. And after that-mystery.”
“Impossible to scan?”
“It’s possible, but the inner zone gives us nothing-not even emptiness. The instruments return display artifacts. Two more things-look here.”
He pointed with his finger at an inscription in stellar language above the door.
“PILGRIM TOUCH...,” translated Andreï, “ ... I’m missing the last glyph. A triangle?”
“And this.”
He showed a photo of the ground near the bunker. He zoomed in-again, and again. And then, in the dried mud ... a human footprint, bare.
“A good size 42, human make. Rain doesn’t fall here, because there’s a shield above the pit, but sunlight does.”
“The Aleph.”
No one else commented. Andreï rose and declared he would go down there with Pallas, while Momoko and Enlil would guard the pit from above. He suggested that a quartermaster propose to the crew to stretch their legs on the planet. Pallas seemed indifferent to all this, and if Andreï noticed, he made no remark.
They stopped by to see the Xeno on board, also named Alpha, who knew the glyph. He answered cautiously: THE THREE-SHAPED FORM.
“Does that word have a special meaning, Alpha?” asked the captain.
“We are somewhat afraid of it ... but it is not fear. Captain, I don’t have the word.”
“For what reason?”
“Geometric forms, my captain. The mark of the gods.”
The crossing of the Xeno city was disorienting to the highest degree. The monolithic metal architectures seemed drawn straight from a book of mythology, the creatures from a work of fantastical fiction, and their occupations were steeped in mystery. They operated machines or pushed others toward unknowable purposes. The cries of birds and the clattering of the Xeno crowds plunged them into an alien world-yet the simple rain and the songs of brooks reminded them that they were still within reality.
Separated from the rest of the team, they descended along a gently sloping path that led toward the bunker.
“You seem weary, officer.”
“That is an accurate observation, captain.”
“Perhaps you would care to confide in me?”
She remained silent for a moment, then said simply, her eyes unfocused:
“Life is made of hope and disappointment. Disappointments break us. We heal, but often by growing back differently, like a broken plant. The wise and the psychologists call that growing up. But I don’t believe we grow. I don’t believe we become stronger.”
“I agree. Pallas, hold on. Great things await you.”
“Only the present matters, captain.”
The bunker, from a distance, looked like some beast of the primordial night clutching a galactic secret between its jaws. Andreï made a detour to lean over the footprint.
Pallas followed him and ran her hand along its contours. Psychometry. She declared:
“Garen was indeed here. He thinks: I escaped death, the beasts, the Xenos. The Grip guides me. This vast, civilized construction. There are secrets. Weapons. Vessels. The key to my survival and my vengeance. The Grip guides me.”
They advanced toward the door. Immense-it seemed as though they could never quite reach it, as if the place stretched space itself-and then, finally, they stood before it. Like a beast of the night of time, yet submissive, its gates opened slowly at the mere detection of their presence. Everything was dark, so they switched on their shoulder lamps.
The corridor was bare. Another identical door. They approached, and the first door closed as the second one opened. An airlock. To isolate the inside from what?
The door opened-they entered-and it closed behind them.
A nearly empty circular chamber. A black floor, streaked here and there with gold along arcs that followed the curvature of the room.
At the center, luminous, floated a triangle of three sides-thick, as tall as a man, motionless.
“It has all the marks of a Transient artifact,” said Pallas, fascinated and seemingly revived.
“The Three-Shaped Form, literally.”
“The pilgrim touches the Three-Shaped Form...”
“Yes, Pallas. Yes, we should assemble a team of scientists drawn from the five major worlds, who would, over years, negotiate with the Xenos to secure their consent for the establishment of research here-which would mean learning their culture to ensure they understood our intentions. Yes, over years they would painstakingly analyze the composition and dating of the concrete, the doors. The HS would raise billions of thalers to create new analytical machines, and the Transients would, of course, get involved, impose moratoriums lasting centuries while pretending to deliberate, all the while hiding what we mustn’t uncover too soon. And finally, after placing a thousand safeguards, after evacuating the planet and covering it in sensors, an Android would touch the Three-Shaped Form. But alas, we must move quickly. I am like that adventure-novel hero who does foolish things with the great secrets of the universe. So let’s go straight in.”
“And besides, the Aleph did it before.”
He nodded.
He approached the Three-Shaped Form and extended his hand. His hand passed through. There was nothing inside the Three-Shaped Form. Pallas suggested he try from another side.
“Which side?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Any side will do.”
He moved his hand slowly toward the left side. No heat. Not quite shadow, either. He touched-it was almost material, like a solid breath. A sudden, brief humming sound. And then nothing.
Had something changed? He asked Pallas to take readings.
The door opened again. They turned around. Human silhouettes. But they would see no more.
Before continuing the singular account of this episode, it is fitting to recall a general fact about the world of physics. There exist laws of physics-already well known by the twenty-first century, and perfectly mastered by the twenty-ninth-but which divide into three great domains: those that govern the infinitely small, under the name of quantum mechanics; those that govern the macroscopic world, more or less at human scale, under the name of classical, Newtonian, or Einsteinian mechanics; and finally, those that govern galaxies and great stellar clusters, known as hypermechanics.
The fact is that these three models all work perfectly, but in radically different ways. Why, scientists throughout human history wondered, should what is true for an atom not be true for a human or for a galaxy, when all are subjected to the same forces? Why had the great Creator of the universe divided the world into three parts-nested within one another-and why did each obey different rules than the others?
That was what the New Horizon expedition, had it occurred as planned, was meant to discover.
The strange fantasy of humankind wishing to reconcile these three bodies of laws had never been realized-and its underlying cause, as we shall see, might perhaps have been revealed in the years to come, had those scientists ever had the chance to study the bunker.
The human silhouettes behind the great door were those of Andreï and Pallas. Indeed, by touching the left side of the Three-Shaped Form, Andreï had reversed the linear flow of time within the chamber. They had arrived at the precise moment when, only minutes earlier, they had entered the room.
However, this new situation was impossible, for when they had entered the chamber, it had been empty.
When such a situation occurred, the scientists who might one day unravel the riddle of the bunker would explain, the universe automatically corrected itself through an effect of chronological censorship. It erased the segment encompassed by the paradox.
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