Page 7 of Oblivion


  Part 7: Myrrh Desert Park

 

  The Grand Disaster set in within hours of time moving forward, around the same time Brangot and Diotitus made their way to Myrrh Desert Park. From what they had been told, the enemy was not Brangot’s race as they had been led to believe. The invaders were an unreal construct from a universe spawned within a chasm between afterworld three hundred one, adjunct Z, a human Christian spin-off afterworld, and three hundred two, a Mormon afterworld. They were able to break into afterworld one when the Spirit Channel inadvertently crossed over the newly formed chasm. Eventually, the invasion would be classified as an error in logistics and inadequate planning by the Spirit Channel administration.

  As far as Diotitus and Brangot knew, the invading force was still working its way through the administration afterworlds. Diotitus hoped the invaders would be held up in afterworld fifteen, adjunct D, the afterworld of gods, at least for a few hours.

  For their part, they frantically tried to rouse Tif. She was still a Drooler in Myrrh Desert Park, and they needed her to wake up so she could complete her last thought. Then, they could turn on the device and make the afterworlds invulnerable to attack.

  “Tif,” Brangot said in earnest and deposited the key inscribed with her name on her lap. “Wake up, Tif!”

  Helpful pedestrians were warned away whenever someone tried to explain she was a Drooler.

  “Tif,” Diotitus said loudly, “It’s me, Diotitus.” He took her hand in his, and placed it on the key in her lap. “Tif, can you feel this? It’s what you were thinking about. Brangot and I made it.” He didn’t bother to mention the machine-helpers did all of the heavy lifting.

  Brangot kneeled next to her and placed his leafy and knotted fingers on her knee. “Tif,” he spoke her name again. “It’s important. You have to wake up.”

  But she offered no response.

  “She’s can’t hear us!” Diotitus said. “She doesn’t want to hear us. Oblivion will fall around her and she is content to stare into a …” and then he paused.

  Brangot and Diotitus, each holding one of Tif’s hands, looked at the other, both sharing in a communal thought.

  “The chasm,” Diotitus started, thinking about where the invading force had originated. “Presumably near-infinite.”

  “With instantaneous access through the Spirit Channel,” Brangot concluded. He wrinkled his brow and remarked, “Very strange. It now seems so obvious.”

  “So simple,” Diotitus added.

  Diotitus felt his eyes water and he gripped Tif’s hand. Looking into Tif’s vacant eyes, searching for a spark of recognition, he whispered, “Dober Jung said we would be together when we shared the thought, but he never said Tif would be awake.”

  Brangot touched Diotitus’ shoulder and tipped his head away from the Obsidian Sea. “She will still be here.” He stood and pulled Diotitus to his feet. “But, we must hurry.”

  Diotitus looked longingly at Tif, and then the two men ran back to the Time Stream and to the device that would save Oblivion and the afterworlds.

  Moto greeted them by asking if Tif was awake.

  “No,” Diotitus said, “but we had an idea. We need a place to put all of the information. And, we think we know where we can store it.”

  “Where?” Moto asked

  “The chasm leading to the invader’s universe,” Brangot said. “From here, we can tap into the Spirit Channel to move the information.”

  “Interesting,” Moto said. “And by using the Spirit Channel as a conduit, you could have almost immediate access. Let’s find out if it will work,” he said and then instructed the machine-helpers to construct a dynamically growing media to toss into the chasm, and connect it to the device via the channel. “You’ll need to activate the device.”

  Brangot and Diotitus rushed to the device, assembled the three keys, and unlocked it for use. As soon as it activated, they could see the stream of particle information flowing out of Oblivion and towards the unreal universe. Brangot configured the device to operate in a Grand Disaster prevention mode. The device automatically locked down the afterworlds and Oblivion from attack.

  With the device in operation, the invaders were brought to a stand still, and the gods voted to banish them into Damnation.

  Several days following the invasion, Gerard summoned Brangot and Diotitus to the Conservatory where he expressed his frustration over their failure to follow his recommended guidelines. Gerard told them he had been left out of the decision making process, at which time he presented them with a plan for administering the device. Brangot told Gerard in no uncertain terms it was not any god’s decision to make, and the two men left Gerard’s hand-written plan on the conference room table.

  After their follow-up meeting with Gerard, Brangot and Diotitus met with Dober Jung. Dober Jung expressed interest in how the men had figured out Creation Mathematics, admitting that the information was given to him from an unseen presence, and his role was to encrypt the algorithms; he was never consciously aware of the unencrypted equations. Diotitus didn’t understand the wickedly complex equations extracted from Dober Jung’s memories using the Time Stream, and felt he was honest in saying they never solved that particular problem.

  In the ensuing years, Brangot and Diotitus worked with Moto and Dober Jung, and occasionally with gods from other afterworlds. They organized research programs with Conservatory graduates, and helped restore souls that were scattered in the wake of Grand Disasters. Acting as administrators to the device built from Tif’s incomplete burst of insight, they weren’t gifted with god-like powers or anything beyond some limited influence and passing recognition. Many souls would never know that their arrival in some afterworld with their entire soul intact, whether heaven, hell, nirvana, or reincarnation, was due to a one time Greek god named Diotitus, and a chlorophyll-skinned warrior named Brangot.

  As for Tif, Diotitus held vigil for her every night. He hoped she would realize she could be productive in an eternal life. It was not until those few frantic days when both Brangot and Diotitus discovered life does not stop in the hereafter. It had been so easy to over-indulge their vices and to let themselves be content with the people they were, and be blind to the people they had become. Diotitus prayed to the original fire-and-brimstone Gods, hoping a moment of inspiration might come enabling him to rouse Tif from her state of mind. Until then, he kept watch over his friend, and discovered a purpose to his After-Life so he may never again lose himself in Oblivion.

 
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