Astral Messiah by J.S. Morin & M.A. Larkin

Author:J.S. Morin & M.A. Larkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643550589
Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press

The crowd had thronged about the central lifts in the Hub, a wave of bobbing heads and shifting bodies so thick it seemed ready to burst through the walls. Hiroko could see them, but more, could feel them, piling in from all the Transit Concourses, come to see her.

To facilitate this, she reshaped the floor, hefting her up above them, as if on a dais.

Cries of awe and rapture reverberated through the assembly, people of a hundred races reduced to tears, or near enough, by a trick any moderately adept wizard could have pulled off. Of course, reshaping the floor would have also caused such a wizard to blow out every light and fry every piece of A-tech in the Hub.

“It’s not magic,” she said, just in case anyone had missed the total lack of technological feedback from her actions. Her claim was an oversimplification, perhaps even a lie, but a lie in service of the greater Truth. While stating what her action was not, she left unspoken the word for what it was, what they would inevitably call it. She could feel that too, bubbling up on the tongues of onlookers, spreading as though disseminated through the collective unconscious. The alternative to magic, the projection of Truth. The one word might describe acts that seemingly violated natural law and yet, were in fact, affirmations of that law.

A miracle.

These demonstrations had become daily occurrences over the past week. A single performance—Hiroko did not fool herself into thinking her showmanship other than drama and theatrics—called for again and repeated after a few days. The gap between performances shrank. Until it became routine, expected at this time. Some minor feat of reshaping Astral Prime with a thought.

It was an extension of herself, and she moved its parts and pieces the same as she might twitch her fingers. More malleable, even, for its bulkheads warped and restructured to her whims. Its heart pulsed in time with her heart.

Once, Kendra had compelled her to watch holo-drivel about a wizard whose magic interfaced with technology—a technomancer the Hollyworld ignoramuses had called their protagonist—a feat any wizard or scientist would have called blatantly absurd. And yet, here, now, having seen the Truth, Hiroko supposed that might prove a more accurate term for what she had become.

Still, it suited her well enough that they called her prophet instead, for she did indeed bring Truth, shattering revelations that might well undermine all existing conceptions of life—and more importantly the nature of sentience—from here to the core worlds.

“More, more, more!” the chant had begun somewhere in the back.

Hiroko made no effort to hone her senses and try to localize the point of origin. Of course, they wanted more. They believed themselves special for having borne witness to a miracle and wanted to reaffirm that specialness, ironically serving to further distinguish themselves from fellow sentients rather than create the unity Hiroko might hope for. Such developments were inevitable, expected, and might even be made to serve in the long run, as these first witnesses became apostles of her message.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.