Clarkesworld Magazine by Wyrm Publishing

Author:Wyrm Publishing [Publishing, Wyrm]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2016-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

The two continuities are exclusionary; both cannot be true at the same time, and yet they are. I am drained dry, of resources, of life, just in different aspects. Back in civilian life, I could do both—process data, provide power. What is needed this time is always something different. Technology versus magic.

After months—years?—of painstaking effort, I can get into my wheelchair unassisted. And after all that time, I roll myself toward the elevator, outside to the roof: flat and pebble-grained and only encircled by a slight, low railing.

I try to lever myself across it, fail and slump against the bottom of the railing on my first try.

I remain there for a long time, too exhausted to weep. But then I sense the approach, the commotion below. People looking for me. Visitors? The new-formed, reformed military?

Some things never change.

With renewed strength, I pull myself up with my arms, my useless legs flopping. I hoist myself over the fence, then tumble down on the other side.

I fall, fall for what seems like millennia.

I reconceptualize my direction: not falling downward, but falling upward, skyward, to the eternal darkness that is not death, but liberation. Toward the luminous towers thought to be forever beyond reach. Against the grain of the universe, the inevitable law that human must strike against human, bodies must grind each other down until only the tiniest specks of pain are all that is left. Against the notion that ever more advanced forms of magic and technology can only be used to wage war.

Against existence, my existence, my lack of place in this reality; toward a reality assumed to be unreachable simply because there wasn’t thought to be enough desperation in our world to fuel a jump.

I am streaming skyward while people scatter and rush looking for me below, and I know that once I am gone, I will be—like the luminous towers—forever beyond their reach.

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