I stumble through the streets. My body is heavy, I can barely move. The minutes seem longer and longer. The bar where the reception was held is behind me. Only 40 meters or so. But no-one sees me. The security personnel is oblivious to my presence, my bodyguard has gone somewhere, god knows where.
FAST FORWARD
I am stumbling into a casino. YELLOW. It is full of people but no-one helps me. I half expected security to pick me up, throw me out or call an ambulance. I meet her, Persephone, I have not seen her for years, but she is as beautiful as I have ever remembered her. She looks stunning and I cannot help myself but feel aroused. She looks at me and sees I'm walking strange, at first I half expect her to just ignore me like everybody else but she calmly strolls towards me and kisses me.
I feel like I'm years older. I feel like that time on the station circling Venus. I can feel like I'm in heaven again. It feels so right.
I kiss her back. She drags me to a big yellow room, which is strangely enough devoid of any living souls. What does she want of me is the only question floating in my mind at the moment. And then she starts undoing my shirt. My pants follow. She's taking off her dress. My mind is floating. I'm feeling drowsier and drowsier. I can feel her touching me and I can feel the aching in my groin.
FAST FORWARD
I am outside of the casino. The drowsiness gone, but I'm still srange. Something is changing in my organism, I can feel some kind of drug going through me and my pharmacopoeia is still baffled by it all. There seems to be no drug to counteract it. There seems to be no information of what exactly it is.
I am slowly slipping into the space between sleep and wakefulness. I am still here, I am still walking, but my mind is changing. My thoughts are not my own anymore. They wonder. And I can feel the change in tone and the wish for more.
FAST FORWARD
I wake up in an unknown bed. On the left Persephone, on the right her daughter Leia. I feel shame rising and at the same time a throbbing sensation at the groin. I cannot help myself but feel aroused by the most beautiful women alive. This world has gone mad. What am I doing here in a hotel room with the wife and daughter of the most powerful man in the universe. How can I be the defiler of the Owner's possessions.
I move out of the bed, still drowsy, but feeling that there is something missing. The strange feeling inside is still going on, i check the pharmacopoeia and there is no response. It is dead. There is no security for my life, I can suffer a heart attack and the drugs will not be automatically administered to stop it and save my life. I might as well shoot myself. There is no chance for me.
Then again I could wait for the Owner's goons. They would take care of the problem for me. By slowly killing me and making me suffer for my degrading actions.
The one thing that bothers me is:
„Why?“
I have not chosen this. I do not even have the slightest recollection of this. This has been like eating an apple and not tasting it. It was like having the best massage and not feeling it, like having listened to the best performance while not hearing a single note. I do not understand what is happening. All the technology installed in me has failed me. There are no recordings, no safety and no memories. I do not know what to do anymore.
There is only one instinct left. It says: „Run“. It keeps repeating it, it started shouting it long ago. So, if only to shut it up, I do.
I run on and on, get off of the planet and hide in an asteroid belt.
FAST FORWARD
I am standing over a dead body. A knife in my right hand, bloody and gory, some unknown part of the being in front of me still attached to the knife. I try to remember what happened, but the only thing in my mind is hiding, and now this? I am standing over this lifeless body that I do not even know, I do not see who he is, inadvertently I move closer, I try to see who it is when it dawns on me. Those robes, only one person is allowed to wear them, only one person can own them, and in term he owns the whole universe. I could not see it from all the blood and gore, but now I
knew, I had killed the Owner.
Time seemed to speed up right then, I could feel adrenaline pumping through my veins and I could feel some force inside me giggling through a grin. It was laughing at me. It was happy with the outcome, and it wanted me to die, slowly.
I jumped the first ship i could and was out of the current galaxy in minutes.
FAST FORWARD
I am at the helm of the private-transport-vessel Carina. I am behind the controls and I can only see a star in front of us. There is a distant alarm going on in the cockpit, but I cannot hear it. All I can hear is a maniacal laughter inside of me. It is gloating and it is happy. Before I forget about everything else I manage to check the master HUD. It says impact unavoidable. The engines have been detached. We are on an impact course without possibility of escape. So we will die.
„You will die.“
I could barely make it out from all of the maniacal laughter in my head. And suddenly it stopped.
„Yes, you will die. I have succeed. I have finally killed the Owner. I have managed to destroy the remains. And now my friend, it is your time. Your memories will be rushing back any minute. My strength is gone and so will be the spell. Enjoy your trinkets before you die a quick death in the furnace of the universe.“
With that the pharmacopoeia came back on line and was administering drugs that were slowly calming me, but I stopped it. I needed the clarity to escape. And then the memories came. My mind was overrun with all the pleasures I had had in the time of my temporary insanity. I could see my movements, I could see myself moving on and I could see the deaths of the guards and the death of the Owner. I could see the gloating way in which I dismembered him.
There was no more time. I had to turn around. But there was no solution to it. The slow maniacal laughter was still there, but behind some wall, hiding.
„Who are you?“
„I'm you, I have always been you, I have always given you what you could not get, even when there was no way for it. I am here, but I am nowhere at the same time. I have no life, but I live all the same. I have no feelings, but I am made only of them. You will die and I will die with you, but I will still live. I am as ancient as the universe and as young as the youngest bit of the start before you.“
„You are nothing and no-one, you are not me or anyone else, you are the one who will hate us all while feeling the deepest love for all of humanity. You will kill us with no remorse while still mourning the lifeless bodies. What have I done to merit such a treatment. What have I done?”
“Nothing, wrong is nothing to me. All you have to know is that you will die. And I will live. And I will gloat. And I have won.”