The Wars of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (find a book to read .txt) 📕

- 'Mark,' suddenly called Durnyam, whom no one expected to even flinch, despite his merits in defusing that mine, he remained with the status of hostage, 'I know why the door is slightly ajar and not wide open.'

Everyone was stunned. Even the hostages. How-how could this young boy be aware of this ephemeral world? He had hardly been here before. In fact, many of them doubted there was any sign of life here at all, despite the elaborate symbols on the doors, and were more likely to see it as the abode of creatures beyond human conception.

- 'It is not with weapons that we must enter, Mark, but with a kind word,' his eyes glowed with a special radiance and actually had an effect on those around him. 'So far we have proved that we can go through all sorts of trials to get here, so the doors are slightly ajar to show the benevolence of those behind them to our courage and dedication, but to open them fully we need to realise that the end goal of our journey is in fact its true beginning.'

- 'I'll be damned if I understand what this one is talking about...' the Rat muttered, confusion reading in his gaze, 'He must not be with everyone. Paul...'

- 'Stay still,' Paul commanded.

- 'Let's hear what he has to say,' Mark confirmed.

- 'Leave your weapons and go calmly ahead,' continued Durnyam. 'Only then will the doors open to admit us. We are in a holy place, let us show humility.'

- 'Since you know so much, surely you are aware of what these symbols on the doors mean?,' the Father asked him thoughtfully.

- 'I have just translated their meaning for you. They are written in Ultrasithian, a language I know perfectly well.,' the young man added calmly.

It was obvious that Mark was experiencing some hesitation, as were the other survivors so far, but slowly and gradually they lowered their weapons. They understood instinctively that the youth was right. If they wanted to kill them, the ultras would have already done so. On the other hand, everything around was so strange that a person who came to such a place could assume that everything was possible here.

- 'Well, well, you lead us then,' Mark's voice had become soft and seemingly disembodied. 'And we - we'll follow you.'

Everyone's weapons thudded to the ground in the fleshless mist. The hands that had shed so much blood, including innocent blood, relaxed meekly. The soul - thirsting for peace - bowed.

Then, most unexpectedly, the doors creaked and slowly opened.

'I must not waste my days trying to prolong them. I must use my time.'

Jack London

^^^

- 'Well?,' the Voice asked him. 'Was that what he was expecting?'

- 'I never thought such a thing could happen!,' exclaimed Paul.

- 'It's the so-called timeline. Or a scene of incessant replay,' repeated the Voice.

- 'So this scenario will repeat endlessly?,' asked Paul, who had studied enough physics, and quantum physics at that.

- Your work is almost complete, but only in its first part. You were in the role of attractor.

- 'Huh? 'What?,' almost shouted Paul.

Mark and the others were able to hear the voice quite clearly now. They didn't need someone to explain to them that this was the same voice Paul had spoken to them about when he had disappeared for a few hours.

- You are the one around whom the system revolves, as you determine its degrees of freedom.

- 'But how could it have come to this?,' said Paul, somewhat indignantly.

- 'It's very simple,' the voice replied. 'Apart from your innate telepathic abilities, you became an important part of this causal cycle after you killed Voltarian.'

- 'Excuse me?,' Paul muttered.

- 'You heard me correctly. You killed him,' the voice repeated in a slightly admonishing tone.

- 'Who is he?,' interjected her Mark.

The voice pretended not to hear him. But this silence was downright icy.

- Ultra City is not what Jacob Wallace told you it was. As you can see for yourself, it's a zone of peculiar anomaly in space-time. According to the anthropic principle, there must be observers. The Archanaeans were soaring high in the sky. They were most comfortable doing so. The problem is, you've already killed a lot of them. And deliberately at that. For which, by the way, you have no excuse!

- 'You mean we brought all this imbalance on ourselves just by shooting a couple of nothing and no chickens that were about to kill us,' the rat nearly screamed. 'What does that look like? That voice, if it's going to be a whistle, seems to be mocking us maybe!'

Mark thought. And for the first time ever, he refused to take any part in the argument.

- 'It is too obvious that there is a higher order than the material world in which we currently find ourselves,' the Voice continued. 'You've been over half the planet, you've killed a lot of bastards, you can even sense it internally, and you keep denying it. I wonder if I shouldn't feel sorry for you. But still. here the voice became serious, ‘Still, I'll try to help you, as I did before. Your work isn't over yet, and it won't be over soon.'

- 'You're telling us about some parallel worlds,' Grandpa Jack dared to ask, 'Even a cowboy like me knows that physicists proved it centuries ago. We can even perform collapsar jumps. To warp space. But only the people in high command have access to these delights. We're just pawns and cannon fodder. Nothing more!'

- 'It's obvious you know nothing. It's even obvious,' the voice uttered with some poorly disguised tension. 'You could have died hundreds of times. You could have never even gotten out of that space-time anomaly, rather reminiscent of a black hole, but extremely different from it. And you keep repeating the same mistake over and over again. Why?'

Durnyam, who had led them here, and had read the writing on the door, was also silent. He felt the voice was right. It was not as they imagined it. Quite the contrary.

- 'Well, tell us,' said Mark, 'if you are the Supreme Mind, and we have come to Ultra City to find that it never was, if we have willingly or unwillingly done all your bidding along the way, at least tell us where Jacob Wallace is, or at least what is left of him?'

- 'Well, that I can no longer tell you,' the voice stammered openly. 'You'll have to find him yourself, and then you'll find out the whole truth about what's really going on around you and where you are right now. So far you have only found out half. The bandage is still on your other eye and is preventing you from seeing the whole picture.'

- 'I think it's time to go home,' Sam Wallace called somewhat unsteadily. 'It's obvious we're not going to get any other help here.'

- 'I think we've already got some. And Ultra City does exist, but not in the material sense.,' Mark spoke quite confidently. 'And when we find Jacob, if we find him, everything will fall into place and the puzzle will fall into place.'

- 'Exactly,' the voice agreed, and said no more.

The whole scene around them could not be compared to anything they had seen before. It was absolutely intangible. It was like they were in the middle of nowhere. But this time it couldn't be called ‘nothing’ at all. They had, apparently, passed into the next intellectual level, and perceived the environment differently. That is, it was becoming more and more material, but it remained immaterial at the same time. It was quite difficult to describe! Maybe they were brand new people now, maybe not! Who knows time was going to tell!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: ELOHY

Elohy embodied the more progressive views of the western part of the planet, for the logic of survival there was built on raw competition rather than brotherhood and equality. The business model of this empire was borrowed from the ancient ancestors who lived before them in these lands - the immigrants. The capital city was named in their honour. But strange as it was, there was no connection between these ancient inhabitants and it other than the name and the business model mentioned. How special the city itself was could be judged by a few characteristic features that immediately stood out.

Firstly, unlike Ensarian, greenery was not abundant here, but that did not make the city any less beautiful, on the contrary it gave it a kind of technocratic charm that had contributed particularly much to its reputation as a settlement open to the entire galaxy. Its population was slightly larger than that of its rival, but it was spread over an area nearly twice its size. Therefore, ultramodern and ultratall buildings and all sorts of other constructions were in abundance and could definitely anchor the gaze of any newcomer with their raw beauty. The capital's main income came from trade in interovore fuel and zegandarian kevlarite, but also from colonizing certain resource-rich areas of the planet, such as the autonomous region of Synthros. But there was something in which its rulers had never succeeded, namely the transition from commodity to intellectual capitalism. Things were still too materialistic, and resources were depleting faster than the growing population.

Another characteristic was that all boys over the age of fourteen were required to join a special unit called the Young Lions of Imgradon, from which, after an intensive six years of grueling training and drill, and after successfully passing an examination, they emerged as the ‘Angels of Imgradon,’ the foremost defenders of the welfare and security of this place. Last but not least, valor and honesty were honored to a certain extent, but the free expression of feelings was not. The youths could not play together if they chose, being too busy with more important things to fill their time, and chosen by their parents.

Thanks to advanced scientific work and reliance on the haploid chromosome set, almost unlimited possibilities were available to remove certain defective or non-functional genes in the respective homologous pairs, and parents in particular had the right to order the isolation of genes related to their children's aging process. As a result, each family had on average one child and births had become relatively rare. Growth was always persistently positive, due to the extreme increase in life expectancy. Which, in turn, created some anxiety. And perhaps rightly so!

No less perplexing was the so-called transplantation of memories. Parents wanted their children to be proud of their ancestors and could order this before birth itself, whereby trained bioengineers made the appropriate adjustments to the embryo's development. It would definitely seem a bit frightening if something went wrong. But the Birth Control Commission that was formed for this purpose was the linchpin of this whole policy that was being pursued. A policy of expansion and domination, but also a sense of insularity despite all this cosmopolitanism.

Any aliens that came from other parts of the galaxy were welcome, but not civilians from the other surface polities of Zegandaria. They were immediately treated as spies and suspected.