Death of Self [BF15]
Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2015 2:45 am
The day he realized he couldn’t die was the day he stopped living.
There was a certain chill in the hall, owed to years, decades, perhaps centuries of disuse. The obsidian pillars and floors certainly didn’t look the part, their magnificence untouched by time. A thin layer of dust coated the floor, but such was expected.
Emperor Harlek was home, the first and last visitor to his palace in an age. He remembered when MASS had finally pulled out, going into collective hypersleep after a glorious many conquests.
Was it a freak mutation that turned him into an immortal? Or a curse by one of his less loyal generals? Regardless, MASS believed that it was in death that one truly lived. How one died determined his worth in life. How many he took with him, among other things. Harlek had been denied that gift, and he would never get it back.
The solution had come easily enough. With cryostasis, he would cease to be indefinitely, until thawed. It would be the closest he would ever come to death. And his armies, loyal to a fault—by the time he was done restructuring, in any case—demanded to join him.
He wished bitterly that he was preparing, that his story ended there.
It didn’t.
He wasn’t sure when it was that he “awoke” for the first time. He remembered the sensation of being weightless, floating, ethereal; how much time it took him to go mad and back with impatience, he couldn’t say. When he regained his senses in his spectral form, he released himself only because the alternative of spending eternity aware and inactive was a fate far worse than life.
MASS returned to the galaxy, refreshed and ready for war. Emperor Harlek would not be around to lead it.
He’d left his empires fate with his most trusted subordinate, henceforth to be the new Emperor. The face swap wasn’t hard, and perhaps was unnecessary since they looked quite similar to start with. But Harlek was done being Harlek. He now sat on his old throne, one last time, before his spacefleet vaporized the whole planet and moved on to MASS’s new homeworld, symbolizing a new era. Harlek cradled a small vial, containing a liquid which he only hoped would work on his mind and spirit the way other remedies, such as laser carbines, had failed. To put an end to the man who once ruled MASS, a man who could no longer die, the only option left was to live. He repeated aloud, hoping to drive into his brain his new identity that it might take hold over the memory cleanser, “My name…is Carlos…Carlos Indiana Devine…slayer of men.”
And then the world left him, as it turned to molten slag.
There was a certain chill in the hall, owed to years, decades, perhaps centuries of disuse. The obsidian pillars and floors certainly didn’t look the part, their magnificence untouched by time. A thin layer of dust coated the floor, but such was expected.
Emperor Harlek was home, the first and last visitor to his palace in an age. He remembered when MASS had finally pulled out, going into collective hypersleep after a glorious many conquests.
Was it a freak mutation that turned him into an immortal? Or a curse by one of his less loyal generals? Regardless, MASS believed that it was in death that one truly lived. How one died determined his worth in life. How many he took with him, among other things. Harlek had been denied that gift, and he would never get it back.
The solution had come easily enough. With cryostasis, he would cease to be indefinitely, until thawed. It would be the closest he would ever come to death. And his armies, loyal to a fault—by the time he was done restructuring, in any case—demanded to join him.
He wished bitterly that he was preparing, that his story ended there.
It didn’t.
He wasn’t sure when it was that he “awoke” for the first time. He remembered the sensation of being weightless, floating, ethereal; how much time it took him to go mad and back with impatience, he couldn’t say. When he regained his senses in his spectral form, he released himself only because the alternative of spending eternity aware and inactive was a fate far worse than life.
MASS returned to the galaxy, refreshed and ready for war. Emperor Harlek would not be around to lead it.
He’d left his empires fate with his most trusted subordinate, henceforth to be the new Emperor. The face swap wasn’t hard, and perhaps was unnecessary since they looked quite similar to start with. But Harlek was done being Harlek. He now sat on his old throne, one last time, before his spacefleet vaporized the whole planet and moved on to MASS’s new homeworld, symbolizing a new era. Harlek cradled a small vial, containing a liquid which he only hoped would work on his mind and spirit the way other remedies, such as laser carbines, had failed. To put an end to the man who once ruled MASS, a man who could no longer die, the only option left was to live. He repeated aloud, hoping to drive into his brain his new identity that it might take hold over the memory cleanser, “My name…is Carlos…Carlos Indiana Devine…slayer of men.”
And then the world left him, as it turned to molten slag.