Related by Lora, Twilit Majz of Many Generations
 

“What is the difference between an operational principle and something that is simply a transient variant related to that principle in action? Does your perception of the operational and the variant reflect what is or what you wish was?” 

I’ll never forget the day my mother threw those two questions at me. I had made up some reason to justify some transgression or other. She had responded by pelting me with those questions, then she sent me to my room to meditate upon the answers. She kept me there for three days. She let me out to relieve my bowels and bladder and had food brought to me. She was always a hard case. 

On the third day I had emerged with a big, “I don’t know.” 

“Fine,” she replied sharply. “You will spend the next several years investigating those questions.” 

That happened when I was eleven. I was still investigating those questions. That was the cold reason I was here, about to be re-oriented with Zygon and Pon who knew where. I certainly didn’t. 

What principles were in operation here? What actually was? Did Pon understand the difference between what was operational here and what he wished were operational? Did Zygon? Did I? 

I didn’t have a clue. I supposed I would find out. 

The now familiar whoosh of reorientation took me. 

We appeared by a wall in an immense, white room. Through high clerestory windows sunlight streamed. It was the same room I had appeared in with Pon eons ago when he first abducted me, or so it seemed. 

I leaned over, poked Pon’s arm none to gently and whispered, “Have I been here before?” 

He leaned down, a smirk on his face, and said, “Why yes, indeed you have. We don’t have time right now to finish what we started then.” 

A thousand sensations passed through my eyes into Pon’s, prominently including passion, anger, lust, and confusion, which discomfited him as much as it did me. I almost slapped him. He backed off. 

The sound of voices and many feet broke up our mutual confusion. Zygon smacked both of us with one of his morae. His thoughts entered ours. “I think we’d better talk this way, don’t you?” he queried, none too gently. 

“I can manage that quite well without your chemicals,” Pon hissed. “When they see us, I will need to be free of you, and you will need to be free of me!” 

“Naturally,” Zygon laughed, “but for the moment, this will do.”

The moment passed. Twelve Iglendas, not unlike the ones I remembered from my brief stay in this room entered. Though they were a good 50 feet away, it wasn’t hard for them to spot Pon, Zygon and me silhouetted sharply against the spotless white of the room. 

The minute they saw us, the uproar started. Pon stepped in front of me. Zygon did too. I let them. All my senses were on heightened alert. I abandoned any attempt at planning, let my deepest nerves, the ones oriented to survival, take over. 

Six of the Iglendas raced toward us. The other six left, I imagined to get reinforcements. Zygon had done a fine job irritating them previously, and Pon…what of Pon? 

“I’ve blown my cover,” he thought at me sardonically. “They will want to eat me alive, and that’s not just an expression,” he continued. 

For one horrible moment the image of a living being strapped to a table being slowly eaten to death hit me full force. A wave of nausea swept through me like a tidal wave. 

“It’s one of their more gruesome rituals,” Pon said grimly. 

“When did they come up with that?” Zygon spat angrily. 

“I don’t know. The rituals of our People before the schism did not include such things. We have always been lusty, eager to fuck, eager to fight, but we were not cruel once. Once we were merely passionate, brimming with life and the lust to experience everything each moment had to offer.” 

“They are perhaps bored nearly to death,” I ventured. “What is their life like here, Pon? What kinds of stimulation are left to them?” 

Before he could answer, the six thundered to a stop ten paces from us. Each crossed his wrists, adorned with the same kind of bracelets I remembered from before. The black stones on their headbands glowed. I felt the power of the Beni begin to reverberate through me, courtesy of Zygon. They were protecting us. With their power booming in my synapses, my awareness expanded to include what Zygon and the Beni knew. The six in front of us were trying to overwhelm the functioning of our nerves with some kind of field. I wished ardently I had paid more attention in physics class! 

“Your off-world friends will not save you,” said one of our attackers. “We will invent new torments, as yet undreamed, just for you.” 

“That is one of your greatest artistic achievements,” Pon taunted. “The making of suffering. It is perhaps the only one left to the paucity of your imaginations. What have you made in generations beyond suffering?” 

The six had no reply. In fact, they seemed confused. 

“Yes, we once dreamed of the glories we would make once the details of daily life were taken over by the Harmonizers, didn’t we?” Pon shouted, waving his arms skyward, puffing out his chest. “But, look at us. What are we now?” 

“Don’t you dare speak to us of ‘we,’” one of the Iglendas thundered. “You are not one of us. You are one of them, the Accursed. You will every one be obliterated soon enough!” 

“You no longer have the power to obliterate!” Pon shouted. “In fact, it is you who will be obliterated!” 

“You think you can harm us?” another Iglenda snorted. “You are impotent as a beast shorn of its glands.” 

I felt Zygon shifting impatiently in my mind. “These arguments are pointless,” he counselled Pon. 

But Pon was caught up. I saw it all through Zygon’s eyes, and it was hard to disagree. The argument of the Iglendas was all they had left. Nothing else mattered. Life, death, suffering, love, all of it served to further the argument, not the other way around. But, I could not keep from seeing that Zygon’s will to punch holes in the delusions of others had become his raison d’etre in much the same way. And what of me? What dead end was I stuck in? 

In the moment these thoughts passed through my mind into Zygon, his concentration faltered. As it faltered, the field being pressed hard against us penetrated the resistance of the Beni. Pon gave a strangled yalp. His knees buckled. I felt stones crashing against my chest. As I fell to the floor, deprived of breath, I felt Zygon laughing harshly as he thought, “downed by the truth!” 
 

to be continued...
 
 

We always appreciate your feedback!