StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Here's a short story I wrote a long time ago, about the passing of the main character within my personal universe. I'm sure it is far less stylish than my recent works which I shall post as they are done. I welcome all criticism and commentary.

This is part of a project to detail an outline history of my personal universe, with details of major historical events and figures being detailed in longer works.

Alternative Reality Construct

For the millionth time I kill myself, it is something of a challenge to find new and innovative ways to do it. This suicide involves a pool of molten metal, a trapeze and setting gravity to be something low. I let go of the trapeze at the high point of its swing. I can feel the heat from the pool of liquid gold from the full distance, I do not look forward to dying but it is the one way I can rebel against my captors. As I fall I roll elaborately, the crowd gathered around the circus tent cheer and applaud. I pull my arms to my sides and become as aerodynamic as I can with my current form but this has a minimal effect. I sweat from the heat, beads of water cascade down my body, I wipe some off my forehead. It like I lingers in the air, the pull of gravity being as slight for it as for me. I am only five metres above the pool of gold - my skin burns from the heat, blisters form and my hair burns away. The crowd gasp in polite awe. I plunge into the pool, the pain is unimaginable and I feel the familiar grey feeling that is dying.
My eyes close, or perhaps it is my sight that stops but either way the world falls into shadow. Wondrously the pain fades and a sense of calm passes over me as I move into the blissful annihilation of death. I look forward to ending, to finally ceasing to exist, to being free.



At the last moment I am snatched from my bliss. Around me the world changes. My eyes do not open but it is as if they have. I have a whole and perfect body again.
My head is tilted upwards to look up at the huge blue moon of my original prison, it looms overhead hauntingly if I screw my eyes hard I know that I could almost imagine a face on it. I do not screw my eyes, the novelty has long worn off. I look around me, everything is the same as it is always, a comfortable chair replete with parasol and a half-finished cocktail, a pristine beach stretching from horizon to horizon and an emerald green ocean gently lapping at the silver sands of the beach. It is idyllic.
I check that my reality is still the irreality that I have been resident in for countless years.
It is.
Long, long ago I still had hope that I could escape, be pardoned or be executed. Anything to be free.
This fraudulent reality in which I exist is no illusion, it is no trick of holograms, forcefields and scents. It exists, every atom of this universe is real, there is no governing force apart from the laws of physics and perhaps to some extent myself. It may seem egotistical to say it but I am the most important being in this universe, it would not exist without me, it indeed exists solely for me.
I have certain power over this universe, near total power in fact. Matter shapes itself to my will, I can at will create and destroy lives, if I wanted too I could utterly change this universe to something else. I could expand it or reduce it to a single room. My own body can be altered similarly, I can be anyone, anything, with a thought. The only restriction is the need for some matter to be me.
For the first few millennia I amused myself with the powers. I was after all a god, which is perhaps what I had strove to become in the real world and it was for this infraction that I was imprisoned for all eternity. But omnipotence over a falsehood eventually grew tiring.
For some absurd length of time I reduced myself and reality to a single perfect atom. Even then though I appreciated that I was still a prisoner. Occasionally people from reality visit me, their presences are often unwelcome, they are here not to see me but to see the greatest villain their history knows. I only know that they are from other places because I cannot alter them. Some of the visitors though are discreet merely watching me or playing along in the elaborate games and dramas I fill my time with, others annoy me with hundreds of questions and refuse to leave until I have satisfied their curiosity and there are others who come here to try and kill me.
Some of the visitors are not visitors at all, I have come to realise that some are in fact characters created by my subconscious will. It is frightening to me that my mind creates people to interact with me, it makes me truly aware of my solitude. Of course I could have, and have, recreated any period from own history and all the people I have known, loved and hated. But they are not the people I knew, loved or hated. They are replicas, imitations of a reality that is long dead.
Time here is different to there but I am not actually aware of the difference, it may flow slower here and the outside universe may be coming to a sad end or it may be accelerated here and only a year has passed outside since my imprisonment. Either way does not matter. All I know is that I have been here for millions of years, thousands of times longer than I lived in the real world. I can think of no crime that deserves such a disproportionate punishment but perhaps I have some bias in this issue.
A tall skinny man in a straw hat and garish shirt comes over to me, his face looks bewildered and familiar, I do not need to remember the name, “Hello. We hear you killed yourself again,” his voice is cold. He is not the man whose face he wears.
I ignore him.
“Well we would just like to again remind you that such an attempt in no way affects us. Your suicides serve no function in any way, if you hope that through such behaviour you may eventually be released you are mistaken.”
I continue to ignore him.
His dispassionate voices shows displeasure, “Just a friendly reminder.”
I turn away from him but he appears in front of me. There is no movement or sudden appearance he is just there as if he had always stood there and never behind me.
“Are you happy?”
I laugh and start crying, “What do you think? I’m like a museum exhibit to you people, something to tut at and be glad of your better ways, something to sustain and keep alive just to show that you do not kill your enemies and so assert your self-righteous morality!”
He considers this, “We do not understand your discontent. You exist as the focal point of a god-type alternative reality construct. All things are possible to you. There are many quadrillions who enjoy existence in identical circumstances.”
“But they choose that existence! Are there any others who are similarly imprisoned in one of your damned alternative reality constructs?” my voice is weak and pathetic.
He shakes his head, “There are no others. Probably. At least there are none formally by Consensus of Infinity of the Universal Republic.”
“Why am I the only one? Why in an infinite universe I am the only one who has been deemed dangerous enough to be imprisoned for eternity?”
“In your lifetime you successfully orchestrated the murder of billions, the consequential deaths of trillions and the destruction of whole galaxies. All others who conducted similar crimes were destroyed by you. You are the last remnant of the Age of Chaos and as such remain a danger to everything,” his voice is dispassionate and entirely divorced from the man whose image he takes.
I sob at him, “How am I a danger? How in Arnias’ name could I possibly be of any danger to anything?”
“This has been explained to you many times. And you still continue to refuse to accept the responsibility for the evils you caused and would have continued to cause had you not been safely stored. I will not waste my time,” he dismisses me with a wave of his hand.
I fall onto my knees, some part of me recognises the beautiful silkiness of the sand for the millionth time, and grab his ankles. His face stares at me with emotionless eyes - there are animals and simple machines with more emotion than this ‘person’, “I wanna die! I want to die and be over with. Cruelty would be to keep me alive! Kindness would be to end me!”
His face shows some sign of emotion, amusement, “We will permit your request.” He waves his hands dramatically and I feel the familiar feeling of dying again. There is no pain. My world greys and I feel myself drawing to a close.



My world fades to black then blossoms into a vision of hell. My soul is crushed.
My head is tilted upwards to look up at the huge blue moon, a pristine silver beach borders on an emerald ocean both stretch from horizon to horizon. I see the chair, cocktail and the parasol. He is sitting there.
I concentrate on the world I see around me, I visualise it changing to a more conventional mythological vision of hell and the world changes accordingly. My private ocean becomes a sea of fire, an endless lake of flame. My beach becomes lava, I have made this body indestructible for the time being and walk on it, my feet communicate only a notice of the warmth but no pain. Above me the cerulean sky turns blood red and the moon explodes showering the world in further fire and brimstone. My sadistic visitor abruptly moves into the air and looks around unimpressed. My own body I change to a demonic form. I charge at him screaming curses in all the languages I have learnt or devised. I headbutt him, my horns stab into him, I feel ecstasy. He dissolves into a mist and reappears behind me.
I change the world into dozens of forms and try to destroy him dozens of times. I unleash every fury and onslaught my imagination can conjure, change the laws of physics so that he cannot exist and unmake existence itself. Each attack is repelled, avoided, countermanded.
Eventually I give up and restore it to its original state. He sits down in an identical chair that has appeared beside mine and gestures for me to join him. An identical though full cocktail appears beside him, he drinks at it and gives a convincing impression of being satisfied. I am still disgusted at his sadistic torture of me but have given up hope of any retribution. I sit down in the chair and finish the cocktail, it is an old favourite but I take little pleasure from it.
“I’m sorry,” he actually looks sincere, “It was a cruel thing to do.”
“Fucking bastard,” I laugh, it is perhaps the strongest laugh I have made in all my imprisonment, “You know, stop believing your own propaganda and look at what you just did there. That is sick, that is evil. I am so much better than you.”
His head hangs in shame.
Some time passes during which I appreciate the gentle noises of the ocean and wind.
“Is there nothing that can be done to help you? Anything?”
“Free me or kill me. It’s that simple.”
“And you know that neither can be done,” he speaks to me with the condescending tone you’d address an infant in.
I create an old-fashioned gun and shoot myself in the head, I let my body die. Again the familiar feelings.



Groggily I wake up, I’m lying on my back on a beautiful beach. Two small silver balls, formerly the sentry drones guarding against anyone who may come to rescue or assassinate me, lie fizzling in the sand. Atrium’s huge blue moon lies above me suspended in a sky of gentle blues and greens. A long silver and grey cone is lying on the beach, from the devastated wreckage of the chair and the damaged jungle I gather that it landed rather violently. It is dimly recognisable as a ship, I stand up and walk over to it, it is hot to the touch. A hexagon disappears, a tall skinny man with a bewildered, familiar and welcome face appears in its stead.
“Well, don’t you recognise a jailbreak when you see one?” I have not heard his voice in person in many years. I scrabble into the hatchway, I hear machine voices telling me to stay still and as the hatchway closes I catch a glimpse of some terrible machine flying over the horizon. There is a brief vibration and the ship’s hull becomes transparent. We are in space, behind us the world of Atrium and its moon disappear in seconds. Space collapses around us, the stars explode into a chaotic web and I laugh.
I am told of the happenings since my imprisonment. There have been riots, wars, coups and much political back-stabbing. I am given a lengthy lecture about the difficulty he had in rescuing me. I complain about not being rescued earlier and he offers to return me. I start to cry and hug him. Later when we are hidden within a star and are probably safe from being found I tell him about the weird dream I had.
“A million deaths and millions of years of imprisonment? You are, my good friend, the owner of a devastatingly powerful imagination.”
“I know, but in that nightmare it was imagination which kept me going.”
“Ahh you,” he hugs me again slapping me on my back again. After a few minutes of travel the ship lets spacetime revert to normalcy and we slow down - I am told we are halfway across known space, apparently during my short imprisonment things have already changed considerably.



I lived for a few centuries. There were good times and bad. I had several children, bringing my total number of real children into the low forties. I saw wonders not figments of my own mind but real and unique amazing sights. As I went through life I eventually felt satisfied with the sum of my own contribution to history and the universe. Travis had decided enough was enough by then and had died. I decided to keep living until I died naturally or was killed.
A disease, an engineered virus specifically tailored to my genetic structure, was produced by some people who still resented me for the atrocities I had been trying to redeem myself of. I was infected with it and have spent the past 3 weeks dying. It would be the easiest thing to cure the disease but I have decided to die and this seems to be the medium through which I will.
I have no fear in death because I’m happy with what I’ve done.
Yet, I must confess now that I have a secret terror: that I will die and wake up on the beach. That all this has been some deception of them or my own mind. I thought I was, perhaps I was, living in a perfect illusion. It’s always been a concern at the back of my mind and despite the best efforts of the best philosophers of hundreds of galaxies I have found no way to know what will happen when I die. Will there be the moon or was that all some horrible nightmare? It is a question that has driven me insane.
I step out onto the balcony of my deathbed’s room. It is a cool night and the breeze brings to mind thousands of memories from such nights. Lovers, friends, wild parties, adventures... and less happy times. I have only a modest residency, my own importance is much diminished from my zenith as dictator of all known space. It is on the top floor of a building which I once helped design.
I try to balance on the balcony waiting for a moment of my choosing to hurl myself to the ground. Ironically my weakened body robs me of the control and dignity I want and my legs collapse and I fall towards the ground. I close my eyes and hope this is it.



I pass the point I have reached a million times, the last awareness fades from my body and I die truly and finally.
There is no moon only darkness...

A recently finished story. I chose the second person to make the reader more uncomfortable with this character. I'm in too minds over whether the ending is a happy one or not. Hopefully this will garner more responses. 80 views and nobody even felt like saying don't bother? Chronologically this takes place before Alternative Reality Construct.

The Inevitable March of Progress

Your car stops outside the building and you nod to your partner Rian. A gun slides out of a holster and you open the door, there are flames in the burnt-out shell of this rebel stronghold despite your firmest orders to Enforcement to preserve all evidence. Orange flames glimmer on pearlescent white. Someone’s going to get a nice beating for that failure. Regardless the operation seems to have gone successfully and waiting troops salute you as you exit the car. There is only the occasional scream, likely disciplinary actions among the troops.

“Sergeant, how many rebels have been arrested?”

“Twenty-three out of twenty-eight, five were able to kill themselves before the gas took effect. Those were the same dogs that started the fire. We ourselves suffered zero casualties.”

You shrug at that, Enforcement conscripts are expendable, plenty of young lads eager to die in service of Dask. The numbers are more than you expected, more than you need. Only a handful needed to be interrogated more than cursorily, the rest would serve as examples to the public, their excruciating deaths mandatory viewing.

“Congratulate your forces sergeant, they have done a tremendous service to the righteous cause of our Dask,” she surveys the scene with an air of contempt, “Have the scum loaded into the wagons. And tell the guards that if any of the captives come to harm in transit then they and all their sons will be castrated with acid.”

The sergeant goes a bit green: revulsion from the thought of a man’s line being ended but also disgust at the…compassion Rian seems to be showing towards the traitor scum. Muscles in his body tense and you can see him easing into a combat stance. The mouth opens but you pre-empt him, “Are you questioning a direct order from an inquisitor? Do you regard yourself as so above your station that it is your position to doubt your superior? Perhaps my colleague’s threat should be applied to you, a reminder to you Enforcement dogs that your proper place in life is always beneath the heel of Dask’s Holy Inquisition.”

“No sir, I am a faithful servant of Dask sir.”

“How impudent to tell an Inquisitor that you are faithful. You really think yourself that highly, that a sergeant in the Inquisition can know more of faith than an officer of the Inquisition? I think such heresy would do well to be expelled from the gene pool,” you gesture at the man’s subordinate, “Bring acid Lance-Corporal, and arrange for the son to be visited.”

The sergeant cries, “My son, please in god’s name, in Lord Dask’s name no! He’s only ten for god’s sake! Don’t make him suffer for my foolishness, kill me but dear god do not butcher him so!”

Though there were far greater physical punishments which could be inflicted and sustained on a man but there was little which terrify could him as much as the knowledge that his unbroken lineage stretching back to god’s creation of the world was about to be shattered. The weakness this pathetic man showed as he writhed and begged and pleaded did little but affirm your view that this uppity dog needed to be neutered as would any common mongrel.

“It would be criminal if we were to waste a perfectly good footsoldier in Dask’s crusade,” the sergeant’s eyes are joyous, “just because his father is this scum. To let this man live would be a greater punishment to him than sparing him the humiliation he will suffer as a eunuch. Don’t you agree?”

“There is no need to punish the child for its father’s sins. It can be spared, but the father cannot,” Rian never toys with her victim’s mind as you do.

“How?”

She looks away from you and studies the man, to fall so far in such a few seconds, the very nature of power. The crisp grey uniform is soiled by dirt and the terror-sweat of the undeserving coward it covers, “He has many years of loyal service, to publicly execute him and shame all who knew him for this one final lapse would be unjust,” she pauses, indeed toying with the man, “Kill yourself sergeant, and be thankful that we have been as generous as this.”

The mutt is thankful, dribbling gratitude as it sticks its gun against its head and then dribbling brain-matter as it slumps on the ground.

You order his successor to dispose of the corpse and fabricate a suitable lie.
As you’re supervising the loading of the chained rebels into the wagons Rian comes over to you, “None of those we caught today were known to us.”

“Twenty-eight killed whom we didn’t know about is merely twenty-eight whom we did not have to expend effort in discovering,” true but you’ve dodged the point.

“I know that,” she’s agitated, “but for not one of twenty-eight persons in this building to have any past record? Either their numbers are far greater than we have ever guessed or our intelligence is utterly incompetent. And as disturbing as both those possibilities are there is still the worst case where the Inquisition ourselves have been infiltrated by rebel forces who seek to undermine our efforts against them.”

Her words ring true with doubts you have been concealing for months now. Although those executed as traitors over the past months number in the thousands there doesn’t seem to be any reduction in the numbers waiting to be caught. If anything the rebels seem to be gaining in power: their terrorist attacks are growing in daring and effectiveness. Last week they even managed to assassinate Force Commander Isheed, though thankfully the incident has been successfully disguised as a tragic accident and it is perhaps better for the army that they had a change in leader from that one who was always that bit ambitious for any loyalist’s comfort.

“Have faith, there is no way that any rebel dog would be able to pass through the loyalty tests,” you don’t think your words sound as hollow as you think they are.

She walks to the car, the black of her robes devouring the light of the fire which burns brighter now that Enforcement has thrown fuel on it. Once inside she instructs the driver to return to the local office of the inquisition before closing the privacy screen and turning to you with rage burning in her eyes, “It demeans us every time we kill a rebel. You know that don’t you?” you are horrified to hear such treason but she continues and redeems herself, “We are bound by reason and law, to kill someone who worships only death and anarchy is to grant them their will and so taint ourselves. Perhaps it would be better to keep them locked away forever so that they cannot be martyrs, so that they see that the revolution they seek is impossible?” she catches the horror in your eyes and reconsiders, “But then again maybe not.”

“Your idea is very,” heathen, radical, unorthodox - all correct, all unsuitable, “interesting,” a suitable cop-out. Implies deviance without any immediate accusation.

She reads the subtext but continues on her chain of ill-considered thought, “They are blood-traitors, disowned by everyone except their fellow heretics. What do they have to lose? Their lives are forfeit the moment they choose to stray from the righteous path,” she’s passionate here, you see that this is something she actually cares about, or at least is feigning caring to try and trap you, “As long as we have mothers and fathers then we will never have that strength, we will never be able to fight solely for nation, Dask and god. There will always be the fear of leaving behind friends and family.”

Your arms sweep the vehicle broadly, “Now is not the best time for this discussion,” because it is likely being overheard by a dozen bugs, “as there are great many heretics needing processed before execution.”

“Yes, of course,” she looks away from you nervously. You have leverage over her, she has shown weakness which you can use for your purposes. All manner of deviant sexual acts come to mind.

Grey countryside blurs by, you are both silent, net links live and showing the torrent of information generated by the governance, reports half-way through completion, citizen records of the captured littering the screens as the paperwork is processed. Although you are trying to lose yourself and your doubts in the work her earlier words haunt you. You had no father and if your mother hadn’t died before you came of age, you would have slaughtered her like the whore she was once you did.

Those you grew up with in the orphanage had been orphaned by war and not the disease which was and still is sweeping society. Many of the anonymous faces you can remember have now gained important roles, none of course exceeding the power commanded by you as an Inquisitor. Perhaps her theory is correct and those without attachments beyond nation, Dask and god do have greater strength. You have seen and denigrated the sentimentality people show towards family. Although the weak child you’ve crushed wants to know what is to have a loving family the rest of you is glad that you are free of such distractions. You glance at her breasts and realise that you are perhaps more crippled by attachment than those you would mock.

She is like a drug.


She’s all your fantasies come at once. Everything deviant, everything wrong that you’ve wanted all your life in one filthy screaming whore. Even the commoners could be voided for these crimes, that you are a member of the Holy Inquisition takes the seriousness of your crime to whole new levels.

You scream in pain as she digs metal claws along your back but she’s working your cock like she’s been doing this for centuries and you can’t help but scream with pleasure even as the blood drips down your back in thin green rivulets. Her tongue flicks out like a snake and licks the drips off her face, her eyes look upwards to god and she comes for the fifth time.

In the throes of orgasm she twists you round and suddenly she’s on-top riding you harder than anyone’s ever before. You can feel it building up inside you and it scares you because you don’t want this to stop, you want this to go on all night. You don’t want it to ever stop because this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you since you were chosen for the Inquisition. God in his heaven couldn’t create anything as whole and perfect as this casual five-minute fuck has grown into.

And it ends, and you start crying because you didn’t think it ever would. And you see her face, brutal, animalistic and warped with the sadistic expression of power. And you realise that though it was you who wanted to make her serve you sexually, that in the end it is you serving, and being used. And then you feel guilty because your oaths of purity to the Inquisition and to god have been broken and you are a disgusting, pervert who should be burnt alive for his heretical worship of physical pleasure. Even your whore mother was less vile than you, she was merely an animal, you have betrayed the Holy Inquisition.

“More!” she screams like a witch. There’s no beauty in her, only lustful rage.

“No!” you plead, for a moment you fear that she’s going to force you to have more sex but she relents. Somehow the two of you are separated and she lies on the bed, casually sticking her fingers inside herself. A female masturbating in your room! Even watching a woman fingering herself is punishable by being made void.

The side of you the outside world knows about nearly faints with the sheer depravity and sickening repulsiveness of what you can see. But you become hard again, you try consciously for a second not to give in to temptation but it’s so much stronger than you are and soon you begin again. Another position, another capital crime, another hour of this slut filling all the places in your heart which nation, Dask and god used to.

You find yourself understanding the rebellion.


You wake up with only your repugnant thoughts and stained bed linen for company. As you relive last night you see that you have utterly betrayed yourself and everything you have ever believed in. And yet you find it hard to care because it was everything you’ve never realised that you wanted before. As you imagine what will be done to you, what will be marred by fire or acid, what will be cut away with the ruthless efficiency of torture techniques which have been perfected by the wonders of modern science, it is hard not to throw up.

You scrub your skin until is slightly grazed, begging forgiveness from god as you go but the filth is still there, sin can’t be absolved with soap. Avoiding your own gaze in the mirror you slide the pure, unspoilt fabric of your Inquisitor’s robes over the tainted flesh.
Nobody on the planet could be any less worthy of these robes right now but you still find yourself walking out in the streets among the plebes. A pocket of emptiness forms around you, people know better than to anger an Inquisitor by inflicting themselves on one, in the hundred fleeting glances you can see the usual mix of awe and fear. None of them can bear to look at you any longer than one glance because they all know that nobody, nobody who is not in the Inquisition leads a life completely pure and in concurrence with the teachings and they all know the punishments for the slightest deviance from Dask’s sacred proclamations.

You lose yourself in a street bazaar, the vindictive part of you, that part which joined the Inquisition to make life worse for others, seeks a victim. One of the traders catches your eye. When your gaze passed over him, he looked away that bit quickly. A lingering stare would imply a challenge, but one so short is obviously fear. He has neither the excuse of senility or youth to explain the lack of social awareness. You walk over, the man’s eyes lighting up with fear, his left hand holding the other vainly trying to stop it twitching. Before he says a word his body has betrayed his guilt.

“You, what wares do you sell?” the voice of the Inquisitor, pure and cold.

He trembles, further guilt, “I sell copies of Dask’s Proclamation Compendia.”

You pick up one of the books, the red cross of Dask is present, the cover black leather, cheap but conforming to the Divine Office of Information’s guidelines. You flick through the pages, occasionally catching a testimony against sexual sin, occasionally missing a heartbeat.

The pursuit of pleasure detracts from the pursuit of salvation. Without total devotion to god and nation total victory can never be obtained. Those who chose themselves over god and nation’s victory are traitors as much as any denier of the faith. Suffer not a whore, male or female.

As your heart drops and you feel guilt, you finally find yourself a crime, an avenue of redemption. You smile thinly, the trader’s face drops, “I see no Seal of Authenticity. Are you peddling vile heresies?”

“No Sir, they are true copies of the proclamations,” the desperation is refreshing

“But they have no seal, how can I be sure you aren’t lying?”

“By Dask and god I swear to you!”
You throw the book at him, “I do not have the time to read through each of these books and check that they do not spread heretical lies.”

He falls to his knees, “Please sir, I have five children, I cannot afford to buy the sanctioned works, they are too expensive. I seek only to enlighten the public. I am a loyal servant of Dask!”

He continues sobbing, incoherent, weak. You kick him to the ground, pulling your pistol from its holster, “In the name of the Inquisition and of Dask and of god, I hereby find you guilty of the distribution of heretical works and of profiting from immorality and of subverting the
national order,” you aim at his head, “The sentence is death..”

“Oh lord Inquisitor, I beg, my children. Don’t kill me. My children…”

You squeeze the trigger, “May you find your place in hell.”

The crowd that has assembled applaud your work, they chant for nation, Dask and god. Helpful patriots pull the corpse away and a bucket of water is thrown to carry the bone splinters, brain splurge and blood splatter to the gutter. That there are still so many faithful gives you hope of overcoming the rebels, hope of your own salvation.

You feel much better now.


You feel terrified. Upon arriving at Inquisition Tower you are met by two guards. They are both armed with rifles, your heart is halfway to the core.

“You are to go to the office of the Chief Inquisitor,” they grunt. Though the loyalty of the Inquisition is of course unquestioned, Dask nonetheless finds it prudent to keep a contingent of well-armed Enforcement troops within all Inquisition buildings. They are outnumbered ten to one, and Inquisitors are sufficiently well trained that the odds could be reversed and they would still be victorious.

“Thank you,” you move off to the elevator, the younger guard steps back in front of you. He must only be fifteen. Yet he has confidence enough to incur the wrath of an Inquisitor. Admirable, though stupid. If you wanted to escape the building you could easily kill both of them, the four other guards in the lobby and the six outside. You would be caught within minutes, seconds probably. Enforcement would have fifty guns trained on you before you could begin thinking about how to make yourself invisible to the city’s intricate surveillance web.

Disobedience is death, an old mantra but applicable.

You let muscles that have subconsciously assumed combat stance relax, and clasp your hands together, not on your gun. If these grunts had the reflexes of an Inquisitor you would be dead five times over. Thankfully they are just above the cattle in the grand scheme of things.

“We are to accompany you,” his voice is uneducated, the emphasis crude.

“But of course,” you suppress your fear to a level they are unlikely to perceive, “Lead on then, it is never good to displease an Inquisitor.”

He grunts, no acknowledgement of the veiled threat. In an effort to distract yourself from wondering about the remaining time you have in this life, you try and decide if he ignored it or just didn’t notice. Since it makes you feel superior, you assume the latter.

The elevator takes seventeen seconds exactly to reach the eighty-first floor. The younger guard growled when you pushed the button for him. The older one seems to have been lobotomised. A real possibility, the procedure is a common punishment for the conscripted who make it obvious that they cannot devote themselves to service. You smirk at him petulantly. May as well take the chance to denigrate him, an armed escort to the Chief Inquisitor implies that even this dullard could count the number of minutes in your life expectancy quite easily.

More guards meet you, this office is as close to the heart of the nation as you have and likely will ever come to. These guards are not Enforcement, they are fellow Inquisitors. Their guns are not drawn, but there are four of them and even if you move to fire they would be able to kill you before you could finish the job. One of them reaches inside for your firearm, there is a tiny speck of blood just in front of the trigger. It was poor form of you not to notice and keep your weapon pure since is after all an instrument of the divine.

Quickly you have are checked for concealed weapons, which of course you do not need carry because as an Inquisitor your killing implements are sacred artefacts. Nevertheless the Chief Inquisitor is a powerful man perhaps fourth or third most powerful in all the world. Only the Star Admiral with his control over the future and the High Cardinal with his control over faith are more influential than he who controls information. Not that any of this will matter once you step through the black doors, the front of which you probably aren’t ever going to see again. A pity, they are beautiful.

It is an oblong room reminiscent of a church, icons of Dask hang everywhere, magnificent blackwood bookcases contain every work of Dask and every work written about him, there are cases of weapons, swords, knives, bows, muskets, pistols and rifles. All are beautifully ugly, tools that have likely ended hundreds of lives with unparalleled efficiency and shamelessly honest aesthetics. A circle of red tiles marks where you must stand, a spotlight where your final scene will be played out. Your head is light, your pulse racing and if you focus on the scenery then the moment might never end.

“Inquisitor,” the voice is strong, of course it is, “serious allegations have been made about you. Accusations of heresy, of associating with known rebels, of misusing Inquisition property to commit terrorism,” once they pass heresy you know something is wrong, these are not your sins.

“Sir, these allegations are lies!” your protest is of course pathetic, no more convincing than any of the hundreds which you have heard and disregarded.

He signals and you are kicked to the ground, your stinging face pulled off the ground, the head held by the hair to face him once more, “You dare to wear these robes, dare to carry out a sacred office all the while betraying everything they embody,” he is furious, another signal and they are ripped from you leaving you naked.

A flashback to better days, being taught interrogation techniques, bright, young and pure, first rule is to put the person off-balance, making them naked will do that, people are uncomfortable being seen by others, if they are fighting that discomfort they can fight your questions less. The only other fact from that training you can recall is this – everyone will break given sufficient time and duress, resistance only prolongs suffering.

You are beaten for ten minutes, by the end of which everything hurts and you are barely conscious. When your vision coheres from a red haze you see that Rian is standing at the side of the Chief Inquisitor.

“Rian?” you manage to gargle the name of the woman you have fantasised over.

“Your ex-partner testified before us this morning. She has video footage of your meeting with a known rebel, not only discussing a terrorist plot to attack Basan cathedral but also committing disgusting sexual transgressions.”

“What?” the blood lowers your surprised pitch back to normal.

Then you watch on a screen, you watch what you did last night, but it is not Rian you are fucking it is one of the local rebel leaders, a woman the two of you have been seeking for a long time. The footage jumps around, it is real, its all real, it wasn’t Rian. It was this woman you have never met.

You cry, “That never happened.”

Rian is dispassionate, “And what of the cuts on your back? The ones this video shows the heretic Duana Kuhn making with her nails? Did they not happen? Why are they there?”

“You know why. You made them. It was us who slept together last night.”

The Chief Inquisitor is disgusted, “Do not think us blind or dumb shitebag, that is you there and that is not the Inquisitor but the most wanted woman in the city.”

“It isn’t real. None of this is real.”

“Well then you won’t mind if I have the flesh stripped from your fingers then?”

You pass out as they pull the flesh from your little finger.


You see white light, feel white heat. Your body has stopped feeling pain, you are numb for now, god’s mercy to the dying. How is it that you are still alive? You stagger to the ground, your right leg is broken, hard to put any weight on it. There are bodies everywhere and the vast window is shattered, Rian stands in the frame gazing at the sky.

“What happened?”

“I saved you.”

“Saved me,” you drag yourself over to her, using the desk of the Chief Inquisitor as a support. You feel dead flesh under hand, part of the desk’s previous owner no doubt, “You were the one that had me brought here, beaten, tortured and nearly killed. You can’t damn well brag about saving me when it was you that doomed me in the first place.”

“Look around you, see the things I have done to these people to stop them from killing you. See the things I am capable of doing to get my job done. And know, know that I will do them without remorse because I will do what must be done.”

You follow her cold gaze around the room, the bodies are not so much dismembered as disintegrated, it would take rage, madness and superb blade skills to accomplish such complete ruining. As you re-evaluate your impression of this woman, who while never turning away from the killing of a person never put herself into that position if she could avoid it, she flicks her wrists and a dozen shimmering wires extend from her fingertips. Her hands are flaying weapons and you do not recognise them.

“Why did you do this?” she has turned her back to you. You seek something to kill her with. Your own gun is within reach, with your working right hand you try to get it before she turns round to answer your question.

“It is my duty.”

“What duty. To whom, to Dask? To God.”

“Be still and watch.”

You reach the gun, steadying your wild aim as best you can, the torso offers maximum forgiveness for poor aim so this becomes your target, “I don’t know who you are or what you serve, but you are most definitely a heretic,” you shoot.

Before either of you realise what has happened she’s slumped against the wall. Her face a mixture of surprise and betrayal. There’s not much blood so death will come slowly. She’s grunting with pain.

“God I’m sorry Rian, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you do not want her to die. But she will now and you cannot change it, “I can end this, I can stop the suffering.”

She shakes her head and shouts, “Look up you stupid stupid bastard, look up and see the true face of the god you serve!”

The sky is burning.


The sky is filled with many-coloured fire and lots of it.

“God what is this?”

“This is the day the madness of the regime you serve dies,” she was upright, with none of the pain she’d shown seconds ago, her voice was happier and more confident than you have ever heard “This is the day your species will remember as the beginning of their golden age.”

“My species?” you spit, “You’re alien?”

The beautiful woman melted into a serpentine nightmare, glistening black like the floor tiles. You could still understand her somehow, “I am.”

Your face paled, “And the sex? My god I fucked you! God forgive me.”

“Sex is just sex,” it tried to touch you, “I do care for you. You might not understand that this is truth but there is nothing wrong with what we do and what I feel for you.”

“Then how could you do this to me,” you wave your ruined hand at her.

She recoils from it, “I’m sorry but it was the only way to get here and the only way to keep you safe. It can be repaired within the hour.”

“Safe from what? These are end-times, look at the sky, there isn’t going to be anything standing within the hour.”

“We are merely dismantling your defensive infrastructure to expedite the process of integrating this world.”

“You mean conquest.”

Her calm is being disrupted, you’re hitting a nerve, “No, I mean integration. Conquest is what your space armada did to five worlds before stumbling across one of ours.”

“Lies, the armada continues to liberate new worlds.”

“Yes there are lies, we have total control over the media, we have total control over your communications infrastructure and we have total control over all of your orbital defence installations.”

“We will never surrender.”

“You don’t need to, this was never a war.”

“The people will fight this tyranny.”

Laughter, “The people will enjoy their new lives because they will be allowed to do what they want, they will be given access to millions of worlds, they will never have to worry about the cost of food, they will never have to worry about the cost of medicine and they will never have to die unless they choose to.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why? Because it’s not a life of suffering? Because people won’t be senselessly denying themselves pleasure because a fictional god told them to? Because mentally disturbed people like you won’t be able to justify their lives by ruining those of others?”

“None of this is real it is a nightmare.”

“The future of your world is a dream made real, if you cannot live in that future then you are free to do as you will,” she waves a tentacle, “All people are equal, all people are free. Learn it well for it is soon to be your mantra.”

You rush at her but she is fast, too fast, too fast even had she not already been shot.

You are in her hands, limbs, whatever and can’t get free, “Let go of me monster!”

She is crying, god knows why but the beast sheds whatever tears it can.

“An interesting though somewhat unfortunate side effect of the method we use to achieve immortality is that often the last few days before the subject’s death are lost,” it’s as if she’s a teacher and you the child, “If you die now you will not remember this, you will not remember the trauma of my betrayal, you will not remember your torture, you will not know how it was that your old world was undone. You will never know what happened here, nobody ever will. You will be taught what has changed as you adjust to your fresh body, the shock will be spread over time. I will come and meet you when you leave the rebirth facility. We will love each other and may even have children in time. One day you may be able to accept me for what I am. We will live happily ever after. That is your future,” she lifts you off your feet, you’re too weak to resist and part of you doesn’t want to. She throws you out the window, “and this is your end.”

There is silence as you fall, the city is silent, there is no sound of explosions or carnage or weeping. There is only the wind in your hair and the ground beneath you.

You close your eyes.


You open your eyes on the day when you’ll finally be allowed to leave the rebirth facility and meet up with Rian. You wonder exactly what the city will be like, how much of the old will still be there and how much the dR will have replaced. You wonder what life outside this hospital is like for all the common people. Normal people you correct yourself. You wonder what the space between galaxies looks like. You wonder what it is like to be able to show your love for Rian openly.

She’s waiting in the lobby for you along with hundreds of others waiting on loved ones to return from the netherworld. You run and grab her in your arms, kissing her neck.

“God, I love you.”

She pulls your lips to hers and you kiss with hundreds of people watching. Eventually you can get yourselves apart and leave the facility, holding hands. The streets are busier than before, the people look healthier, happier, better dressed. And there are other kinds of people. Stranger things than anyone dared imagine walking down a public street.

“Stop staring,” she gives you a gentle smack on the arm.

“What are they? I mean what do they call themselves?”

“There’s all of time to learn their names, I have something to tell you,” she’s nervous.

You kiss her, “What?”

She pats her stomach, smiling with total contentedness.

You kiss her some more, shedding tears of happiness.


You love your new life already.