The noise faded, and the elevator halted.
No shudder, no sound—just a sudden stillness, as if something inside it had stopped breathing.
The first door slid open, revealing another: the entrance to Central Command.
Simon walked beside Fayet down the gleaming metal corridor. The floor reflected their faces, slightly distorted.
He said:
"Death told me... it would meet me in the end. Does that mean I won't achieve my purpose?"
Fayet glanced at him but didn't break stride.
"Death meets everyone, Simon. The difference is, you're trying to escape—to tear apart the oldest chains of creation. And until your immortality is realized, death creeps closer, step by step. But for now, the chain remains around you."
He shook his head faintly.
Not in disagreement. Just... turning the words over inside, testing whether he believed them.
They reached the door.
It opened slowly, as if the room were drawing breath after a long pause.
Butler and Mogan stood there. Waiting.
Neither moved—they only looked at him. No fear, no shock, just... quiet relief.
As if seeing him alive was enough. They knew how much Simon hated drama.
Butler stepped forward, his heavy boots thudding, his right hand pressed to his chest.
"How are you, sir?"
Simon didn't answer.
He was staring at them.
Their presence seemed to fragment—not just visually, but as if they were slipping from reality itself.
They weren't as he remembered. Less. Less real. Less solid.
Like actors on a stage... not the actors themselves, but the roles they played.
Yet he didn't feel the same with Fayet.
She remained real. Painfully so. Sharp as a blade's edge.
Why?
What made one person real and another not?
Had the layers of reality fractured, or was it his own unraveling mind?
Finally, he said:
"I'm not sure..."
He wasn't speaking of his condition.
He meant now
This feeling that had no name.
Simon let his gaze drift across the command room.
Strange keypads pulsed with muted light, holograms flickering in and out like fleeing specters. Numbers and symbols danced in the air, meaningless to him—a language meant for some other consciousness.
He wandered slowly, his eyes tracing the ship's alien components and the view beyond the glass: the eerie shoreline where the stars of the cosmos mirrored themselves on its still surface, as though the sky had descended to contemplate its own reflection.
At last, he stopped before the central chair. He pushed it aside and sat, his expression unchanging.
Only a thick silence answered him, deepened by the rhythmic hum of machinery and a faint, mocking laugh from **Clonmacnoise**—as if it scoffed at their gravity.
Then Simon spoke:
"Ever since my temporal flow diverged from the reference line, I've experienced... perceptual overlaps within the structure of consciousness. I'm no longer bound to linear time. Instead, I move through a spectrum of branching chronologies.
I don't see the future as a fixed event. Under any indeterminate probability model, the future is an unresolved, shifting space—a swarm of divergent parallel branches. But what I perceive... is an infinite probability of possible manifestations.
I can project awareness across the quantum event network. I comprehend all that could be, all that was, and all that interacts instantaneously within the scope of expanded perception."
Mogan interrupted: "Wait—are you saying you're connected to multiple timelines?"
Simon shook his head and continued:
"I no longer exist within time. I've become a connected state—transcending decay—a continuous coherence across temporal fields.
In short...
My non-finite continuity within existential space is realized. I am now... a permanent entity."
"So is it over? Is this Simon's finale—his immortality achieved?" Butler and Mogan thought in unison. But one glance at him told them otherwise. Even *he* knew it wasn't so.
Mogan's voice was low but sharp:
"What's the next move?"
All eyes turned to Fayet. Even the ship—its systems, its machines—seemed to hush, waiting for her answer.
At last, she spoke—her voice laced with bitter mockery:
"There is no 'next move.'
Immortality isn't a door at the top of a ladder, waiting to be climbed step by step.
It isn't a place… but a state.
And to understand that state, you must first understand death.
Death comes for everyone. Whether you live forever or beyond forever, death will still be there.
It is the riddle, and the only key lies in its hand.
As for immortality…
Immortality is something death doesn't even acknowledge exists.
And if it does exist, only the enigma knows its meaning.
And believe me… the enigma does not like to share its secrets."
She stepped forward, into the center of the room, standing firm amid the whirl of lights and sensors. Her gaze swept over the faces of those present her usual smile absent.
She looked at him… but she wasn't quite herself anymore.
Fayet's features began to crack, slowly—like a mask dissolving under the glare of some inner heat. Her eyes flickered out for a moment, then reignited in pure, depthless black, twin voids that refused to reflect light. Behind her, the metal wall melted like wax, tendrils of smoke rising, twisting into the shapes of human limbs silently choking.
The holograms ceased their data streams, replaced instead by flickering visions—cities collapsing, planets being devoured, bodies dragged into forms beyond comprehension.
When she spoke again, her voice was no longer her own. It was layered—echoes upon echoes, a ripple distorting language itself, as though the words struggled to break free:
"No.
I will not be your guide through this hell of your own childish choosing.
It is foolish to expect this new world to treat you like some lost child in need of direction.
This is a realm ruled by entities that *feed* on hesitation… and erase those who wait for explanations, who beg to be told what to do next.
The beings here do not understand mercy. Mercy is only used as an ethical trap.
No one here cares if you are afraid, lost, or waiting for a moment of inspiration.
If you do not act, you will be reclassified excess noise in the structure, unheard, marginalized… gone."
A faint electrical hum rose, swelling louder and louder behind her as the floor disintegrated. A yawning abyss opened, filled with numbers writhing like digital worms and faceless black figures resembling humans, moving in repeating patterns before collapsing into nothingness.
Fayet herself began to elongate, her shadow splintering into multiple silhouettes, each warring for dominance over her form.
Her arms stretched unnaturally, as if time itself were pulling them… her features shifting every second woman, man, something genderless, then just a white mask with slitted eyes.
She took a step toward him, her voice now like metal striking stone:
"You want me to guide you? To tell you the next step?
You do not understand where you are.
This is not a space for simple decisions.
This is a cosmic stress test, where consciousness is squeezed until it distills—or dissolves."
Then she raised her hand, pointing toward the void beyond the glass, where the shoreline had inverted, becoming a shattered mirror reflecting countless versions of Simon—each dying in a different way.
One steps into an unprepared chamber, opens a vacuum-pressure door thinking it's a passage. In an instant, his organs are sucked out through his mouth and nose, his bones shattered from within.
Another tries to use a biological reconfigurator to adapt his body to the external environment. The machine works… but reshapes him while he's still conscious. Extra limbs sprout, tiny faces emerge on his chest, then attack and devour him alive.
A third succeeds in summoning a past version of himself for aid—only for the copy to attack him, believing *he* is the impostor. A bloody struggle ensues: eyes gouged, strangulation with his own intestines, decapitation by his "self."
A fourth stands in a critical zone within a powerful magnetic field. A shard of the biometal implanted in his spine is suddenly ripped free, tearing through his vertebrae. His body spins like a hammer before smashing into a wall at lethal speed.
A fifth is trapped in a room where his self-images multiply, each screaming in his voice: "I am Simon!" He loses all sense of identity, the chamber choking on conflicting selves until it explodes.
A sixth trembles violently before disintegrating into thousands of tiny, crawling creatures—each with a single eye resembling his own—that begin consuming one another.
Thousands more play out, each death worse than the last, all screaming:
"Where is Fayet… Why didn't you warn me?"
Death chases Simon.
Death is behind Simon.
Death below you.
Death above you.
Beside you.
Inside you.
Death… Death… Death… Death…
A distorted voice crackles:
"À̴͘-̶̕͡N̶̨̛-̵͢͠D̴̨̕ ̵̵̀̀͡͡Y̵̨͝E̸͟͜T̴̢͘I ̴̕͟W̸̡͞Ą̶̛Ì̸͜T̸̀͜—"
"Look at them," Fayet snarls.
Those are your failed iterations.
Decisions unmade… or made at the wrong moment.
Because I wasn't there… because you didn't have me… or simply because I betrayed you and grew tired of you.
There is no "we" anymore, Simon.
No friendship. No partnership. No guidance.
There is only:
"I" – "HERE" – "NOW."
Either you lead… or you are *led*.
No middle ground.
No counsel.
No understanding.
This… was my final advice to you."
She stepped back—but her form lingered for an extra second, hovering, before snapping back into cohesion.
"The gate opens for those who step forward—not those who are pushed.
I can teach you how to force the door… but not how to walk through.
And if you sit waiting…
You will be the one who loses."
The last remnants of her words lingered a whisper in a voice no longer human, echoing from everywhere at once:
"Maturity… is to choose."
Silence followed.
Then, slowly, Simon rose from the chair.
It was not a movement of haste, nor hesitation.
He took a single step forward, leaving behind the warped illusion Fayet had crafted, stepping past the specters of his dying selves.
His eyes were no longer lost.
His gaze was now like a blade—sharp, unwavering, incapable of looking away.
He approached the edge of the room, where the glass overlooked the sea of enigma. Lifting his head, he said calmly:
"Prepare the ship."
The hum of ion engines surged—the growl of a colossal, silver beast awakening from slumber.
And above the roar of machinery, Fayet's face twisted into her wide, inhuman smile.