In Wake of the Memorial (I)

"-. 16 April, 1989 .-"

If he said that even his lugubrious imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, he wouldn't be too far off the mark. But he would still be off the mark. Even whatever passed for eyes in this realm of this and other couldn't do better than an approximation for what he was looking at. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounting a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings... It looked like a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence... And yet it barely took a glance askance to see it dissolve and grow in and out of other things like and unlike it. Amorphous blights of nethermost confusion which blasphemed and bubbled all around him, deriding and spitting and slavering at him through the… the...

Richard Rider stared at his maddening surroundings, aghast.

This had been nowhere on his list of possibilities when he went to their host and flatly demanded he be shown immediately whatever the man's daughter had meant to work slowly towards.

He'd meant to have it out of the way in time for Tony to rise from his sleep.

Maybe he should have been more worried for himself.

[Richard.]

"Prime Computer." The memories of his life seemed to strangely underlie a much vaster record, but he was able to parse everything well enough. "Are we back in the Cancerverse?"

[An erroneous name stemming from our ill understanding of past times. The Cosmos originated from the primordial chaos and waxes through uncounted degrees. But as it cultivates those manifestations of matter and thought which settle neatly within itself, it sheds those too malformed and misqualified to change or fit. The so-called Cancerverse is but that low, base layer where all muck and grunge and offscourings fall back down to rot, fester, mutate and devour endlessly each other and themselves.]

Richard Rider stood within a cage of light and networked minds and beheld the things which gnawed hungrily on all unfortunate enough to be swallowed by the inconceivable, unlighted bowels beyond reason that he found himself in. "So… we're in the Cancerverse."

[There is no cancer 'verse'. There is cancer and everything it tries to overtake. On the whole it is waning fairly quickly. It will reach entropy far sooner than any of the other planes, as is in the nature of all indiscriminate plagues. But spans of eons and timelines upon timelines are not the sort of 'quickly' that will make any difference to you.]

"That's still not a no."

[We are within the bowels of the creature that yet arises in might from that cesspool of existential refuse. The Chaos Ophidian. The Midgard Serpent. Jormungandr, through whose bowels ever tunnel upward the Many-Angled Ones.]

Richard tried to summon up whatever knowledge he could about that last name there, but his focus wavered amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes. "Right. And the Cthulhu lookalike?"

[You cannot comprehend its true form. Regardless, it is but one of countless creatures that dwell in this beast. It would devour you if it could. Tear at you with its pincers, insinuate its tendrils and tentacles through your mutilation and then use its fanged proboscides to gorge on your remains.]

The creature's appearance wavered suddenly, shifting into something else. Like a nightmarish plastic column of foetid black iridescence that oozed tightly forth through a fifteen-foot sinus of some vague, monstrous creature. It gathered unholy speed and drove at him like an angular spiral, a thickening cloud of rods made of some pallid abyss-vapour. The shock of the collision was like from some terrible, indescribable thing vaster than the greatest interstellar train – a shapeless assemblage of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous. They splattered, burst and spilled over the protective field that was the Xandarian Worldmind. Myriads of temporary eyes formed and unformed as pustules of greenish light chittered at him through the sharply vibrating boundary. "That's a shoggoth," Richard Rider said dumbly. "Wait… Did you just suggest that shoggoths are the Old One's equivalent of intestinal bacteria?"

[Not the most apt analogy, but only because there is no such thing when it comes to the Old Ones. Or at least, that is what I have found.]

Richard Rider stared at his maddening surroundings. "… Prime," He asked. "Why hasn't all this mind-breaking horror turned me into a gibbering, sobbing mess?"

[You were never so faint of heart.]

Richard paused at that reply. It came quickly. Perhaps too quickly. "What aren't you telling me?"

[… This entity feeds on desire, begets nightmares and has acquired a powerful taste for strong flavours.]

Richard waited, but no more was forthcoming. He thought of pushing, but he realized that he didn't need to. He could guess well enough. "Prime… How long have I been here?"

How long has he been… being eaten?

[Two timelines, in both since you were born.]

That… that… How was he still alive, let alone sane? Was he sane? "… And since you've been here?"

[Roughly fifteen years.]

"I…" He had no idea what to say to that.

[Most people have low-energy astral bodies which the serpent cannot tell apart from motes of no-thing, let alone hunt like this. That has not been the case for you since the first time you were empowered by Rhomann Dey. Even so, you should have been sufficiently dim and quiescent after the reset for it to seek better prey. There are many that would have suited better. Psychics. Mutants. Occultists. Other reincarnations]

"Give it to me straight, Prime."

[Our ability to weather universal collapse has always been inconsistent. But the undeniably worst was two timelines ago. Whatever happened to alter the differential between the cosmic substance, motion and intellect, it had as many rejuvenating effects as deleterious ones on the various paths of development. Natural. Cultural. Social. Religious. Technological.] The network of minds paused, uncharacteristically. [I found myself adrift without host or body in the un-manifest no-thing beyond the planes. It took years on top of an entire timeline for me to find my way back to the material plane. When I did, I found no platform for me to re-embody in, for the Worldmind of Xandar has now never existed. Its technological basis is entirely unfeasible. Having failed in my first goal, albeit reassured that Xandar and its people at least exist after a fashion, I decided to… check in on you before deciding how to proceed.]

The Worldmind paused again, as if hesitating. More likely, though, because it foresaw this exchange and was observing the etiquette of conversation pauses. Not as likely but more real was the low, simmering outrage that was somehow felt all the way down to the depths of Richard's being.

[Astral bodies are but vessels for the self, I have found. Provided there even is one. But by that token, a person will know to instinctively discard it and form a new one when it is damaged or altered to the point it no longer fits them. Starting over buys a reset to sanity, for the price of most inherited talents and whatever natural foundation for spiritual development had formed in the prior years of one's life. Temporary, if severe, depression would accompany that, I imagine. Tragically, this is something that I've seen happen to over a billion Terran children since I arrived. Usually around the age of four to six solar revolutions.] Which was about the age where Richard's age-mates were talking about their [first manifest astral servitors] imaginary friends. [You have already seen what became of those astral bodies that they shed in escaping this place into the ignorance of self-rejecting convention.]

Ugly facsimiles of life. He could glimpse them among the other horrors even now. Their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked. They milled throughout the serpent's guts and glands. Hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. Richard was bizarrely glad that they had no more than four limbs. Despite this, some still looked human. Or in that strange stage between humanoid and whatever it was that turned them into this ugly shape more fitting for taking to the sea.

[The enmity of the Many-Angled Ones is not easily escaped, and you've earned it many times over. Even when the All resets to an earlier state they remember, for time never flows just forward for them. They remember you. They sought you. And through the serpent's unending hunger, they got their filthy tendrils on you long before I found you again. And once they did, they didn't risk giving you the sort of spiritual shock that would have made you regress to a lower condition of being. That would have risked you escaping into the same inconspicuous dimness of the masses on this world. No, they decided to go slow with you.]

Belatedly, it occurred to Richard to look [down/inward/back] at himself. He found he had nothing approaching a humanoid form at all. He was closer to an ovoid of light, or whatever [subtle astral matter] this substance was called. It glowed in some places and didn't in others, and there seemed to be [wounds of the soul] gaps and cracks in it. They were filled with… with the inner part of the cage or net or box of [transplanted parts of minds of Nova Centurions past] light that the Worldmind was sheltering him in. Most alarmingly, there didn't seem to be anything to account for his ability to feel or hear or see.

Richard beheld himself, and all the horror that didn't emerge upon the sight of the horrors around him found an outlet in the sheer scope of damage done to his soul over a lifetime and change.

Then the sickly unlight of misqualified energy drained out of him through the [psy implants] strange vein-like network of off-bright light, into the pinfold that shielded him from the monsters.

And was spat out and away.

In what was the first moment of respite since Richard awoke to this place, the creatures jerked away and lunged for the gangrenous emanation and began fighting and killing each other over whose thousand mouths got to gorge on it first.

Absently, Richard Rider realized that all his unhelpful emotions had disappeared, leaving his mind calm and clear.

[Attention, Richard, it is critical you pay attention at this time.]

Richard's attention was suddenly pulled to one specific spot to the left of the unholy spectacle. His focus sharpened then, part by choice part induced by the Worldmind in that way that reminded him of going beyond his own limits when wielding the Nova Force. He did his best to add his focus to the effort, even as the things occupying that space did the opposite. Soon enough there was that hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute. But it all seemed to fade as soon as he turned his attention to it. In its wake were the sputtering, slurping rattle boxes of countless slavering mouths. And beyond them, coming as if across astronomical distances and several layers of ribs made of bedrock and skin made of silt, was the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums. Detestable pounding and piping danced slowly to it, awkwardly. Like the thin, monotonous whine of the accursed flute he'd tried to recapture. Only its echo lingered now, bizarrely, tossed back and forth and sideways by all the things around him and everything they angled out and in.

Impossibly, Richard seemed able to see through all of the layers of wretchedness, for a moment. Or maybe around them in a straight line, somehow. Or a curved line that avoided all the angles that tried and failed to imitate the notion of curvature. The outside of the snake.

A snake that was injured.

"Something actually hurt this thing?"

[So it appears, though I admit my ability to perceive things beyond this place are limited so long as I am focused on immediate defence. Still, I suspect similar ignorance if that were not the case – whatever it was occurred frightfully quickly. One moment the serpent wallowed in its trench, the next something burst out of its belly like an unmoored star. The aftershock and overflow of light and power washed over us even here.]

"Can it be used to escape?"

[I am confident it can. Especially since the inconsistent time of the Many-Angled Ones works against them for once. Though it has been months since the event, the serpent may as well have suffered its wound this very moment.]

Ignoring how his revulsion and horror and disgust kept leeching out of him like water down a drain, Richard looked at the… things that were starting and stopping and reversing in the act of stoppering the wound.

"Alright," Richard said, his determination not wholly his own, but he'd take it. "Alright then. I'm sure you've already come up with a plan. Fire up the Nova Force and let's roll before the DMT runs out."

For the second time since he awoke in that terrible place, the Xandarian Worldmind seemed to hesitate. Except Richard knew, like he knew the way his spike of unease seeped out of him like everything else now did, that this wasn't just conversational etiquette anymore.

"Prime…?"

[… The Nova Force is a misnomer, Richard.] Hesitant. Chagrined. Embarrassed on his behalf. [It has always been a misnomer for the ability to manipulate gravity fields. Entirely a result of two things: the vast computing capabilities of the Xandarian Worldmind-]

"Which you are."

[-and the virtually unchallangeable right to assert will over such a fundamental force. The mind over matter ability resulting from the combined will of all past and present Nova Corpsmen, an order which went back thousands of years before the organisation was so named and founded in its most recent, centralised form by Tanak Valt and Queen Adora.]

Richard Rider felt… confused. "What does any of that mean? All past and present Nova Corpsmen – or whatever they were called before – Is literally what you are."

[There has never been a Xandarian Worldmind now, Richard.] The Prime Computer relayed with the terrible gentleness of those resigned to their worst fears having come true. [The Nova Corps are not the ancient and storied order they were in past histories either. Their existence does not carry the same conceptual weight. There has been nothing to preserve the imprints of the corpsmen. If you glimpse any of these lights and energies composing me as brains, they are mere representations of my decentralized cognitive architecture. And the consciousness of the universe itself has changed.]

Richard reeled. "But…"

[Even if it could somehow be used on this level of reality, The Nova Force no longer exists, Richard. I am sorry.]

Richard Rider… he just… he just stopped. He… he had no words. The shock and resulting emotions were drained from him like all the ones before, but even then he didn't speak in the wake of that. Couldn't… Couldn't think what…

[Fortunately, serendipity smiles on us in this instance. You will not have to fight your way out. I would that the psychic surgeries I performed on you had been unnecessary, but they will work in your favour here. They will have imparted my experience with planar mechanics, on top of preserving what natural ability was possessed by your soul to navigate planes like this one. I will extend myself between here and the exit, open a path for you. If you are quick, it should last enough to keep you safe from these predations until you are clear. Remember, Richard: Always travel in a curve. Never a straight line. That which is whole made of angles cannot follow a curve or spiral. Ready yourself, now. As soon as I unspool, you-]

"No."

What followed didn't qualify as an awkward silence for the simple reason that the horrors around them made it impossible for there to be silence of any sort.

[…What?]

"Yeah, we're not doing that."

[What.]

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you just said sounds a lot like you volunteer as tribute while I flee the big bad wolves. That seems a mighty big decision to make for me all on your own."

[Richard-]

"Don't you 'Richard' me! I can't even be sure I'm not insane, are you sure you want me to question your sanity too? Because I'm not hearing any at the moment!"

[Richard-]

"But then you have been here for fifteen years. How many years of mind-breaking gibbering does that make, multiplied by all the brains you have in this network of yours?"

[The sheer number of minds that compose my existence-]

"Is smaller than it was when you first came looking for me by how many?"

[…]

Shockingly, the Xandarian Worldmind actually felt lost for words.

Richard felt no vindication over his guess, but only because he didn't seem able to feel much of anything. "You can't even remember, can you?"

[…]

A forgotten penny very belatedly dropped just then. "Prime… How did you get down here in the first place?" No answer. "Prime." A spark of dread seeped out through the cage and distracted the bunch of horrors that were turning their attention to them. "Prime Computer, how much did your search of me mirror what you just proposed to do? Why were you unable to escape with me once you had me?"

[…]

"How many minds have you already sacrificed?" No answer. "How many, Prime?"

[I do not remember.]

"Of course you can't! Your literal brains were bitten off! An amnesiac wouldn't be an amnesiac if he could remember what he couldn't remember!"

[Whatever minds they were could not have held anything particularly important if I did not prioritise them over the ones I kept.]

"Because it's not like you've ever been surprised or overcome enough for such a thing to be out of your control."

[Richard-]

"Look Pi – can I call you Pi? Great, thanks Pi!" For the number. It was a good pun on his title and name and unique but unfathomable nature and it helped Richard steamroll him. Which it damn well better after he'd witnessed and suffered Tony Stark doing similar things so many times. "Now look, we've technically been together barely ten minutes. That wouldn't be enough foundation for tragedy in bad drama fiction, let alone real life!"

[…If you think you can antagonise me enough to abandon the plan, you are mistaken.]

"Only because I'm sure you don't remember me doing just that successfully on many occasions because half your brains are gone!" And hopefully Pi was off-balance enough to conveniently fail arguing against 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' "I bet you don't know me at all."

[Oh I know you as well as you know yourself. I still have the imprints of your consciousness as they were every time I was there for your death. I will anchor them to you now.] The Worldmind manifested a ringlet of light round him, through which orbited some dozen sources of light within Richard could vaguely glimpse his brain, himself, and the image of the Nova helm intermittently. [If you should eventually heal from these grafts, or otherwise gain the means, you may even re-assimilate those experiences, rather than them only being available to you in this nightmare or your dreams. Now, if there is nothing else-]

"Do you really mean to play chicken with me, Prime Computer?" Richard asked darkly, finally fed up with this useless conversation. "Do you mean to spread out for these things to devour on the assumption I will not refuse to move from this spot out of stubbornness and spite?"

Not even the Xandarian Worldmind could remain unaffected in front of that much derision. Though it did a good job of pretending. [Are you finished?]

"No. I haven't even begun. In fact, I suspect I will not be done for a long time to come."

[We both know you are too noble to let me sacrifice myself for nothing like you just implied.]

"You mean like how I used up all the Nova Force to escape the Cancerverse via Cosmic Cube that one time and abandoned you to the biggest bads of these monsters?"

This time, it wasn't Richard that reeled.

He probably shouldn't have just thrown that out so harshly, if at all. Perhaps he was not as unaffected as he thought by his… 'surroundings.' But it worked as a way to estimate the true scope of damage done to the Worldmind's memory and cognitive ability, if nothing else.

Insanely, Richard had to resort to horror watching in a bid to calm down. Everything that was probing at them before was still there, but on further study he could see other things as well. Pinkish things about five feet long, with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins or membraneous wings. They had several sets of articulated limbs, and a sort of convoluted ellipsoid instead of a head, covered with multitudes of very short antennae. Carrying the creatures were a sort of huge, light-red crab with many pairs of legs and with two great bat-like wings in the middle of their back. Some walked on all their legs, others on just the hindmost pair, using the others to lug around… things. A detachment of them even waded along a shallow slime trench three abreast in a bizarrely disciplined formation. Above them one was flying and launching itself from the top of a bald, lonely mound of – let's not go there – and vanishing through a port in the gut wall above on great flapping wings.

He was brought out of his fixated stare by the feel of the most viscous and voluminous expulsion of sanity-destroying emotion being expelled from him through whatever grafts the Prime Computer had given him.

[…There is no place for me in this new order, Richard.] The Xandarian Worldmind conveyed eventually, unable or unwilling to process that revelation that shouldn't have been a revelation. [Whether I wink out now or later, what difference does it make? My energy is finite. My will is finite. I am finite now.]

"Oh boo-hoo, look at me being all mortal now! Clearly the only solution is to walk up to the primordial horrors from beyond the threshold to the cosmic dumpster and offer myself to be eaten!"

[Well what else do you suggest we do!?] The Worldmind demanded angrily.

It rattled Richard's literally everything but he would not be cowed. "Oh I don't know, defer the plan until we consult with the literal supergenius in the room next door? Ask the witch that just hired me for reincarnation experiments about your problem? Or oh, here's a good one: ask for help from the guy who literally just brought the dead back to life!"

The entirety of that intestine they were in seemed to pulse away from his shout, and it belatedly occurred to Richard Rider to wonder if the things everywhere could hear everything they were talking about.

[… Wait, what?]

Eh?

Richard Rider stared at the faraday cage of brainlights, nonplussed.

[You… you mean you did not just spontaneously become aware of the here and now?]

"You mean… you don't know?"

[You did not awaken spontaneously!?]

"Aren't you literally in my head? What did you think I mentioned DMT for?"

[What even is this DMT you speak of-oh...]

"Yes. Oh. Should I be worried about your cognitive balance?"

[Keeping you shielded and healing is rather distracting at all times, Richard. Because it apparently bears spelling out.]

"Don't you snap at me!" Richard snapped instead before he could remember it wasn't Tony or some other manchild he was not-talking to. "I'm not the one who bragged about checking in on everything important to me in the material world! You're telling me you somehow did that without some way to perceive it? How else was I supposed to take it!?"

[I am busy focusing outwards. The only way to also peer into the physical would have been through you, but the damage you incurred imposed upon me other priorities lest I harm you further myself.]

"…. You're a blind surgeon." Richard groaned, unable to even parse the implications of doing whatever the Prime Computer had done to him without a way to check on just what the effect was in the material. "Good god! Look, Prime. I've never been a genius. Occasionally, I may even qualify as a moron. I get it. But since when are you one?"

[… Since fifteen years ago apparently.]

It wasn't even a joke. The Worldmind seemed to be just as morose as he was now.

"Look…" Richard said at length, doing his best to come up with a plan that was at least a step above that lowly bar of incompetence known as tragic heroic sacrifice. Which he had apparently lived down too almost every life before. "Say we stay as we are for a while, is the time to you exhausting your energy the sort of 'quick' that will make any difference to me?"

A pause.

Then…

[Probably not.]

"Okay," Richard said, his impulse to pinch his nose leading nowhere on account of him lacking one. Or arms, hands and fingers to pinch with. "Okay. Okay, we can work with this. We can figure out a way to – what was it? – regenerate my astral self faster than you're depleting yours? It can be like blood transfusion. You'll just have to rely on me for a change. And we'll have to get you some way to see what the hell kind of effects you're having on me. Stick me with whatever other organ or implant or whatever will let you see what the hell you're doing!"

[Richard, that is n-]

"Not negotiable, exactly," Richard growled. He felt something like kinship from the creatures constantly being 'distracted' with his actively expelling emotional waste. He shuddered. "Just… Just sit down with me and let's figure this out. Both of us. Together."

[… Very well.] The Xandarian Worldmind radiated resignation. [For however long it lasts.]

"Eight hours or a multiple thereof."

The surprise was even more blatant now, somehow. As if Richard possessing any sort of actionable intelligence was somehow the most shocking thing of that whole affair.

"Oh screw you too you condescending flop!"

[You were never so belligerent.]

"That you remember." Not that he was wrong, but he'll be damned if he admitted it. An amnesiac ghost of an AI, honestly! "I never did magic either, but here we are. Now come on, brainstorming time. Show me everything you've seen and tried. Then we'll go over my ideas and see if we're struck by any inspiration."