Vol. 3 Chap. 41 Rememberence of Things Past

Remembering… what? Can the soul have memories? I thought that was the mind’s job.

<<No, not exactly. Thinking and reason are the mind’s job, as are most of your memories, but the soul does pick up things. I don’t know what or how much, but it has to because otherwise, what is it that goes to the afterlife? What is it that gets processed by Heaven and Hell, if not your recollections of life? The accumulated stain of thousands of choices?>>

Truth was stumped by that one for a moment. Alright, but… What exactly is my soul remembering? My life is no mystery. No big gaps, other than the Well.

<<Well… about that…>>

What?!

<<What if it isn’t this life?>>

Truth just blinked blankly at the wall when he heard that one.

<<It has come up in some of the stuff we have read about the afterlife, baptism, and all that. Some souls, for reasons unknown, come back again. Not a lot of them, but enough that it’s a pretty well-confirmed phenomenon.>>

Not that well confirmed. The frigging fragment of divinity living in the Bronze Sea thought it was my soul going off on vision quests, not memories from previous lives.

<<Fair. Got a better explanation?>>

No, but that doesn’t mean the incredibly rare, questionably confirmed phenomenon of reincarnation is the answer. It seems like kind of a leap from “You remember something I don’t” to “I am reincarnated.”

The system made a frustrated noise. <<Look, I am a mutilated bit of your soul, right? I am capable of perceiving the world around me in ways you don’t have words for, but I am still stuck inside you. Anything I learn is something you were exposed to. I know more than you because I am paying attention to everything you pick up, and I don’t forget anything.

<<So where could the information, IE, the name Yaldabaoth and the fact that he is a dick and a lousy craftsman, have come from? It didn’t come from the System Astrologica, or I would remember being created with that information or being told it during your period of enslavement. It didn’t come from something you read or heard because I would remember that too. So we have ruled out it coming from “me” in the sense of this awareness created by the System Astrologica, and ruled out you in the sense of your psyche and your awareness of the world around you, so that leaves what, exactly?>>

A semi-separate bit of my soul, but not completely detached, is what you are. The Rough Patron showed us that, and the Bronze Sea said as much too. So if my soul remembered something, even if it didn’t reach my mind, it could have reached you. Truth slowly nodded. It was a genuine wonder. How could it be possible? Oh wait, he was forgetting the obvious.

<<No, I’m not making shit up to fuck with you. Kind of pointless as pranks go, really.>>

Occam’s razor, and all that.

There was another pause. <<You… want to repeat that last sentence?>>

Occam’s razor- oh shit.

<<I’m sure you have a real, real good explanation for who this Occam guy is and what possible relevance his grooming regimen has to anything. I mean, I don’t, on account of never having seen or heard a single damn thing about anyone called Occam, but you DEFINITELY do.>>

Truth just sat there, rapidly going from bewildered to alarmed. What the hell else do I not know I know?! And why is this all coming up now? My soul has been going through these corrections for at least as long as you have been there.

<<No idea. Maybe your soul has healed to a certain point; maybe it’s something to do with the Tongue or that little bit of Etenesh you carry around in you.>>

Truth felt choked- overwhelmed by everything. I don’t have time for this. At all. I have… so many things to keep track of, my head is spinning. I just can’t spend brainpower on this weirdness. I’m going to go out, eat some breakfast, figure out a possible atrocity to create, and then decide which luxury hotel is my next hideout. The Dunbar is burnt.

The System went silent. Truth took it as agreement. It only took a minute to pack up.

Truth went back around the party barge rental places. They were tiny offices attached to storage spaces, generally. Some were more all-inclusive than others, but from what Truth could tell, the system worked like this- The party barge supplied the venue (that is, the oversized, slow-flying cloud or an actual enchanted barge, speed carefully limited by law) and a driver. For larger parties, they would also provide a small crew to keep things organized and safe. Some barges had a bar, or a party lights system, or a spirit of music, or even a hot tub. Mostly, though, they were flying platforms.

Once the venue was secured, caterers were organized, then decorations were rented, music arranged, invitations manufactured and issued, each going to a separate contractor. There was no all-in-one option because the economies of scale made specialization more lucrative. No one person was “throwing” the party, except for maybe the person funding it. It was an awful, brutal sort of beautiful. Like a wasp parasitizing a spider. An entire ecosystem built around ecstasy that carefully ensured that the creators of that ecstasy got neither pleasure nor pride from their creation.

He flipped through the reservation books, trying to find something. They were heavily booked, and the barge companies didn’t care even slightly who was renting them, so long as the money was good. Every moment the barges were in storage was a loss. They were screamingly expensive, so naturally no one could buy one cash. They were financed, purchased with expensive loans.

Every second of every day, interest accumulated and the next payment due got that little bit closer. But nobody wanted to party 24/7, and there had to be cleaning, and maintenance. If you cared to invest in maintenance, which many didn’t. Tick, tick, tick. Time is running out. Truth understood how they felt. Enrolment Day was getting closer. Tick, tick, tick.

It took a lot of back-and-forth trips, as well as a bit of research into just who was booking what, but he found one eventually. One of the bigger barges was being rented for the “Whicker and Voss Spring Whingdinger.” He had to ask someone what the hell a “Whingdinger” was, but he knew the clients. Whicker and Voss were one of the big three accounting firms. Nobody at that party would be famous, but a lot of them would be terribly rich and connected. And they did a lot of work for Starbrite subsidiaries and suppliers.

Well. Time to make a few little preparations. The first of which involved trekking over to the slums. It took an extra two hours from his day, but he found the Ghul nest. He didn’t drop by. He still had no idea how to communicate with them. Then it was a quick rush round the shops to buy or shoplift a few tools and some paint, then off to find a room for the night.

He was very sorry to learn that the Transcendent Nova of Tranquility suite had been booked by a Ms. Gersh, not a Ms. Bhu at the Crystal Mountain, and that a Mr. Xin had reserved the Emerald Dreams Elite Residence for himself and his bubbly guests at the Residences at Perwik. The best suites were, apparently, heavily sought after in Buran’s downtown.

Growing increasingly irritable, Truth opted to lower his standards and broke into a penthouse apartment next to the fifth hotel he visited. It didn’t look like anyone was staying here at the moment, but the automated cleaning system and endless housekeepers would erase any trace of human habitation regardless.

The glass walls, stretching seven meters from floor to ceiling, gave one spectacular views of both the city and the ocean, depending on where you looked. The art was enormous and so abstract it was quite impossible to guess what it was supposed to be about. Each piece must have cost as much as a house in a third-rate city. There was an infinity pool on the wrap-around balcony, with an attached hot tub. The hot tub also had those wonderful built-in water jets. The bedroom was a room, a quite large room, whose entire floor space was covered in a deep mattress. It felt like it was stuffed with angel feathers, and in Buran, that might literally be true.

Truth decided that the apartment would do for now. He slept. The System had developed a nervous habit of keeping a close “eye” on Truth’s soul. Healing or not, the changes were agonizing. The soul seemed to ripple for a moment. Then the pain came.

__________________________________________________________________

“Alethes! It’s been years!” The handsome man hugged his guest forcefully and long. Far, far more intimate than a Japanese person would usually tolerate, but he was exceedingly well-traveled and cosmopolitan. He knew what Greeks were like.

“I told you, just call me Truth. You don’t have to torture yourself with the pronunciation.” Truth grumbled, smiling. “You are looking oppressively fit.”

“Haha! Thank you, thank you. You are looking mighty fit yourself.”

“Modeling, acting, and apparently, you took up martial arts?”

“Oh? I didn’t know you knew.” The Japanese man smiled broadly. “Come in, Yoko has prepared your room. Let's get you settled. You have come a long way.”

Truth allowed himself to be settled in a guest room, then settled in the living room and settled with a cup of warm, but not hot, green tea. Yoko looked immaculate, like a swan on water, unstained by the muck of the world. It was a mask, but he didn’t take it personally. Her husband was the strange one that way, not her.

“Where are the kids? No, no, thank you, I don’t smoke.” He waved away the offered pack.

“At school, of course, it’s the middle of the week.” The handsome man reclined, looking like the best thing that ever happened to cigarettes. “Getting some thin version of education. If you don’t mind my asking, why did you come to Japan? I am delighted to see you, but all I got over the phone was something garbled about headless men?”

Truth gave the writer a grim smile. “I brought a present. An extremely rare collection from my library. I dare say you have never seen its like and never will again.” Truth hauled out a small cardboard box and handed it to the author. “Sorry, no time to get it wrapped.”

“That’s extremely kind of you-”

“Open it. It’s relevant to the conversation.”

“Eh?” The author looked at Truth oddly and shrugged. He opened the box, revealing five magazines inside. On the cover was a headless man. Muscular, the author noted approvingly, holding various occult symbols and with a skull over his groin. Which he also approved of. His eye caught a certain name on the cover, making him smile.

“Something by Bataille? I think I heard something about this.”

“Bataille and a few others. A sort of philosophical review with a big focus on Nietzsche. Other things too, but he pops up the most. The whole last issue is almost entirely on him.”

“Ah? I thought you weren’t very fond of Bataille?”

“I’m not, but too many others are incomprehensible without some understanding of that old monster. Besides, he meets the requirements for my library.”

“Oh? I know you have a lot of books, but I think you mean something different here.”

“Yes. My philosophical library consists entirely of philosophers who went to war, with a specific preference for those who fought in resistance movements.”

“Bataille was in the French resistance? He was too old for the army.”

“Yes. Acephale was more than just the name of the Review, it was a secret society. They carried out armed resistance activities to the Vichie and the Germans, going so far as to conduct a human sacrifice to harden their hearts.” Truth nodded.

The author looked a lot more impressed as he flipped through the magazines. “I had no idea.”

“It’s not widely discussed, for obvious reasons. Still a lot of hard feelings.” Truth felt the little ball of lead shift around under his rib. “A lot.”

“A precious gift. Thank you. But really, it’s too much.”

“You can give me a return gift. Sign this.”

Truth pulled out a heavily read pamphlet. The author noticed with a combination of irritation and appreciation that it had been subjected to extensive underlining and notes in the margins.

“I will sign a clean copy for you. I have plenty around the house. But why this in particular? I can’t imagine it was enough to get you to fly halfway around the world.”

“You would be wrong. It is.”

“I don’t qualify for your library. I wasn’t even allowed to serve in the army.”

“Irrelevant. You are officially going into a collection of one. Bataille is relevant to our conversation because he is the closest I could find to your essay.” Gimlet eyes bored into the author. “Congratulations. You have written perhaps the only unique bit of philosophy in the Twentieth Century. And nobody knows you did it.” They looked down at the bland, battered volume. “As someone with a lot of exposure to both sun and steel, I had to get on the plane at once. I have a lot of questions for you.”