Across Eternity: Book 4 – Chapter 7

The Wandering Spirit

Deeper and deeper, Noah delved into the sea of his memories, losing all sense of identity and time. Random moments from his experience in the multiverse flashed across his mind’s eye with crystal clarity, hypnotizing his senses with experiences of thousands of years in the past. Pleasure, pain, laughter, tears, exhilaration, fear, intoxication, love, loss, they washed over him, with moments stretching across centuries and lifetimes passing by in the blink of an eye. With what shred of awareness he retained, he searched for solutions to solve the elven epidemic and dug ever further into the past, reaching for his origin and the truth of his existence.



———-

“Incoming!”

Explosions blanketed the landscape, further leveling the city that was once Philadelphia. Debris was hurled into the air to mix with the smoke of burning flesh. Noah ducked down to avoid the raining rubble, feeling every piece of concrete and metal bouncing off his helmet. Neither they nor the explosions could drown out the radio chatter in his ear.

“Hernandez is down!” one man squawked, followed by swears from several different voices.

“Well someone get his ass back up, he still owes me 500 credits,” Noah said.

Looking across the field of devastation, his helmet detected movement before his eyes even saw it. One of his enemies stepped out from behind a junked car, a slade. Taller than a human, the slade’s armored body moved on three legs and had three double-jointed arms, operating in any direction with a 360º view. It spotted Noah and aimed with the small missile launcher in one of its hands.

Noah was slightly faster, shouldering his rifle, while a glowing set of crosshairs appeared on his helmet’s visor. He planted four glowing rounds in the invader’s chest, disintegrating its armor with liquid flames. Regular bullets just bounced off slade metal, so plasma rounds were developed that could burn through. The alien shrieked in agony and collapsed, but Noah shot it in the brain to be sure.

Behind him, he heard the gnarled warbling of the slade’s alien language and sensed another two moving into his blind spot. He bolted to the side, dodging twin laser beams that sliced through metal and stone, and disappeared in the ruins of a destroyed building. It offered some small cover, allowing him to counterattack. Noah managed to blow the head off one, but the second wasn’t making it easy. It launched several missiles, forcing him to run before a line of explosions knocked him off his feet.

He hit the ground rolling and got back up, locking onto the slade with his helmet. He fired a missile from his rifle’s sub-barrel launcher, and as it flew, the small rocket-propelled dart adjusted its trajectory per his helmet’s tracking system. It missed the slade, but distracted it long enough for Noah to end its life with a burst of gunfire. He didn’t bother waiting around and continued through the rubble-strewn streets.

Up ahead, he saw a group of his comrades, each soldier wearing the black BDUs of the rebellion. “Sgt. Rothel, this is Cpl. Tiller. I’m two hundred meters north of your position.” John Tiller, that was Noah’s name at the time, just another to add to the long list. He had no true name, only what was given to him in each life.

The sergeant in command spotted him and signaled him over with hand gestures. Noah moved quickly and quietly over to the group. “Cpl. Tiller, where is the rest of your squad?” the sergeant asked.

“We got split up when our transport went down up north. The slades were on us immediately, and we couldn’t regroup. I counted five guys dead on arrival, saw another three wounded, and the rest were in the wind.”

“No one is where their supposed to be! We’re totally fucked!” one soldier cursed.

“Shut it, Smith,” the sergeant barked. “Long-range communication is down, so we can’t get air support or reinforcements.”

“We’re not out of luck just yet,” said Noah. “I saw a downed primer drone a klick to the west. If we can retrieve its power cell and a GALV missile, I can maybe rig up an EMP to take out one of their towers. That’ll be our way through their defenses.”

“I sure would like to see at least one of them go down today, Sgt.,” said a soldier.

“All right. Lead the way, Tiller.”

With Noah taking point, they navigated the ruined streets, gunning down slades as they appeared. This was the fifth alien invasion Noah had lived through, and it was pretty entertaining. Though their enemies were more powerful and technologically advanced, the war had stretched out long enough for the human resistance to acclimate to the threat and begin to turn the tide.

They arrived at the drone, a combination of human and stolen slade technology capable of flying remotely or with a human pilot. Though downed by a slade rocket, it was still relatively intact. As Noah went to work removing the power cell, the rest of the squad kept their eyes peeled and weapons raised.

An inhuman scream was heard from the wreckage of a nearby building, with a slade revealing itself and laying down a storm of automatic fire. One of the soldiers was ripped to shreds by the alien rounds, turning his blood purple. Then, more slades appeared from all directions, slicing through the soldiers’ cover with their lasers and bombarding them with missiles that produced green explosions. Noah succeeded in retrieving the power cell and then went to work cutting off one of the drone’s wings, with a missile still attached.

“Cpl. Tiller, haul ass!”

“I got it! Let’s move!”

Five soldiers slung their rifles and hoisted the wing onto their shoulders, cursing in pain and exertion. While they carried it, Noah and the rest of the squad covered their escape, gunning down the slades with reckless abandon. They left the area and ducked into a smashed parking garage, where Noah could work freely.

Following his instructions, a few soldiers helped remove the missile’s casing and replace the exploding warhead with the drone’s power cell. While they worked with shaky hands, he rewrote the missile’s coding with a small computer on his wrist. Neither the missile nor the power cell was designed for this kind of use, but this was a theory that Noah wanted to test.

“That should just about do it.”

“Just in time, too!” a soldier shouted. “Incoming siege tower at 4:00!”

All the soldiers looked up at the craft approaching the parking garage. These metal siege towers, nicknamed after their medieval counterparts, floated over the battlefield while raining death from above from various artillery turrets. Their primary weapon was a laser cannon at the bottom, able to wipe out entire city blocks.

“Point the wing at the tower and draw its fire.”

They hoisted the heavy slab of metal atop two blocks of concrete, aiming the missile with its exposed components at the approaching tower. The soldiers scattered while shooting the alien craft with everything they had. Explosions and bursts of plasma erupted across its surface, but its armor was far more powerful than what the slades wore. Regardless, it returned the volley ten-fold, raining deadly artillery that leveled ruins and shredded bodies.

With his wrist computer, Noah fired the missile, producing a roaring jet of flame that propelled it across the sky. The exploding soldiers managed to draw the tower’s full attention, and the missile struck the side. There was no flash of light or explosion, but a mechanical groan bellowed as the onboard mechanics fried, and the tower fell out of the sky. Unfortunately, it was falling right toward Noah.

“Damn, this would earned me my promotion,” he muttered.

———-

The bell rang with painful intensity, signaling the end of class. Students filled the hallways, heading off to their next destination like livestock. Noah was leaving history class on his way to lunch. One of his acquaintances in a matching letterman jacket followed him, complaining, as usual, that his brain wasn’t made for studying.

“I swear, man, every time I have to remember another date or some ancient fag’s name, I want to blow my fucking brains out.”

He was expecting a response, so Noah got into character. “I know, dude. Seriously, who cares about this bullshit? It’s all on the internet, so what’s the point?”

Up ahead, he spotted a few other members of the football team gathered around a locker, talking and joking. Seeing him, one of the guys threw up his arms. “Yo, Scott! That last throw you did at the game blew my mind!”

“What can I say, I was in the zone! Man, you should have seen Julie after the game. She gave me a hummer the whole ride home.”

The guys grunted and laughed, exchanging their sophomoric high-fives. Noah, or ‘Scott,’ as he was called, was the school quarterback, best in state history. In this life, he had decided playing in the NFL would be interesting and thought he’d use it as an opportunity to live out every cliché and stereotype of the high school jock lifestyle. It was just another crafted persona.

Though these lowbrows thought of him as their friend, to Noah, they were like chimps in the wild, and he had spent years earning their trust so he could observe the intricacies of their hierarchy and culture. He even got bad grades to blend in, but had a football scholarship that would take him to whatever school he wanted.

Slender arms wrapped around Noah’s neck, and he felt a kiss on the back of his ear. “You aren’t talking about me, are you?” a sultry brunette asked.

Julie was his cheerleader girlfriend. She was gorgeous and popular, the prom queen every boy dreamed of dancing with. She was also as shallow as a puddle and had the personality of a lottery ticket, but she completed the ensemble, and he had her trained in the bedroom to his liking, so he’d keep her around until graduation, same with his “friends.”

“Nah, babe, you know I’d never do that,” he said as he reached around and grabbed her ass.

As one guy started talking about a kegger planned for next weekend, another groaned from hunger. “Fuck, I’m starving. What are they serving today?” He was Travis, a guy whom Noah was sure had date-raped a girl at a previous party.

“You don’t want to know,” another said. “Come on, let’s bail and go get some real food.”

Everyone agreed, and they went out to the parking lot. He said “bail” instead of “sneak out” because there was no shortage of audacity as they left. The school wouldn’t interrupt their fun if they kept filling in seats at games. Noah hopped into his car, an expensive convertible his parents bought him. His father was a wealthy lawyer who loved football, making him easy to manipulate. He was one of the main reasons why Noah decided to focus this lifetime on football.

He peeled out of the parking lot with a screech, making Julie squeal in delight. His was a reckless, stupid life, but within 30 years, he was one of the most famous football players in the country and retired with more trophies and Super Bowl rings than he knew what to do with. As for what happened to Julie and the others, he didn’t know or care.

———-

Endless tears poured down countless cheeks, the listeners hypnotized within their seats as the music washed over them. Here in Carnegie Hall, in the expansive gold-colored performance room, tickets had been sold out for months, with the most dedicated lovers of music coming to hear the masterful keystrokes of Michael Welbrin, regarded as one of the greatest piano players ever known.

He first graced this stage as a child, immediately regarded as a genius of the generation. Now, fifty years later, he still drew in crowds that few modern bands and singers could match. His music, be they covers or originals, played with people’s emotions like puppets on strings, with zealot fans of all ages.

Strangers believed that his obsession with playing and fanatical practice schedule resulted from mental illness, even going so far as to assume him an idiot savant. Those who met him were shocked and even intimidated by how intelligent and well-socialized he was. No one, not even his family, was aware that much of his unparalleled talent resulted from over a thousand years of life experience and accumulated hand-eye coordination. They didn’t know that his devotion to the piano was not a life calling, more like an item on a to-do list.

Michael Welbrin was just one of Noah’s lives focused entirely on the mastery of one instrument. In his previous life, it was the guitar, and in his next life, he planned to focus on the violin. This lifestyle had affected his body, changing the shape of his hands to improve dexterity and strengthening his wrists to withstand even the most severe carpal tunnel syndrome. Unfortunately, it came at a price, leaving him with tinnitus, back problems, and heart issues. His doctors warned him of the danger of his obsession, but these alterations just stirred his interest.

He was driven not by love, but by curiosity as to what the absolute pinnacle of piano mastery would be like, and how close musical talent could bring him to deification. He swore off friendship, hobbies, and anything else that might interfere with his ascension.

———-

The water around Noah was clear, letting him see the labyrinth of tree roots trying to colonize the river bottom. A turtle swam past him, first taking a moment to bite his goggles. Noah kept swimming, following the tails of the pink river dolphins. Here in the Amazon Rainforest, they swam through channels and flooded sections of forest, continuously searching for food and stimulation.

At first, they were wary of Noah and stayed out of his reach, but with patience and persistence, he continued his pursuit until curiosity overcame them. They doubled back and began swimming laps around him, crackling and squealing in excitement. Though not as social as their bottlenose cousins, they were far less fearful. Noah mimicked their movements, joining along in their games as they played with rocks and sticks. Their bodies, greater than his in size and weight, had exceptional flexibility and maneuverability, and their pink skin gleamed from the sunlight.

Looking up, Noah spotted a branch with a low-hanging fruit over the water.