PARADIGM - CHAPTER 4: SMOKE & MIRRORS
Kim clutched at the Doctor. He cradled her.
"This is madness," he said, through gritted teeth, over her shoulder to the room at large.
"It is fated. The child has seen it."
"No!" sobbed Kim. "I don't want to. Not me...."
Mommy.
Yes, sweetheart?
She doesn't understand, does she?
No baby. She's confused.
Shall we explain to them?
Let us do that, little one.
The Childseer stood and turned to face the Doctor and Kim. He smashed an orb on the ground in front of them. Fumes from the quicksilver pool drifted up into their faces. Tendrils of smoke teased at their senses. Behind them the Accolytes chanted in numbing unison.
SIX...SIX...SIX...
The Doctor and Kim swayed slightly in time with the chant. Pictures danced in their heads.
They saw a long lost race. A race that dreamed of God. They had created a machine from the living quartz. Programmed it to solve the Skasis Paradigm by whatever means in its immense power. To roam the Universe and return triumphant. To make them God.
They estimated it would take a thousand generations to return. That was a billion years ago. They had long since gone but the machine persisted. Inexorably searching. Roaming free.
ONE
They saw it find the key to the first element. A drop of dew on a frond of summer grass.
TWO
The second was found aeons later: The dying breath of a Madris Unicorn, its lifeblood ebbing away from a wounded heart.
THREE
The third was hidden deep inside a colony of insects. A single chrysalis among billions buried deep in the birthing chamber of the Queen.
But then the well ran dry. The trail had cooled.
In desperation the machine had sought the legendary world of Skasis itself – the home of the Paradigm. It buried itself here in the mountains, waiting with infernal patience.
FOUR
Over millenia they saw it attract new moons to the planet, filling the previously empty sky. Then one night, right on time and in accordance with the machine's calculations, the moons aligned in their pre-ordained pattern. The fourth element.
FIVE
The fifth element needed imagination. The imagination that only children possess. Children in great numbers. They saw the machine suck up the Children of Skasis in its greedy maw. The total childhood population of the planet. Twenty-seven million all told. It created one child – the Childseer. Twenty seven million children in one body – dreaming. The act of its creation was the fifth element.
They then saw the machine extinguish the remaining population of Skasis, save for the Childseer's twelve Acolytes, who were spared to provide for his material needs and to chant the mantra.
Try as it might the machine could not find the sixth. It was too well hidden. But the Childseer had found it.
SIX
A random selection of cells and tissue. An unremarkable woman working in a place of books. Hidden in plain sight.
They saw the same woman standing beneath the sixth cube of the Skasis Paradigm, glowing with power and screaming with joy. They saw the prophecy.
Kim's anguish echoed across the chamber. The pictures faded.
"No !"
"You cannot fight the prophecy," said the child.
The Doctor looked pityingly at the boy. "What you have done here...to the children... is obscene."
The deep voice chuckled. The crystal walls pulsed. "He thinks I'm his Mommy." The voice changed to a simpering, saccharine, falsetto.
"You can rest soon, my baby."
"Thank you, Mommy. I'm very tired."
"Don't I get a say in all this?" Kim's face was streaked with dried tears, but she still managed to strike a defiant note.
"Of course," rumbled the machine."Yours is the important voice. It is prophesied that you will give yourself to the Paradigm of your free will. That is the vital element. The free will."
"And if I refuse?"
"You saw the outcome yourself. You will complete the circuit. You will take the power. You will become God." The voice lowered. "Do you really think you came here at random ? Drifting on the wind? This is your destiny."
That word again.
Kim disentangled herself from the Doctor and looked into his eyes.
"You can't be seriously considering it?" he said.
"Destiny." she whispered. "You used that word, Doctor. But you couldn't see this, could you? What if this is my destiny? If you tell me it's not then I'll believe you. But what if it is..."
The Doctor stared at her for a very long time, then sighed. "I don't know."
Kim found herself chewing at her nails, just as she used to do back home when nervous or afraid.
She looked at the Doctor and the boy and at the pulsating crystalline walls.
"I need time," she said. "To think."
"Kim...!"
"There is a place of contemplation set aside. You can rest. You have already seen the truth but you need to accept it. To embrace it."
"I will take you," said the Childseer.
The boy took her hand. The Doctor made to intervene but was restrained by two of the Acolytes who pinned his arms.
The Childseer led Kim into the passageway, out of the cavern.
The Doctor struggled in vain.
"Now you see your irrelevance revealed," said the deep voice. "I wonder if there will be a place for you in the new order?"
SIX...SIX...SIX...
.
The child led Kim down a branch of the main passage until they came to a small aperture in the wall, just about big enough for one person to pass through.
"You will rest. In here you can hold up a mirror to your soul. See the truth of your feelings." He looked up at her with big, sad eyes. "But when you come to create your new universe, promise me one thing."
"W-what?"
"That there will be no place in it for creatures like me."
He let go of her hand and sat cross-legged, head bowed. Waiting.
The space inside the aperture was bright and roomy. The walls were polished, multi-faceted and angular. A myriad of Kim Gideons reflected back at her. She felt like she was standing inside a prism.
Hold up a mirror to her soul, he had said. She hated mirrors.
UGLY FAT COW ! The chant of Jimmy Knapp and his gang, back in the school playground. Maybe her universe would get along very nicely without Jimmy Knapp and his like. And mirrors. Yes, a universe without mirrors sounded good. And she could have friends...hundreds of them, thousands of them...no more loneliness...ever....
Kim gasped. She was actually contemplating it !
God.
Her head pounded. She covered her face with her hands. Trying to block out her anguish and temptation.
She was still in that position when one of the reflections leaped forward and struck her senseless.
(End of Chapter 4)