Chronological markers: this scene fits in as a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, season 3, episode 4, around 20:50 (while Klaus and Stan "clean" the rooms).

Suggested soundtrack: The flashbulb - Good luck out there ; Stellardrone - Breath in the light

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April 4 2019, 04:02 pm

The Lakota people have a saying that 'Reality is an illusion we all share'. Reading this proverb in the little book I found in the White Bufallo suite, I appreciated its profound meaning, and I wondered if – truly – we all share the same illusion, or if we each approach it with different personal distortions. At this moment, however, the very notion of 'reality' shakes all my ability to philosophize. Is what I just saw real, or is it once again a product of my weary mind?

In front of me, the only door on the top floor of the Hotel Obsidian just closed behind Iggy, whom I watched pass by, hidden in my invisibility and immateriality. No. I'm certain my eyes didn't deceive me: I just saw him lift the back of his scalp and begin to remove his skin. I couldn't precisely tell what I saw beneath, but I am almost sure it was scales, matte and dull green, with a hint of yellow around the edges.

Iggy isn't human.
I couldn't even say what he is.

Suddenly, I look around me again, as if the Hotel Obsidian - this immense machine whose nature I have come to understand and which has sheltered me for several days now - might have an answer for me. This place was built in the 1910s-1920s, incorporating the cutting-edge technology of its time: the techniques of Seiko and Omega. But to shelter whom? To conceal what?

Part of the answer… lies beyond the door that just closed. Iggy. Whatever he is. He has answers for me.

*Crack!*

As I reappear on the black hexagonal tiles of the hallway where I was never meant to be, I see him ahead, walking away, his back illuminated only by the same blue lights as on the landing. His arms, his hands, are muscular and long, ending in claw-like nails. His scaly back is marked with what I can only describe as ridges or spines, perhaps both. His head is bald. He has no ears, but he heard very well that I had just arrived.

I stand where I appeared: fully visible, entirely tangible, facing him as he turns, holding the upper portion of what was previously his skin, now folded over his arm as if it were a coat. His indescribable face - a blend of human and reptilian - stares at me with the transparency of yellow eyes marked by surprise.

I was never meant to witness what I am now seeing. And he begins to hurry toward me as I - frozen - just look around me.

For a fleeting moment, my gaze slips inside one of the sliding doors left slightly ajar. To my right, within what appears to be a dimly lit lounge surrounded by booths, the 'Furry Ladies' are petting their cats, their faces now bearing reptilian features like Iggy's, while chatting with a figure placing his pipe away with scaly hands, whom I can only guess is Hemingway. On their left, seated with their backs to me on tall, silver bar stools, those I recognize as the Film noir couple now appear as two slender tailless lizard-like figures. Yet they are still served a cocktail by the one I once called Waler, the 'Australian soldier'.

There are more of them. I can hear sounds coming from behind some of the other doors. My breathing quickens, though none of them have seen me. But already, Iggy is upon me, grabbing and pulling me by the arm with a strength and agility I never would have believed he possessed. I don't try to resist or even make myself intangible again: I'm far too stunned for that. I simply let myself be led wherever he's taking me, watching the knotted lines of his reptilian neck ripple with each step.

He carries that sharp scent I noticed when passing through the landing: a scent from skin unlike any in this world, covered in a thin mucous layer that likely allows him to fuse seamlessly with the human skin he wears. I know nothing of what he truly is: even the sound emerging from the choanae that serve as his nostrils should chill me to the bone. And yet, I trust him. Through the strange energy coursing through his otherworldly physiology, I feel no, truly no, hostility.

His otherworldly hand brushes a small panel, and another door opens, setting in motion visible mechanisms like those of an immense clockwork. Inside, the light that flickers on is no longer golden but blue, and he pushes me to the far end of the small room, onto a cot made of pine wood, covered in wool and fur. The walls are adorned with pelts, leather bags hanging down, ochre fabrics decorated with beads and feathers. A large, very large dreamcatcher hangs above a set of drums. For a moment, I could almost believe I was inside a tipi. But the one who closes the door behind us and fully sheds his skin over a taut rope is anything - anything - but human.

"Who are you…", I say with difficulty, as the question feels inadequate compared to everything I need to ask.

My mind is nothing but a whirlwind of questions and doubts. I wish so much that I were dreaming, waiting to be called back to wakefulness. But he raises his voice in turn: a voice different from the one I knew, now that he no longer wears the face he used to speak to me before. That face now lies inert, like a costume, beside his hat with the long feather.

"The main question, kid, is: what are you doing here?"
I tremble slightly on the raised cot, which smells like him, mingled with the scent of medicinal herbs and furs.
"I… I was looking for my new room… I saw you pass by…"

He stares at me with his split yellow eyes, not even questioning how I teleported through the door, as if it doesn't surprise him. Perhaps he senses that my answer isn't a lie, and, in any case, it's now too late for me to unsee what I have seen. What I am seeing now as well. So, I rephrase my question:

"You weren't lying, were you, when you said you'd been wandering these corridors for ages…"

Removing his cowboy boots, the last remnants of his human guise, he stops looking at me. His posture is both strange and graceful, the skin of his neck rising slightly with each breath. On the sides of his chest, small technological devices appear to puncture his ribs, and I suspect that without them, he wouldn't be able to breathe the air in this room properly. He sits cross-legged on a metallic mat with a honeycomb pattern, contrasting starkly with the Native American decor around us.

"I haven't lied to you about a single thing. We've all lived here since the very moment this hotel was built, where once there were only fields. Long before everywhere around us and - what you call The City - was born."

I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them. I tremble slightly, but again, I sense he means me no harm: no more than when we first met in the Obsidian Bar. He adjusts a small, glowing button on the side of the mat, and a purple vapor rises, humidifying his scaly skin. I realize that's where the smell comes from. He lets me watch, allowing me the chance to fully take him in, and I notice just how ageless he seems. I wonder how long a being like him - like them - can live.

"Where do you come from?"

It's a short question. Simple. But I know it's deeply intrusive, likely calling for a long answer. My intuition tells me that they are only a handful… that they're all here, perhaps. And for the very first time since I've known him, I see him sigh, his reptilian chest expanding as a bellow.

"Our planet… has no name that would make sense in your language. The Lakota call your Earth Uncí Makȟá, Grandmother Earth. So, I like to call the place I come from Makȟá Zuȟéča. The Broken Earth."

These names resonate within me with an endless sadness, perhaps because I can feel Iggy's own sorrow amid the vapor that now envelops him. I have no trouble believing he could come from another planet: no, not with the being I see before me. And perhaps, because of what I am myself, I find it easier to accept what might seem supernatural to anyone else.

"Are you… exiles?"
He closes his eyes for a moment with a pale, translucent membrane.
"We are castaways. Our numbers have dwindled: we are now just a handful."

I unfold my legs and cross them, sitting in a posture that reflects my full attention. And Iggy opens his iridescent eyes again.

"Humans… you're so much like our species was in its youth. With that frenzy for progress, comfort, consumption, that furious drive to live. We were just a few centuries ahead of you, little brothers."
I remain motionless, my fingers clenched around my knee.
"Ahead in what?"
He tilts his head in that strange, hypnotic way.
"In the race for technology, and, and thus the erosion of our resources. In always wanting to go further, we caused the fall of Makȟá Zuȟéča."

A shiver runs up my spine, and I look at him with difficulty. These past years spent in the sixties - amid the songs of the hippies and the Cold War - have inevitably made me think about humanity's future. About an apocalypse that might come of its own, in a more insidious way than any Hargreevism could ever bring about. I've been too swept up in events to dwell on my own eco-anxiety, as so many people have. But now, I realize that the mistakes we're making have been made by other civilizations before us.

"You… depleted your planet."

Iggy keeps staring at me intently, and I know his silence is an affirmation, one in which I can see all the wars, epidemics, and famines.

"There are many ways to react when a world is ending", he says, his rough voice carrying impossible tones. "I was among those who blinded themselves and sought hope elsewhere. Who believed we could emigrate. I'm not proud of it. We were travelers, naturalists, ethnologists, philosophers… We followed the Wayfarer on his journeys. Myself and my companions: the ones you know."

I sense he's speaking of the Furry Ladies, the film noir couple, Waler, and Hemingway.

"... I turned my gaze toward other worlds. I grew fascinated with the cultures of your planet and the human populations. We all carry in our hearts pieces of your ways of life, fragments of your wisdom, your still-primitive sciences… your nascent technology and artifacts. In my case, I suppose the Lakotas connection to nature resonated especially deeply, reflecting the very destruction consuming my own world."

I sense that he hasn't often had the chance to reflect on himself this way, so I give him the space he needs. He shakes his head.

"Others never gave up on Makȟá Zuȟéča, even though it was too late to stop the collapse. So they… sought scientific and technical means… to reverse the course."

My heart clenches, knowing that the story he's telling could very well one day be ours. That perhaps we've already crossed the limits without yet feeling it that much. I think of those who believe humans might one day colonize Mars. I think of those still fighting to change behaviors. And I see the parallel with what the people of Makȟá Zuȟéča went through.

"They tried to make your planet livable again?"
He remains still as the vapor dissipates around him.
"Some did. All of them failed. But one among us, whom we call the Cosmologist, went so far as to seek to restore our planet - and everything - to its original state."
I frown.
"Restore it?"

He nods in a very human way, probably a mimicry learned from those he's been around for so long.

"She studied the most elemental components of the universe: those of matter, energy, forces, trajectories… the very essence of reality. Deep within the machinery of the universe, she sought to reconfigure its parameters to restore our great plains, fertile and green."

I blink, trying to understand, and I make the connection with the Legend of the White Buffalo he told me not long ago: the very one that inspired him when he was asked to decorate the suite of the same name. He placed all his hopes in those objects, and especially in that symbol of renewal, above the mantelpiece.

The birth of a white buffalo, in the words of the Lakotas he so admires, is a sign 'that the world has a fever', but it also carries the hope that Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka - the Great Mystery - will soon restore it. I remember asking him if he truly waited for this promised restoration of world harmony, which I believed to be mostly symbolic. He replied that I had no idea how much. Yes. I had no idea he meant it literally: that, like the other castaways of his planet, he was waiting, in the truest sense, for a kind of 'reset' of his extinguished world, and everything around it.

Today, our world, too, has a fever. For what humanity does to it, day after day… and, more immediately, for the waves of Kugelblitz that are gradually consuming everything. My throat tightens.

"The Cosmologist… did she fail?" I ask him, with the utmost care, knowing that if he's here, on this Earth now dying too, it means that story didn't end well. And yet, his reptilian eyes take on a new glimmer.

"Yes… and no."
Answers like that - especially coming from wise ones, as I now know Iggy to be - always make me smile. But I let him continue.
"'Yes', because she tampered with something far too vast for her, which hastened our downfall and triggered a cataclysm..."

He freezes for a moment, as if terrible images flash before his eyes: images whose nature I don't know, but whose very energy chills my blood. Yet, with a pained expression, he pushes them away, closing his eyes.

"…and 'no', because - even though time is now running out - there is still hope… beyond the White Buffalo."

Suddenly, his gaze turns ochre, with a piercing, almost urgent warmth, as if he's expecting something from me. From us.

Almost instinctively, my hand goes to my forearm, to the tattoo beneath my oversized black hoodie. Those concentric squares and hexagons linked together: the ones I jokingly described to Sebastian, my tattoo artist, as the ultimate answer to the universe, just like the number 42. The pattern Reginald Hargreeves forced me to see in 1963, which is also here, in this Hotel at the heart of The City, and perhaps at the center of everything. The very same design on the pachinko machine in the White Buffalo suite, which Iggy himself decorated.

I lock eyes with Iggy, my dark gaze steady, and slowly pull up my sleeve.

"What… what's in the White Buffalo suite, beyond that pattern?"

I felt the vibration of the pachinko: I couldn't sleep at night because of it. I know it's hiding something. Something with immense energy.

Iggy doesn't even blink his membranous eyelids, he stays silent. In the stillness above the furs and hides, through the walls, from other alcoves down the hall, I hear fragments of conversations in a guttural, breathy language, only catching half the sounds. I don't know how many of them are here, but his reptilian expression grows fervent with hope as he finally replies:

"I don't know, just as I don't know the meaning of this Sigil."

He takes a deep breath of the air from this world that isn't his, his choanae vibrating with the weight of all his hope, and adds:

"But the Wayfarer knows."

-

Notes:

I wanted to tell the story of Reginald and Abigail here: a story only hinted at in the series through brief flashbacks (warning: the following list contains series spoilers).

- Season 2 (Episode 9): reveals Reginald's extraterrestrial, reptilian nature.
- Season 4 (Episode 4): shows us that Abigail discovered the particles fueling the machinery of the universe, and in doing so, triggered an "incident" that hastened the destruction of their home planet.
- In Season 1 (Episode 10): Reginald releases these particles on their dying planet as Abigail lies terminally ill.
- In Season 3 (Episodes 8 and 9): we learn how Reginald found the doorway to the universe's machinery - allowing for a reset - and how he built the hotel (and the city) around this door, with Abigail remaining cryogenically preserved on the dark side of the Moon.

You've understood who the Wayfarer is and who the Cosmologist is. For me, the "fall of Makȟá Zuȟéča" is central to understanding the story of The Umbrella Academy, and yet it's so scarcely explored.

I chose to contextualize Abigail's research and Reginald's explorations by giving them a broader backstory: that of a world already undergoing an environmental apocalypse. This allows me to explain Abigail's motivations in her search for the universe's elemental particles and to account for her urgency to do so.

I wanted to explore this story through the eyes of another member of the reptilian species to which they belong. Iggy, as Rin calls him - along with all the strange, timeless inhabitants of the Hotel Obsidian - is also a castaway.

Rin has now understood that the Hotel Obsidian has a role to play in the hopes of renewal for the exiles of Makȟá Zuȟéča. She still doesn't know just how deeply her fate and that of the Hargreeves are connected to it.

Any comment will make my day!