The crypt tower glowed in the endless dark of that pit. its shades of blue were familiar yet also indistinguishable. A beautiful nightmare.
Of all the secrets he kept, the location of this place was the one he kept best. Not even Marie knew of its whereabouts. Nobody should, it shouldn't be there.
He could see neither bottom or top and the lift ride down took five minutes.
Cables stretched out to the walls like arches and occasionally a strange buzzing sound would reverberate through the place. Growling and mechanical in a strange way.
When that sound arose the tank bubbled. But not from any vent.
The catwalk where Arron stood reached out to the tower. It was narrow, no more than a foot wide and had no guard rails.
The being it was made for didn't make mistakes.
The singularity: The death after death. The afterlife.
On the platform that circled the crypt there was a series of metal beds, head shaped devices connected to the tower at their ends.
All was made of dark metals he'd never seen before. He understood none of it.
The collected mind of an entire society all in one place. Once one of the builders' marionettes would work here bringing our kind to its afterlife.
That ended long ago.
Now a fiction governed the afterlife. A person Arron and made up at the beginning of New Empire.
Surprisingly they fell for it. Or pretended too.
Truth was people cared little about what happened after death, they were too focused on the event itself, usually.
The singularity was not a choice, it was not a certainty.
It was artificial. It could even be a lie.
To Arron it was fragile, like a vase of souls.
Despite common beliefs nobody had been brought here in fifteen years.
Before that only the ruling class had been allowed in for more than a century.
The people had become more metaphorical in their beliefs over time. The aristocracy just needed to be lied to.
They would fade too anyway, eventually.
He wondered if the people in that mausoleum of one and many had found peace, if even they could.
They were no longer them, they were all.
He supposed there was something beautiful about that.
Before he had met the builder, he did think it was beautiful. But his faith was betrayed. Betrayed by bitter reality.
He could not trust such a being and none of them could. He was not of this world, neither are we.
Was it peace to be gone, lost in the endless self. Aware of everyone else, there is every thought and feeling.
He smoked a cigarette, his first in years. He had to buy a lighter to steal a lighter from Marie's desk. It wasn't awkward lighting it, muscle memory held strong.
They were the kind Torrin and Rebekah liked, light and airy. He found their profile ironic considering the pair's disposition though opposites did attract.
That's why he didn't like that place, that endless barrow cold and terrible.
There were no opposites in the crypt, only reflections. A wrong place to make awful decisions.
Gaias Went the military police's commander had called for a meeting with Marie and himself two hours from then.
They had been pushing it recently, calling for legislation to be changed and reverted back to old forms.
Grasping for reform, conservatives of a style.
They 're probably going to demand control over the investigation into Rebekah's killer. Bombs were always their specialty.
Maybe they'd even move for more seats in the larger council. Why expect anything new?
Arron thought about that for a moment but shook his head.
He sighed, throwing the end of the cigarette down the shaft and made his way back along the catwalk.
He was not at his end yet.
The question of the builder, this place and the world they lived upon, was one he'd tried to forget. Tried and failed.
He thought that the Builder and the singularity were artificial. If they were machines, what was their purpose?
He knew the Builder's purpose was to breed a new world. But what could be the purpose of this?
He looked back at that nightmare one more time as he hit a button in the lift, the room buzzing again as he began to move up.