Sequel

This was quite difficult to write and I did get strange looks for my own reaction to it. This is not the end. Not yet.

I firmly believe that Rel is absolutely crazy.

But he's also been set up to do just this so... yeah. At least he's doing as he's been asked. Unlike some characters of mine.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




The next day was a blur. Rel played with his control the entire time, losing track of the morning and then the afternoon. He took the control unit with him to the meeting, down in the pool room. Because he had had success in the morning and he knew Raya was watching the bots. The two had had several battles with the bots over the morning but momentarily a majority of the nanobots in Norash were Rel’s.

For the moment.

Which was why Rel played with his control unit as the Sidhe talked. Which was why he didn’t notice that there were no partners at the meeting until everything went silent. That was when he looked up and found oddities.

The only light of the pool room was the light filtering in through the huge windows. Which meant the room was slightly darker than it had been other times Rel had visited it. There were no partners there. Hohi was out in the open, wanting Rel’s attention without directly asking for it.

And everyone was looking at him.

“What?” He asked.

He checked his bots. The power of the entire floor was off and each successive floor was shutting down. Souse, the bots informed him, was in the basement, flicking switches. Rel glanced back up and found everyone still looking at him.

“What, already? What do you want?” Rel asked the tribe.

To which the tribe looked from one to another, to another. Looking for a spokesperson. Ashun finally sighed and stepped forward, being prodded by Raoh. The young woman dug around inside a backpack as she explained, looking for something to eat.

“We’ve decided we can’t wait any longer. We have to do it now.”

“Do what now?”

Ashun gave Rel a look, snapping out a granola bar from its wrapper. She paused as she went to take a bite and presented Rel the wrapper.

“Your people have grown fat on the bones and blood of my people. You charge a man more for fresh food than you do for poison. You are fat and lazy and most of you do not know what natural is. It is time for that to end.”

“Even ending the world, it would take centuries to destroy all the. The buildings and metals and plastics.”

“Let it. But let no more be made. Let the reign of the people fall once more and let the world resume its balance.”

“I can’t reach that far. No one can reach that far. Sidhe bone technology is used across the globe, you want me to shut down the world. Not for a moment, not for a minute or an hour or a day, but forever. Do you know what will happen?”

“People will die. Children will die. Sidhe will die. The elder will die and those who cannot adapt will die. Good people will die, be sold,” Ashun responded, then paused, “but they already do. Your highest priests are raping young boys. Your politicians are getting away with murder. Literally. Innocent people pay the extreme price of speeding while the very council members who are supposed to protect them are using tax money to fly to other nations, third world nations, to beget children on underage Sidhe whores.

“Open your eyes, Whisper. The only difference between yesterday and the tomorrow we want is that the world. Mother. Will not die along with the people.”

“Fuck,” Rel muttered, looking at Muan, “and what do you,” Rel looked at Mn, “and you, think of this?”

Mn and Muan shared a look. Muan gave a small nod to his sister and she huffed out a breath.

“We watched our mother be slaughtered. Her bones were scattered across the government buildings, one of power, she was and so her bones are more powerful, back up generators. So the first lady can curl her hair. So the defence minister can watch child pornography. Our mother died. We. Had a younger brother. A simple soul, an artist, when lots were drawn.” Mn paused and looked at Muan. The male wrapped an arm around her reassuringly, “I drew the lot. Mt,” it took a moment for Rel to realise that was the younger brother’s name, “when it was my time to go, stepped up to my place. And so we watched our brother be slaughtered. His bones when into small things, cell phones. Sometimes I swear I can still hear him. Raising his voice to greet the moon.”

Rel swallowed and looked away, “why not just-”

“Return the favour?” Mn asked, “where do you think I’ve been? Trying to round up the bones of my mother and my brother, to give them a proper burial. But what would be better? Bloody my hands, or take back what is mine? That in itself will be punishment enough.”

“But I can’t reach that far.” Rel protested.

Silence for a long moment before Mn motioned towards the control unit, “why not use those?”

“These? I only control the ones in Nora-” Mn snatched the control unit from Rel, “sh?”

The female jabbed at the screen several times and handed it back over to Rel as the unit began a happy beep. Like.

An excited Sidhe.

Rel glanced at the screen. He now owned all but a small cluster of nanobots somewhere to the far south, “how did you…”

“Can you use them?”

“Yes. I’ve done it before.”

“Good.”

“But… I just fried some technology. Overloaded the circuit.”

“You can speak Sidhe,” Ashun muttered around a mouthful of granola, “just tell them to go home.”

“Go… home…”

“Sidhe, when they die, will stick around, trying to help those who they loved during life,” Mn muttered, “a Whisper can tell a soul to pass on, without the soul attached to the bones, the population can grow, with reborn souls, the bones will lose their power and the technology needs that power to work.”

“The original plan was-”

“I am telling you that this is the new plan,” Mn snapped, “all the bones. Free the people.”

Rel looked to Ashun. The young woman swallowed several times before saying, “we were going to ask Paw to do it, but as he’s… left… he can’t. You’re the only Whisper we can ask this of. They might fade at the end of the world. But yes, we want them free.”

He sighed and sat on the floor. “Ya’ll are crazy.”

Rel rubbed his face, considered and then looked at the control unit and huffed out. They were crazy? He was crazy.

He took a step sideways, out of what was rational, normal thought. Good luck to any who tried to follow him, Rel felt the Sidhe minds turn towards him, felt the startled hesitation of Muan as the male considered following. Too late to follow. Rel dove through the control unit, being leaking across Norash, broadcasting across, of all things, the satellites above Mother. For a startling instant he saw what was referred to as dark space.

That band of stars across the sky, were not stars at all, but was a cloud of debris, thought to be from a secondary moon. The souls of the gods winked at him as he tumbled back to earth, as he spread across the globe, jumping from bot to bot to bot.

The bots moved into every bit of technology, ignoring their command protocol. They shifted and dug and drilled their way into every piece of metal they could find, settled on the bones of the dead and sighed out as the calcium in the bones awoke. Millions of Sidhe turned their attention towards Rel, then millions more as bone chips communicated to one another, across the globe.

lookit they whispered to one another, what’s that?

Rel waited as his mind strained, waited until he was certain -how was he certain?- that every power plant was infiltrated. Until the entire population of deceased Sidhe stood before him on an ethereal plain. Rel herded them together, herded them towards his home, that place where Tusto resided, to a restful time and an accepting peoples.

Go he urged them.

They talked amongst themselves, so many tongues and so many tribes, long killed, old friends and family. All were connected, all moved as one, not quite paying attention as Rel herded them towards the underworld. A moment before they touched the gates, Rel tried to pull away, realising his mistake.

The backlash of pushing so many souls into the underworld, all at once, slammed Rel into his body as his body dropped from the air. Rel choked and coughed, struggling to continue even as strong arms caught him and pulled him gently towards a being.

Startling silence rolled through the pool room. Darkness predominated.

Rel thrust himself back into that other place and ordered the bots to destroy the bones, least the people find some way to use them again.

With one last flick of his mind, Rel ended the world.


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