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I was behind bars again. The rods stuck firmly in the rock and did not think to stagger. During these days, I somehow even got used to the imprisonment. It was sad only because the newly returned vision became unnecessary, because there was almost no light here. The skills acquired during blindness helped a lot not to hit my head when trying to go to the toilet, which was just a hole hollowed out in the rock. Where it led was not clear. But from there the wind blew periodically, bringing back the smell of sewage.
Yes, I tried to put my hand in there. What had I to lose? If I had a chance to climb through this hole in the rock, I would certainly take it. But it was impossible to do that.
I tried calling Rob. But he didn't answer. Apparently, communication sessions also required desires.
More than of the deception of May-e-oka I was thinking about who this Great Mother was. And how does this relate to my birth at the peak, under the bulk of which I was sitting. But the days dragged on and my curiosity remained unanswered.
And what of deception? Of course, it was a shame, but part of me felt that no matter what, something more connects me with May-e-oka than this whole Ogunter Lag story.
My only visitors were a bowl of food and a bottle of water. They stood in front of the bars every time I woke up. I have never seen who brought them, no matter how much I pretended. Only when I really fell asleep did I get a new portion. Those who fed me clearly did not want my imminent death.
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It's hard to say exactly how much time has passed, but one day a flickering light appeared in the depths of the cave. It was like an electric current passed through my body. I sat down on the bench and clung to the yellow dot with my sight, afraid to let go.
Soon it became clear that it was the figure of a woman in a crown. Coming closer, she called an armchair out of the darkness, and like a slug it crawled up to my unusual guest, who sat down on it. The lamps, and there were several of them, which seemed to me to be oil from afar, were extremely unusual, glowing strips of light on layered stands hovered in the air by themselves. The woman pushed them aside, illuminating her stone face with oblique rays. It seemed like the rock itself had come to talk to me.
“Hello, the disguised one.”
“Hello, Great Mother,” I nodded in response, “I would like to say that there is no reason...”
“Silence,” the woman interrupted me.
I fell silent, staring at the floor. There was only the hum of lamps left.
“But I can't be silent,” I shook my head, yielding to the indignation that rose from my heart, “I don't know anything about what you are…”
“Shut up!” the woman screamed and coughed.
This time I finally fell silent, painfully twisting the fingers on my right hand to distract myself from anger by the pain.
“Do you remember me?” The Great Mother asked, having mastered herself.
“No," I answered honestly, frowning.
“What do you remember?”
“You ask the questions here, of course. But I won't answer until you…”
The woman got up from her armchair, signaled to the lamps and headed away.
“Wait. Okay. No. Don't leave," I grabbed my head with my hands, "please talk to me, I'll tell you everything.”
The Great Mother stopped and waited.
“I remember being carried by an old man, who handled me to someone in a boat. And then him being lifted on a sword by a huge bull. Then I am brought to a big city, where I am looked after and raised by nurses for a long time. I remember Agalit pretty well, her breasts were especially full of milk and the sound of her heartbeat calmed like nothing…”
“Don't mess with my head with this nonsense!” The woman screamed, turning to me, “When did you remember who you are?”
“I... didn't forget," I shrugged.
“Don't lie! Bastard," the Great Mother got angry and stamped her foot.
“I'm not lying, I've always, as long as I can remember, been just Bike, an orphan Bike,” tears welled up in my eyes, and I struggled to restrain their flow.
The woman sat back down on the armchair, and the lamps positioned themselves so that they stopped illuminating her face.
"You stole everything from me," she hissed through her teeth.
“Madam, Great....”
“You stole my beloved from me! You killed him. I…You! You threw him over the horizon!
“I…”
"Then you stole my body! And then my son!”
The walls of the cliff shook from her scream. And I remembered now what her voice was reminding me. It was just like the wild howl I heard on my birthday when the bull raised the old man to the sword.
“I didn't steal anyone. I was taken away myself. I was stolen…That old man, maybe he stole me?” I replied, trying to find at least some logic in her words.
“What are you?”
“I'm a Bike... an orphan…”
“Know whether you confess or not, we will execute you. We figured out how.”
“I... Bike...”
“You can't escape anymore Ogunter Lag. No one knows you're here. No one will come for you.”
“Tell me one thing. Please tell me about my parents if you know anything about them. I came here for this. I've wanted to know who I am all my life…”
“You’ve found out.”
The woman stood up, and the armchair behind her staggered and fell, crumbling into pieces. The Great Mother called the lamps and walked away into the depths of the cave. Stunned, I watched the waving lights.
“May the red moon take you!” I shouted after the woman, “And if it doesn't, I'll try myself!”
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After a while, I heard a rustle near my cell.
“Hi," May-e-oka’s voice rang out.
I turned around on my bench, trying to see something in the semi-darkness.
“Hello.”
“How do you like it here?”
“It's better than with whale plague patients.”
The girl giggled and hit her head on the ledge, gasped and began to rub her head.
“Careful, there are a lot of sharp corners.”
“I noticed, thanks.”
We fell silent and the wind from the hole carried the smell of sewage.
"Are they going to execute me?" I asked, having mastered my disgust.
“Yes.”
“Will they succeed? With all this wormgunteralag thing?”
“It may well be. No one has done this yet, but everything happens for the first time.”
I felt somehow unbearable to speak, a sense of injustice closed over me like a cold cocoon.
“You know, I believe you ...” said May-e-oka suddenly, “no matter how strange it may sound, but something inside me says that you are not lying.”
"I'm not lying.”
"But I can't be trusted in these matters.”
"Which ones?"
“In matters of feelings.”
“Why?”
“You see, you and I are somewhat similar.”
"Stop talking in riddles.”
“Imagine that you are Bike.”
“I am Bike.”
“Good. You're a Bike, but there's a whole space inside you where your worm lives, and someone else. And you are just an outer shell for these creatures. They control you. And it seems to you that you are Bike, you live some kind of life, you are interested in something, but in fact you are just a mask that they will take off when they need it.”
I fell silent and thought.
“Sad, yes. But I understand you. I don't have anything of mine either. I'm just a tool in someone else's hands," my guest shrugged.
“Which is better to be a tool or a mask?”
“I don't know. I think it's better not to be.”
Nobody said anything for a long time.
“And this someone else, who is he?”
“The man from the launcher. That's what they call him. He was born in another universe more than 5,000 years ago. And he came to our world together with the Outs, on their ship. He is immortal and had superpowers from the very beginning. His goal is unknown, but he was fighting another immortal named Rob. He thought about him constantly while occupying the body of the Great Mother. She was pregnant at the time, and he moved into her son.”
"Is he in me now?"
“Yes.”
“That means…Is the Great Mother my mother?”
“That's right.”
“So that's why... oh... how stupid I am…”
“Not the brightest one, yes, but not completely stupid,” the girl grinned, “absolutely stupid wouldn't have guessed at all.”
“Laugh, laugh,” I got angry.
“I'm sorry, I just can't deny myself the pleasure.”
"But I am. Here are my hands, here are my legs, they obey me. I'm thinking.”
“Are you thinking that?”
"Are you saying I can't trust myself?"
“Yes, that's exactly what I want to say. All that you perceive as yourself is only the experience accumulated during your short life. A set of energy fields that force you to make false representations that there is some kind of personality behind all this. But in fact, behind this facade...”
“A worm and a man from a launcher...”
“That's right.”
“And what should I do?”
“I don't know. I'm not so far away from you myself. I don't have any advice for your situation. I'm sorry I brought you here.…”
"Don’t worry," I shrugged, "there's nothing to change anyway.”
May-e-oka paused, got up, and her steps quickly disappeared into the depths of the cave.
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Soon they came for me. They inserted a gag, put a bag on my head and led me in an unknown direction. After long passages, stairs and one endless elevator, we found ourselves in a warm, sonorous hall. The rumble of footsteps and distant conversations in an unknown language informed me about its size.
I was taken further and soon I felt a strong animal smell. The bag was removed from my head, and I saw a stone throne surrounded by massive columns, in front of which my mother was sitting, and on it a huge gray-haired bull-man. On the edges of the throne stood women and men of different ages, some of them were not human, but semi-animal. Many had the same horns on their heads as the bull-man. I tried to find May-e-oka with my eyes, but I couldn't. Behind my back were two big guys, also with horns.
“Hello, worm,” the voice of the bull-man thundered, “do you remember me?”
I nodded. This bull and the bull from my memories have joined.
"Whether you're lying or not, it doesn't matter," my interlocutor continued, "what matters is that we are gathered here, surrounded by our children, to finish you off. Once and for all to get rid of the curse unleashed into our world by Outs.”
I wanted to show off recently developed fearlessness. Everyone I’ve met tried to kill me so many times in the last few days that I wanted to see how they could do it. But instead, I felt something completely unusual. The worm became agitated. He was spinning somewhere behind my back. What did that mean?
“The Outs, even though they were primitive beings in spiritual terms, were good with technology. They did not disdain to borrow the best from their rivals," the mother continued after the bull.
And then I noticed in front of the steps leading to the throne a depression the size of a large bath, in which a black liquid began to boil.
“In front of you, Ogunter Lag, you see a “mirror of memories”, a technology that allows you to revive the memory of any person to life. Our children," the woman waved her hand around the throne, "are such memories that faithfully served us in the search for you, Ogunter Lag. And today we honor our daughter, who managed to regain trust and bring you to the answer.”
May-e-oka appeared from behind me and walked towards the throne. She came up and bowed first to the bull, then to the Great Mother. The bull stood up and raised his hoof. The liquid behind girls back stirred and several black threads rose and swirled over May-e-oka's head, turning into the same horns as on the others.
"You're free, child," the mother smiled, "and you can go back.”
The girl bowed, turned around and entered the black bath. Others started praying and dancing. After taking one last look at me, she decomposed into black threads. A groan escaped from my chest.
"The mirror is ready to reflect again, and we will summon a memory that will help us get rid of you, worm," the bull thundered.
A figure vaguely familiar to me began to form from the dark liquid right in the place where May-e-oka disappeared. It was a man in a brown hat and raincoat, large thick-rimmed glasses and a suitcase.
"In the archive of the secret library that Strife read while you were there, possessing her body, there was information about the research station of the Outs, buried here in Minea. In it we have found the memory storage and the technology of the “mirror of memories". One such memory turned out to be the memory of an immortal named Khton, about a meeting with an engineer. And this is our great luck. Engineers are a special caste in the universe of Outs. Invisible servants of the Central Computator, whatever that means, they correct the errors in reality that the immortals create. And they are able to clean imprints, whatever that gibberish means, too. This happened to Khton, his body was captured, but an engineer came and repaired it, erasing the invader. Khton remembered it in every detail. Thanks to him.”
Meanwhile, an engineer has already woven himself out of the dark liquid in front of me. He came out of the recess and moved towards me, brushing off his cloak. Halfway there, he stopped, put his suitcase on the floor, opened it and began rummaging through it. He took out one device after another and looked at them, then at me.
The worm behind me was panicking. And someone else. Now I felt that someone else inside me also felt fear, because he remembered. He remembered Khton, some kind of robot, a woman who had been erased. He remembered very well what would happen next.
The man in the brown raincoat finally found something in the suitcase. It turned out to be a key. He inserted it into an invisible lock and turned it.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
