Mirror Sky. Part 1 - Blissful Nemesis

01 - Gost

While he felt the smothering embrace of the Twilight only in the human world, he always felt the pressure of Mirror Sky, even in Limbo, where he saw it go infinitely into the future and deep into the past. Its oppression suffocated the world for twenty centuries. Mirror Sky was the great equalizer. It did not matter how much money, power, or influence you had, nor how many throats you had to slit to get to where you were in life – in the end, you always confronted your reflection and went no further, dying in the Twilight like all those you left lying behind.

Hubris and greed shattered against Mirror Sky. Humanity inflicted untold misery on itself, trying to break out. Yet, the barrier stood unmoved, the Twilight grew thicker, and the Eternal Night drew closer.

Mirror Sky. Something so powerful, yet Gost could not even see it, despite looking right at it. This faultless, invulnerable enemy hid in plain sight. It posed as a perfect copy of the dim, desolate landscape. The twin black mountains and boulders above and below were five miles apart, separated by the invisible Sky two and a half miles high. The sharp jagged edges of rocks all around looked like the teeth of a giant monster that swallowed the world whole.

The Sky extinguished the last ray of sunshine over this land long before Gost was born. He had to look into the past to see it happen. His mind drifted to this haunting scene.

He remembered the last pillar of light shining from above. It lit the faces of the crowd standing amidst the dying old oak trees. The pillar was shrinking. It shone brighter in defiance, putting up the last stand against the darkness. The people and trees turned into silhouettes outlined by a courageous golden glow. The pillar now appeared almost solid, a glowing trembling rod. Then, the light shook, turned blinding for a moment, rushed in all directions in its last attempt to defeat the darkness... and died.

People were silent for a few moments. Gost expected them to cry in anguish or to gasp in horror. Instead, to his astonishment, the witnesses erupted in cheers.

Humanity cheered a lot of awful things over its history. In hindsight, this was the worst one.

Gost thought about the last pillar of light as he looked at the infinite void of reflections forming the Dark Horizon of today. He held onto the golden glow from the past that was now no more than a myth. Now, other solid pillars dominated the landscape – the stark and cold God Pillars. Gost let the last bits of memory die out and allowed reality to take over.

Were God Pillars indeed built by Gods? He heard this question asked many times. Even though he knew the truth, he could not give a simple answer, nor did he want to give any answers. The few times he buckled, he had to ask a question first. What makes a God? Is it immense power, knowledge, or influence? Is it technology so advanced that it appears like magic to others? Is it indeed a disembodied consciousness with otherwordly abilities? In one way or another, all of it contributed to the creation of the ten million God Pillars, the Mirror Sky they propped up, and the Dark Horizon they sliced to pieces.

The Pillars were monstrous in scale. Each was half a mile thick and had six Sky-perfect mirror edges, creating an interconnected network of reflections that could reveal a boulder nearby, a mountain thousands of miles away, or even the Sea of Leviathans on the other side of the globe. It was a dreadful kaleidoscope of the world, showing how little light was left.

Nevertheless, there was light somewhere. As long as you could see something in the dark, as long as something interrupted the Dark Horizon – life went on. The dying planet was yet to take its last breath. The Eternal Night was postponed, one spark in the darkness at a time. The existence of the Twilight meant hope. The Twilight meant that someone somewhere was still fighting.

Smiling at this old uplifting thought, Gost turned away from his reflection and walked among the black rocks stripped bare.

There was no sign of soil, plants, animals, or insects. Humanity went to considerable efforts to erase wild nature from existence. Gost would be hard-pressed to even find bacteria. The richness of nature remained only in words, expressions, and legends.

It was not the fault of the current generation, of course. The desolation of greed happened centuries ago. The current generation only humbly collected the rubble of the old civilization and made the best of it.

Gost soon saw the machines of such gatherers, one of the small glimmers of hope that kept the Twilight going and held the Eternal Night at bay. He followed and nudged these people for a couple of decades. They were oblivious to his influence. His open involvement was reserved only for pivotal moments.

The group of survivors camped for a sleepover a couple of hours ago. Gost could not see anyone wandering around. They were all inside their miraculous machines.

One such machine was the massive Landship Daring, a long five-story fortress on wheels disguised to look like a row of boulders. Ten thousand tons of rocks and steel that could go fifty miles per hour! On moonshine, no less. Thousands of miles of range, in near complete silence. Remarkable.

Another was an Arachnid lovingly nicknamed Limper - a four-hundred-foot-tall robot on eight long pointy legs covered in rocks and standing perfectly still. Its eight arms on top bore a variety of guns and artillery. Few dared to test Arachnid's firepower. The machine's sheer size and creepy shape made the adversary steer clear. Spiders were long extinct, but the fear of spiders, especially giant and mutated ones, prevailed. Arachnids, people joked, were used when wheels and talks had failed.

Both machines were carefully engineered and perfected to thrive in the impossible conditions of the Twilight. The sophistication of their recycling, farming, and energy preservation systems ridiculed the wasteful culture of the old perished civilization. Human ingenuity, adaptability, and resourcefulness always amazed Gost. Their tendency to abandon it all in times of prosperity was just as jarring.

It was a quiet moment. Not a soul was in sight. It was easy to imagine that time had halted.

An uneasy feeling came over Gost again. This time, it was not anxiety. It was something more potent. Something only he could feel – the fabric of space-time becoming unstable.

He could not see the future at the moment, but he could feel it becoming murky with thousands of conflicting scenarios and unresolved paradoxes.

It was all his doing. It was a brewing storm of his creation. He was here to see it start and grow. Then, he would make sure it would keep going no matter what.

There were countless ways it could all go wrong and one slight chance to make all the risks well worth it.

One slight chance to shatter Mirror Sky to pieces and bring starlight back to Earth.

Gost felt the hair rising on the back of his head as he took another deep breath. It was time to meet the eye of the storm he conjured.

It was time to meet the child.