Entering the forbidden space inside Right Man's mind, Proscenium experienced the man's memories again, but in a new light this time.
Flash! Right Man is tending bar on another hectic night. This time, something is different. The mass of customers parts at one end of the bar, and stunning woman he would eventually come to know by the rather ridiculous name of Madam Corruption stepped forward.
"And what," Right Man said, "can I get for you?"
She smirked at him. "I know who you are and what you've done."
Flash! Right Man is strapped to a chair in a dark room, beaten and bloody. Corruption stands before him with arms crossed again, surrounded by men in faceless red robes.
"I'm not joining you!" he screams.
"We are the Temple," Corruption says. "You've learned of our existence. Now you become one of us or you die."
The muscles in her face loosened, and she leaned in closer. "I'm sorry to threaten you like this, but it's a necessary evil. Our great work demands secrecy."
He gazed into her grey-blue eyes, almost forgetting the pain.
"We are offering you a gift," she said. "Make this sacrifice in the name of the Temple, and rewards unimaginable will be yours."
"How can I believe you?"
"We're going to show you."
Flash! His arms still behind his back, Right Man stumbled forward down the long dark hallway. He could barely make out Corruption's athletic frame slinking ahead of him. She and the men in the robes kept him in the dark after many hours of traveling.
Corruption led him to a large black shape that Right Man couldn't quite make out. She made some odd motions with her hands and it swung open – a door.
A golden yellow light filled the hallway, making Right Man's eyes flinch. The Temple agents grabbed him and roughly pushed him forward onto his knees.
His eyes adjusted and saw the light came from pyramids. He was an interior space, its limits extending farther than he could see. Glowing gold pyramids, each one the size of a two-story house, stretched off into the distance, illuminating the blackened ceiling above them.
"Where am I?" Tears streamed down Right Man's face, partially from the light, and partially from amazement.
"We are miles below ground," Corruption said. "Beneath the museum."
"Museum? I don't understand."
"How do you think an organization like the Temple has existed for so long in secret, without a soul revealing it to the populace during all the ups and downs of human history?"
"Uh..."
"It's because of this." She gestured at all the pyramids before her. "This is the Temple's neural network."
He let those words set in. "Network?"
"For as long as there have been human beings, there has been the Temple, observing and studying their every move. The neural network is the collection of all that data, as well as the key to the Temple's secrecy. These interconnected structures use the cognitive power of billions of human minds against themselves to calculate and digitize data in amounts undreamt of by humanity's greatest."
"That's... not possible."
"Staying several steps ahead of humanity has required advances in technology some might consider unnatural. Whenever the general populace dismisses something as scientifically impossible or against the laws of physics, this is the technology of the Temple, farther ahead of anyone else."
"I don't..."
"These pyramids, such as they are, are in reality neural nodes. Synapses, really. They are firing billions upon billions of electrical impulses all over the globe every second, faster than the speed of thought. Behold the greatest information network that has been and ever will be created."
Corruption turned to face Right Man and said, "You want in, don't you?"
"Yes," he said.
"Interesting," Proscenium said.
Right Man looked to the side and saw Proscenium standing there, just off the edge of one of the pyramids.
"You're here again?" Right Man said. "When are you going to leave me alone?"
"You'll find me in all your memories," Proscenium said. "Even ones you thought were erased."
Right Man concentrated. Proscenium was everywhere. In childhood birthday parties, Proscenium stood in a corner at each one. At embarrassing scenes in high school, during stressful tests and awkward cafeteria interactions, Proscenium walked beside him every time. In job interviews, Proscenium sat next to him the whole time. Bringing women home to his apartment after a night at the bar, Proscenium was there each time, watching silently.
Right Man remembered Proscenium being at every childhood memory, every adolescent embarrassment, and every adult frustration.
"Get out of my mind!"
"Too late," Proscenium said. "I'm here forever."
* * * *
Right Man woke from his sleep and found himself still pinned to his chair in the Classicum Theater. Left Man and Center Man sat slumped next to him, both beaten down. Right Man wondered if he looked as defeated.
Proscenium stood on stage once again, with the only light in the theater shining down on him. Even though Proscenium didn't say it, Right Man knew it was time for the final monologue of this night's performance.
"The soldier, the maniac, and the hacker," Proscenium said. "The Temple lied to each of you. Your talents, or perhaps merely nothing more than your blind loyalty, was all the Temple needed to sway you. You were promised rewards in exchange for your loyalty. Where are those rewards?"
Silence in the theater.
"Someday," Center Man said, "if we have faith..."
"The Temple lied to you. You know they lied, and you still follow them. Pathetic."
Proscenium spread his arms apart, so that his curtain cloak fell behind him, revealing his full bronzed armor for the men to see. "I now grant you that which the Temple never would. I give you your freedom."
With that, Proscenium transformed into a thick purple cloud, floating up into the rafters backstage, and out of sight.
"Let's get out of here," Right Man stood and hurried down their row of seats and up the aisle, with the other two men following. He threw open the front doors of the theater, figuring Proscenium had left them unlocked for them. He ran into the cool night air, finding himself not far from the center of Theater City's dilapidated downtown in the middle of the night, where there were plenty of bright lights but only scattered small groups of people wandering about. Right Man immediately tried accessing the neural access point surgically inserted under his forehead, but his tech had been severed from the Temple.
"Freeze!" a cop shouted.
Red and blue lights appeared from around a corner. Police cars rounded the corners from all around them and drew their weapons. Right Man followed protocol and surrendered. He dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his head.
"I don't get it," Center Man whispered. "He said he was giving us our freedom."
"He betrayed us, and that's his way of showing how the Temple will betray us," Right Man said. "It's a metaphor."
* * * *
Standing on the roof of the Classicum Theater, Proscenium watched as the police rounded up the three Temple agents, including the cops' revulsion to unmasking the three men upon revealing their mangled faces. Proscenium assumed that the Temple likely had mechanisms in place to get them out of police custody while erasing all existence – including human memory. Nonetheless, the night's endeavors had been a success.
Proscenium had learned much about how the Temple operates, which he planned to impart to U.S. Amy and the others.
He heard sirens in the distance, from the other side of the city.Someone several blocks away was in distress. Proscenium transformed into acloud and flew in that direction.
# # # #
END OF CHAPTER 17
# # # #
Next: Brawl.