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impossible. The man in black picked up on it and continued. “What you see here is something that will change the face of history,” he said. “You will make it, Master Eemos, you alone can help us.”

  “You think my ego so inflated that you would seek to–“

  “You misunderstand,” the man interrupted. “I have seen all of this happen before. All of this, look, gaze at your side.”

  There was shimmer in the air to Eemos’ left. A slight deviation of a shape stood visible in the gentle, blue-hued light. A specter of a man, smiling, looking down at the projection and nodding, his image granulose and distorted as though not fully in phase with space and time. Eemos jumped aside.

  “What the hell is this?!”

  “It is me,” the man claimed. “It turns out the future is something we thought we understood, thought as nonexistent. There was nothing but Now, they said , but even the Now is the future. There is no Now, for each time you think you are in the Now, the Now is the past and you are in the future. But it is so much more than that, Master Eemos. The future is like a serpent, living and breathing, shaping and reshaping, shedding constantly.” Eemos hated word-loops and philosophical conundrums. He had only half listened to what the man had said, but still he knew it had made little or no sense. All he could think about was building the miraculous machine on the schemata before him.

  “I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, not the brightest candle in the cave, but still,” said Eemos, “I am having difficulties in seeing what this has to do with anything. What do you mean this… ghost, is you? What are you talking about? What is this trick?”

  “No trick. The truth is simple. The future is not a lie, Master Eemos. It is a pre-set thing that you cannot control or set into motion differently. Humankind has believed, or at least liked the idea of fate. I am here to tell you fate is all there is. It is as real as you and me. As real as this projection you see before you.”

  “But this hologram isn’t real, not really,” said Eemos.

  “What is real, then? Are the clothes you wear real? Are you real? Is the life you have lived so far real? Are the dreams you dream at night real? Tell me, Master Eemos, when the night falls and you lie down in your bed, drift into sleep, do you dream then? What do you dream about?”

  “What?” he asked. It increasingly felt like the man was trying to make him remember something. Something important, crucial. “I would ask you to make sense, but I see such commodity is not something you possess in droves.”

  “Listen to what I am saying, Master Eemos. Listen,” the man said and tapped his forehead with a finger. The hologram cast a bizarre illumination on the man’s face and made it pale, eyes underlined with age, his face pointy, hiding secrets underneath the skin.

  “If the future is real and pre-set,” said Eemos, “then why are you here?”

  “I am here to give you this schematic.”

  “I know that, but why? Are you not shaping the future by merely being here? Are we not all creating it by simply existing? Surely if you hadn’t have come here, the future would be different than it is now? Why have you waited so long, outside my house?”

  The man stood silent for a moment, his face stoic.

  “I have yet to tell you about the transgression,” he said without answering Eemos’ question.

  “You have yet to tell me what the device actually does,” smirked the master.

  “No, it is not a time travel device,” the main said. “If that’s what you were thinking.”

  “What then?”

  “What if I told you can step into a pod, a pod that is preprogrammed so you create your own experience within it. Preprogrammed in any way you desire, so every situation you are faced with can turn into your favor or be stirred into the best possible outcome without effort. A pod where there is no sadness or regret, where every possibility is open, where one can remain young and the sun never sets. You can live your life any way you want, you but program this life and its parameters before entering the pod – you cannot do it while already in. Nor can you ever get out. You forget there was – or even is – a life outside the pod. Every experience and sensation you feel while inside it is as real as the reality which you now sense and perceive. The pod becomes your reality. But you may never step out. You live and die within this pod. Would you venture inside? Would you merge with such a device?”

  “Again with the philosophical questions,” sighed Eemos. He was getting tired, bored. “This is all the device does? You sold it as something far more miraculous. You actually managed to get my hopes up. But now I see you have nothing of interest for me.”

  “It is not a philosophical question, it is a simple yes or no inquiry,” the main said.

  “Pha! Simple. My answer would be no then.”

  “Good,” the man answered, “because now comes the part where you agree to build it and I tell you what we actually achieved with this device.”

  “Very well, speak then,” said Eemos. He moved to the other side of the table and examined the projection from a different angle.

  “We have built a prototype, but something had gone awry, and the machine could not contain the high power outputs needed to keep it running. It burned out. Everything become useless after that and the monetary investment to build another far exceeds our budget. We need you to improve the design so it will function for an extended period of time.”

  “I see,” said Eemos. “And this… transgression?”

  “Ah. Well, as I said, this is not a dream device. Somehow, either by some fluke or by a strange coincidence in the design, we have managed to create a reality-interfacing device.”

  “So you made a brain? And what now? Do you even hear what you’re saying?” asked Eemos.

  “Quite well, as matter of fact,” the man answered.

  Eemos was beginning to feel excruciatingly uncomfortable. The shadow-shape of the man, the copy of the man in black, stood motionless, its eyes trailing every movement Eemos made as though recording it. The shape made the room feel like an uncomfortable place to be by simply standing there, still and silent. Every now and then, its lips would move as though it were talking, but no sound ushered. Air became harsh and moved about as though a wind blew within the room. A static charge was building up and the wood began to prickle. The floor crackled as if feet were moving about.

  Eemos looked at the shadow-person, looked away, thought he’d seen something and looked back. The face began to droop, slime and drip. How can I smell? Eemos thought, if the thing isn’t real… then why can I smell it burning?

  “What’s happening?” he demanded.

  Skin and bits of flesh fell off to reveal a bleached, grinning skull. Eyeballs rolled out of their sockets. The holes began to burn from within and stream a golden, blinding light.

  Eemos screamed.

  “No!” the man in black yelled and quickly folded the schematic. The blue light faded as a result, the only source of light the screaming white noise of the now approaching specter.

  The man in black grabbed Eemos by the cuff and pulled him towards the exit.

  “You have the keys?” he asked as the two exited and shut the door behind them. The man in black put his weight and held as something smashed into it.

  “Lock the door, damn it! Hurry up!”

  A harder smash. This time the man was thrown back. Eemos didn’t wait and ran down the corridor.

  Footsteps matched his speed behind him. He took the bend in the corridor and could hear his chaser gaining up on him. Breathing became difficult for the old man and he had to stop for a moment. The man in black grabbed him and almost dragged him along.

  “Move, you old bastard,” the man said between breaths. They went into a room and closed the door shut. The room was ostentatious with old, burnished closets. Ideal for the man in black to push and place over the now shut door.

  “You know what the transgression is?” the man asked, leaning against the closet, breathing heavily. “We have found something we should no
t have found. We have found the edge.”

  “The edge of what?” Eemos breathed out.

  “The edge of reality. We have discovered the future is a realm we step into, rather than create. What you saw today was our first attempt of trying to change that future. The outcome was unexpected, to say the least.”

  “You cannot be serious, I cannot, how… this is–“

  “I understand your confusion, Master Eemos. Believe me, if anyone understands, it is I.”

  “Why?”

  “I made the schematic, I entered the prototype, I have seen it all happen. You would not believe what I have seen, the things that await humanity. I must change such a future. I have to–”

  The closet lurched as something heavy slammed against the door. There was a grunt and another lunge. Then another. Then a pause.

  “This is my transgression, Master Eemos, I have found the algorithm to break the present as we know it. I have watched this event happen before, and it is me you saw standing in that room with us. But when I watched the event play out in that form, for the first time, you rejected the work, called me a lunatic.”

  The thought of calling him a lunatic had entered Eemos’ mind on more than one occasion. And he would have done it, if not for the incisive banging on the door by something which had minutes before not even existed, at least not in any real way.

  “So what’s trying to kill us then?” Eemos asked.

  “Honestly, I do not know,” the man in black answered. “Nothing which has transpired today was predicted in any of my simulations and estimations. The only thing I can say with any degree of accuracy is that, when I entered the pod, I must have triggered every possible outcome in every possible reality.”

  “How does a melting face and a–“

  “I don’t know!” the man admitted. He opened his mouth to say something else when an explosion sounded and they were flung forward in a hail of splinters and pieces of shredded wood.

  Eemos could feel a bone in his hand breaking as he fell. Pain shot up his shoulder and into his neck, he grabbed his elbow and squeezed the hand to his chest as he sat up.

  His ears rang, his sight fuzzy. Through it all, Eemos saw the faceless man, hauling the man in black up by the scruff of his neck.

  “Here!” the man gasped. “Take it! Take the damn thing!” He threw the schematic. It bounced off the chest of his attacker and fell on the carpet. “Take it damn y–“ with a twist of the wrist, a crack spliced the air and the man in black went slack. The other let the body drop.

  Eemos cursed, he cursed his endemic memory for what was probably the first time ever. He cursed because he knew the being that had just killed the man in front of him also knew Eemos had remembered. Remembered every little nuance of the design, its whole imprinted upon his mind. He couldn’t forget it even if he wanted to. All he wished was to be given a chance to try. To try and forget. That would be enough. Just an attempt. He knew he would not get such a chance. He watched the man approach and scrambled back, the pain in his hand inconsequential, managed by adrenaline. The pain of it hit Eemos after there was nowhere left to run and he pressed his back against the wall. He trembled and shook.

  To bare witness as someone who might be a danger approach you, was something to be feared. Yet to see an impossibility made real and to have that very impossibility kill a man, then have it trudge towards you – eyes gleaming a feral yellow – was something altogether different. Eemos pissed himself.

  He knew what came next. But such knowledge didn’t make the reality of it any less freighting. The thing grabbed his neck, seemingly immune to Eemos’ attempts to try and fend it off. It squeezed. He managed to spit in its face, before he heard the last sound he would ever hear.