Aberrant: In the Beginning - 'The Sun Also Sets'- Epilogue, Chapter 1

[Titan]

Margaret Mercer picked her way down the tunnel, carefully avoiding the debris. Rock and sand had landed here when Ra blasted his way out of the Black Pyramid, the others had told her. So, when she had Mbuto teleport her here, she started outside. More work this way, but less chance of being trapped in a stone block, so there you are.

She entered the Throne Room… finally. It was open to the night sky, which was a welcome change from the last time she was here. She looks around at the devastation, and then works her way across the room to the burial chamber. The altar is bare, the sarcophagus empty, as she had been told. Still…

She looks up and around.

“I know you are here,” she says quietly.

Ra stepped out from behind a molecule he had been hiding behind. He chuckled.

“Yes. I am still here.”

She faced him, hands on her hips, fury on her face. She knows that he can kill her with a thought, so she treads softly, but it is hard to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“What exactly happened? In Cairo?”

Ra holds up a hand.

“That was not intended. I simply told them to go, and tell the world that Ra was coming. All perfectly good super-villain stuff, just like we agreed.”

Margaret’s eyes flash with anger. She barely controls herself.

“You were supposed to cement the need for unity in their minds. You were NOT supposed to make humanity fear the Novus. Now, I have a harder task than before!”

Ra raised a hand, still holding his ankh-topped staff.

“I did as you asked, it is not my fault if their repressed anger and aggression led them to go further than I instructed.”

“And why are you still in that form?” She asked, bitterly.

“I find I like being the Sun.”

She has no reply to that. She looks around again at the chamber.

“Where was Zetankhaton? Was his body here?”

Ra laughs.

“No. He and his organs were long dust before I got here. I had to set the props, as well as play the part. I should charge you extra.”

Margaret looks at him sharply.

“I thought there was no payment. You said you would do it just…”

“So I could see him again. Yes. And I saw him. It was a jest, Margaret.”

Margaret looked at Ra with suspicion still. She began edging her way to the tunnel entrance.

“Well. I have some fires to put out with the UN, if the Utopia project is to go through. I should…”

Ra holds up a hand.

“Indulge me for a moment. It is so rare that I speak to humans. Your project will go through, though it will hardly be a Utopia.”

Margaret’s curiosity overcomes her fear, for the moment.

“You speak as though you know the future.”

Ra laughs again, bitterly.

“Oh, I do. Do you think your father is the only person in history who ever discovered the means to travel through time? This is not my first time to witness the birth of the Nova Age, but the ninth. Each time, I have tried to do more to change the way events go. Every time, it ends in War, and your father’s psiads inherit the earth, while my people…”

Margaret snaps at him,

“Will you please do away with the Egyptian trappings? I want to see you!”

Ra smiles at her cynically for a moment, then his features change, and blur together, then redefine. A pale-skinned, red-headed man stands before her now, with the same cynical smile. He wears khakis and a sleeveless undershirt. He looks like a Gap model, except his eyes, which glow with power.

“Better? Do you feel more comfortable with Michael Donighal? Does Divis Mal make you feel safer?” The last is almost a snarl.

Margaret cringes. She has never seen him irritated, much less angry, before. Of course, she has not dealt with him much, except recently. She changes tactics.

“Why don’t you come back to Æon, Michael? With your power-“

“You don’t know anything about my power. Eight times, I have watched my children born, develop into caricatures of themselves, fight in the War, and yes… eventually die. Each time, I have tried differently to change the outcome. Each time, I come back, to find myself about to begin it all again. And each time, I submit to my future self. I have killed myself Nine times, Margaret. Nine times. I cannot imagine allowing anyone to kill me, yet I did, Nine times. Of course, they weren’t me… I had to do the killing. Each time, I destroyed a younger, more hopeful self. And each time, I thought it would be different. I thought I could make it different. I had thought that Procyon… but no.”

Margaret watches him in horror, sure that he’s gone mad.

“Oh, I’m not crazy. I’ve seen hundreds, thousands, of my kind go crazy. But not me. After the first thousand years, I decided I would never go crazy. Maybe it’s because I was a ‘natural’. I think I have finally realized why I can’t change the outcome. Part of it is you. With your machinations and your Proteus.”

“Proteus? I don’t-“

“You will. And look at you, you’ve already begun traveling down that path. Your deal with me was bound to end badly. Surely you see that. Never mind. You are only part of the problem.”

Divis looks sadly around the Throne Room.

“The other part of the problem may simply be me.”

Margaret looks at him uncomprehendingly.

He ignores her, and looks up, through the sky and the stars, up until he stares out of your screen. At you, reading these words.

“Titan thinks so. He believes, with the coming of the Dawn, that his problems are over. Even the sly old Fox has come out of his hole, he thinks. Ha! He believes that if only I were gone, then this world would finally be at peace. I hope he is right.”

“Titan? Titan Omega? The-“

“No, not that jumped up child. Nor your slightly less jumped up child, Pax. I’m talking about Titan, who thinks he controls events here, in this world. Even as he types these words, he thinks that he controls me. What I say. What I do. As if I could not stop him if I wished.”

For a moment, Divis Mal looks as though he is ready to do just that. Then, he relaxes. He looks at Margaret, and speaks again.

“It was he who decided to make me Ra. Not you. He, and his merry band, almost all of whom I have known before, in their various incarnations. And I went along because… I’ve never deliberately been a villain before. And you know what?”

He smiles at Margaret, sending a chill down her spine.

“I liked being the Sun. I liked putting the thousand years of failure behind me, and just… having fun with it for a change. Ha. Me, just having some fun.”

He shook his head, chuckling mirthlessly.

“I’m trying to be sorry that some of your people died, Margaret, truly I am. But, as you know, I don’t care in the slightest. I am glad that I didn’t have to kill any more of my people. But, if I stay, I’ll have to do just that. And I am sick. Of. It. All.”

He looked again at Margaret, pityingly. He walked toward her. She tried to pull away, but something held her there. He reached out, and caressed her cheek.

“Who takes over Æon, if you should fall?”

Against her will, she answered.

“Maxine. My granddaughter. But, she’s too young, she doesn’t understand what-“

“Perhaps her youth is what will save my people. Your father once wrote to me, about my power. I have never forgotten it. ‘Michael, my friend, the mixture of drive and intelligence within you will lead you to great things. At some point in the future, you may find humanity's fate in your hands. If that time ever comes - and I pray, for your sake, that it never does - I can only ask that you make the right decision and let humanity prosper on its own terms.’ Its own terms. Perhaps he was right. Titan thinks so. Regardless, I am going to give him what he wants. What he thinks he needs. A world without you, and me. You could come with me, if you wish. As the daughter of my one true love, I would make you welcome in my new world, I promise you.”

Margaret struggled wildly against her invisible bonds.

“New- I don’t-“

Divis Mal allowed his eyes to become unfocused for a moment. Staring off into space, he seemed to muse.

“I think that I have always known that it would eventually come to this. ‘Go then. There are other worlds than these.’ Still, I leave victorious, for once.”

Behind him, a warp gate opened. Through it, Margaret could see a lush mountaintop, framed by a golden sky. Although not truly alien, the world through the gate seemed very different from the one she knew.

“As Divis Mal, I have failed, again and again. As Ra…”

He pulled her, still unfocused and smiling up at the stars, toward the warp gate. She struggled and screamed in vain. He paid no attention to her, in fact had forgotten her existence.

“As the Sun, I remain… Unconquered.”

The gate enveloped them both, contracted with a flash of light, and was gone.