Misba

The Great Convergence

The day isn’t far
When you’ll crave the one—
The art that will steal your dreams.
But it won’t come
Because your world is flipped

The Great Convergence

The day isn’t far
When you’ll crave the one—
The art that will steal your dreams.
But it won’t come
Because your world is flipped
Beneath all grand schemes.
Fake words, fake news, fake booze
Fill your chalice in streams.
The Devil brings nymphs
Who sing lies of trance in hymns.
That day is the end of all days,
Lasting decades.
Though it’s only the Hour in One God’s dreams.

In that Hour, you’ll wish you had a friend
Of real flesh and blood in red enflamed—
Who will mend your heart smoked.
You got lured, dazzled by hell’s hanging fruit,
But when you touched it, inside, it was all grieving soot.
That day isn’t far
When you’ll crave peace and someone with measured brute,
Who would sing it all to the world from the Opener of Truth.
That day isn’t far when you will want her—
The one with a true smile and one matching foot.

When he got up under our bridge,
he lifted hand and head as one
So he wouldn’t need to shout,
and said, ‘Now see what pain is,
you living one, visiting the dead:
see if anything’s worse than this.
And so you can take back my news,
Know that

When he got up under our bridge,
he lifted hand and head as one
So he wouldn’t need to shout,
and said, ‘Now see what pain is,
you living one, visiting the dead:
see if anything’s worse than this.
And so you can take back my news,
Know that I’m Bertran de Born,
Evil counselor to the young king.
I set the father and son at odds:
Achitofel was no worse with David
And Absolon, pricking them on.
Because I sundered those joined,
I carry my brains separately
From their stem in my poor body.
So the counterpass, on show in me.’

I say—‘let’s go alone, unguided,
since you know how; I don’t like this.
If you are as observant as usual
Don’t you see them gnashing teeth,
Looking as if they mean trouble?’
He tells me: ‘Don’t start worrying:
They can gnash just as they want,
They do it at those simmering souls.’
They turned to take the left bank;
But first, each blew a raspberry
At their leader, for a salute,
And he trumpets back with his arse.

I’ve seen troops get under way,
Whether to attack or to parade
Or sometimes to make a retreat;
I’ve seen horsemen on your land,
You Aretines, I’ve seen raiders,
Clashes at tournaments and jousts;
I’ve witnessed clarions and bells,
Drum-rolls, signs from battlements
Or other signals, native or foreign;
But I never heard a bugle like this
Get horses or infantry into action,
Or ships steering by land or stars.
So we depart with the ten devils,
Grisly company!—but then in church
With saints, with scum in the pubs.
My eyes were fixed on the pitch
To study everything in this valley
And the people being stewed here.
Like dolphins arch out their backs
and give a warning to sailors
that they should save their boats,
so occasionally, to ease their pain,
a sinner’s back would curve out
then in again, quick as lightning.
Or like at the edge of a ditch
The frogs poke their noses out,
Keeping the rest of them hidden,
So here the damned, everywhere;
But when Barbariccia approached
They go back under on the boil.
I saw and I still shudder at it—
One stay put, as it can happen
every frog slips away but one;
And Graffiacane, who was nearest,
He hooks him by the tarred hair
And out he comes, like an otter.
I knew the names of the devils,
I’d listened when they were picked,
And when they called each other.
‘O Rubicante, get your claws going,
Shred his skin for him a bit!’
So the others all start shouting.
‘Master,’ I ask, ‘can you find out who he is,
This poor devil here
Who’s plumb in his enemy’s hands?’
So my master went over to him
To ask who he was. He replies:
‘I’m from the kingdom of Navarre.
My mother put me to the service
Of a lord, my dad being a lout
Who ruined himself and his goods.
Then I served good King Thibault:
Here I began my shady dealing
That I sweat to payback now.’

THE CHEAT CODE
Chapter 1: Canvas of Death

WHAT IS WORST ABOUT DEATH IS ITS MYSTERIES.
Not the ones about when it may happen or how it will come to you, or what it will feel like, no. It’s rather in what conditions someone would leave, what art the death would cause, and what details the art may have. You know the sort of details like how the skin would fade, how the shades of brown will turn worm grey or green, and how prana will leave the body. Like a poof? Like a whoosh? Like a bang? Or like a stealthy slithering snake? Most important: what will you smell like?

“What will I smell like?” Ruem, the Mesmerizer, mutters.

Good people will smell like heavens, they say, like the nectar of roses or mist in a meadow or honey in the ocean. Oceans in heaven are made of honey, no joke. And bad people will smell like rotten roaches. Another law in the universe God coded while creating it all.
In the lounge of Kuhawk, Ruem, the Mesmerizer, doesn’t see any color of death, but he smells it. Death is near. He doesn't wonder whose death, for now. Instead, he thinks of a question—a random one at that. Why does God promise only food and women in heaven?

Because he is the God of men?
Because men were God’s audience when he sent his books?
Because God is the greatest mesmerizer who knows how to lure?

The Mesmerizer finds no answer; he can’t just know an answer; he is not an intuitionist. However, he knows one thing. That God is one corporate manipulator who knows what his consumers want.
Food. Women. And youthful eternity.

Could be true, could be wrong, could be a delusion created from epics or an old song. But in his mind and soul, Ruem Drohung, the Mesmerizer, knows one real truth, the truth that no one else knows. That he will stop God. He will recode fate—his fate and everyone’s fate. And he will do it using the codes God made the universe with. Nothing can stop him. Not after what God took and termed it fate.

“I do not accept it,” he mutters to his painting—yet-to-be painting. It’s an empty canvas. Someone with evolved senses could smell the handmade paper made by the craftsmen of Kappa, but the Mesmerizer smells more. He smells the forest where the paper was grown. He smells the chemicals in it that repel the pests. He smells the box in which the ream of paper was imported and the ocean air through which the boxes have traveled. It hovers in his easels three feet away from him. Light, not too bright, glows only on the canvas, making the rest of the lounge darker. In that darkness, the Mesmerizer observes it. The paper will soon smell of colors.
What should he paint tonight? Death? Or life?

Maroc Metz, the only butler of Kuhawk, comes to the lounge in his usual attire—tailcoat, polished shoes, gloves, and glasses.

“Master Ruem, it’s time for the ritual, and our guest has arrived. Should I bring her here before it gets discourteous? Or will you continue contemplating?” he asks the Mesmerizer, in a tone he would never dare to use if it were a time ago.

“I am painting.” The Mesmerizer watches the blank canvas.

“The brushes are fresh, the oil still untouched. The painting has not even begun, and you’ve sat like that for four hours. You’re contemplating.” Maroc dares again.

“It’s part of the painting,” the Mesmerizer says.

“And you’re explaining,” Maroc adds with no surprised tone, but a hint of question is there. “You never explain yourself.”

“I can explain a thing or two to the only one I can depend on.” The Mesmerizer doesn’t look at Maroc; he doesn’t need to.

“You mean the only one left for you to depend on,” Maroc says, “after you’ve killed the lot of them.”

“Sometimes, you sound as if I am the villain.”

“And sometimes you sound as if being a villain is bad, Master Ruem.” Maroc curves his lips. His eyes are gleaming, which his master doesn’t see but senses. His tone has devotion, perhaps even grief. “I’m bringing the guest. Here is your suit.” Maroc calls a suit—a three-piece, polished with ionized fiber, conditioned with fragrance, smoothened with the right temperature and humidity. It flies here with a hover-hook. Soundless, no air blows; even the blue macaw in its silver cage doesn’t flinch. The suit hangs in the air from its hook.

The Mesmerizer ignores it. “Am I a villain, Maroc?”

Maroc was about to leave, probably to serve the guest of Kuhawk in the manner she deserves, but he looks back. His master still watches the yet-to-be painting. You’re my Master Ruem, Maroc wants to say, but he doesn’t. He knows something is troubling him. He never saw this man troubled with anything, not even when the toughest cyclone of the decade hit Alpha. He was there when the King of Mesmerizers stood firm before the mountain of water when it was approaching their city. He saw him speaking to the raging water, and the water listened. Water always listens to the Mesmerizer’s voice.

“You are the Mesmerizer I would follow to death,” Maroc says and turns to leave, but the voice stops him again, and this time, it’s the voice he always waits to hear.

“Send the guest to the cave,” says the voice. “Tell her we meet where it lies. Tell her to leave if she cannot voice death. Tell her she will be a sacrifice if she bends her will.”

* * *

A SPIRAL TUNNEL taking deep into the earth.
A man humming a lullaby.
A gold anklet—one of its pair—ringing in his hand.

The man, the Mesmeriser, left the other around an Ungraded girl’s ankle. Perhaps she deserves it; perhaps she doesn’t. That’s something to see later, not now. The anklet, however, is something he needs for the time. It bells in the sweetest sound as some delicately forged gold, the sort of sound that only this anklet can make. In the cave, it creates a special frequency, a distinct ringing. Not always you find a word specifying the sounds of an anklet, not in all languages. But some do have a word or two, like Runujhunu—Bengali from the Old World.

“I didn’t want to come here,” says the symbolist the Mesmerizer has hired, Piuee Pariyeta. Her ginger hair is messier tonight, her face ashen from the dirt the path here has provided. Her analyzers aren’t broken. She appears confident but only on the façade.

The Mesmerizer remains silent, his eyes—fiery red, looking for things in the fungus-covered walls, things that only his eyes would see. It’s not the final destination. It’s not the cave, but it’s the beginning.

“Don’t you want to see the shrine you found?” Maroc Metz speaks on behalf of the Mesmerizer.
Piuee doesn’t reply at first. She was pleased with herself when she found the shrine where the Devil’s Book was forged. All discoverers feel such pleasure when they find something that could hold the truth. Still, who would visit a shrine that asks for a price?

“The shrine wants death,” she speaks her concern.

“You mentioned it,” Maroc Metz answers her, too quickly this time. “Thirty-nine times.” He also sneers, seeing the dirt on her nose. He tried not to do it all these times; his master taught him manners. “Do not use tones unobservant Low Grades use,” he said once, just once, and never again. The Mesmerizer never repeats instructions, but this woman is beyond—what you may call—acceptable. This woman makes people repeat instructions. He walks behind her, keeping distance between them as if he’s saving his valuable tailcoat from the world’s worst sewage. His gaze—scornful and repulsed—doesn’t soften.