The Pact.
Esteban Ponce added, at the exact moment, his blood into the barrel of the syringe to obtain a thick gray substance that only he understood in its entirety.
One last, deep breath, and got ready to plunge the needle into the forearm.
Sitting on chairs in a large backyard that had become a garden of roses, six children united in the same Daydream contemplated their work in silence, waiting for the exact moment to interact without being seen by someone who was no longer, fully, one with them.
The man felt the touch of a little hand on his back, and at that same moment the calculations that inhabited his thoughts were no longer protected by relevant logic. The man felt the touch of a little hand on his back, and at that same moment the calculations that inhabited his thoughts were no longer protected by relevant logic. As if a blow on the surface of time had generated new waves that his brain could no longer, need no longer to work out. Not only his actions, but even the seemingly inanimate objects were altering the possible futures, in a dance whose intoxicating beauty he could not ignore anymore.
With unquestionable clarity he saw the explosion of a damaged Core turning the old friend’s right hand into red smoke. The flames of well-known will-o’-the-wisps that multiplying in and around a building that was collapsing around a teenager, maybe a warrior armed with an impossible shield. The Lightning that was pushing reality in its path in the metropolis, causing destruction and claiming hundreds, thousands of innocent souls in its path.
Each image was too sharp, as if there were not an infinite number of probabilities, but just a handful.
Rationally, he tried to deny that this could be happening while it was happening. The fear of a possible Daydream that would get ahead of his calculations led him to hit his face, seeking, if nothing else, a mere second of calm.
He fell to his knees and then he felt another small hand, this time on his shoulder. A little hand with the weight of the world, and another one drawing shadows of orange hues that grew, devouring everything until he could only see shapes that, little by little, became silhouettes in front of his eyes.
Children, but that was impossible. No normal child could cause such ripples in the tides of time. The probabilities of a fatality that devoured the world multiplied towards absurd amounts, incomprehensible to him. Esteban got afraid of losing his mind.
One of the creatures, maybe all of them at once, spoke inside his mind.
‘Ignore the infinite, focus on the probable, the immediate.’
He shook his head and made the right decision to focus on what he should, on what he could. Even with his senses numb, he was able to identify two boys and four girls.
Then, they all spoke aloud together, almost at the same time, like in a chorus.
“Alberto, Esteban, we know you.”
He thought he saw a reflection of his friend some feet away, but it was just a blurry illusion that did not last more than a moment. The children’s voices, one after another, demanded his full attention.
“We know what you did.”
“You created something.”
“Something you shouldn’t use.”
“And you disobeyed.”
“But it wasn’t you fault.”
“Not entirely.”
“The Dream Shepherd made a mistake.”
“And then abandoned you.”
“Now, you are alone.”
“Paying the consequences.”
“Suffering the consequences.”
“We can reach an agreement.”
“Make a deal.”
“What you treasured most.”
“And you don’t remember losing.”
“We can return it.”
“It has a price.”
“The price is high.”
“Decide if it’s worth it.”
Of the two male children, the one with the shaved head showed Esteban the palm of one open hand.
“Now you can look,” he assured, and after a new inner burst of orange mists, the man once again saw the world as it had been long before the obsession with creating something that they never really understood.
The darkness around him was suddenly nothing more than that, and his own movements did not generate waves anticipating any possible future. He had not yet fully accepted that miraculous, forgotten sensation of ignorance when the memory of an aroma, perhaps the shadow of a face, took him by surprise, moistening his eyes. He was almost from remembering a name, when the little hand moved away and his head was once again a storm of abstract thoughts and infernal calculations, vaguely premonitory, that did not belong to him and to which he was tied with ropes stronger than his own will.
Kneeling before the six small faces that were awaiting a response, the man did not even need to think the words that finally came from his mouth. He didn’t care how high the price was.
“Yes,” he begged. “Please.”
Two, maybe more hands then rested on his head.
He felt a brief shiver, and then the freedom of one ridding himself of a burden too heavy for his mortal shoulders. When he regained consciousness, he did not find a single trace of the illusion around him. Had he gone back to sleeping like a normal person, to really dreaming?
As rising up, he accepted that he could no longer perceive or calculate the possible futures, and he let himself be enveloped by a heady sense of relief.
He took a deep breath, walked towards the door that led to the street, and when he opened it he received the strong evening wind that made the treetops hiss. Once again, the shadow of the memory of a face passed through her memory, acquiring new clarity. He remembered; he was starting to remember.
A sudden, familiar, unpleasant tiredness took over her body.
He slammed the door shut as he began to feel the heaviness in his arms and legs. Hell was surrounding him.
On the kitchen counter, a syringe with its contents already evaporated seemed to mock him. In that precise moment, he understood what it really meant to no longer have neither the skill nor the time necessary to generate a new serum that would alleviate the worst of the torment.
The memories of oblivion came one after another, relentless. The hours given away, year after year, to the obsessive creation of a machine with no real use when reality needed him more than ever. All that time lost, wasted, irrecoverable.
He fell to his knees, bathed in cold sweat.
‘Enough, no more,’ he implored internally.
He could not, nor was there any point, continuing to endure new torments. And there was no longer any reason to do so. Without the ability to calculate multiple possibilities in fractions of a second, the search for an injectable palliative, a possible cure, had come to an end.
He opened the counter drawers one by one until he found the object that had been waiting for him since the days after a wake.
He put the barrel in his mouth, so as not to allow an insurmountable margin of error, and pressed the trigger.
A loud noise, a flash of flame, and then a smell of sun, of lavender, of homemade food. Two familiar, fragile and candid hands that were caressing his face tenderly in the kitchen.
Finally, he remembered the name, and that last thought allowed him to say goodbye to the known world with a smile.
