Epilogue by soulmagic at Inkitt

Summary

hen a being known only as NOTYOU files for “Terminty,” a cosmic form of self-erasure, the universe must select a successor. The responsibility falls to Shepard, an ancient functionary tasked with retrieving the next Pro Magnus from the mortal plane and returning them to power. But the drawing reveals something impossible. The chosen soul comes from Earth, a planet that no longer exists. To solve the mystery, Shepard descends into a mortal body and sets out with two unlikely allies. Rotterman is a brilliant architect of higher-plane technology, and Tye Worthington is a long-forgotten synthetic built to be useful rather than important. Their journey carries them across the universe through forgotten weapon worlds, bureaucratic empires, living cosmic leviathans, and the ruins of a civilization erased so completely that it survives only as dust. Their mission becomes more than a retrieval. Using ancient machines capable of reconstructing lives from scattered particles, the crew begins rebuilding the Echo of a single lost human. Yet time is running out. In the higher plane the seat of power cannot remain empty forever, and pressure grows to abandon the search and choose a replacement at random. Part cosmic satire and part philosophical science fiction, Epilogue explores memory, identity, and what it means to resurrect a life from the fragments left behind. As the universe grows impatient, Shepard and his crew must decide whether one forgotten human life is worth defying the machinery of creation itself.

Genre: Scifi

Author: soulmagic

Status: Ongoing

Chapters: 2

Rating: n/a

Age Rating: 16+

Epilogue

Science Fiction

Jahil Nelson 782 Rose Drive Benicia, CA 94510 www. jahilnelson. Com

Some storytellers tell a thousand stories. Some tell only one.

PROLOGUE

What follows is not the story itself. It is an approximation, a mercy edit for the soft-headed and carbon-based. Somewhere in the infinite bureaucracy of creation, someone decided this version should exist. Why the publisher bothered to authorize such a low-resolution translation remains unclear. Perhaps they believed that by flattening eternity into digestible shapes and familiar verbs, sales would improve. Or perhaps it was an experiment: How much truth can a soul endure before losing interest?

You are about to read the result.

The original text is not written in language, not even in thought as you understand it. It unfolds across dimensions of meaning unavailable to creatures who sleep, excrete, and die. There are so many words and concepts with no human equivalent that smarter beings than you banged their heads against rocks just to invent the simplest metaphors for things infinitely more complex. Reducing it to this level is like trying to teach algebra to a dog.

Still, here we are.

To make this palatable, every concept has been sanded down to something you can hold without screaming. Time, for instance, is rendered in a polite straight line. Existence has been simplified to nouns and verbs. Even divinity has been reduced to characters with proper names and pronouns. If any of it feels insufficient, that’s because it is. There are no perfect equivalents for eternity, only euphemisms.

Somewhere above this version, far above, there are richer accounts, worthy accounts with the proper nuance and detail that higher beings, far higher, can ingest, enjoy, and contemplate. This is the for-dummies version, the pocket paperback, the for-mortals edition, written for a species that still needs to blink.

You will encounter errors, of course. Inconsistencies. Places where the translation gives up entirely. When that happens, forgive the text; it’s doing its best. We lack a common verb for what happened next, or before, or ever.

In regard to the title, The original title has no direct equivalent in your language, or any language that requires breath to speak. After several failed attempts to render it accurately, the translators gave up and settled on something you could pronounce without bleeding from the ears.

Eventually, someone suggested Epilogue. It wasn’t right, but it wasn’t wrong either. It had a certain shape to it, an ending that might also be a beginning. Close enough. And at least it sounded nice when spoken aloud, which, for your kind, is apparently half the battle.

So lower your expectations. Open your mind as far as it goes, and then a little less.