ENTANGLEMENT

1.  The device was godly and evil; reaching into the uttermost points in space and dimension to retrieve the very best that every species created. 

2.  "These people are farming," Kiles repeated his earlier observation.  To identify, 'which Kiles,' had become irrelevant since a single Kiles had been validated by Conscious:  Her Act placed every Kiles under Elliptical jurisdiction.  She anointed Onimex to be the chief liaison between biology and machines, to, "prevent this fiasco from cascading into Chaos."  

3.  They observed the device, in their shifted forms, rummage throughout the Galaxy for stealable foreign technology. 

4.  The observation would have been precious and holy, except that the motive was to magnify the financial and political leverage of an extreme few.   The masses would remain enslaved to those who stole the world's wealth.  Even those entrepreneurs who earned their wealth honorably, became emaciated by the disease of Materialism. 

5.  "Where is Azoth when this happens?" Kiles moralized in a whisper.  Oni didn't answer.   The caveat made Blue Funnel and The Elite appear sanitary and righteous.  "Is this a dimension within a dimension?" Kiles queried psionically.  He was referring to the eternal darkness that surrounded them.  A thin veil of light illuminated the circular extraction platform and the control console facing it -- that was all.  One would never know that they were in a heavily guarded compartment on International Island roughly 40 feet below the waterline.
           
6.  "Will I suffice?" Azure asked, exposing a very feint outline of his cobalt blue form.  Oni ignored the interruption, "Yes," he answered Kiles' latter question.  

7.  "Well?" Kiles prodded Azure, since he represented Azoth.  Azure didn't need to articulate an answer -- his outline seemed to reveal a truth by simply being there.  That truth formulated in Kiles' mind.

8.  "Don't tell me that an interdimensional perversity of this magnitude, that abuses time travel for theft, is purely a matter of free agency?"  Corlos would be going out of its mind if they knew, and Kiles knew that Corlos didn't know.  "How did they hide this here?" he wondered.  "Who cares about the 10-planet system?" someone joked once or twice. 

9.  "This is the intermixing of rights and privilege," Azure commented, "The species that developed the device had earned the right to use it..."  He held short of describing the entire diegesis of that civilization, "... but as you can see, a less evolved species... inherited it." 

10.  "Aren't there ways for an advanced civilization to safeguard their technology?" Kiles replied instinctively:  Then he recalled Earth's recent history, and Earth's history before that one.  Azure anecdotally added a history prior to those two.

11.  "I don't like the unaccountability of..." Kiles began.  "Circles and strings," Azure finished for him.  "Music," Oni injected, while they were going off on this existential tangent.  One of Kiles' co-located selves was taunting him to 'quantify a circle.'  Dimensions are infinite, and very few can be inhabited.   "I store data in those," Xanax explained once. 

12.  The wheel of a watertight hatch spun open and the backlit silhouette of a hooded person entered and waited for the door to be resealed before it proceed to the control dias.  "Finally," Kiles sighed with relief.   

STARGATE

13.  "Suns can be seen in every dimension," Azure said, "which is why nuclear explosions can attract interdimensional species."  Azure had 'thought' them both to a location in-between Mercury and Sol.  "It's an advantage we have over machines."  He was referring to their photonic mass withstanding the sun's radiation.  Onimex had met them on his own; any closer and he would have to engage an index to escape the radiation.       

14.   "So, stars are dimensional hubs," Kiles surmised. 

15.   "If we were to go inside," Azure continued, "we would see an infinite layer of dimensions reaching to every point in existence.  Species at that level can travel the entire Universe in no time at all."  Azure projected every fractal possibility, originating from inside a sphere, into Kiles' mind.  In effect, every sun is a portal to the collective suns, if one gains the intelligence to understand, interact and manipulate. 

16.  "Everything is in constant motion," Kiles observed.  "But it's no more complex to them, than ocean currents are to Humans," Azure clarified.

17.  "Is there an end to evolution?" Kiles wondered.  Azure permitted a moment to reflect, then answered, "We all morph into the cosmic consciousness."  Psionically, he clarified, "We're 'already' a part of that consciousness, but..."  He didn't finish.  Kiles heard the omitted words, "Beauty & Savagery."  "Like a river flows into the sea," a machine said.  There was a familiar laugh.   "Is that..." he started.  "No, you superimpose her laugh every time you hear a rhyme," Oni answered.  She laughed again.  "Thoughts can become reality," Kiles remembered. 

18.  "There is a lot of savagery," Azure sighed.  His tone suggested that there would be many casualties along the way, and that many sentient creatures simply don't want to evolve.  "Failure is a choice," Azure shrugged.  Kiles heard, "Free agents are expected to succeed, but are not obligated to."

19.  "Which brings us back to the technology-theft operation on International Island," Kiles reminded them both.  The excursion to the sun had been part of Azure's explanation.  "Yes, the nuclear explosions create tears in your dimension that alert species in other dimensions."  Azure pointed out some of the more savage strands within the dimensional ad infinitum, "And some of those species do not have good intentions."

DAMNATION

20.  "Isn't it amazing that some of the most evil people on the shell, are also the most spiritual?" Kiles said to his Mom.

21.  "Selfishness," Ireana deduced succinctly.  Kiles looked at her as though she was a quantum computer.  She knew that look; and had built Onimex to prove her ownership of that look.   He also knew that she knew more than he ever gave her credit for.  It was the kid in him, that wanted to invent a whole new frontier just to impress her.  She had been impressed with him since the day he was born.  She also understood his childhood angst better than he did.

22.  "Mom," Kiles said with unusual directness.  Ireana returned her lazer stare.  "Don't," Kiles looked away meekly.  She laughed and held his chin up, "Just feel the burn," she smiled.  Kiles smiled.  It felt as thought there truly was a beam of light connecting their eyes; Azoth would have confirmed it.  There was no need to speak out loud because she had already sensed something phenomenal:

23.  "I need to tell you something," he began. 

24.  She went inside in mind. 

25.   "Oh, Guards," he sighed as though his brain was being ransacked.  She had never psionically ravaged him to this extent.   "I want to see stuff too," he parried, and went straight to her affair with Kor. 

26.  "You WERE... ARE the Secret Sorceress!" he exclaimed with comical hesitation, because in his soul, he already knew.  He had never taken any psionic liberty with his Mother, and she had never gone quite this deep into him -- there had never been a need.  For the first time, she conducted a Guard-level audit of her son's memories, and what an odyssey that became:   

27.  The extent of what she saw provoked rage, fright, trauma, amazement and the joy of discovey.  "I've neglected you," she thought, nearly in tears.  Everything she saw, as far as Kiles' mind was concerned, really happened.  Her biggest challenge was seperating his imagination from reality, and the line of demarcation was unclear

28.  "There's more of you now?" she lipped quietly, as a comment more than a question.  "I have no idea where," Kiles shrugged, "they're all independent -- they don't report to me." 

29.  She stopped her audit, knowing that her mind would need to sort through and unzip the information, similar to how Onimex expands a data packet.

30.  "But I'm their Mom too," she realized, accepting the holistic aspect instantly, but questioning the interpersonal semantics:  "How do I tell them apart?"  She knew that each would develop a distinct personality.  "Them?" Kiles smirked, "there's only two more that I'm aware of."  She could tell that he wasn't completely confident that there was only two more.  "Every point you touched, created another dimension," she clarified.  "By now..." Kiles re-calculated, "there could be thousands." 

PRAYERS

31.  "Fractal Agendas," Kiles thought, while listening to the endless dramas, eternal hopes, unanswered caveats and perpetual prayers from the serene quiet of orbit, "Nobody knows what's really going on down there..."  "... or the layers of dimensional checks and balances," Azure added.  "Selective balances," Kiles observed, as a serious pun.  No argument from Azure.  

32.  "Some of this is quite serious," Kiles listened.  Even those caveats that seemed to have an answer were intersected by other realms, with different intentions.   The reasons for the various entanglements was endless and complicated:  On the Cosmic side was structure and order.  On the chaotic side was money. 

33.  "It's all about money:  The crime.  Their hope.  Everyone's anxiety," Kiles observed.  Money was the construct in which the friction of wealth and poverty played out.

34.  The spiritual realm was well aware of the chaos that financial injustice provoked.  "Damn them!" Kiles said angrily.  "Isn't it convenient that every wrong can be blamed on 'free agency?'"  He peered away into the serene beauty of space, "While citing non-intervention as their bullshit justification!"   Kiles was a capitalist at heart and firmly believed that the lazy and unmotivated were not entitled to the effort of others:  "Generosity is a choice, not an obligation."   "Those who sit on their ass and do nothing about an injustice are as guilty as those who perpetrate the injustice," he thought. 

35.  "Many would see it that way," Azure agreed with careful reservation.  Kiles caught his hesitation.  "Look deeper," Azure suggested. 

36.   Holistically, the blanket of God's Love should have sufficed for all.  The problem was learning, and the myriad of mistakes made to acquire wisdom.   The biologicals had gross sensory limitations which forced them to rely upon intuition to survive.  The learning process was cruel and shameful, so many mortals chose the quickest, least moral path to attain power over others. 

37.  The entire construct was embodied by money and everybody wanted it.  There were many who wanted sex more than money, but money still ranked first. 

38.  The most stunning caveat behind the entire affair was the Light Race. 

39.  Kiles looked at the Milky Way.  Some of the data packets that he had acquired at Corlos were beginning to assimilate into his synapse.  His validation by Conscious accelerated the data assimilation.  His mind was morphing into a more complete consciousness.  The Ellispsis became objective more than mysterious.  A'zoth, Uhura, the ante-delluvian Universe; his encounter with Flash and having seen his Mom at various points in time and space and in different realities.... his conversations with God.

40.  "There has to be a limit," Kiles deduced.  "Only those you create," Azure said.  Kiles felt like his mind was reaching into every crevice of the Universe.

ZERO POINT

41.  He descended through fluffy sunlit clouds to a foggy mountain slope lined with trees.  It was a bright, lively fog that imparted beauty and inspiration.  Tucked inside the treeline was a sheik, futuristic mansion of extraterrestrial design.  It was made to look natural, but it clearly wasn't.  Curved metallic spires outlined the porch like the ribcage of a giant Segment 8 machine.  It was a stage proscenium.  "Curious," Kiles observed; creative and elegant but definitely otherworldly.

42.  His descent stopped on the 2nd floor private theatre.  The decorum was dark and cozy; appointed in crimson, charcoal, polished gold fixtures and a few cosmetic deviations.  It was obvious that wealth was irrelevant; that the rise and fall of continents was decided by the owner of this home.

43.   In one lavish leather chair sat a handsome, middle-aged man with light hair and eyes, lounging in a beige mink house coat that closely matched his skin tone.  His hair was slightly damp from having taken a swim in his indoor fresco tiled pool. 

44.  There was another person seated in an elegant high-backed chair.  Kiles could only see the person's arms draped on the armrests because he had landed behind the chair.  There was a third chair facing the other two, unoccupied, to complete a triune.  Kiles drifted toward the unoccupied chair so that he could see the other two more clearly. 

45.  The occupant in the high-backed chair was wearing a black silky suit from another shell.  It had the shimmer of animorphic mercury, but not the swirling jeweled translucence of a glorified machine.  The machine had just said, "We don't tell them anything," and held short to examine the empty chair because it's machine perception could register bandwidths that mortals can not.  

46.  The Human noticed that his guest had became distracted, "Something catch your eye?" 

47.  "Perhaps," the machine answered, acknowledging the man with a glance and returning his gaze to the empty chair.  "Care to identify yourself?" it directed toward the chair.  "It's not one of yours?" the man thought, which Kiles read psionically.  Kiles was surmising several possibilities, but didn't have enough information. 

48.  "Things aren't going according to plan," the man continued, as though the machine's distraction was merely introspective.       

49.  Kiles felt the tug of dark matter attempt to siphon off his photonic energy.  "No, it's not one of ours," the machine answered before the question was asked.  "Could biocybergenics already be this advanced?" Kiles wondered.  The machine held up his hand toward the man, to caution him from speaking further.  Anti-beings are not psionic -- this one simply knew what the Human was going to ask.     

50.  The shimmering metal dissolved into a featureless, hooded outline with no interior.  Some of the ambient light began to streak into the abyss of its interior but it shielded the Human from any ill effect.  Evidently, the man was a servant worthy of protection, a Blue Funnel emissary... not Human, but Theite.   

51.  At this point, Kiles had no compulsion to play coy with either of them, since standard Corlos protocols were clearly being ignored.        

COPYRIGHT

52.   "Who is Ernest Hemingway?" Kiles asked out loud.  "There's nothing impossible to me;" he contemplated, "I'm only limited by my imagination." 

53.   'I could have asked him,' he realized, and then answered his own question, 'I have instant access to everything.'

54.   Rather than force the richest man on Earth and his master, Lucifer, to sweat it out -- he made them forget that he was ever there.  Like God adjusting time with a paintbrush -- he never arrived; 'they don't know I exist.'   It never happened.  The Theites are much more clever than anyone gives them credit for.  More specifically:  Blue Funnel.  Not even the Theotian Senate knows for certain what Blue Funnel does because they are beyond oversight and Blue Funnel owns a majority of the Senators.    

55.   He learned that Money is the true God of Earth.  Lucifer worked his magic behind the scenes for the Theite-Baron, and the Baron gave Lucifer carte blanche with his wealth.  Contrary to popular belief, "Lucifer was more obsessed with proving to God that his ideas were better than God's; based on his logic, that one can't prove anything to God, if God doesn't exist."  "He's vain," Kiles realized right away and asked him outright, "Why would the Eternal Host of Heaven who creates worlds without end... need a guardian?"  What Lucifer heard was, "Would The Eternal Creator ask a created clay pot to protect Him?"

56.   A flame of indignation resulted and Kiles frankly told Lucifer to go frack himself.  Then Lucifer mentioned Ernest Hemingway.  Kiles worked his alchemy and made the whole episode go away.

57.  The real enigma was the portal on International Island.  'Blue Funnel,' Kiles whispered, 'have their fingers in everything, everywhere.'  "They are here working their financial magic, like recapitalizing on credit," to name one idiotic formula.  He was going to reapproach the portal with this new found clue. 

58.  This entire device was protected space.  The governments of the world protected the island, but the portal itself was lost in a black budget ledger somewhere, probably on some other shell, in typical Blue Funnel 'unaccountability' style.    

59.   "But nobody even knows where the 10-planet system is?" Kiles remembered.  Theos benefited from the device, but the device was kept in an unknown location.  "Perfect," Kiles  thought.  "Who would ever look here?"   "Actually..." he reconsidered, "Does... Theos benefit from this device?"  Blue Funnel is a covert financial extension of the Theotian paradigm.   Blue Funnel held the Theotian empire together. 

60.  Two people entered the chamber; a male and female, wearing tight-fitting silver body suits.  The suits had small rectangular oynx-black belt buckles.  Their wrist watches had onyx- black bezels, that likely controlled the suits function.  "Cloaks," Kiles imagined.

61.  The female mounted the dais, turned on the console and retrieved her phone.  She touched her phone to a transfer port on the console, and the floor before them animated to Ireana's laboratory on M'trol-1. 

62.  Kiles eyes widened to cartoon like apertures.  "What the hell!" he was about to interrupt their meddling.  They began to eavesdrop on her calculations, taking notes, specifically her artificial gravity equations for Onimex.  "You fracking thieves!" Kiles muzzled a whispered shout.  The male briskly looked over his colleagues shoulder in Kiles general direction, but didn't see anyone.  He looked at his colleague and they dismissed the spookiness as normal.  "Nothing is sacred!" Kiles thought, recovering somewhat.  He was frustrated and pissed, "I've got to get someone in on this!"

63.   "But who?" he wondered.  'Is espionage a constant of the Universe, or is it just here?'  In spite of his overbearing desire to crush the two thieves, Kiles chose to observe them for a minute first.  Maybe he might learn more about their agenda.