Chapter 73: Man vs Memory

The trip was as uncomfortable as the landscape was beautiful.

The false René took the wheel the way the real one hadn’t in years. The Renault Kangoo drove through a green landscape worthy of an Italian countryside postcard. The area felt incredibly familiar to Basil for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on, but also unnatural on a closer look. The leaves of the trees on the path followed a uniform design, and the wind smelled of oil paint. The snowy mountains beyond were as lifeless as icicles. Everything about this strange world smelled of trickery and deception.

Then why did its inhabitants feel so earnest?

“So…” The fake René coughed as he warily observed the snowy road through the northern mountains. Although there were no other cars around, the Old Man drove conservatively and safely. “The world has ended, but people are still here?”

“Yes,” Basil replied absentmindedly, his eyes turned to the landscape outside. Plato and Aya played a game at the back of the car, with each of them throwing back and forth a small ball at the other. They were on their third, after accidentally throwing their first two out of the car.

“And everything works like one of your video games?”

“Yes,” Basil replied. He had conveniently avoided mentioning Dismaker Labs’ role in the disaster. Since Aya seemed so confident Pluto was a good person, she would probably react with denial and obstruct them; at this point, all Basil wanted was to leave this place and find his team as soon as possible.

“And you say you were fighting mummies and a three-headed dog in a pyramid’s basement, which also happened to be the Louvre?”

“We didn’t get past the UNESCO HQ, but technically yes.”

“And giant bugs burned down the house?”

Basil sighed in despair. “Yes. I swore a blood oath over it.”

The fake René scoffed. “Again?”

“We all did,” Plato said at the back. “Even the plant. Especially the plant.”

“I see,” the Old Man muttered.

“You’re taking this well,” Basil said in suspicion. The real René would have been mad at losing the home of his dreams.

“I live in an exact copy of my old house, and walls matter less than the people living between them. What matters is that you all survived.” The fake René nodded slowly. “Your tale is quite elaborate for a fantasy. You should write a novel about it.”

“I wish it was a dream,” Basil said sharply. No matter what Plato had said, this trip was starting to sound like an exercise in patience and frustration management. “Believe what you want.”

“Oh, I believe you.” The old man chuckled darkly. “After everything that happened, if you had told me aliens and demons were behind everything I would have taken your word for it. When nothing makes sense, everything does.”

What an elegant way to sum up the apocalypse so far.

“In truth,” the fake René said with a low, soft voice. “I’m proud of you.”

The illusion said it so earnestly, so candidly, that Basil almost believed him on the spot. He clenched his fists in anger. “You’re proud?”

“Aren’t you?” the fake René smiled warmly. “You have saved hundreds of lives, maybe thousands. Defeated monsters and demons, tamed a dragon, and slain living gods. If even half of what you said isn’t an embellishment, then you’ve proven yourself a hero twice over.”

Basil didn’t respond. He had always wanted to hear these words from the original René, but the fact the praise came from the mouth of a fake left him with a bitter taste in his mouth. He kept his hand close to his halberd, half-expecting the other shoe to drop at any moment.

The fake René briefly glanced at him, his gaze faltering with sorrow. He didn’t ask any other questions afterward.

The path took them beyond snowy mountains and to the frontier of the illusory world. Literally. The icy ground stopped in front of a greenish-blue wall representing the sky joining with the earth. The fake René parked the car nearby and Basil stepped out of it first in his haste. He moved to the border of this fantasy land, his hand pressing against a solid wall. He felt oil paint under his nails, as if the sky itself was a giant portrait.

“This is some Truman Show-levels of mind bending weirdness,” Basil muttered to himself.

“On the bright side, I can officially mark the sky as my territory,” Plato said as he joined his best friend with the others. “I’m tempted to open the pee pipe and let the domination fluids flow.”

“I brought a litter in the car hold,” Aya replied cheerfully. “And cat snacks too!”

“Ohoh, truly?” Plato licked his lips. “I haven’t eaten good ones in weeks!”

“Don’t get distracted, Plato,” Basil said sharply. He didn’t see any beach around, so he was starting to wonder if they had been lured into a trap. “Where is this portal you spoke of?”

“Right there,” Aya replied, pointing at a spot on their left. “You can see the frame.”

Basil squinted at the painted false sky, and quickly understood what the little girl meant by frame. A wooden archway stood embedded into the border of the false world, barely standing out from the rest of the structure. The space inside it was blue instead of pale green, and when Basil approached it, he smelled the odor of the sea. He pressed his hand against the surface, his fingers phasing through as if crossing a painted veil; the air was cooler on the other side, saltier too. This portal reminded Basil of an optical illusion portrait.

“Mr. Pluto wants to see you,” Aya said with a smile. “That means you must be the good guys.”

“Of course we are,” Plato deadpanned. Somehow, Basil could tell what he was truly thinking:that there was no good person on the other side.

“It’s like we’re inside a painting or something,” Basil said as he pulled back his hand. “Are there other portals like this one?”

“Not that I know of,” Aya replied before touching the portal. Unlike Basil, her hand failed to get through it, much to her disappointment. “Oh… he won’t let me in.”

“Let me try,” Plato said as he peeked through the portal. His head vanished into the painted veil while the rest of his body remained behind. After a few seconds where Basil started to worry for his health, the tiger cub pulled back from the doorway. “Mmm.”

“What did you see?” Basil asked with a frown.

“Another giant litter full of sand,” Plato replied with a shrug. “Each one is bigger than the last, if you ask me. I hope we’ll get a wish with the last one.”

The fake René examined the portal for a few seconds, before trying his luck at crossing it. His hand stopped against the painted surface, unable to penetrate it. “Hello, is there someone inside?” he asked, knocking on the portal as if it were a door. “Can you let us in?”

“Do you think Pluto will open the portal if you ask nicely?” Basil deadpanned.

“Politeness can take you farther than violence, young man,” the fake René replied calmly as he kept knocking. “I would rather follow you and see the world outside for myself, so yes; I am asking nicely.”

Having an illusion of his father figure following him around was the last thing Basil wanted, but he did wonder why neither the fake René nor Aya could cross this portal. Was it yet another trap?

The System provided an answer, but not the one Basil expected.

The dead cannot escape Naraka.

For once in his life, Basil would have wished for a happy apocalypse. He stared at the notification in silence, struggling to apprehend its implications.

“Basil?” René asked in concern. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m…” Basil gazed at the Old Man with fresh eyes. It… it couldn’t be. It was impossible. He had perished long before the apocalypse. It couldn't be him. It... it couldn't. “I’m… I’m fine.”

“You are not,” René said, frowning in worry. “Basil, what’s bothering you?”

That you might be real, Basil thought. That this is purgatory.

Plato sat on the ground, silent as a tomb. He had figured it out, perhaps because he had received the same message. He stared at a confused Aya and then at the snowy mountains.

How many people inhabited this… afterlife?

“Aya?” Basil asked, praying to be wrong. “Has anyone else in this place been able to cross this portal?”

To Basil’s sorrow, she shook her head. “I told you, Mr. Pluto doesn’t let anyone in. None of my new friends can enter it.”

“Except us,” Plato whispered.

“I’m jealous,” Aya admitted with a smile. “But I’m glad Mr. Pluto is letting someone through. He shouldn’t stay alone.”

“Yeah…” Basil turned his back on them to focus on the portal. René’s gaze had suddenly become unbearable. “I guess that’s for the best.”

“Basil,” the Old Man said.

Basil didn’t have the courage to face him. He kept his back turned, something moist building up in his eyes.

“Once you step through this door, you will never come back here,” René guessed, his voice soft.

“No,” Basil admitted, wiping out his tears before anyone could notice. Plato was unnaturally still, and just as shaken as his best friend. “I don’t think I will.”

“I see…” René let out a sigh. “Must you go so soon? We’ve barely reunited. I know you have a duty to fulfill, but…”

“I have to go,” Basil replied. Why did the words sound so weak in his throat? “I must.”

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Basil glanced at the fantasy landscape around them, at the snowy mountains beyond which awaited the house of his dream. He knew it was all a trap to ensnare him, but he couldn’t shake off the nostalgia he felt at the sight.

“This realm is what I wanted more than anything once,” Basil admitted. He turned away from the portal and found the courage to face his deceased mentor. It felt like staring at the sun, but he owed the Old Man that much. “A peaceful life without worry.”

“But you do not desire it anymore?” René guessed. “You yearn for something else now.”

“I was a coward.” Basil had come to realize as much through his travels. “I told myself I was escaping the rat race, that I was done playing by society’s rules, but it was a lie I told myself. In truth, I…”

He struggled to find the right words, but René waited patiently for him to get them off his chest. The Old Man had always been a patient listener, and death hadn’t changed his predisposition.

“I was scared of failure,” Basil admitted. “Of disappointment.”

Basil had bunkered away in the wilderness rather than persevere. He had given up, tried to keep his head down, and cruise through life. But even if you ignore the world, it certainly won’t ignore you, Basil thought grimly. Running away incurs a debt to reality and one day it is repaid. One way or another.

“I can’t run away this time,” Basil told the only true father figure he ever had. “I won’t. As much as it scares me, it’s not about me anymore. It’s about the world. I’ve got friends waiting for me outside. People who will die if I stay in this… if I stay here.”

“People will die even if you leave, Basil,” René replied calmly. “I do not demean your achievements, far from it. But you are not Atlas. If you try to bear the world’s burden on your shoulders, you’ll only end up crushed under it. I fear you may be putting too much pressure on yourself. I know you. You will break before you bend.”

“Perhaps my efforts won’t amount to much,” Basil agreed. “But if each Bulgarian told themselves that, we wouldn’t have won independence. We wouldn’t have shaken off the Ottomans and the communists. Maybe I won’t make a big difference… but a small contribution is still better than none.”

Too many lives depending on his actions today. Vasi, Bugsy, Shellgirl, Rosemarine, Kalki, Neria… and so many more. Basil had the duty to stand with them.

“I see.” René nodded slowly to himself before looking down at Plato and petting him on the head. The tiger cub purred happily in response. “Watch over him then, would you? Make sure he doesn’t get too deep into trouble.”

“I’ll try, but I make no promises,” the Rakshasa Kitten replied with a chuckle. “He hunts down problems like I do birds.”

“As is his wont.” The Old Man smiled sadly, before facing his adoptive son. His voice broke halfway through his confession. “A part of me is sad to see you go, Basil… but the rest of me is proud that you’ve found your way.”

The last sentence was said with such earnestness, such candidness, that it left Basil speechless. The young man felt something warm in his eyes, which he couldn’t suppress this time.

Before he knew it, Basil had closed the gap between them and dropped his halberd. His arms closed around René and held him tightly. The Old Man gasped in surprise at the hug, but quickly returned it.

“Fuck,” Basil muttered. The Old Man felt so warm to the touch, so solid and real. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry,” René apologized. “I’m sorry I can’t follow you further. I wish I did, but… I guess that’s what de Gaulle meant when said that old age is a shipwreck. My time is done, but you can still swim to shore.”

“I’m…” It was a herculean struggle for Basil to let René go, but he did; slowly, gently. “I wish I could stay here longer. I truly do.”

“I understand,” René replied with a sad chuckle. “Don’t be sorry, Basil. Every man and woman has his own wars to fight. I’m lucky I could see you again at all.”

“Mister Bohen, Mister Plato?” Aya joined her hands shyly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Basil whispered. He couldn’t deny a last request.

“If you meet my cat, Misha, can you give her a message? She’s golden and small and adorable and lived with me in Tunis, you can’t miss her.”

She might as well have described millions of cats, but neither Basil nor Plato had the heart to point it out to her. “What message?” the Rakshasa Kitten asked quietly.

Aya looked down at her feet. “That it wasn’t her fault.”

Such a short sentence, and yet one that implied so much.

“We will tell her, if we meet her,” Plato promised with a paw on his belly. “I swear it on my stripes and feline pride.”

“I do too,” Basil promised. “On my honor as a Bohen.”

“Thank you.” Aya smiled brightly. “I hope we’ll meet again someday. You’re rough outside, but nice inside.”

“I hope so too,” Basil said, though he knew better. After one last glance at the Old Man, he recovered his halberd and turned to face the portal.

“It’ll be easier if we do it quickly,” the feline whispered to Basil as he joined him. Plato wasn’t one to cry, but his eyes were heavy with sorrow. “Without turning back.”

Basil nodded slowly and took a step forward.

“Go forth, young man, brave cat,” René said as Basil and Plato crossed the gate. “Show ‘em your mettle.”

He would.

For an old friend’s sake.

The first step was the hardest of them all; the second was easier, but only barely so. Basil and Plato crossed the painted veil into another world, into an endless beach of granular sand glittering under a pale white sun. A calm, soothing sea of blue paint expanded as far as the eye could see. Only silence and a gentle breeze welcomed the duo.

Benjamin Leroy’s daughter had perished in Tunisia during a terrorist attack. Basil wondered if it was the beach where she breathed her last, forever frozen in time.

“I do not understand you, Basil Bohen.”

Basil looked up, his hand tightening on his halberd. A shadowy form materialized in the sky, floating above the duo. Plato drew his blade and pointed it at the creature.

“Why did you leave?” Pluto, no, Benjamin Leroy asked. The confusion in his maddened eyes was only too human. “You’ll only find pain outside. You cannot save the world of man.”

“Can you?” Basil rasped.

“I already am,” Leroy replied with what could pass for enthusiasm. “I will absorb all souls into Naraka and empty all afterlives. The living, the dead, all will be united in a perfect world, a better world, without pain nor sorrow. No one will mourn, no one will grieve. All will be right on Heaven and Earth.”

Basil listened to his empty spiel. They sounded so familiar to him. He had invented many excuses to cover up an ugly truth too.

“What are you hiding from?” Basil asked, his question as sharp as a sword.

“Hiding?” Leroy let out a light chuckle. “I am in front of you. Don’t you see me? Do your eyes deceive you?”

“This place, this pocket dimension, whatever you call… it’s a fantasy,” Basil pointed, his halberd raised at the godly shadow. “What’s a fantasy’s purpose but to escape reality? What are you running from?”

The answer became obvious the moment Basil’s words left his mouth. Benjamin Leroy had committed all his crimes to achieve a clear, simple goal. He wasn’t after power or wealth like his comrades. His atrocities had been committed in love’s name.

Basil remembered what Aya had told him, how the false god broke down after asking the same question over and over again. This false world was exactly what Basil had wanted once. A refuge to escape the most dreadful fear of them all.

Failure.

“You’ve failed, haven’t you?” Basil guessed. “For all of your power, you couldn’t bring her back.”

The false deity winced as if slapped in his shadowy face.

“You’ve made a deal with the Devil.” Basil failed to suppress a brief pang of sympathy for the madman before him. Having run away himself, he understood Leroy’s plight only too well. “And he shortchanged you. Your daughter had already reincarnated, or her soul went to rest in an afterlife that even you cannot touch. You sold out the world for a fool's promise.”

Leroy’s eyes were the only thing human about him, and they couldn’t lie. When Basil caught the brief flash of pure anger in them, he knew he had guessed correctly.

“You couldn’t own up to your fuck-ups,” Plato rasped, his voice dripping with disgust. “You created a fake paradise to soothe your own guilty conscience!”

“But it only made things worse, didn’t it?” Basil raised his halberd at Leroy. “Watching children like Aya, the spitting image of what you thought your revived daughter would look like, dead because of your actions… it must have been a slap in the face. You’ve ruined the world and killed millions of innocents… and you did it for nothing.”

A black eclipse obscured the sun, turning it black as sin. Streaks of crimson tainted the sky, and the painted sea started to boil. As for Leroy, the false deity’s eyes began to burn with an otherworldly, ferocious glow.

And most importantly, the painted portal vanished behind the Bohens.

“You just couldn’t bear the guilt. So you ran. You ran away from reality, from the truth, because it was the easy way out.” Basil sighed, both out of scorn and sympathy. “Madness is a coward’s last refuge, I suppose.”

Leroy snapped to action with fury by expanding his shadowy wings. Flames came alight within the darkness of his body like stars in the night sky.

“Phlegethon Flame!” the false god snarled.

Fiery stars fell down to earth, scorching the sand to glass and sounding the horn of battle.

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