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gerrysherry · 1 year

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Steven's Sabbatical

This work will be disturbing and confusing. It has many instances of unreality. It's also a part of a larger work I will be posting soon.

The mindscape was a sight to behold after all the boys had spent 8 years Cultivating it. It contained hanging gardens and castles and whole alternate worlds with their own peoples and cultures. Many were based on Abrahamic traditions or Egyptian mythology but others seemed whatever the three could dream up. The main corridor was a series of locked doors and only one of them knew how to open all them, the gatekeeper. He was named appropriately enough Lockley, but he preferred Jake.

Steven wondered how to leave the other two. In the olden days yielding control was more resembled sleep but now he often did mindscape chores. Translating the books that appeared at random in the main library: some were gibberish but a few were in Spanish, Latin or modern Italian, Arabic and hieroglyphics. The languages he knew. Some had familiar alphabets : Hebrew, cuneiform, Cyrillic, Linear B, Greek but they were meaningless to him. Others were replacement ciphers of English those he loved. Others were the page in a book you read in a dream: Meaningless.

Every day he’d ask Lockley about a new room in the main hallway, Jake would open it and Steven would do a brief catalog without entering.

One door led to an airlock which led into outer space. Even Jake didn’t know what was outside. They left it well alone

Steven asked to see the airlock door again, and before Jake could stop him stepped through.

“Tell Marc I love him and I’ll be back but I can’t deal with reality right now….”

He didn’t listen to Jake’s protests and opened the airlock. There was no sound in space so he couldn’t hear Jake crying softly.

He couldn’t breathe but he discovered he didn’t need to. This was like dreaming he told himself. He felt more unreal than when he yielded and shared control. Steven crashed through a skylight and felt nothing but broken glass even if it wasn’t real glass.

He awoke on the moon. As he stared at the dome that kept him alive he thought, one small step for man indeed.

Astronauts surrounded him and led him into a main building. There he was checked for diseases and cleared. Finally he was placed in a holding cell. Shortly after a man who was clearly in charge entered. The man’s nameplate read ‘Spector’ because of course it did.

When he removed his helmet he looked like a mix of Jake and Marc visually but was clearly supposed to be a version of Marc.

“We have no records of you. What colony are you from? Did the werewolves send you?”

Werewolves? Who put urban fantasy in my b-list sci-if?

“No, I came on my own. I’m a refugee.” Steven said. True enough.

“What colony are you from?”

“I’m from an alternate earth! I want to get away to prevent Marc from my world from making a terrible mistake but I traveled here instead!”

Commander Spector blinked at this veering off genre. “Hmm, I believe you…. For now… what can you do?”

“I know five languages, hostage negotiation and a little of every martial art in existence.”

“Can you either shoot down or pilot a spaceship?”

“No…. My brother probably can…. And my friend Jake can drive”

“We’ll assign you a position in R and D. What is your name?”

“Steven Grant.” Steven said.

Commander chuckled: “like the old tv series from the 80s? Steven Grant, tomb smasher?”

Steven nodded, Marc used to love the show so when they split he named his new ‘friend’ after the protagonist. It seemed this part of Marc remembered that.

“Yeah I was named after him” Steven said.

“I too was named after someone else. Don’t know much about the Earth Marc Spector besides the fact we are both reluctant war heroes. I prefer M or Commander Spector to differentiate.” Commander mused.

“I’m sure he’d be proud of you,” Steven said. He meant it. He did not mention the original Marcus Spector after whom they were both named after. He was not about to rehash the horrors of those who died in World War Two.

***

Sorting through the moon colony library (named the Thoth wing) Steven found a memory card with yesterday’s date. Curios, he plugged it in. In it was a very sweaty Marc at an archeological dig site. He told of his misadventures stealing a pyrite idol. Steven laughed. He wished he could be there. To tell Marc he was alright, ask about the temple. He needed to get back there.

He rushed out to the dome outside and tried to go back but gravity held firm. What was I thinking? I can’t just float back

He was brought inside by a tech that looked about like an Oracle from the temple of the sun and moon. Commander M merely said: “thank you captain Thorne. Leave me and Mr. Grant alone please .”

Thorne saluted and left.

“Is that their name? How do you know their name?” Steven sputtered.

M laughed: “I see they are friends of yours?”

Steven nodded. “They have a different name where I’m from but yes.”

“What elicited that reaction from you?” Commander asked.

“Marc contacted me and wants me to return but I can’t forgive him yet.”

Commander flinched at having his own name said with such vitriol.

“Commander Spector, what do you do to calm down?”

“I do a survey flight around the dome. More to the point, what do you do for fun?”

“I usually read or play board games”

“What is a board game?” M asked. He clearly didn’t know. Perhaps in this world the tradition had died out.

Steven knitted his brows thinking of how to explain the concept: “A bit like an analog video game. Oh I can make you one and show you. It needs another player anyway.”

“When I have the free time I would be honored, Mr. Grant, to try this pastime.” Commander said and stared back at his screens. He wanted Steven to leave

Steven left the office wiping away tears he had board games to replicate. He decided to start with Checkers, Snakes and Ladders and Senet and go from there.

***

“Durier bodies named after the painter, can contain the memories of another person but quickly become their own being,” Steven explained.

it was from a Sheckley novel Marc had read in his youth that stuck with him.

In it 11-year old Alistair Crompton has his mind separated into two robot bodies to save his breaking mind. The two mind parts in different bodies are forced to grow separately in foster homes on different planets. By the time Crompton can legally reintegrate with his two other selves, the other selves didn’t want to. Despite more resembling Crompton in personality Steven related more the care-free and hedonistic playboy Loomis. Hell if Marc came here demanding Steven come back, he might directly quote Loomis refusing to reintegrate with Crompton. Would Marc even recognize the allusion?

He knew nothing about robotics but it didn’t matter. He made dreams into reality here.

Commander asked him a few questions about the mechanics and seemed deeply disturbed by the implications. Steven was originally planning to upload his memories of Marc into the android but was realizing this was actually the last thing he wanted or needed. What this world needed was Jake.

“Well that’s all I can do until the wetware brains start growing. I’ll be in my office sorting and translating if you want to drop in for a game of Senet.” Steven said.

M nodded and walked away, shuddering through his jumpsuit.

An hour had passed and Steven had translated a passage in hieroglyphics: Khonsu is often portrayed as a gigantic child with a temper to match, other times in his adult aspect he is humanoid and wears the moon as a crown. In the lost tomb of Seti there are two statues of Khonshu, both of which were at first mistakenly thought to be statues of Horus due to the bird-like heads. They were properly identified as Khonshu due to the headdress and the crescents on the scepters. The depiction of Khonshu as having a bird skull is the strangest cases of mass hysteria seen in the 21st century. Started by patient zero, M.S.,the depiction spread throughout any city he traveled where fellow soldiers in companies he’d served or patients in hospitals he was recovering in would report dreams of a figure with a bird skull. Many drew it. One Egyptologist, Dr. Peter Alraune claims that M.S. was trying to redefine myth itself and lauded him for it. After M.S. was assassinated by a fringe cult of Christianity, new cases stopped but his friends continued to have the dreams. one man B. C., even turned a profit by selling the paintings he created at an almost pathological rate. Bird skull interpretations of Khonshu are now Isolated to North America and some parts of Africa and Europe.

Steven shuddered when he realized the document was talking about Marc. Idly he wondered if he’d been giving others nightmares by sheer proximity. He chalked it up to his subconscious aping Lovecraft right down to the racism and antisemitism.

He stopped to think about it when a new message appeared on his table. A hologram of a postcard from Rand.

Marc was in Cairo. Without him! He needed to return or he’d miss a trip of a lifetime.

He curled up into a ball and sat there. That was how the commander found him.

“Grant I’m here to…. Oh dear, what has Spector done now?”

Steven straightened: “He’s going to Egypt without me”

“And you’re on the moon without him. You’re square. Now teach me this Senet I have never heard of.” M said.

Steven obliged. He set 5 wire spools in front of him and 5 in front of M. He introduced the throwing sticks and explained which combinations meant which numbers. He explained the theological significance of throwing to land exactly on square 26 or returning to square 15.

“First person to get all 5 pieces to 30 wins. Strategy wise it’s snakes and ladders meets backgammon.” Steven said.

They had time to play one full game, before the werewolves attacked again.

Steven activated the first android of those he’d willed into being. He’d hoped it would collect data of the fire fight but the robot never returned.

Steven was learning to fly and even shot down a werewolf. He said a quick prayer just in case they still had souls.

Suddenly a stray shot killed his engines and nearly killed him. His head was bleeding. He pulled himself into a spin. Better to be a moving target than a static one. Marc had taught him that.

He was shot down anyway and hit his head on the controls.

Darkness.

A man with a bird skull for a head was watching him. Ah here is the Senet player, Marc. Will the ritual commence?

Marc rushed over to the bleeding Steven and hugged him tight. No words were said between them. None were needed.

Finally Marc turned to the bird man and said: “he’s in no condition to play and I’m in no moods for deals. Please leave us alone. Unless you’re planning to kill Randall, if I refuse. Then I’ll play your stupid game”

I never even considered using your brother’s life as blackmail. But he is unwilling when he dies he cannot serve me. Would you like to serve instead to hold up your side of the deal?

Steven gasped: you sold Randall’s soul to this thing?

Marc shook his head: I sold MY soul to him in exchange for Randall’s life. And then you formed, possibly as a coping mechanism from the trauma. This is Khonshu, Egyptian god of the moon by the way. Khonshu, this is my prodigal right hand man. I’m glad you’ve finally met.

Steven stood up and bowed. It was polite Blood leaked from his skull.

Khonshu knelt and put an inhuman greenish hand on Steven’s wound. It healed.

There, senet player Steven, your host is right. It is not the right time. We shall meet again and I shall win. Go to your part of the mind. Heal. You have a great battle ahead of you

Cracks formed. Steven was seeing double.

Marc shook him: “Where are you? How can I reach you?”

“The airlock in the main hall,” Steven whispered. He regretted revealing his hiding place but he missed his brothers.

****

The SOS signal was caught by one of the robots. It was a recording urging Steven to return by the other Marc.

“Listen Steven, I’m sorry I got thrown out of the Marines. Please it was you who stopped me! I need you in my life. I miss you and I don’t think I can function without you.

I’m just another ruthless greedy merc without you. I tried 8 years ago to get rid of you and it was you and Lockley who saved me in the end. I have a stable friendship with this guy Jean-Paul. You’d like him. Rand visits a lot. I see him more than as a marine.

Oh and Jake says hello. He misses you too!

Commander Spector was deeply disturbed that his namesake from Mr. Grant’s world was a bloodthirsty mercenary thrown out of the earth land brigades. He understood suddenly the resentment between Marc and Grant. He found Grant working with the androids. “Your world needs me and so does mine. Cherish him, value him and let him choose his own name. like Eddie for example. Most of all never compare him to me.” Grant said. “He’ll awake the moment I leave regardless if I survive the trip”

“You don’t have to leave Grant, you owe him nothing.” Commander said.

“He’s my brother I can’t leave him, besides Rand and his roommate are a good influence on him.” Steven said.

Steven borrowed a space craft and flew towards the black hole, later the craft returned on autopilot, empty.

They performed a burial at sea for Grant.

The android Grant awoke several days later and began the human Grant’s translation work. Like commander he preferred to go by his initials. He was even shyer than the original Steven and often felt he was a fake. M did his best to comfort him. New recruits arrived shortly after but so did more werewolves so it was a mixed bag.

Another SOS craft arrived a month later. It was of the other Grant and the man shown in the background of the missive playing the game Steven had taught M. Commander smiled. Perhaps they belonged in their own worlds but that didn’t mean they couldn’t maintain an alliance.

****

Steven cautiously unwrapped a package on his bed, it was a replica of senet Rand had bought to lure him out. Thanks, Rand!

He looked at Marc’s, His, roommate lounging on his bunk and looking bored. A man with dark black hair and a thin mustache. Steven asked: “would you like to play a board game I liked as a child?”

The man, Frenchie, right? Looked taken aback, “I can certainly try Marc. As long as the rules aren’t too hard.” Steven did not correct him on the name, it wasn’t worth it.

“No not really. This is senet, it was played in Ancient Egypt mostly by nobles and it represents movement through the afterlife. The rules themselves are actually quite simple. It’s like snakes and ladders. If you overthrow past 26 you go back 15 otherwise you keep moving forward”

“With you so far, Mon Ami”

“So to win you need an exact throw…..” Steven trailed off.

“Please continue Marc, I’m listening even when I do not say anything. I’m passionate about whatever you are passionate about.” Frenchie said. Steven was starting to like Frenchie.

***

Go on, Steven Grant, gamble to win back your soul

Steven sat down to a game of senet. He tossed the throwing sticks. 6. he did not look at his opponent. His opponent a Egyptian god tossed a three.

Silence.

Several moves later Steven landed his last piece on exactly 26. Yes! His opponent oh heavens, he was playing against Khonshu himself, landed his last piece on 27 and said something in an ancient language that was clearly cursing. Hopefully not the magical kind. Khonshu’s piece was forced to go back to 15.

Steven rolled a 4. He moved to 30. Steven’s pieces faded from view.

A scale appeared and weighed his pieces. Each was lighter than a feather. They faded. Pretend souls in a pretend game.

Khonsu reached out a bony hand: Good job, Steven Grant, player of games, you have won back your soul on behalf of Marc. You two will be my avatar, my knight in this wretched world, but your wills will be yours alone.

Steven shook it without looking up.

In the real world Marc Spector gasped for breath.

#tw unreality #tw dissociation #moon knight #moon knight comics #moon knight prequel #my fanfiction #marc spector #steven grant #khonshu #jean paul duchamp #senet #my writing #fanfiction

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