Darkness surrounded Aris. No, not surrounded. Submerged. He was submerged in it, darkness so thick that for a moment he felt it had weight and texture, pressing against him from every direction.
And for the hundredth time, or perhaps the thousandth, he tried to breathe to calm his raging mind. But there was no sensation of inhaling, no air to begin with, no lungs, no chest, no body. Just the cold, endless dark, and the slow realization that perhaps he was no longer a body. Maybe a thought. A consciousness. A soul, floating in a sea of nothingness.
How long had he been here? A second? A year? The question drifted away before he could answer it. Time had stopped meaning anything. Or maybe it had never meant anything. Maybe this was what eternity felt like.
He tried to move, but he couldn't tell whether his body, or whatever he was, had obeyed or simply lacked any ability to register motion. For what felt like days, perhaps months, perhaps years, he struggled to keep his mind from fraying, grasping desperately at sensations that no longer existed.
Only the overwhelming, invasive cold remained, and a silence so absolute it seeped into his consciousness like water soaking into dry stone, blurring the boundary between where the silence ended and he began.
Am I in a coma? He tried to console himself with the thought. But deep down he knew it was impossible. With that many explosives, he knew he was dead without a doubt.
He tried to force his eyes open again. He had lost count of how many times he had tried. Maybe they were open already and he had simply become blind. Maybe the reason he couldn't feel his body was because he was paralyzed on a hospital bed. But he knew the thought was absurd. He tried to open them again, the command still feeling distant and detached, like trying to twitch a severed limb.
And then a dot appeared in the darkness for the first time. Tiny. White. No, gold. He stared at it with excitement, afraid to blink even though he couldn't, afraid it would vanish, afraid it might be a hallucination. But it didn't vanish. It pulsed, once, like a heartbeat, like the heartbeat he no longer had.
Then, slowly, more gold dots began to emerge. Countless millions upon millions of them. A brief flash of relief washed over him, only to curdle instantly as he realized this new sight was barely different from the previous darkness. But at least he was seeing. At least these dots meant something.
The golden dots stretched in every direction, distant and glowing, scattered across the endless dark. Only their faint glow marked the thin difference between this place and the previous darkness.
For a long moment, or perhaps only a fraction of a second, he stared, caught suspended between paralyzed awe and a creeping, primal dread, his mind churning in the endless dark.
Where... where am I? Is this hell? Heaven? Some kind of metaphysical transition place?
Do places like that even exist?
He looked down instinctively and froze. Where his hand should have been, there was only a faint, pale mist, a wisp of glowing white energy, barely clinging to form. Why hadn't I see this before? Why wasn't I able to perceive myself like this? But he stopped the descent into another spiral. He tried to clench his fist, but his fingers dissolved into thread-like strands that drifted apart before slowly, reluctantly, reforming.
Am I a soul now?
The realization dragged up fragments of memory from his final seconds in the vault. He still couldn't truly believe he was dead. Outmaneuvered so completely, so suddenly. After every meticulous plan, every ruthless betrayal, every calculated step, cut short before he could avenge the only two people he had ever called family.
He looked up from his spectral hand and suddenly went entirely still.
Cold.
A maddening, invasive cold pressed deep into him. But that should have been impossible without a body. Unless souls could bleed heat, too. The burning question remained: what was the source of this cold?
His scattered thoughts suddenly stopped as the distant golden dots began to swell at maddening speed. Were they rushing toward him, or was he hurtling toward them? He couldn't tell.
Then he noticed the void between the dots shifting as an indescribably massive gap carved through the darkness, so vast it blotted out entire constellations, a terrifying rift of blackness with no end in sight.
He remained frozen, his mind straining to comprehend why the stars were expanding. Slowly, they drew closer until each one loomed with the terrifying magnitude of a sun. But they were arranged strangely. Formed into a familiar geometric pattern, like… like scales.
An entity emerged from the void, or at least, the microscopic fraction of it his perception could comprehend. A serpentine entity too immense to fathom, coiling through the cosmic dark like a living galaxy. Its body spanned an impossible distance, and as he tried to grasp even a sliver of its scale, a primal, existential dread flooded every corner of his being.
The entity shifted slowly, its massive scales emerging one by one from the dark, shimmering with gold laced with blue. With every movement, the immeasurable pressure radiating from it escalated, pressing down onto his fragile soul.
He recoiled instinctively, though he couldn't feel himself move. It felt as though the entity was zeroing in on him specifically, though distance had lost all meaning here. Light-years? Galaxies? It didn't matter. The entity's raw gravitational weight fell upon him regardless, and for the first time since his death, his formless soul felt weight in the void.
One frantic word screamed through his mind: Run!
But where? In this endless void, there was nowhere to go and nothing to hide behind, not that cover would have mattered against something like this. He remained frozen, gripped by a slow-burning horror that paralyzed every rational thought.
And yet part of him wondered if the void had finally driven him insane, if his dying brain was conjuring fever-dream hallucinations to pass the agonizing eternity.
No. The crushing pressure was too agonizingly real. The cold too deep.
Even then, his mind raced, churning through desperate calculations. Should he beg? Should he act defiant? Should he try to impress it? But no matter how fast his thoughts spun, he knew that in the face of absolute, godlike power, no mortal trick or clever maneuver could ever suffice.
{Fear not, child.}
The voice—deep, ancient, and unnervingly calm, resonated directly inside his mind, making the endless void itself feel small, yet inexplicably carried a strange, enveloping warmth.
{I mean you no harm... Not yet.}
Aris's fear spiked. How could I feel warmth from something like this? And—not yet? The weight of those final two words hung in his mind. Yet, buried beneath the terror, the unbreakable will of the man who had plotted for twenty years began to stir.
An entity of this incomprehensible scale wouldn't waste its time playing games with his measly existence. If it wanted him dead, he would have been erased before he even awakened in the void. He clung to that single, logical lifeline. So stop. Calm yourself. Think.
{Interesting Fusion.}
A strange, rolling laughter followed the words, vibrating through his mind, and Aris wondered if this was what divine amusement sounded like. It was vaguely akin to a human chuckle, yet ancient and vast, a sound his mortal mind could only compare to the distant rumble of thunder echoing across an ocean.
{Even trembling before me, you still attempt to compose yourself.} The voice paused, and he felt the crushing weight of unseen eyes pressing upon him in that second, or whatever it was. {As expected of someone who got out of the Net. Destroyed my plans. An interesting fusion indeed.}
Net? Plans?
Aris mentally braced himself, forcing his spectral, mist-like form to bow. And as he willed himself downward, the glowing wisps of his soul reluctantly obeyed.
Asking what plans I ruined without knowing it even existed is unwise. But I have to know.
"May I ask why a being of your magnitude would summon someone as insignificant as me?" Despite lacking a body, his voice echoed through the void, though he didn't waste a fraction of a second wondering how. "And how could someone like me even begin to foil your plans?"
The massive, serpentine shape shifted, and a single golden eye opened in the darkness, its vertical slit vast beyond comprehension, hanging like a burning moon unto itself.
{Aris Seldon.}
The voice sounded like a heavy page being turned, as if his entire life were a finished book that had already been read, closed, and shelved among countless others.
{You are not insignificant. You are one among my countless children. One whose greed even I failed to foresee.}
Aris stiffened. Children?
{And that greed has stolen the future that belonged to my children.}
A chill rippled through his formless soul. "Your children? Their future?" he asked slowly, an inkling of the accusation coiling in his mind. Surely it can't mean…
{All of humanity—past, present, and future. Every one of them is my child.}
Its colossal head slid out from the crushing darkness, and Aris could only attribute its likeness to an immense, ancient eastern dragon, its whiskers drifting like smoke from a distant nebula.
{And I...} The word hung suspended in the void between them. {...am their providence.}
Aris remained dead silent, his mind refusing to cooperate. Humanity's providence... personified? He had never believed in providence, or luck, or whatever cosmic forces supposedly guided the fate of mortals. Luck was just mathematics. Probabilities. Providence a myth.
But looking directly at his current situation, at the entity before him, at the starlight bending around its whiskers and the swirling galaxies reflected in its scales, the question answered itself with terrifying clarity.
{The biochip you pursued with such desperate fervor was the destiny of all humanity.}
The words pressed against Aris. He wanted to ask what that meant, but stopped himself.
{Your greed and hatred shattered that future.}
The pressure of the dragon's gaze settled on him fully. His soul fractured, scattered, reformed, and with it, guilt, an emotion he had kept buried for two decades of rationalization, justifying every innocent life he had trampled with twisted logic, surfaced within him like a corpse rising to the surface of a still, dark lake.
"So you brought me here to punish me?"
{No.} The dragon's voice remained flat. {I reassembled you here because of what needs to happen next.}
A faint, brilliant golden light began to gather around Aris, swirling like a spiraling vortex from below and pulling at the edges of his soul.
{You destroyed the biochip. Yet its core fused with your soul.} The dragon's colossal gaze narrowed, as if studying this new fusion. {Technology and soul were never meant to fuse as they have within you. Least of all within a mortal with such a fragile soul.} The golden light spun faster, howling in the silent void. {Yet… against all odds, they have.}
"So I'm some kind of accident?" Aris asked.
{ 'Variable' is the more accurate term. At least, within the current iteration of humanity.}
The golden vortex intensified, roaring into a blinding funnel that spun with dizzying speed, hauling hard at the disintegrating edges of his soul.
{And therefore...} The dragon's eyes closed slowly, as if reaching across eons to make a monumental decision.
{My final gamble. Your species' final gamble.}
The golden light tightened, and his soul began to spiral uncontrollably into the blinding vortex.
"Wait! Wait! A gamble? What are you actually planning to do with me?"
{You will return.}
"Return where?"
{To the Primordial Era.} The dragon's voice in his mind sounded suddenly distant, strained, unnervingly weak. {To an epoch before the Great Shattering.}
Aris's mind reeled, panic overriding his shock. "You're sending me back in time? How is that even possible? What about temporal paradoxes—"
{Quiet. I have accounted for that and infinitely more.}
A heavy pause stretched like an eternity as the vortex spun faster, roaring as his soul began to unravel, golden strands weaving seamlessly into his being.
"A gamble? You're a god! A god! For God's sake. Gods don't roll dice unless they've rigged them. If I'm the variable you're betting on, show me the data. I can't change a destiny I can't see!"
{Be careful with your insatiable curiosity, Aris Seldon.} The dragon's deep tone softened, carrying an unexpected, profound sorrow. {In the River of Time, a single spoken word can become a boulder that alters the entire current. Carrying the map of the future into the Primordial Era invites the gaze of—}
"The gaze of what?" Aris demanded. But before the entity could finish, the sound vanished, swallowed by a deafening rushing noise. For the briefest second, Aris smelled blood and attributed it to the dragon.
{The future of your species rests entirely on this gamble. In your hands.}
"Hold on! At least give me a weapon, something to defend myself."
{You already possess everything you require. Sending your soul backward has already cost us dearly.}
The dragon's voice was barely a whisper now, fading like words spoken from the far end of an endless corridor.
{The biochip will suffice. Even I do not know the limits of what it can become.}
Aris opened his mouth to argue.
{Keep your head down, Aris Seldon.} The voice turned grave. {For I will not be able to save you a second time. The future of your species rests entirely upon you. Again, tread lightly, Aris Seldon.}
The golden vortex collapsed violently inward upon itself. In a fraction of a second, Aris vanished, and the void returned to its profound silence.
The dragon slowly shrank, its brilliant golden scales dimmed, its once-mighty presence withered.
{Almost all of my providence energy... gone,} the entity murmured, its voice hollow, its massive body coiled weakly among the dying stars. {I hope this gamble was not my final mistake. I hope he does not squander the three drops of Providence. For if this fails…}
It closed its eyes, fading into a deep slumber.