Welcome back to the Awakening. The architects are waiting.
The Trappist D Odyssey, the transmissions of Group Omega.
Emil noticed it, his voice whimper.
They're watching through the ink.
He pointed to the far wall and beat his head again.
Emil spun around with eyes wild. The child is in the walls, it
seemed, cut off by a wet crunch as he did his tongue.
But I don't hear anything other than you and John.
I dug my nose into my palms at what the future showed me.
Broken images, flashes on my future self.
Knife in hand, Kathy's throat beneath it, overlaid with John's
eyeless chanting. I rocked, telling myself stay
present, stay here, stay now. The blacking from my eyes
crawled toward the floating debris, forming new glyphs.
Cold wind blasted her bones, but the air stale tomb like shut up,
shut up, shut up. Emil cupped his hands around his
ears, but the sound in his head didn't stop.
I'm not next, he sobbed. It whispered the architects need
7 more, one for each world, despite all of us falling apart.
John read the next page, his voice and mind strained.
His voice didn't stop. The journal's page is fused to
his fingertips, skin peeling like wet paper.
The journal's blood smear footnote reshaped into a crude
eye. It bleeped.
A new sentence appeared beneath Gamma 7's last words.
The architects are never laid. You were bad to be on time.
You read faster if something was chasing his words.
Page 4. The torn photograph caption
only. Trappist decolonization team
1987, left to right. Doctor Hart.
Redacted. Redacted subject Gamma 1.
See how it smiles? Cathy contorted again, her body
writhing, her jaw unhinged. With a wet pop, the inocu wards
tore out of her, but beneath them, a child's voice whimper.
Mommy, why does Teddy have so many teeth now?
Sarah took back tears. She snatched pictures from
John's fingers. She stared at the photo, looking
from left to right, trailing her fingers, taking in the faces of
the people. How could a photo do that?
When she touched Gamma One, she shook her finger.
That burned me. Gamma 1 smiled, stretched,
consuming the other faces like wet paper, the gleaming teeth on
teeth, their glyphs identical to the upsetting blot.
Sarah bit her own wrist so hard it bled, bled, dripped onto the
photo. The glyphed teeth drank it
angrily as Emile balled up both of his fists and slammed the
glass in the cabinet, cutting himself bloody.
Shards hovered and rearranged into the doorway, the perfect
rectangle of darkness reflecting not him, a child's face with
blackened eyes and gamma One smile, the reflection mouth.
You're next, Emil, it's not me, Not me.
Emiled, wide eyed, gawked at the reflection in the cabinet's
jagged broken glass doors. Stop grinning at me, Emil.
Stop. You'll cut yourself.
My words meant nothing. The shards rearranged midair
into a doorway. It's not PO possible.
I grabbed the photo from Sarah, her mouth bloody.
The young woman in the photo. I've seen her before.
This woman was my doctor. I pondered why this woman in the
photo. She looked younger, about 30
years. I remember my last appointment
with Doctor Hart. She injected me with a black
fluid. She said something that didn't
make sense then but is now being well understood.
Harts whisper words. You'll dream of Trappist D soon.
I leaned into the table, knocking over the vial of black
fluid. The caption rewrote itself.
Doctor Evelyn Hart, architect, liaison.
John studied a loose page from the journal.
Stiff and rigid. He discarded it.
The colorful people wafted to the floor.
Page five Child's drawing crayon on labit letterhead.
The stick figure. Family labeled Mommy, Daddy, me,
but the herons have too many eyes and the child floats above
a black planet scribbled with the same glyphs as the block
down sounded garbled, compressed, and thick.
The sound of his baritone voice ripped through the room as he
read the next subject. A child.
Innocence lost beneath in an adult's handwriting.
Subject Deltas 1286 drew this before simulation terminated for
protocol cleansing fire. Kathy gazed at the colorful
paper, drawn to it. She grabbed it from the floor.
Kathy, don't. I screamed too late.
I heard the crunch of her bones when she hit the floor.
She bawled up in the last little child's voice.
Mommy, why does Daddy have so many teeth now?
I ran over to her, cradle to her tongue, blackened, crackling
like dried parchment. She vomited a thick surpley
black fluid. The puddle twisted into the same
glyphs as the journal. 2 voices both whined, Kathy's and a coral
whisper. We're the matches.
They're going to burn us to light the way.
The black fluid hissed like grease on a skillet, distorted
inverted lullaby like a muessel box underwater as the black
puddle reflected not the room but a place I'd never seen,
planet's surface pulsing like a heartbeat.
Kathy trembled in my arms. I rocked back and forth.
She didn't just hear the journal, she felt every death
recorded in it. Emil calmly walked over to us.
He tore the paper from Gathy's grasp.
Look. Emil's hands aged rapidly as he
touched the drawing. Wrinkles, liver spots, then
regression. His body shrink to a child's
size, but his shadows stayed in adult shape, his voice a broken
whisper. They made me pack, but I chose
wrong. For 10 seconds, he became delta
12, whispering. They made me pick which parent
to keep. He vomited dark green bowel and
baby teeth, each tooth inscribed with a glyph.
Sarah came closer to us. She stood at the feet of Kathy.
Give it to me, Emil. Sarah's timber voice and tears
in her eyes held on her hand the crayon drawing animated in her
hands. The stick figure.
Parents crawled out of the page, their many eyes weeping ink.
She tossed the paper on the table and frantically searched
the desk. What are you looking for?
Sarah kept my toe mild and even found it a little blue lighter.
She flipped it a few times. They combusted with a blue
flame. She thrust the drawing into the
flame, attempting to burn the drawing, but the flames turned
black and cold, freezing the air around it.
I want it out of this chamber, out of this horrific memories.
I turned to the Obsidian block, still in open position.
The glyphs on the block repeated In the black puddle.
I glimpse Trapisty's surface, and it's covered in identical
labs. Beaten, I sank to my knees,
whispering. We're not the first, we're just
the last. John's lips moved, but the words
weren't his subject. Gamma ocular nerves messifested
the glyphs. Within six hours of exposure, he
recited, voiced flat as a dead channel.
The subject begged for blindness.
Request denied, The journal's margin.
Squirm not ink veins. Thin black tendrils crept toward
John's wrist. John turned to the last page of
the Book of Death, the final page, The shaky hand.
No whisper, it isn't paper, it's skin, human, tattooed with
glyphs. He peeled it back and revealed.
Welcome Home group Omega, you've always been a part of the
experiment. The Awakening Psychic Odyssey, a
mind bending Fiddler podcast. Subscribe and binge all episodes
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