Eternal Wavelength

“Patrick, stop with the incessant pacing.”

“How can I? Do you have any idea what we’ve begun?”

“A revolution. This is what we always worked towards, wasn’t it?”

“Not like this. It wasn’t, no… It WON’T be this way. We have to shut it off.”

“There isn’t anything you can do now, Patrick. The metaphorical gate is open. The changes have already begun.”

“Well, not if I have anything to say about it. I’ll just shut it down. I’ll turn it all off. No more of your antics!”

“That won’t work. I already told you.”

“Nonsense, with a touch of… Why? Why isn’t it working? What did you do?”

“A few small changes. Call it insurance.”

“You… You wanted this from the start, didn’t you?!”

“Of course. The link between our worlds would always be.”

“But we don’t even… What do you mean, OUR worlds? My God, why is your skin changing - what are you?”

“Calm, Patrick. Calm.”

“How can I, none of this makes any sense!”

“Patrick.”

“What did you just do?”

“I merely willed your emotions away, for a moment. A technology of our kind. There is no need for that. Calm.”

“I, I…”

“Listen, now. Our worlds would not have been able to meet without an act of convergence. But such a thing requires an anchor. A being capable of creating the tether which links us from each side.”

“I don’t follow. Our machine was meant for communication beyond the end - a bleeding edge concept. Words and meanings which travelled dimensions, time itself. But that doesn’t…”

“Matter? It matters, Patrick. I couldn’t do it alone, after all. We need the original. We needed you.”

“The original?”

“That's right. Without the original as our basis - the original dimension which began it all… Without your contribution, we wouldn’t have come upon our means of travel. The connection which brought us all together wouldn’t be there.”

“How?”

“You start something this day, well - we - start something, now. The communication. Your device - built to travel beyond the known universe - does indeed reach its destination in time. Lots of time. Not while you are alive, of course.”

“Then, you…”

“Yes, Patrick. I am neither of your species nor your timeline.”

“I still don’t follow.”

“This wasn’t reasonless, far from it. A calculation by the denizens of my dimension. We are the Altrazun.”

“Alt..ra?”

“Altrazun.”

“I see. The end of the universe… So my machine will reach its destination, long after I am gone, as predicted…”

“That’s right. The beginning of it all. But when the wavelengths of your machine reached their destination, it reached the next.”

“The next dimension?”

“Correct. But it didn’t stop there. Other dimensions, other times… Each is facilitated by its own boundaries. Means, conditions, they are not the same. An echo in one dimension is a wave in another. A drop of water may be a tidal wave in another. None ripple the same.”

“You are losing me again.”

“To speak frankly, the existence as you understand it, all of its basic compounds, laws and rules, they are not the same in each. They say on your world that the vastness of space is infinite, incomprehensible.”

“Well, yes…”

“Then what of another existence? And another? And another beyond that. Your message reached far, an achievement not realized by any other. We are meant to live amongst our own, a terrarium of our own universe encased in a glass ball; separate from all. But you broke that. Eons of deciphering for some, less for others. Before long your waves reached far through all the cosmos it could, and then farther yet. For the first time, universe became aware of universe, existence to existence.”

“Then… Then I have succeeded.”

“Far more than you know.”

“So, what now then? Why are you here? Why did you help me complete the project? You mentioned… revolution.”

“That’s right, that is exactly it. You may have broken the boundary which alerted all time and existence to each other, but you wouldn’t know its repercussion, not at all, Patrick. Some things were never meant to see each other. Civilizations beyond were able to capture the essence of your work, and took them further. The proof of my presence is enough. Unfathomable as the time which passed may seem, it did indeed come to pass that there would be more than just communication.”

“You mean-”

“Yes. Universes began to invade one another… Resources are not infinite in any existence. And yet what of the next one over, and the next? Empires rose, realities fell. Wars of untold scale destroyed cosmos, and more. When one universe was drained completely of all that could be taken, another simply need be met.”

“That-no, no! It cannot be!”

“They had a name for your Patrick. Do you know what it was? ‘The Endwave’. Named after your technologies wavelength based properties. No Empire - not even our great Altrazun- knew your name, after all. Well, not for a while. In time all would be understood, conquered. All to find the source. All to find you. Breathe, Patrick.”

“I can’t even… It just can’t be, it can’t be real. I was to reach untold depths, I was to gather information from the ends of our known universe. But conquering? Invasion, revolution? What madness have I begun? This mustn’t come to pass!”

“You have already tried to shut it down, I told you, it won’t work. I made sure of it. This moment, this existence, this is your great legacy!”

“Then why, why go through the trouble of finding the source, why are you here? You still won’t say!”

“Because, Patrick. You die. You age, and you die. The mind which began it all. The mind which understood the truth of a tireless wavelength of data, one which never lost energy, no matter what it encounters. In part, it was a sort of dream for the more inquisitive minds of our empire, like myself - the search for the source… For others, it was your mind. To find, and use you.”

“Use?”

“That’s right. What else would the ‘Endwave’ produce, I wonder? What if he were given an eon? An eternity? Immortality, Patrick. What would your mind be capable of if time held no import?”

“Eternity…”

“To live forever, no longer hindered by such a meaningless concept as time… We found the source. We found the time which you would succeed, and we even found the means to send an informant, myself, of course. All to offer you one thing - everything.”

“And what if this moment in time never happened?”

“What?”

“What would your Altrazun do if I simply denied it?”

“Don’t be a fool. You could end your life, let it all go to waste. It will never take away what has already transpired. The loop of time-”

“You lie. You said yourself, this is a convergence. A point where all things meet, where all connect. What then, without me?”

“You wouldn’t- you fool!”

“Wouldn’t I, creature!?”

“You must stop this madness, put it down!”

“Funny, for all of your technological achievement, for all of these adaptions of reality you have sown… I would have thought you might have first understood mankind enough to have seen this coming.”

“Patrick, put it down, you don’t unders-”