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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

They walked to a less populous, more industrial-looking neighborhood at the edge of the main cavern. Christopher felt a sense of familiarity, even more so as Cain led him to a door and unlocked it. Once again, they were back in the maze of dull hallways.

“We might still be able to turn your unexpected arrival to our advantage. If it surprised me, then the others are even more in the dark.”

“There’s just one big problem,” Christopher said. “I hardly remember anything, and what I do remember is a disconnected jumble.”

“Well,” Cain said, “we could wait for you to recover more of your memories, but everyone has their spies. They’ll all find out eventually. If we give you more time, we give them more time.”

“Including the killer, if they’re still around,” Christopher said. “How many of the original secretaries are still working?”

“Most of them,” Cain said. “Everyone has just gotten older. The Secretary of Justice was replaced. The Secretary of Education died of cancer ten years back. Her deputy took over as well. That’s been the way that succession has been handled. But her deputy wasn’t as interested in the role once she found out more of the details of the job, so we had to pull the next in the hierarchy. There’s too much distrust in the group for any kind of election process.”

“If we reveal…me…what was your plan?”

Cain stopped walking and looked at his watch.

“There’s a cabinet meeting scheduled for today, about thirty minutes from now.”

“I just sit down with them and tell them I’m God-Speaker?” Christopher said.

“Something like that. I can do as much of the talking as you’d like.”

“And then all hell will break loose?”

“Undoubtedly. Some of them might be willing to believe, especially if you can offer them some proof. Others will be skeptical. If the person who killed you is in that room, they’re going to be extremely worried.”

“It’ll paint a target on my back,” Christopher said.

“You’ve already got a target on your back,” Cain replied. “This way we’ll know to watch out, and everyone else will be watching too. If we wait, we won’t know when or if they know about you. They’ll still have an opportunity for a cover-up. If we reveal you to everyone, then you can hunker down and wait for your memories to return. The traitor will know that they have very little time. They’ll either slip up, or be forced to flee.”

“So I’m the bait,” Christopher said.

“You are the bait.”

“I’m not entirely excited about this plan,” Christopher said.

Cain nodded. “Do not misunderstand. I am only making a suggestion. The moment you opened your eyes in that room, you became my leader again. You are God-Speaker. Whatever you want to do, we will do. I’ve spent half of my life trying to bring you back, and I didn’t do it to order you around.”

Christopher sighed.

“No. I’m practically a stranger here now. You’re the one who has been in the middle of this for years. If you really brought me back here, then I think it’s only right that we continue to follow your plan.”

“You say that like this is all carefully thought-out,” Cain said. “The truth is that I’m improvising.”

Christopher felt a twist of fear in his stomach, but also excitement. It would be dangerous, maybe deadly.

“Then let’s improvise together,” Christopher said.

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The walk back up from the depths was slower. Christopher felt shaky and a little weak, like he had been running laps for too long. They took the elevator back up into the utility hallways, where every corridor looked more or less the same. Christopher recognized it, or at least pieces, in a way he hadn’t before. This was familiar. This was home.

Cain led him out into the city. They stuck to the side streets. There were people going about their business here and there. Christopher felt like someone who had moved away from the town where they were born and raised and returned for a visit many years later. Most of the familiar landmarks were in their expected places. In fact, very little had changed. He found himself studying the faces of the people they passed, looking for any that he recognized. An older woman stood out to him, but he couldn’t place her or summon her name from his jumbled memories.

Their journey was accompanied by a faint murmuring, and Christopher eventually realized it wasn’t the voices in his head. It was Cain talking to himself. He seemed to be having a mumbling internal debate.

“You seem uneasy,” Christopher said. He wondered at the choice of words. Would he have said it the same way before his visit to the chamber below the cavern? Was he speaking, or was it God-Speaker? Was there a difference?

“I had so many plans,” Cain said. “Years upon years of plans, and none of them worked out. Then you fell out of the sky, quite literally, by the stories I’m told.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan?” Christopher asked.

“Not exactly. All at once, everything is falling into place. I wasn’t prepared, but we just have to make the best of it.”

“And how do we do that?” Christopher asked.

“Exactly what I was trying to figure out,” Cain said.

“What’s the situation?” Christopher asked.

Cain looked up, his distracted gaze refocusing, as though seeing Christopher for the first time.

“Of course. I’m sorry if I overstep my bounds. It’s just that you’ve been gone so long. We’ve had to make do.”

Christopher laughed. “Assume I know nothing about what’s going on. Overstep away. I’m not even sure I know who I am yet.”

“There’s something very important,” Cain said. “Do you remember what happened to you, before…”

A flash of memories assaulted Christopher. Pain and blood. The dark office. Falling. Scrambling. A looming shape and a glint of light on the edge of a knife. The memories did not form a neat sequence. They tumbled out in a disordered mess, like some cartoon closet overflowing with forgotten things.

“I was stabbed,” he said. “It was unexpected.”

“Yes,” Cain said. “We found your body. Your former body. Do you know who did it?”

Christopher tried to piece the memories together. He had known the person in the moment, but the memory was focused on other, more immediate concerns. He shook his head.

“No. Someone I knew. Someone I trusted.”

“Do you remember a face? A name? Anything?”

Christopher could sense long pent-up frustration behind Cain’s words. He shook his head.

“It’s all a blur. I remember the pain and the knife. I don’t know whose hand held it.”

Cain sighed. “This is the mystery that has haunted me these long decades while you were gone.”

“There were no clues?” Christopher asked. “I…it was a meeting with someone.”

“You had many meetings, every day,” Cain said. “But who you were meeting with was not common knowledge. You had a tendency to keep things secret, unless others really needed to know.”

That word, “secret,” reverberated within Christopher. It was deep in his core, the desire to hide things, the inability to trust, the unwillingness to let his guard down, or show any weakness. For all the good it had done him.

“I think you’ve probably barely begun to understand the secrets I’ve kept,” Christopher said.

Cain smiled.

“These things happen over a few thousand years.”

“There were no clues left behind?” Christopher asked.

Cain sighed. “Precious few. There are surveillance systems throughout the city, but not in your office or home, or the immediate surroundings. At least none that we were able to find. Nobody knew who you might have met with, or nobody was willing to say.”

“What about the office itself?”

“There was plenty of blood,” Cain said. “Two or three smeared footprints that yielded no matches. No murder weapon ever found.”

“So whoever killed me was never caught?”

“Things got messy fast, once you were found,” Cain said. “The cabinet met, and accusations were thrown around. There’s no hierarchy among us, and nobody trusted anyone. The investigation was difficult because of it. There was a sort of trial held, but you can imagine how well that goes when everyone is simultaneously prosecutor and possible suspect. In the end, we held a vote. The Secretary of Justice was imprisoned.”

“You don’t think he did it?” Christopher asked. He couldn’t call up a memory of the Secretary of Justice.

“She,” Cain said. “There was some circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete. Nothing that would have held up in an actual court. It wasn’t a trial, more like a desperate attempt to put the thing behind us and try to keep the place running.”

“Who do you think did it?” Christopher asked.

“I don’t know. There wasn’t enough evidence to say. I abstained from that vote.”

“What happened after that?”

Cain shrugged. “Some of the others pretended that it was resolved. Myself and one or two others quietly decided to keep looking into it. The Deputy Secretary of Justice was promoted to the council.”

“No more murders?” Christopher asked.

“Not among us. Murder isn’t unheard-of in Razor Mountain, but it’s rare. There’s been nothing that seemed related.”

“I would have assumed this person was trying to consolidate power,” Christopher said. “Maybe it was really just a grudge.”

“Maybe,” Cain said. “Maybe they were after power, but they knew that another killing would completely upend the system. Putting the Secretary of Justice away at least had some semblance of a resolution to the whole bloody ordeal.”

“Was there some attempted coup then?” Christopher asked.

“Nothing so obvious,” Cain replied. “Just years of endless jockeying for power. Arguments over little slivers of administrative control that fall somewhere between our individual domains.”

Christopher shook his head. “Of course, I never bothered to think about what might happen if I were gone.”

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Christopher lay on the floor, groaning.

“What did you do to me?”

Cain still stood in the doorway of the room, as though he were blocked by an invisible wall.

“What does it feel like?”

Christopher rolled onto his back and struggled to push himself to the edge of the room, eventually coming to rest with his back against the curved wall. There was a deep thrumming behind it, an endless note played below the range of human hearing.

“It feels…crowded,” Christopher said, squeezing his eyes closed, hands pressed against his temples.

He lay with the wall inches from his face, a matte gray, not-quite-metallic texture with strange shapes etched into the surface. But it was distant and unreal, like an image on a screen. Christopher felt lost inside his own head, a misty void filled with half-formed shapes. They milled around aimlessly, whispering. They were lonely, desperate for someone to listen to them, but Christopher also sensed a frustrated haughtiness; a royal irritation. They needed him, and they hated him for it.

It was possible to ignore the voices only because there were so many of them. If he concentrated, he might be able to pick out coherent ideas, but when they all washed over him it was just noise. That noise was a carrier signal, and he could follow it back to its source.

It was above, in the darkness and the weird, eye-rending purple light. Or perhaps it was in the walls, or the mysterious throb of hidden machinery beneath his feet. Despite his difficulty tracking its physical location, he was sure that it was buried with him under the mountain. Mentally, he had no trouble following that thread back to its origin. It was a vessel and a prison. It had brought the voices here, saving them from one disaster, only to deposit them into a new one. The voices had brought their tools with them, but they were unable to use them.

Christopher found himself laying on the floor in the fetal position. Cain squatted in the entrance to the room, watching him with some sort of pent-up emotion that Christopher couldn’t read. The scene barely registered.

Christopher found a place of memories. With a jolt, he recognized them as his own. They were past lives, a long, unbroken sequence back through time. He could see they were there, but he couldn’t fully process them. They went back so far that the world, the people, became almost unrecognizable.

When he reached the end of this human lineage, it didn’t stop. Shrinking back in horror, he saw another sequence of lives. The voices. They went back much farther, in endless generations before humanity; before any life on Earth was more complex than sludge in a fetid tide pool. They had experienced so much, and knew things far beyond human understanding.

He reeled away from those ancient, foreign memories, but the sequence of human memories called to him. He felt his connection to them. They wrapped around him like a warm blanket that threatened to suffocate. He could see flashes of the past, moments of memory, but they were jumbled and confused.

Instinctively, he found a balance between this new internal world and the external world he had lived in before entering this room. He couldn’t tell if it was something he had discovered or something remembered. In any case, he sat up, his head no longer spinning. He took a deep breath.

“I think I understand,” he said.

“Do you remember?” Cain asked. Christopher could sense the excitement under the calm facade.

“Some things,” Christopher said. “This place…jostled everything loose. I remember your face. I remember you, but younger. I know bits and pieces. I think it will take a while for everything to come back.”

“Do you remember who you are?” Cain asked.

“Tutanarulax Qatqa,” he said, his tongue stumbling over the strange words. “I’m God-Speaker.”

Cain nodded.

“But I’m still Christopher. It’s…not comfortable.”

“You never told me what it was like,” Cain said, “so there’s not much I can do to guide you.”

“Of course I didn’t,” Christopher said. “I hardly told anyone anything. This is so odd. It’s like seeing different viewpoints out of each eye.”

“Do you need some time?”

“I’m fine,” Christopher said, standing. “I mean, I can stand up again without falling over. I can tell what’s real and what’s not. Mostly. But it’s going to take a while to integrate. Days, maybe weeks. It’s never happened like this before.”

They stood together in silence for a moment.

“That last jump did not go well,” Christopher said.

“Yes, I know,” Cain replied.

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

“Don’t be a fool,” God-Speaker said. He shielded his body with his already bloody arm as he slid backward across the carpet, away from the man. “You know how this will end for you.”

In the back of his mind, God-Speaker was enraged. How had he missed this? The rest of his thoughts were focused on the moment, on the loaded gun in the drawer of the table a few feet away. The voices also echoed in his thoughts. They were locked in their chamber far below, but omnipresent in his mind, screeching their many opinions of the situation.

Reed loomed, following God-Speaker with steady determination.

“I don’t care.”

The man lunged and God-Speaker flung himself backward. He found the leg of the table and pulled it, tumbling the heavy copper and stained glass lamp into Reed’s path. The man took his time stepping over it, then dove onto God-Speaker knife-first.

God-Speaker fumbled desperately with the drawer of the table. He managed to get his hand on the handle of the gun, but the knife caught him below his ribs. He felt a hot, wet rush as the blade sank into his abdomen.

The pain pushed out everything else. It was beyond anything he had physically experienced in the centuries of his many lives. The world was obscured by a red fog. He no longer knew where the gun was. Worse than the pain was the fear. What lay beyond the darkness that threatened to engulf him?

The voices screeched, and God-Speaker reached out to them with his thoughts. Proximity to their chamber mattered, but only a little. It was easier to connect up-close, but the distance was as much a function of his mind as it was of the physical space between. It didn’t really matter.

The voices had power. They wanted desperately to use it themselves, but they couldn’t. They were trapped. So God-Speaker used their power. He reached out from himself, from his physical body that lay bleeding on the floor of his office, from his physical brain slowly being drained of oxygen.

He reached out into the Razor Mountain, seeking the candidates he had already identified. Normally, this would be done in precise ritual, with everyone in their designated place. He did not know where to find them. He groped out with his mind, but it was imprecise. Even this sixth sense began to fade as his body shut down.

He found his consciousness floating far afield. He was beyond the city now, out of the rock, skimming over landscapes, chaotic and varied. Places and people appeared and faded in vague, disconnected visions. His mind was lost in the vastness of the world.

Somehow, all of his carefully laid plans, all of his contingencies and protections had failed him. The universe was powered by an inherent entropy, a randomness that could never be fully tamed. That was why the voices were here. Even their immortal kingdoms had eventually fallen. Despite their incredible powers, they had been forced to flee, bodiless ghosts in search of compatible hosts. Would the same thing happen to God-Speaker? Would his mind fly out beyond this world, eternally searching for someplace to land?

No, he was not one of the voices. He didn’t have their machines. He would die. Really die.

This revelation was enough to give him one more burst of desperate energy. He reached out, groping for anything he could catch. He anchored himself in a place: a city, a building, a room. By feel, by intuition, he found a presence that felt welcoming, unresisting. Why were some people amenable to him, and others incompatible? That was still a mystery; one that even the voices couldn’t answer.

It didn’t matter. He had found his escape hatch. Teetering on the edge of death, he found a person, a personality, that he could sink into.

It was a new mind, still shocked by light and the blurred shapes it brought with it. This mind sensed a warmth, the smell of life, of satiation, of comfort. It already had felt the great loss of the peaceful, quiet warmth where it had begun. Everything was too bright, to rough, too cold. On top of all these shocks, God-Speaker intruded, an alien presence. One more shock.

God-Speaker sank into that mind, that sea of thought-subsuming darkness. There was nothing else to do. He felt the sharp edges of consciousness blur and fade.

As the faculties of language fell away from him, God-Speaker heard words: human voices speaking.

“Did you decide?”

“I think so.”

“And?”

“I think he looks like a Christopher.”

“Then that’s his name. Christopher.”

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

God-Speaker left Cain in the borehole chamber, shuffling his papers. This was the furthest extent of the cave system, so he had to walk for a few minutes before reaching the secured door that led back into the outer neighborhoods of the city. From there, he made his way into the bustling city center. Among the shops and offices was a central pillar made in the tapered hourglass shape of a stalagmite and stalactite that had fused. It was actually engineered—carved from the rock over many years, like almost every space in the city.

The bottom of the pillar was sloped, and some of the tallest buildings were piled up against it. The upper half was painted like the ceiling so that it would at least partly blend into the artificial sky.

God-Speaker walked to a narrow space between two larger buildings, where there was a nondescript door with no handle. He waved his hand over the hidden chip reader in the wall nearby, and the door clicked open.

Inside, there was another door set up in a sort of airlock system. God-Speaker glanced up at the corner of the little room, where the glint of a reflection was the only sign that a small camera was watching. Anyone entering this space would be observed, and if they weren’t authorized they could be held until someone came to retrieve them. God-Speaker waved his hand next to the door on the opposite wall, and it opened to let him past.

From there, he was in the little catacomb of hallways and back rooms within the pillar. Although it was smaller, it was much the same as the restricted-access areas out beyond the exterior neighborhoods. Down the hall from the entry vestibule was an elevator. One wall was made entirely of glass, and God-Speaker looked out over the city as he rode up. To provide this visibility, narrow slits had been carved from the stone, cunningly hidden from below. The view took on a stuttering kinetoscope quality that made the city appear small and artificial, like an elaborate model village. The elevator continued up beyond the sky-painted ceiling of the cavern, and the tiny buildings vanished from view, blocked by a blur of rough rock speeding by outside.

High above the city, God-Speaker stepped out into hallways that were notably nicer than the utility areas below. There was carpet, doors and trim made from real wood, and occasional pieces of art on the walls. The lighting, hidden in the ceiling, was warm and inviting.

From the elevator, it was a short walk to God-Speaker’s main office. He had kept to his schedule, but he found Reed already sitting in a chair outside the office door when he arrived.

“You’re early,” God-Speaker noted, as he unlocked the office door.

“I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting,” Reed said.

The man stood and followed God-Speaker into the office. God-Speaker walked around to the other side of his desk and sat. Reed waited, standing, until God-Speaker gestured to the chair on the opposite side. God-Speaker noted that the lanky man showed signs of distress. He had a tendency to pick and fiddle, always doing something with his fingers when his mind was otherwise occupied; but when he really had something on his mind he was entirely still.

Now, he sat in the chair, his fingers steepled against his chin, unmoving as a statue.

“Did you find anything of interest?” God-Speaker asked.

Reed blinked slowly. “I have done extensive digging. I looked through all of his accounts myself. As you indicated, some of the accounting is a little…unorthodox…but I found no signs of anything nefarious.”

“What about other things? Anything outside the finances to raise a red flag?”

Reed sighed. “No. There are the usual interpersonal conflicts here and there. Some people find him a little bit grating. Some seem to appreciate his apparent earnestness.”

God-Speaker nodded. This was what he now expected, and perhaps it explained Reed’s tenseness. The man thought the absence of evidence would be taken as a failure on his part.

“I think it’s clear, but tell me, what is your opinion after this initial investigation?”

“I am sure there is more that could be done,” Reed said, “but I have found nothing to indicate that Cain is anything more dangerous than a young and opinionated person who is still figuring out his new position.”

God-Speaker nodded. “I agree. I’ve spent more time with the man over the past few days, and I realized that I may have misinterpreted some of his actions.”

“Are you sure that was wise, sir? What if he had turned out to be a threat?”

God-Speaker shrugged. “I have managed to take care of myself for quite some time.”

“Of course,” Reed said. “But people are unique. You have admitted that even you are not always able to read certain people.”

“I manage,” God-Speaker said irritably. “In any case, I think we can end this investigation. I am satisfied that we’ve come to the correct conclusion with Cain.”

“Very well,” Reed said. He was still nearly frozen in the chair. “Regardless of the outcome, I appreciate the trust you put in me for this…delicate matter.”

“Thank you for taking it seriously,” God-Speaker said. “Although I have noticed that some of your reports have been delayed while I distracted you with this.”

“It will be taken care of,” Reed said.

“Very well,” God-Speaker replied, standing. “I think we’re done here. You’re dismissed.”

Reed nodded and stood slowly. God-Speaker was struck once again by how tall and thin he was. He stood a head above God-Speaker, but surely weighed less.

Now that the situation with Cain was cleared up, God-Speaker could focus on the matter of his aging body. He stepped over to the bookshelf, trying to recall which of his replacement candidates was tallest.

He was not prepared for the searing pain in his right shoulder. He cried out and turned, his left hand instinctively reaching over. He felt wetness. Blood.

God-Speaker turned to face Reed. The man stood with a long, thin-bladed knife in his right hand, his face contorted, his jaw working as his teeth clenched.

“What are you doing?”

Reed struck again. God-Speaker raised his arm as a shield, and the knife cut deep into the muscle, scraping against bone. God-Speaker stumbled back and fell against the bookshelves before sliding down onto the carpet.

“I’m doing what that idiot Cain should have done. What we all should have done, years ago.”

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The borehole was unsettling. A perfectly-cut cylindrical hole in the stone floor, about three feet in diameter. A spotlight stationed at the edge shone down into the depths, only serving to highlight the endless darkness beyond the reach of the light. A few pipes snaked down the sides of the pit, test runs for much larger pipes that would eventually fill every inch of the available space.

Cain stood over the hole like a proud parent, shuffling nervously as he waited for God-Speaker’s opinion. God-Speaker leafed through the reports he had been given: charts showing temperature readings at various depths, reports of durability and heat dissipation for various materials and radiator arrays, and costs and expected maintenance for all of it.

God-Speaker had to admit it. Assuming all the numbers were accurate, Cain had actually undersold the project. He had diverted some funds in ways that God-Speaker didn’t like, but the project showed incredible potential. It would be an order of magnitude more efficient than much of their current infrastructure, and cheaper to maintain. Even more impressive, the improvements were all down to Cain and his engineers. God-Speaker hadn’t even contributed his usual breadcrumbs of knowledge gleaned from the voices beneath the mountain.

“There are some discrepancies in your accounting that we will need to address,” God-Speaker said, and he could see Cain’s shoulders begin to sag, “but I have to admit, you were correct. What we’re looking at here is the future of our heat and electrical generation.”

Cain’s back straightened, and he grinned.

“It won’t go through as fast as you’d like it to,” God-Speaker continued, “but I do think we will need to allocate more resources and move up the project timeline. Can you have all the necessary reports ready for the full cabinet meeting at the end of the month?”

“Of course. I can have them ready by the end of the week.”

God-Speaker peered over the edge again. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, but it still made him uneasy. This was the visual inverse of the voices’ chamber: an endless hole where light faded into darkness, in opposition to that room deep under the mountain where there was no ceiling, only the black void above and a harsh blue light that seemed to emanate from the darkness itself.

Cain shuffled again, clearly trying to find the right words to express himself.

“I…I wanted to apologize for my behavior. I know it’s not an excuse, but I’m very excited about the things my people are working on. I’m sure you know…it’s the engineering I love. Interacting with people…I’m not so good at it. And the finances always seem to get in the way.”

God-Speaker had been watching Cain, and was beginning to realize that he had read the man wrong. What he had seen as aggression and ego was a combination of fear and passion: love of his work and the worry that he wasn’t good enough to do it, that it might all be taken away.

“I’m sure I have only exacerbated the issue,” God-Speaker said. “I failed to listen to your concerns, and I underestimated your abilities.”

Cain was visibly relieved. God-Speaker also noted the subtle changes in his stance when receiving even such a mild compliment.

“I will try to work on the ways I interact with the rest of the cabinet,” Cain said, “and I’ll be better at keeping myself in check in our meetings.”

“You don’t need to apologize, and you don’t need to worry,” God-Speaker said. “You’re new to the position. These things will come with time and experience. Remember, this is a job for life, or at least as long as you want to do it. Take the long view. You don’t need to accomplish everything right away. Pace yourself. Think about what will have the most impact over decades, and focus on that. It’s easy to become distracted trying to run everything, but you have people below you to help with that. This is a lesson I still need to relearn myself from time to time.”

Cain nodded, now the picture of the dutiful employee.

“I have another meeting,”: God-Speaker said. “Will you excuse me?”

“Of course.”

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