Soul Guardian - Chapter 23: Lou
It started out as a seemingly innocent question. At first Six thought she had misunderstood.
“Don’t you mean, which room do I want?” She asked, “Because I thought we settled that the first night. I want the one on the top floor with the skylight.”
“Of course of course.” Bael waved his hand. “But how big do you want it to be? Surely such a tiny room would be quite cramped. Don’t you want more room to stretch out and play?”
“But rooms here, you can’t just make them bigger or smaller. Not without affecting the rooms next to them. Can you?” Six thought about it. “You aren’t going to put a library in my room are you? Because I wouldn’t like that.”
“Nothing so crude, just a minor alteration to the fabric of space and time. You’ll hardly notice it.” Bael promised. Of course, he neglected to mention the possible consequences of letting out the seams of reality to get a little extra leg room.
“We’re just going to redefine the internal volume of your bedroom without changing the external dimensions… simple stuff really.” Bael set about marking the doorway with chalk and muttering to himself. “Why don’t we just make it twice as big? Nothing fancy, I’ll double the internal dimensions and that should do the trick. No, better go three times as big just to be safe.”
“Whatever, just don’t blow up my bedroom.” Six hugged her teddy bear backpack and waited for Bael to finish weaving his spell. But in the back of her clever mind a feeling of apprehension was starting to form. Something Bael had said was nagging her but she couldn’t put a finger on it. Something about geometry, or possibly algebra. She counted on her fingers trying to make sense of it.
By the time she realized what was wrong it was too late. Bael had tripled the dimensions of the room, but as a consequence he had increased the volume twenty seven times. He hadn’t just stretched the fabric of reality, he had ripped it to threads like a sumo wrestler donning extra small yoga pants.
The resulting vacuum blew her bedroom door off its hinges and tore at them with hurricane force winds. She tried to grab the frame but her hands slipped.
“Bael, you moron!” Six screamed as the wind sucked her into the void.
***
In the dark space between dimensions where there was unlimited potential and endless nothingness Six drifted aimlessly. Her rudimentary understanding of physics told her that she should be a frozen lifeless popsicle but she decided not to press the issue in case the universe decided she was right.
Off in the distance something massive and glistening was coming towards her at break neck speed. As the distance between them diminished Six could see that it had the tentacles of an octopus, the wings of a bat and the annoyed bearing of a workman coming up against a deadline only to discover the plumbing has all been put in backwards.
“Oh that’s not going to be cheap to fix.” It waved a light year long tentacle towards the hole Bael had ripped in reality. “We’re going to need to redo that entire seam and reinforce it otherwise it’ll just go again in a few millennia.”
“Excuse me?” Six asked uncertainly.
“Well what you have there is what we call a complete unbuckling, which means the substructure of reality has been affected.” The creature droned on pleasantly. “We’re going to have to redo that whole section from top to bottom and believe me when I say that you do not want to cheap out on these kinds of repairs and try to fix them yourself.” It let out a hearty laugh.
Six weighed her options. She could ask the creature to fix whatever it was her foster father had broken or drift endlessly in space and probably die of starvation. “What’s it going to cost to get it fixed?” She asked.
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“Well… to be completely honest once you get a hole in your reality it’s usually best to start over fresh.” The cosmic repair creature let that hang for a moment. “But if you’re strapped for cash I can just slap some duct tape on it and hope for the best. That should hold for a couple trillion years while you save up for a new universe to inhabit.”
“You have duct tape?” Six asked incredulously. “Next you’ll tell me that you’ve got a can of WD-40 too!”
“Won’t leave my home dimension without them.” The creature confirmed proudly. “That and a good pair of vise grips. You can never forget your vise-grips.”
“Get out of town.” Six exclaimed.
“Nope, I’m completely serious.” It gave her a conspiratorial wink. “You know how scientists are going on and on about the missing matter that holds the universe together? It’s duct tape. Regular old duct tape.” The creature seemed to be contemplating something. “You know, that is an awfully big tear. How did you manage that in the first place?”
“You know how some people are naturally good at math? Like, you can ask them to add up a bunch of numbers or do multiplication in their head and they always come up with the right answer?” Six asked. “Well my foster father isn’t one of them.”
It eyed the fractured reality above them. “Who exactly is your foster father?”
“You probably don’t know him.” Six said unhelpfully.
“There are very few entities that have enough power and the complete lack of judgment it would take to do something like this.” The creature let out a sigh like the dying of planets. “It’s Bael Sharoth, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so.” Six shrugged. “I take it the two of you have met before.”
“Unfortunately, yes. So, I am to understand that Bael Sharoth, the lord of torment and a baron of hell, is your foster father? You know he’s one of the most powerful demons in all of hell, right?”
“Is he? I always thought he was a little goofy.” Six contemplated that new information. “Sorry, but no. Bael is just a mid level bureaucrat. He’s not anything special. He’s just… my dad. Well, for now he is. Until he finds me a new family.”
The creature drifted forward until she was so close she could reach out and touch its face. The black pools of its pupils threatened to swallow her whole. This was an entity that had seen the births and deaths of planets, entire solar systems, even a few of the unluckier universes.
“Believe me child, Bael is not what he seems. I know first hand of this.” There was a softness to its voice now, like a doctor delivering bad news. “If he is your guardian, I can think of no better one to protect you. But if this is merely part of a grander scheme, then none can help you. You are truly lost. Now, I’ll fix what I can and return you to where you came from.”
Before Six could think of a reply there was a flash of light and she found herself alone in her bedroom. The furniture was gone, sucked out into the void, but the rest of the room seemed intact… if somewhat larger than she remembered.
The creature’s words stuck with her. Was Bael her guardian or was he something else? Could she really trust him or was she better off finding some way to send him back to hell?
There was a knock at the door and Bael came in looking sheepish.
“Sorry about that. I never was very good at math.” He said. “I see Lou fixed everything up though. He really does do quality work.” He looked around the room. “We’ll probably need to get you some new furnishings though. Why don’t we go get them now?” He waved for her to take his hand. “Come on, no sense wasting time.”
Uncertainly Six took Bael’s hand and followed him to the car. As they rode in the back seat of the big black SUV she couldn’t help but wonder what his game was. If Lou the cosmic repair creature had been telling the truth there was no knowing if Bael was trying to help her or running some larger game.
She studied him intently. Could she trust her guardians? Could she trust anyone? And if she couldn’t, what then?
Unknown to her Bael was harboring thoughts of his own. Six should have been killed instantly when she was sucked out into the void. She should have come apart on the sub-atomic level but instead she had come back to him unharmed. If he counted the car crash that killed her parents that made two times she had dodged death.
Was some greater power looking out for her? Or was the child more than she pretended to be? Did she even know that she was special? Was there some other game at play?
