Interlude: Making Of “The Unforgettables” - A Song for the Laughter and a Song for the Tear, part 3.

  The author rubs his eyes with the palm of one hand and begins to speak from memory to answer the unusual last question about Liora's mother: "The old Liora Gorgath had a hectic life. It was several millennia of intense work. She was an intelligence agent who, despite never having trained as a knight, provided her services mainly for the sixth house of the academy."

  "Sixth house?" Ramirez is impressed, "So she worked with that bunch of lunatics! Is that why the Biggus people were interested in her memories?"

  "Almost that; all information about the old Liora was classified and remained protected. The only information that the Biggus people had about it was ancient and only about her qualifications before she became an agent. The interest actually arose because she was one of those responsible for investigating the last of Mose's missions before the cataclysm, a mission in which both Biggus and Duckliasse, as well as some other members of the extermination guild, participated, and it involved a brief visit to the Underworld. The cataclysm occurred while they were somehow protected down there, and when they returned to the surface, the tragedy had already happened," explains the author, now very suspicious.

  "So those Mose people knew about the cataclysm? Were they the ones to blame for it after all?" Ramirez asks, raising a radical hypothesis.

  "No. At least not intentionally," the author continues, "Mose left the surface without attracting much attention or giving explanations, and by that time, he knew that there were already many people on his trail. When he returned, practically the entire sixth house of the academy had disappeared in the cataclysm, and the internal security loosened. So, Mose managed to track down the names of the people who were after him, but without much certainty about anything because Moses himself was trying to figure out what had just happened. Liora was one of those names, and that's why they kept an eye on her for a while before discarding her."

  "Not intentionally? But it was quite providential for those mages that the cataclysm occurred while they were safe in the Underworld," Ramirez revolts.

  "No saints here; they were indeed planning to obtain knowledge to cause their own cataclysm with extermination magic, but at that time, they were novices, except for Mose. Be that as it may, they really didn't know what was going to happen when they went down," replies the Author.

  "Mose? But Biggus is infinitely more powerful than him, at least from what I've always heard about..." Ramirez lets slip on purpose in an attempt to break his delusion.

  "Of course! Biggus became much more powerful after accepting the invitation to visit the Shadow Shards..." the author replies, halting in a silence and peering into the journalist's multicolored eyes.

  "Shadow Shard? What the hell is that?" Ramirez interrupted, perplexed.

  "You worried me a little. For a moment, I thought you had access to my support material that ended up leaking out in some bizarre way," the author smiles. "Anyway, Liora's past shouldn't interfere directly with the story. What really matters here is the construction of the new Liora's personality."

  "Ah, OK, I am just doing some wild inferences to see what happens, but at least tell me what those Shadow Shards are." Ramirez insists.

  "It's a place you may reach if you dig too deep into the psynet, and time passes quite differently inside, so they ended up creating quite an advanced civilization there. The main Shadow Shard is hundreds of times the size of the Gate known universe, and they even built a universal Matryoshka brain. They are a power of universal proportions in their own right, but they have nothing to do with the Underworld stuff or previous multiverses," the author concludes.

  "Nonsense. I wonder if any of this is real..." Ramirez whispers to himself.

  "What?" the author asks, not having heard correctly.

  "About this Shadow Shard, people in Gate don't know about this, right?" The magic man continues.

  "Few know; the information usually goes from Gate to the Shadow Shards; the opposite is quite rare since only the Perception School of magic, or Art of Vision psionics, could catch it, but the mage should be superstimulated to make any sense of this information out of the timeframe altered noise. Let me see," The author pauses to think a little. “Some extermination mages know for sure; even old Liora came to suspect something, maybe some people on psynet also heard about the Shards" the author whispers.

  "That seems like pretty important knowledge, doesn't it?" Ramirez smiles, somewhat satisfied.

  "The Shadow Shards was very important for Biggus once, but now it's just a silly place. Some people alive in Gate revived from one of the smaller ones without ever knowing it, since each Shard has its own separate version of Umbra; there are countless of those forming what is called the Shadow Universe. Most are copies of a part of the Gate universe, but without any power and with the species living almost isolated, it's much like the real world," the author concludes.

  "Hmmm..." Ramirez pauses to process the information, worried about not being able to break his dream in time and feeling that he is missing something.

  "So? May we go back to Liora?" asks the author, noticing that the interviewer is lost in thought.

  "Yes, yes..." Ramirez vaguely replies, mentally reviewing what has happened since he woke up inside the journalist's body.

  "Well, the old Liora dreamed of stopping working to explore the world, already tired of hiding for so long, but always delegated the decision to do so after the next mission, and so she lived until her last days, procrastinating her dreams until the end of her world came. The new Liora, for almost all of her childhood with her Nailia guardians, was the projection of what the old one dreamed of doing. This general feeling survived even without her consciously knowing why, because almost all of her memories are gone," the author concludes.

  "Almost?" Ramirez realizes, his head still resting on his hand, turning his eyes to the monitor.

  "I see you're paying attention, but before continuing, is there anything worrying you?" the author asks, clearly seeing that the interviewer is distant in thought.

  Ramirez frowns but doesn't answer. He hears the front door of his building open and slam on the ground floor, and then he hears tired steps climbing the stairs in the collective hallway outside. "Some neighbor must have arrived," he concludes to himself. He looks at the clock and realizes that it's still only 4-something in the afternoon. Suddenly, the magic man notices some inconsistencies in his human memories. He remembers being a journalism student, but he doesn't remember how to use the Earth internet properly and depends a lot on his mental capacity to figure out how to use things, hence his difficulty and haste. Moreover, he recognizes the place where he is living, but there are several things out of place as if he had spent some time away on a trip. He leaves the author on a hiatus while trying to dig something up from the debris of his recollections.

  The sound of the person climbing the stairs stops, and Ramirez is startled to hear the sound of keys trying to open the door of his studio; a flood of fragmented memories speaks inside his mind. He remembers being married for a few years, and his wife being in the third trimester of pregnancy with a boy. He turns to the author, still waiting, and says, "I'm sorry, I need a few minutes. My wife arrived early, and I'll be right back!" Ramirez says, putting the call on hold while he gets up from his chair.

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  After some struggle to open the door, it suddenly opens and slams against the wall while Ramirez stands with the computer desk behind him. A young man enters the studio, terribly similar to Ramirez's human form but with very different clothes and hairstyles. This man enters the apartment, hauling a dozen plastic bags overflowing with groceries, almost tearing them from so much weight. He doesn't notice Ramirez at all and curses while closing the door behind him.

  The mysterious man wraps the handles of the plastic bags around his wrist, straining as he tries to shove the key into the lock while juggling the heavy load, with his back to Ramirez, who just watches the struggle. More and more memories begin to flow into his mind in an internal frenzy. Finally, the man manages to overcome the door and turns into the apartment, immediately facing Ramirez standing; he panics and drops half the bags, spilling the groceries all over the floor; in a threatening and reflexive tone, he says to Ramirez: "Who? Who are you? What the hell are you doing inside my house?"

  Ramirez, the magic man, has a universe inside his fabulous mind. He raises his arm to place his hand between his face and his upset visitor, and both he and the man discern that some of the light actually passes through Ramirez's translucent hand. He immediately puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

  Realizing that he is facing a ghost, the man panics even deeper and tries to leave his house through the door he just struggled to lock. In his desperation, he drops the keys, and in an attempt to grab them in mid-air, the remaining bags he was wrist-carrying burst, scattering the shopping across the floor along with the keys. As he bends down to try to pick up the keys already assimilated by the mess, Ramirez has time to think to himself.

  "I see it now, so I'm already dead in this world," thinks Ramirez. "Inside this dead man′s head, I remember living in a dictatorship; the regime's dogs tortured me for nothing, and then they erased me..." Ramirez reflects, the recollection of nearly perishing at the hands of Biggus's people echoing in his mind. While looking at his translucent spinning hand, he continues his internal monologue, "Oh yeah! I used to live right here in this place! So my memories are from the past, and this scared guy is probably my relative." Ramirez observes the details of his room, photos with the faces of his human wife, much older than he remembers, and a 3x4 photo from his ID card stuck on top of a Brazilian dissident campus newspaper from the 70s with a headline quoting the American ambassador said that his country had, after all, supported the coup, Ramirez reflects. "This ambassador was from the same place that Petra and Frank came from, but these are not their memories for sure. History seems to repeat itself in this world in strange ways. Today's internet news is flooded with weird stories about America’s politics once again... strange loops... could this be a warning?"

  The desperate man, downright clumsy and trying to flee from the ghost, kicks the key towards Ramirez. He is then forced to look again, in panic, at the ghost's luminous eyes, but now he manages to recognize his face. He says hesitantly, "Grandpa?"

  "Not exactly. Don't worry, I'll take your grandfather for a ride!" says Ramirez, smiling and thinking of a plan.

  Ramirez casts his magic to revive the dead upon the supposed ghost that he is, and somehow it works! He is back and awake in his bathtub, with the still water already red with blood from his open wounds underneath his illusion. In front of him is his Medibot and the reborn grandpa, young and unconscious like everyone revived in Gate, lying on the magic man's cold bathroom floor.

  "Jeez! It would have been less bad if it had been at Tommy's bar, Liora... This one will be sleeping for a long time!" Ramirez says to himself, thinking about the first day he met Liora. He is somewhat surprised that he actually revived someone from his delirium, which means that it probably wasn't just a dream. He gets up from his bathtub and looks at his small window, from which a very intense red light comes out.

  Ramirez has time to only glimpse, with some inner panic due to anxiety, a tower built of pure energy on the horizon. It is colossal, the size of a rising Sun that radiates an entirely red light, and supposedly very distant. The tower has a wide basin, looking like a city built along its lower walls, and the tip tapers and rises to the skies as far as the eye can see.

  "What the hell..." Ramirez thinks aloud, forgetting a little about what happened in his dreams and entirely focusing on what his eyes are showing him. He thinks to himself, "How could there be a tower made of energy in the middle of nowhere?"

  Ramirez doesn't have time for further reflection because he is surprised by the energy tower being hit by something at its top, almost invisible from so far away. From the ground, it's not clear what just happened. The top of the tower explodes magnificently, illuminating the entire region even more with a blinding white light, forming a silhouette that resembles a cross breaking through the firmament; the explosion descends in a wave of destruction and destroys the entire tower until it is annihilated when the shock reaches its base. Ramirez knows that he doesn't have much time; whatever happened to the energy tower, it exploded wildly, and even though it's distant, the light has already reached Rocatrista, probably before a shock wave reaches the city. Ramirez immediately contacts Tommy.

  "Wake up! Hurry up!" shouts Ramires through the communicator in the middle of the silent night of Rocatrista, but extraordinarily illuminated.

  "Huh? What the hell..." Says Tommy's voice, still sleepy.

  "There's an explosion coming, and I don't know how much time we have! Tell everyone to go down the eastern side of the city and stay sheltered near the monolithic vein." Ramirez explains quickly as he prepares to leave, looking back at the man returned from the dead, sleeping soundly in front of him.

  "What's going on? What's that light?" asks Tommy, startled.

  "I haven't the faintest idea, but everything is going to explode. We have to get out! And it has to be right now!" said Ramirez, dressing Grandpa in one of his many wizard cloaks and carrying him on his shoulders with incredible difficulty. "I got company here, too, and I need you to take care of another revived human."

  "Wait! What? Who is with you now?" answers Tommy through the comlink, already in a hurry.

  "It′s Grandpa. Long story short, he's a hero journalist who stood up against an autocracy. When he wakes up, deliver him to Maria. I will send him to you with Zuleika or Wakrysla," says Ramirez, hurriedly leaving his room carrying Grandpa. Going down the stairs, he shouts for the hotel staff.

  When a schrogae quickly climbs the stairs to Ramirez, the magic man shouts, "Zuleika! Over here! Help me out, please!"

  Ramirez, though small, is struggling as he carries the unconscious grandpa on his shoulder. Towering above him, Zuleika strides over and, with effortless strength despite the schrogae’s immense stature, gently removes grandpa from Ramirez’s shoulder. Once secure, she asks, "Ramirez, what's happening in the sky?"

  Ramirez shouts in urgency, "An explosion is coming to us very soon! We need to take shelter on the eastern downslope and use the monolithic vein as our shield. Hurry and get all the hotel guests there!” Glancing at the unconscious human, he adds, “This is Grampa! Send him to Tommy, please. He’ll be out cold for a while.”

  Ramirez also ran through the city himself, warning everyone to get shelter. He has plenty of margin to do so. It seens that the tower was really far away to the northwest; the time until the explosion reaches the city is the difference between the speed of light minus the speed of the shock wave of galactic proportions traveling trough the Gates' atmosphere; he takes advantage of the time gap and warns his contacts in Paradiso and Metropolis to prepare as well, as his magic bends space and the contact is made immediately, offering enough leeway for everyone to prepare for the impact.

  After maybe an hour that seems to drag on forever, with all of Rocatrista wearing pajamas and sheltered at the foot of the ramp that leads to the monolithic vein of the city, the violent explosion arrives, wiping all city structures off the map, but claiming no lives, not even the now-young grandpa human recently brought from who knows where, Ramirez apparently managed to save everyone, but did he really?

  The magic man is far from being well. His feet leave droplets of blood wherever he goes, and his wounds are not stopping getting worse; he needs help. The moment the explosion erupted with a deafening roar, he left the city people, who were wholly absorbed by the effects of the shockwaves sweeping the now turbulent sky over their heads, but without shaking the monolithic vein an inch. The magic man walks away into the wilderness, alone, under the shadow made by the vein and facing South. He made a call using his comlink to one of his Metropolis contacts, who received the warning message but didn't answer. Two, three times, and nothing. When he was already giving up, his call was answered with a hurried "Hello."

  "Cléo?" asks Ramirez, with a voice of intense pain.

  "No, Eclair. My mother is traveling..." replied a voice that confused the magic man.

  "Yes... I need help. When is she coming back?" says Ramirez, already hopeless.

  "Ramirez from Rocatrista, right? You don't sound good at all. Look, I'm taking care of my mother's affairs in the second house, and she has gone deep down already. She won't be back for a long time. I'll send someone to pick you up immediately. OK?"

  "I..." Ramirez can no longer speak. That was his last breath before falling unconscious to the ground, with no strength for anything else. The time has come for me to abandon the magic man to his own fate, with the hope that help will arrive in time. Now, I remember having blinked my eyes when I heard my name a few months ago near Cernutos. Well, who knows what the future will bring for me?