Diamond-1

The very top of the Diamond Tower:

Another stadium-sized auditorium.

A ballroom, one could say.

To stand inside of it was like standing inside of a glitter ball. It was the windows of the ballroom refracting the illumination from outside that did it. It seemed to make the very air itself sparkle.

The ceiling of the place, or roof or whatever, was fifty feet above anyone's head.

Good place for a party.

There was no party going on at the moment, however.

The auditorium was empty except for six people.

They sat in comfortable chairs at a dais. In front of them sat a second dais, a much smaller one.

These six people made up the council that controlled all wealth on Earth, Anne Wells and five others.

POOF!

This POOF! was created by a displacement of air.

One second, the six of them sat alone in the auditorium.

The next second, Valtair sat before them on the dais, Egoneg at his side.

In that second, Valtair became, by far, the largest living entity in the room. Seven feet tall and nearly as wide, Valtair had thick, muscular arms and legs. He didn't really have a head to speak of but more of a missile shaped thing that extended from his shoulders to rise to a point at the top. There were two slits in this shell that everyone always assumed were eyes. When he spoke, the words seemed to emanate from the front of his head, but no one could say for sure. No one ever confused Valtair with anything human.

Egoneg, on the other hand, was all too human. Smaller than most women, he was an older, pale man. His stomach was so round and huge that he had to wear his jeans low, and he could never keep his stinky T-shirt tucked in. Whenever Egoneg moved, everyone around him would have no choice but get a look at that huge, pale-as-lard pot gut of his. His dirty, knotted hair hung low to his waist. He wore sandals without socks, and his toenails were long and broken and yellow with thick deposits of toe gunk under each of them. Egoneg always seemed to have a cold. He was always snuffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve.

In short, this was one disgusting human being.

If any of the council members were surprised by Valtair and Egoneg's sudden appearance, none of them showed it.

"You wish to speak with us," Valtair said.

Another woman, besides Anne, sat on the council, a plump woman in her late fifties. Gray hair. Eyeglasses thick and round. She said, "We'll assume that when you say us, you mean you and The Fours."

No reply from Valtair. Egoneg, though, standing at Valtair's side, nodded. He emitted this half-chuckle, half-cough every couple of seconds that he seemed to have no control over. So annoying.

"Your presence on this planet can no longer be tolerated," said an elderly Asian man who sat dignified, back straight, in his chair.

Chuckle-cough from Egoneg.

"I'm not sure I understand you," Valtair said. "What have we done to offend you? What funds taken have been re-introduced into the economy."

"By building an amusement park that robbed every person who attended it," said a man draped in robes and a turban. The dark glasses her wore made it impossible to see his eyes.

"And this tower," Voltair continued. "We hired thousands of workers to build this tower, and we paid them well. Soon, we'll be hiring tens of thousands..."

"To what end?" asked a Hispanic man in dirty gray and green fatigues and also wearing dark glasses. "Why are you here? Is your intention to conquer the human race?"

It was Valtair's turn to chuckle. Egoneg all but fell over he laughed so hard. Drool dripped from his mouth to splap on the floor. This really was one disgusting guy.

"We're not accustomed to being laughed at." This came from a white man, immaculately dressed, hair combed to perfection. He said this in a monotone, as if making an effort to control his temper. His eyes said, "I've had people killed for less than this."

The lights in the auditorium dimmed.

Then,

Over their heads.

It was like they watched an incredibly real-looking 3-D hologram play itself out in mid air.

And it was a vision of Hell.

Of present day Earth, or at least a present day Earth. (You know how it is with multiverses.) People stood in the city streets in this vision and stared into the sky, and in their eyes existed nothing but horror and terror and hopelessness. They looked ragged. They looked starved. The city itself looked like a cadaver of its' once bright and shiny self. No lights. Shadows everywhere, even though it was mid day.

Another image appeared in another part of the auditorium, above their heads. This image was also of Earth, only this time not present day Earth. No, this was a depiction of some future Earth with the sky filled with floating vehicles and snake-like transports sliding through long, transparent tubes, and citizens wearing anti-grav packs so they could rise from the ground to float in the air.

But, again, the city looked skeletal. These citizens, also, looked into the sky in terror. Again, there were shadows, only they weren't shadows, either. They were like blobs of black mucous, and they were everywhere. Some of the blobs looked as big as two story buildings.

A third image appeared, a fourth. The third image was of India. The ground was packed with tens of thousands of praying bodies. Over their heads appeared a rift as if the sky itself was made of birthday present wrapping and some petulant god had torn the wrapping away. Within the rift was a blackness of a density and strength found nowhere on Earth. The fourth scene was not of Earth at all but of another planet entirely amongst the endless galaxies. This was a race far advanced in comparison to our own. Starships could be seen, and huge, floating cubes of technology. Their weapons looked formidable.

And, at the moment, these weapons were all aimed at the sky...

where there was, yep, you guessed it, another deeply black rift.

Scenes including this black rift appeared all over the auditorium.

They filled every available space.

A scene from Europe during the fourteenth century.

A scene from a planet writhing with eels as large and long as railroad trains.

A scene from a planet where there no longer seemed to be any stars in the sky.

A scene from a planet surrounded by dozens of space stations as round and huge as moons. Blobby black shadows were attached to each of them.

Then, a voice.

Not Valtair's voice, nor Egoneg's.

It was a voice deeper than the deepest baritone's. It was a voice that sounded, somehow, like it was filled with gravel.

It was an earthquake of a voice.

And it said,

"I EXIST TO DEVASTATE.

I WILL, I MUST, DEVASTATE THIS UNIVERSE.

I EXIST TO ANNHILIATE.

I WILL, I MUST, ANNHILIATE ALL THAT IS."

And now the black rift in the sky, in all the different scenes that filled the auditorium, fired blackness, like a ray, into the heart of each of the planets.

It was like all the planets got hit by the same huge, black blast at the same time.

The ray bore a hole into each of the worlds, and at the same time it sent out tendrils of blackness to cover each planet's surface. The tendrils reminded Anne, in a terrifying way, of a black spider web growing outward. An impressive thing to witness, especially since it was understood by everyone there that what they watched were probably not movies but windows into other true realities.

In other words, somewhere among the infinite intricacies that was the ever-growing, ever-evolving multiverse, this was really happening.

"What are you showing us all this shit for?" asked the sixth member of the council, this one bald, older, but quite muscular. Even though he was sitting and not walking around, he still had a bit of a swagger about him. Anyone who looked at this man anywhere on Earth would have the same initial impression: American. "You're missing the point, pal. You're leaving Earth, and you're never coming back. You disappear, or we array the military force of every army on this planet against you."

No reply from either Valtair or the entity with the deep baritone.

Egoneg, however, did one of his chuckle-coughs.

Without looking in his direction, Valtair smacked Egoneg in the mouth, knocking him over like a bowling pin. As he scrambled back to his feet, Egoneg muttered, "Oh, I'm so sorry, sir. If I had any idea that..."

"Just shut up, you fetid, runny glop of shit."

"Yes sir. Of course sir."

"Shut up!"

The scenes above merged as the black rays obliterated each planet. The auditorium filled with the blackness that seemed to glow in some odd, inexplicable manner.

The blackness wasn't like the night sky.

It had a form, a shape.

It was a living entity.

It looked roughly rectangular, this entity, Anne noted, a cloud-like rectangular blanket that floated and undulated over their heads. Anne assumed that, in reality, this entity had to be far bigger than what now filled the auditorium. The only thing to truly compare its size to was Infini herself.

And, in each corner of this rectangular, multiverse-sized blanket of blackness, there was a head.

Four corners. One head per corner. Four heads.

They all spoke at once, these four heads, in all different levels and tones, and yet, by the time the sounds reached the ears of the council, they became one voice.

The voice of The Fours.

'THE MORE I DEVOUR, THE MORE I GROW. THE MORE I DEVOUR, THE FASTER I BECOME WHO I MUST BE. DO NOT PRETEND THAT YOU HAVE ANY CHANCE OF ESCAPE OR RETALIATION WHATSOEVER. I HAVE DESTROYED COUNTLESS GALAXIES, AND I HAVE COME TO DESTROY YOURS."

The Asian man muttered a question that consisted of a single word:

"Why?"

"THERE IS NO WHY. THERE IS ONLY DEATH. FIRST, THE DEATH OF EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS, AND THEN MY OWN. I WILL FEED ON YOU UNTIL YOU ALL DIE, UNTIL EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE IS DEAD."

Anne watched the four corners of the "blanket" that was the most malevolent entity in the multiverse fold up within itself until it resembled something not unlike a...a fist.

A fist?

A fist that slammed into the dais they sat on.

"DIE!"

Not really. A fist didn't really slam into the dais. It was all a hologram kind of deal, a show.

Still,

The fist came down a second time.

"DIE!"

A third.

"DIE!"

Again. Again. Again.

"DIE! DIE! DIE!"

CONTINUE