[MV] The SUper Wizard From Space #24: The House Of Blinding Light

[Wil Alambre]

A portion of empty space bubbled and bulged, like plastic melting in a
fire, then peeled away to reveal the spitting green end of a warp
tunnel. Wrapped and protected in a cocoon of pale starlight, the Super
Wizard From Space blasted out of the tunnel opening at incredible speed.
The wound in black reality mended behind him with a practiced flick of
his hand.

He had arrived deep in a trinary star system. Two large suns with a
smaller red dwarf that arced around them in an elliptical orbit. No
other planets. No belts of rocky debris. Just a lonely small corner
where the weight of bright compression had collected everything and
squeezed them into these three spheres.

Approaching the larger, yellow-white sun, he slowed enough to watch the
surface activity. Vast fields of heat so intense that it was barely
given the chance to become flame, burning away every spare atom. He
looked for bending swaths of magnetic fields penetrating the
photosphere. When he found a ripe enough spot, he did some quick
calculations in his head and pushed against the field, causing the
corona to link with the solar interior. The result was a bursting flare
of liquid fusion, of radiation and plasma squeezed from the star and
flung out into the surrounding darkness. A curving snapping arc. 

The wizard outstretched his arms, hands clutching, half-closed, dragging
the expelled powered into himself. He caught fire. His suit glowed a
pure hot white. Gravity collapsed into him. 

He drank deeply. Drank until he was sated. Then reluctantly released the
flare, to let it fall back down into the field of heat. A hand over his
eyes a moment as he fought a shiver down his spine.

After a troubled sigh, he checked on the companion star, the second
large sun. It was smaller with an oily orange tinge to it, and was
emitting significant amounts sour radiations. The wizard bled out a
portion of his extra gravity against the star, nudging against its
trajectory. He hoped that it would eventually ripen like the primary,
but so far had been unsuccessful in finding a fertile orbit.

Eventually he moved away, making a tight arc toward the red dwarf. It
had a pleasantly wide course around the two suns, providing a good
vantage point over the yield while being far being far out enough to
still have an unobstructed view of the outlying universe. When he had
originally found the dwarf, it had been of poor quality. A sad little
thing clinging along due to unfortunate circumstances. With cleaner fuel
and a tweaking of its magnetic field, he had managed to make it
welcoming. He had even given it a pleasing pulse, its brightness
increasing dramatically to the beat of a half-remembered song.

The wizard flew underneath the dwarf star, to the bottom of its axis,
and used the remainder of his collected gravity to open it. At first,
the surface spit and jumped like an aggravated animal, then a swirly
dark spot appeared in the center. Holding his hand out, he turned his
palm slowly, causing the black spot to become a black iris. Splitting,
widening, the surface spiraled open, petals made of crimson fusion. He
let himself fall into the open door, the photosphere collapsing closed
again once he was inside.

Because of its low mass, the interior of the star was completely
convective, meaning the wizard fell against the outflowing movement of
plasma all the way to the core. Pulled upstream and downhill at the same
time, a warm fiery rush sweeping past along his skin and uniform. The
dull red washed into a bright orange washed into a blinding white, waves
of intensifying heat and light. Pulled and pulled, down and down,
distance stretched by gravity layered upon itself, diving deeper than
the logical radius of the star itself, until he finally reached the
thermonuclear core he called home.

Here, fusion acted directly against a super dense sea of hydrogen,
atomic nuclei being fused and immeasurable amounts of energies being
released. Here, a careful state of hydrostatic equilibrium keeps the
exploding energies balanced between inward gravitational forces and
outward pressure gradients. Here, unbound power is crushed and released,
the very laws of the universe are defined and defied. 

Here, the Super Wizard From Space finally let his shoulders sag. Here,
the wizard relaxed.

The science-sorcery of his great race had long conquered the core of
stars, transforming the tremendous energies into a power that could be
wielded and molded. An unreachable mysteries to others, this was a vast
plane of private existence open only to his kind. The ongoing fusion
created a near blinding effect, creating a field of fierce contrasts. An
unending white light in all directions, with only jagged black shadows
of shapes and structures fading in and out of view; at one angle, a
shadow that could be a fortress, but with the turn of the head, it
melted away behind ever-present glare.

Half a millimeter and a million miles away, geometric blacks shapes
unblended from the waves of blindness. Positioned with efficiency, kept
at optimal running conditions, this was his stellar laboratory. Each
inky shape a machine made of nuclear activity, maintained by math and
mind. They all viewed outwards, their sensors the solar winds and
broadcast energies of the dwarf itself. They watched the system, they
watched the galaxies, they watched the universe, and they watched beyond
the edge of even that. He checked each one of them with a habitual
motion. 

A tilt of his head and the shapes changed. Tall pillars of darkness,
turning the plane into vertical black and white stripes. Here he kept
his specimens and samples, all arranged with the same frightful
efficiency as everything else in this solar realm. 

In one empty pillar he placed the cosmic crown he had taken from the
Infinite School. Their mad champion gone, they themselves aimless, they
had drifted off to more abstract regions to look for a new teacher. 

In another empty pillar he placed the cosmic crown he had taken from the
Invisible Monks. The family Dharma seemed relieved to be free from the
burden, able to focus on matters closer to them. 

Over his head, his own cosmic crown buzzed with anticipation. The
challenge remained, and with it, a compulsion to complete it. The other
space-champions had scattered as soon as the grey lizard lost the douli.
A gritting of his teeth at the thought. They did not come after him
eventually. This tournament they designed trapped them as much as it did
him.

He felt a fluttering at his feet. Looking down, he saw a flash of
folding red, the only true color in this colorless place. It was a
dress, a ruby red shade, caught in the motion of hydrogen being smashed
into helium, drifting along it as if it on a sea breeze. 

He shifted and the specimen room was erased into the white glare, but
the splash of red remained. He narrowed his eyes and the blindness let
him into his laboratory. The clothe slid and settled, following. He
slowly lifted his foot. It caught a nonexistent gush and finally tumbled
flatly away, hiding in the white light.

It wouldn't take much to let the fusion have it. It took more effort to
keep it from being vaporized in the core. He stared at the spot the
dress had disappeared to, and though he knew it was there somewhere, he
could not see it again.

He closed his eyes and let the bursts of heat and light and radiation
push against him. Pressure became energy became plasma. Gravity became a
conceptual thing again. Distance unstretched, the everythingness turned
orange and then red and then suddenly the emptiness of space; with a
smooth splash, the surface of the red dwarf released him.

Super Wizard From Space paused there. The dwarf star pulsed with light.
To a pattern he set, to a tune someone else once hummed to him.
Resolved, reaffirmed, he picked a point in the dark universe and
departed.

.........................................
Wil Alambre, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wilalambre