Chapter 2: For the walk is all there is

So that’s how it all started, a drunken walk back to a conference hotel, a weird glowing stone and my powers acting on its own again.

I woke up in what can only be described as a blank space. I was surrounded by a sea of white: The ground was white. The sky was white. The horizon, white. White, white, white, white, white.

I chose a random direction and started walking, I don’t know how long I walked for, but I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore and then when I got tired I stopped, and took a rest. This became my routine, walk, stop, and rest, repeat.

At some point I started marking the number of days on my hand using a pen I found in my right trouser pocket. I stopped doing that when the ink ran out.

I kept walking, my clothes started to fade in colour. I kept on walking, my shoes were worn through, I kept on walking. I never stopped walking. I had a lot of time to think while I was walking. I thought about anything and everything: why I liked listening to jazz on TV but never listened to it on my stereo. Why Jenny Carpenter went out with Dean Smith when Dean was the most gormless stupid looking buffoon to ever set foot on earth. If we live in an infinite universe, then the laws of infinity state that another earth also existed in which everything that I did were also done by an exact replica of me, and if the universe started to repeat itself was it an infinity or just a massive Mobius loop back to the original. But mostly I thought about my regrets, of what I could have done to change my life to make me and those around me happier.

By this point I was convinced I was dead and this was my personal hell, walking forever, pondering the useless mysteries of the universe, and what could have beens. At some point I stopped needing to rest, I just never noticed. I just kept walking. I forgot how to think and I kept on walking. I forgot who I was and I kept on walking and kept walking until, suddenly, after I don’t know how long I collapsed and slept. I felt my soul evolve, like I had finally realised some fundamental law of the universe, I felt the pain of bone deep tiredness, the pain of all those years of walking. But I also felt soul deep nourishment, better tasting than the best food I had ever tasted, more pleasurable than the best sex, it was rapturous.

I woke up to that blinding pure white light, knowing my torment had not yet ended. Suddenly I heard ... no more like felt ... something or someone near me, I sat up as fast I could, this caused my blood pressure to drop and I felt dizzy and had to lie back down again

“Careful there lad” I heard, the voice was that of a man, not young, low slightly gravely. There was a joyous undercurrent in his voice, but also something more ... profound sadness and loneliness.

I tried to speak up, but I couldn’t remember how, it had been so long since I had to speak, I tried to remember words, they were there just out of reach. It was like I was a little boy again, in my grandma’s back yard trying to pick mangoes, but they were just out of reach and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t jump high enough to reach.

The man helped me up and I got my first look at him, he looked to be in his late 60s, wrinkled, rugged, he liked to smile, he would have been very handsome in his younger days, he still was. I don’t know why but he reminded me of my mom’s cousin, Vikram, I called him Uncle Vicky, who was a colonel in the Indian army. There was something about this old man’s posture that screamed soldier, and not just a soldier, but an officer. The most striking thing about him however were his eyes, steel blue with silver specks, they were mesmerising. There was an unimaginable feeling of patience, love, kindness but also unimaginable sadness and loneliness. It was as if he had lived a countless lives, loved and felt the loss of everyone he ever knew dying before him. This man in front of me was an immortal.

I don’t know how I knew. He had spoken exactly three words to me and I had only seen him for the first time a few seconds ago, but I would have bet my life on it, this man was an immortal.

“Here, drink this.” He said giving me a glass of water. It was like a glass shattered in front of me and I realised all those years I walked, I hadn’t eaten or drunken anything. I took a tentative sip of water, then some more and then some more, it was the best tasting water I have ever tasted, so clean, fresh, pure. I kept drinking till I was full and returned that glass back, realising it was still half full.

“Hhh ... hello” I said, suddenly remembering how to speak again, like I had never forgotten

“Hello.” He smiled “I have never seen anyone keep walking till they forgot how to breathe”

“Am I ... dead?” I asked, not sure if I actually wanted to know.

“Good, god no!” he laughed

“Then where am I? How long have I been walking?” I asked calmly, weirdly calm. I should have been freaking out but I wasn’t. I was dead calm, walking for so long thinking I was dead.

“You are inside my legacy. Connected by the strings of time” he sighed “and you walked for 1849 years”

I stared back at him blankly, “1849 years” I repeated back ... that number was inconceivable, ludicrous, stupid, insane. I already believed I was dead now; I was starting to think I was mad as well.

“My name is John. I was born before they started counting days, before mankind as a concept even existed, since before human society crawled out of what you now call the Indus valley.” “I have lived a thousand lifetimes, loved, married the most beautiful woman to have ever existed. Fathered some of the most brilliant children to have walked this earth. I have been a grandfather, a great grandfather. I have seen humanity rise from the caves, and the plains, to great cities. I have seen humanity writing their stories on cave walls with animal blood and I have seen them grow to build greatest network of libraries, containing the greatest repositories of knowledge that man may ever know.” “I have seen war, famine, pestilence ravage humanity. I have seen unimaginable cruelty, committed by men who are revered as saints and I have seen monsters show kindness. I have watched on as everyone I ever knew died, helpless against the unrelenting march of time.” “The greatest curse that the gods ever cast ... was the gift of immortality. A joke so cruel, that the gods themselves stopped its practice.”

It was that last sentence shocked me. this strange man I just met was telling me he was older than civilisation and I was willing to believe that, but that last line...

“Yes, even the gods are no longer immortal” he smiled at me “Not that it really matters anyway; they tended to kill each other off every few thousand years anyway.”

I took a few moments to digest that news. The gods were real, and no longer immortal. The other things I already knew, I knew about john’s curse of immortality since I first looked at his eyes. I knew deep in my soul. “You said something about your legacy?” I asked

“After spending thousands of years trying to die, I found a way, I could freeze myself in time and find a successor, I can burn my soul and use the energy from the immolation to shatter my soul and end my suffering. And pass on my curse”

I looked at him frowning “That doesn’t sound like dying.”

“No, shattering the soul won’t just kill me it will erase me. I won’t pass on, I will end. But at least my suffering will end. I can’t remember her face anymore...” there were tears in his eyes

“A successor ... why me?” I asked calmly far more accepting of this situation than I had any right to be.

“Your power, it is called void control, which makes you a void mage. It is far more powerful than you think. In its infancy the power is fairly weak, a useful storage space but not much else. However, as you progress it will grow in power exponentially, even allowing you to have control over the other elements and even capable of influencing the fabric of reality in its final stages.”