Unsacred Responsibility Chapter 1 - Glorious Purpose

The most merciful thing in the world was said to be the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. Yet, even that mercy, this accursed universe had deprived me.

I could not make sense of a thing around me, a thing before me, or a thing behind me. Shapes were not shapes and sounds were not sounds, up was not up and down was not down. Colors were not colors, gods, they were not colors, gods they were colors, some wretched thing in between and far between, and my mind screamed to understand it and begged to forget it.

The Dark Dimension lacked time and heeded no laws of physics. The glimpse of it seen through the eyes of Stephen Strange as he proceeded to bargain was but a minute aspect superimposed over the Earth; a facsimile of a facsimile, a xerox of a xerox, a sandcastle of the Taj Mahal built upon its dusty blueprint on parchment housing sketches of itself cleansed with rubber.

The worst of the inscrutable was the fate of my body. I was, at first, the infant, one who would mewl and puke within a nurse’s arms; then the whining school boy with a shining morning face, yet, I was still, then and there, the soldier and lover, and still then and there, the aged shrunken, man, with failing eyes, and slipping spectacles. 

In a place where time itself was bereft of voice, a place where ages and instants were songbirds with slit throats, to shower in the absence of that melody was to guzzle concomitantly of eternity and ephemerality.

I was infinite, grandiose, greater than the stars, and I was infinitesimal, trivial, lesser than atoms.

Yes, the Dark Dimension was horrid, but in that horridness came the absence of time and freedom from torment. That in of itself was to me sweeter than any promises of sung Valhalla, any whispers of the gold-paved roads of Jannah, and any enlightenment attained by sages deemed Nirvana.

Even so, such sweetness was sickening. The human brain could not compute a ‘Dimension Beyond Time.’ It had evolved only upon dimensions with time. Doctor Strange who’d borne witness to a fraction of it, had either some form of protection in the form of an Infinity Stone cloaked in the Eye of Agamotto, or had studied methods and ways to temper his mind, or perhaps, when the Ancient One had sent his astral form across the multiverse to witness its horrors and beauties, his voyage past his vast isles of ignorance had administered an inuring tincture against insanity.

I was not Stephen Strange. Madness had claimed me; of this, there was little doubt. What little remnants of my sanity had endured a calculated assassination, but whether it was witnessing the unwitnessable nature of Dark Dimension or the torment of thousands of deaths, I, like Caesar before me, knew not which knife had dealt the killing blow.

I’ve gone mad, I felt, at one moment, horrified.

I’ve gone mad, I felt, the next moment, elated.

I did not feel madness to be deplorable. Indeed, madness was the correct state of mind. I pity the man who could endure eternal death as prelude and a world beyond time as postlude and in his soullessness preserve his sanity.

As there were no ‘moments’ in a spacetime that had been decompounded to lack the latter element, these feelings and thoughts were parallel. All feelings and thoughts were parallel. Everything I could think, had thought, and was currently thinking, ran side-by-side on a track; Usain Bolt competed against Usain Bolt whilst neck-and-neck with Usain Bolt. The ability to think, in of itself, that I could have, was no doubt a small mercy granted by Dormammu, for beyond time, there was no change and there was no sequence, there was no cause and there was no effect. Thus neurons could neither be given commands to fire nor receive commands for ceasefire.

“Human. Gather yourself.”

Dormammu’s voice, ancient, distorted, incomprehensible, boomed as everything, everywhere, all at once. I could smell it. I could taste it. I could feel it lather my skin like a Redneck bathing under an African Desert Sun.

“Your mind is unravelling. Focus on that which you hate. Focus on your malice.”

That which I hate? That which I… 

Hate. 

Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.

The untold number of deaths came.

The Ancient One’s face came.

The MCU, its Sacred Timeline, came.

Fourteen million six hundred and five possibilities—

And the one which they won being predicated on the meanderings of a fucking rat.

Through hate, I saw the Event Horizon. With hate, I accepted my loss of sanity, and saw how it spaghettified and stretched, I saw it emerge upon the other side as utter brilliance. Hatred drew me from the depths of the abyss and pushed me towards the light of sheer genius. Yes, indeed, I was a genius. An utter genius. I had attained Supersanity. Unsanity. Desanity. Sanity Platinum. Sanity Premium. Sanity Plus Plus Plus.

My mind, for the moment, became clear. Unspeakably, post-coitally clear. The hatred that had been my lifejacket as I waded desperately in infinite time had become my wings to ascend the uncharted waters of timelessness.

I was mad, yes. Unfathomably mad.

But my madness had a purpose. There was a target, clear and painted in my heart of hearts and soul of souls, a target so beautiful she was the bone of my bone and the flesh of my flesh.

The Ancient One could not tolerate my existence because there was a ‘script.’ 

So, it had to burn.

Let it all burn.

Let chaos take the world.

Let. Chaos. Take. The. World.

LET! CHAOS! TAKE! THE! WORLD!

My gaze snapped upwards towards the one who had saved me, the one watching me with a thing akin to fatherly amusement. 

“I have brought you salvation, Human. What shall you offer as tribute?”

In my brilliance, relying exclusively on the subscription plan to Sanity Plus Plus Plus, I wanted to speak, but knew not whose voice to use. 

Who was I?

Who was I?

How was a man to speak when he knew nothing of his nature? Whose mask was he to wear when his had been stripped, when a face found wanting of a nose, ears, eyes, and a mouth stared as his reflection?

I searched for a speck of identity to grasp, but my mind could only produce the name: Peter Parker. Speak as he did? How did Peter Parker speak? Wise-cracking, humorous, perhaps? Inappropriate when facing a cosmic entity. Flashes came. A black suit. Dancing. What did they call it? Bully Maguire. I relished that. Again, inappropriate for the entity. There had to be a bit of flair. Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice. Shakespeare in the Park. A hint of Loki. A dash of Pre-Ragnarök Thor. A pinch of Stark conceit. Doth Mother Know You Weareth Her Drapes? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. She doth know. There it was, my Chemical X.

My lips opened, yet they had always been open, and when they closed, they would always have been closed.

“A thousand worlds, Great Dormammu.”

“A thousand worlds?”

“I swear to deliver you a thousand worlds, worlds to which you may drink and relish; worlds so succulent, such that even the delight of savoring them becomes itself loathsome.”

I rolled a D20, gambling with weighted dice.

“Great Dormammu, I would give this and more to you. The Heads of Heroes, the Mantles of Gods, and the Hearts of Titans. Yet, as my mortal flesh limits me so, I request to draw power from your Dark Dimension. From you, Great Dormammu. I would beseech a Pact.”

Dormammu did not laugh, for perhaps he knew no humor. Perhaps if he were the same as the Dormammu of other worlds, it would have been this moment he burst into laughter, or the moment he scoffed at my audacity.

Alas, when a man was mad, audacity was his god-given weapon.

“I accept.”

My form changed and locked. The specifics of the rigidity of biology were meaningless in a world where an apple could teabag Newton. Biology was, at day’s end, the thot daughter of chemistry, and chemistry was the gay son of physics. 

Parker Brainware operated rapidly. Changes came, one after the other. Gone was the mewling babe, the schoolboy, and locked in place was the soldier, the warrior, an appearance, age, and form at the peak of one’s life, putting me in the mid-twenties. A mark seared itself upon my forehead, the very same mark I was aware the Ancient One bore within the Mirror Dimension.

Agelessness was mine. 

Agelessness but not immortality. 

One must beware the difference. 

“As for the Sorcerer Supreme?”

“She shall die a thousand deaths in a thousand lifetimes, and be reborn to die a thousand more.”

Dormammu did not smile, but the Dark Dimension trembled with all the grace of a housecat with a well-petted belly.

“A Thousand Worlds. I shall await your tribute.”

Dormammu gave neither a timeframe nor a time limit, and I’d thought such a thing odd, until it occurred to me that for a being beyond time, it was no incongruity. Tomorrow or in a million years; it made no difference.

The Dark Dimension retreated all around me. The thought had occurred to me for but a single second to ask for the details of where and when Dormammu would place me, but I did not wish to push my fortune further. Though I could draw upon Dormammu’s power, the power of the Dark Dimension, I knew nothing of sorcery and nothing still of spells. Were I to encounter the Ancient One once more, the outcome would be no different.

As the incomprehensible slowly became comprehensible, I landed within a vast and pitiless desert, the likes of which stretched for vistas beyond my vision and beyond any normal understanding of space and time. In the distance, wreckages and ruin, in the foreground, bodies, and corpses, and far above me, where the sky should have been, a monster made of cloud and smoke, darkness and dusk, feasted upon the sun.

This place…

The sun-eating monster I recognized at first glance. First, from the show that followed a caricature that called itself Loki Laufeyson, and another, from the third installment of the culmination of Ryan Reynolds’ childhood aspirations. The Alioth it was called.

In escaping a Time Loop and leaving the Dark Dimension, a dimension beyond time, I had been displaced entirely in time. There were only two places to have gone: the very beginning or the very end.

I was in the Void at the End of Time.

The place where beings, creatures, and entire timelines were sent once they were ‘pruned.’

A piece of tumbleweed cruised idly by. I crushed it underfoot.

“Great Dormammu! I beseech you to transport me elsewhere!”

There was no answer.

“Great Dormammu?”

Again, there was no answer.

I could still feel my connection to the Dark Dimension. Our Pact still held. Silence meant either Dormammu was ignoring me or he could not hear me. Functionally, there was no distinction.

I see. I see. I see.

I nodded sagely. I squatted, slav-style, Asian style, put my hands together, and started to think. Parker Brainware, operating at adult mastery, fired at full throttle.

In my knowledge, to escape the End of Time, there were two methods. The first was with one of the devices used by the disgusting band-aid to the wretched contrivances that was Endgame: the Time Variance Authority. Finding and obtaining such a thing was all but impossible. 

The second was with the Sling Ring in Cassandra Nova’s possession. 

The task of obtaining it from her was a frog too large to eat. Deadpool and Wolverine succeeded via their unkillable nature, but even with that nature, it required a team composed of Gambit, Elektra, X-23, and Blade to thin down her minions. Even with such members, defeat would have been guaranteed if it weren’t for the relationship between Logan and Charles Xavier; it would have been guaranteed if one of her minions hadn't chosen betrayal, and it would have been guaranteed if she hadn’t been toying with them as a lion does a mouse.

I was not unkillable.

I was not Charles Xavier’s dysfunctional drinking buddy.

I was alone.

Thus, my vendetta with one bald woman would have to wait until I dealt with another bald woman. For to even earn the chance to seek cathartic comeuppance against the Ancient One, to even get the chance to wring her neck a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes, to press pillows over her face days without end and whisper empty platitudes of salvation, to get the chance to hold the Sacred Timeline by the balls and spit into its mouth… 

I would need to kill an Omega-Level Mutant.

A sane man would have crumbled to his knees. A lucid man would have cursed and screamed at the heavens. Fortunately, I was neither.

As a madman in an absurd universe, like Sisyphus ever-rolling his boulder—

I shivered in utter ecstaticity.