Kumari - Meaning Of Kumari, What Does Kumari Mean?

Pritish Nandy: I understand you are quitting Bombay and going away to Khandwa…
Kishore Kumar: Who can live in this stupid, friendless city where everyone seeks to exploit you every moment of the day? Can you trust anyone out here? Is anyone trustworthy? Is anyone a friend you can count on? I am determined to get out of this futile rat race and live as I’ve always wanted to. In my native Khandwa, the land of my forefathers. Who wants to die in this ugly city?
Pritish Nandy: Why did you come here in the first place?
Kishore Kumar: I would come to visit my brother Ashok Kumar. He was such a big star in those days. I thought he could introduce me to KL Saigal who was my greatest idol. People say he used to sing through his nose. But so what? He was a great singer. Greater than anyone else.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are planning to record an album of famous Saigal songs….
Kishore Kumar: They asked me to. I refused. Why should I try to outsing him? Let him remain enshrined in our memory. Let his songs remain just HIS songs. Let not even one person say that Kishore Kumar sang them better.
Pritish Nandy: If you didn’t like Bombay, why did you stay back? For fame? For money?
Kishore Kumar: I was conned into it. I only wanted to sing. Never to act. But somehow, thanks to peculiar circumstances, I was persuaded to act in the movies. I hated every moment of it and tried virtually every trick to get out of it. I muffed my lines, pretended to be crazy, shaved my head off, played difficult, began yodelling in the midst of tragic scenes, told Meena Kumari what I was supposed to tell Bina Rai in some other film – but they still wouldn’t let me go. I screamed, ranted, went cuckoo. But who cared? They were just determined to make me a star.
Pritish Nandy: Why?
Kishore Kumar: Because I was Dadamoni’s brother. And he was a great hero.
Pritish Nandy: But you succeeded, after your fashion….
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I was the biggest draw after Dilip Kumar. There were so many films I was doing in those days that I had to run from one set to the other, changing on the way. Imagine me. My shirts flying off, my trousers falling off, my wig coming off while I’m running from one set to the other. Very often I would mix up my lines and look angry in a romantic scene or romantic in the midst of a fierce battle. It was terrible and I hated it. It evoked nightmares of school. Directors were like school teachers. Do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. I dreaded it. That’s why I would often escape.
Pritish Nandy: Well, you are notorious for the trouble you give your directors and producers. Why is that?
Kishore Kumar: Nonsense. They give me trouble. You think they give a damn for me? I matter to them only because I sell. Who cared for me during my bad days? Who cares for anyone in this profession?
Pritish Nandy: Is that why you prefer to be a loner?
Kishore Kumar: Look, I don’t smoke, drink or socialize. I never go to parties. If that makes me a loner, fine. I am happy this way. I go to work and I come back straight home. To watch my horror movies, play with my spooks, talk to my trees, sing. In this avaricious world, every creative person is bound to be lonely. How can you deny me that right?
Pritish Nandy: You don’t have many friends?
Kishore Kumar: None.
Pritish Nandy: That’s rather sweeping.
Kishore Kumar: People bore me. Film people particularly bore me. I prefer talking to my trees.
Pritish Nandy: So you like nature?
Kishore Kumar: That’s why I want to get away to Khandwa. I have lost all touch with nature out here. I tried to dig a canal all around my bungalow out here, so that we could sail gondolas there. The municipality chap would sit and watch and nod his head disapprovingly, while my men would dig and dig. But it didn’t work. One day someone found a hand – a skeletal hand- and some toes. After that no one wanted to dig anymore. Anoop, my second brother, came charging with Ganga water and started chanting mantras. He thought this house was built on a graveyard. Perhaps it is. But I lost the chance of making my home like Venice.
Pritish Nandy: People would have thought you crazy. In fact they already do.
Kishore Kumar: Who said I’m crazy. The world is crazy; not me.
Pritish Nandy: Why do you have this reputation for doing strange things?
Kishore Kumar: It all began with this girl who came to interview me. In those days I used to live alone. So she said: You must be very lonely. I said: No, let me introduce you to some of my friends. So I took her to the garden and introduced her to some of the friendlier trees. Janardhan; Raghunandan; Gangadhar; Jagannath; Buddhuram; Jhatpatajhatpatpat. I said they were my closest friends in this cruel world. She went and wrote this bizarre piece, saying that I spent long evenings with my arms entwined around them. What’s wrong with that, you tell me? What’s wrong making friends with trees?
Pritish Nandy: Nothing.
Kishore Kumar: Then, there was this interior decorator-a suited, booted fellow who came to see me in a three-piece woollen, Saville Row suit in the thick of summer- and began to lecture me about aesthetics, design, visual sense and all that. After listening to him for about half an hour and trying to figure out what he was saying through his peculiar American accent, I told him that I wanted something very simple for my living room. Just water-several feet deep- and little boats floating around, instead of large sofas. I told him that the centre-piece should be anchored down so that the tea service could be placed on it and all of us could row up to it in our boats and take sips from our cups. But the boats should be properly balanced, I said, otherwise we might whizz past each other and conversation would be difficult. He looked a bit alarmed but that alarm gave way to sheer horror when I began to describe the wall decor. I told him that I wanted live crows hanging from the walls instead of paintings -since I liked nature so much. And, instead of fans, we could have monkeys farting from the ceiling. That’s when he slowly backed out from the room with a strange look in his eyes. The last I saw of him was him running out of the front gate, at a pace that would have put an electric train to shame. What’s crazy about having a living room like that, you tell me? If he can wear a woollen, three-piece suit in the height of summer, why can’t I hang live crows on my walls?
Pritish Nandy: Your ideas are quite original, but why do your films fare so badly?
Kishore Kumar: Because I tell my distributors to avoid them. I warn them at the very outset that the film might run for a week at the most. Naturally, they go away and never come back. Where will you find a producer-director who warns you not to touch his film because even he can’t understand what he has made?
Pritish Nandy: Then why do you make films?
Kishore Kumar: Because the spirit moves me. I feel I have something to say and the films eventually do well at times. I remember this film of mine – Door Gagan ki Chhaon mein – which started to an audience of 10 people in Alankar. I know because I was in the hall myself. There were only ten people who had come to watch the first show! Even its release was peculiar. Subhodh Mukherjee, the brother of my brother-in-law, had booked Alankar(the hall) for 8 weeks for his film April Fool- which everyone knew was going to be a block- buster. My film, everyone was sure, was going to be a thundering flop. So he offered to give me a week of his booking. Take the first week, he said flamboyantly, and I’ll manage within seven. After all, the movie can’t run beyond a week. It can’t run beyond two days, I reassured him. When 10 people came for the first show, he tried to console me. Don’t worry, he said, it happens at times. But who was worried? Then, the word spread. Like wildfire. And within a few days the hall began to fill. It ran for all 8 weeks at Alankar, house full! Subodh Mukherjee kept screaming at me but how could I let go the hall? After 8 weeks when the booking ran out, the movie shifted to Super, where it ran for another 21 weeks! That’s the anatomy of a hit of mine. How does one explain it? Can anyone explain it? Can Subodh Mukherjee, whose April Fool went on to become a thundering flop?
Pritish Nandy: But you, as the director should have known?
Kishore Kumar: Directors know nothing. I never had the privilege of working with any good director. Except Satyen Bose and Bimal Roy, no one even knew the ABC of film making. How can you expect me to give good performances under such directors? Directors like S.D. Narang didn’t even know where to place the camera. He would take long, pensive drags from his cigarette, mumble ‘Quiet, quiet, quiet’ to everyone, walk a couple of furlongs absentmindedly, mutter to himself and then tell the camera man to place the camera wherever he wanted. His standard line to me was:Do something. What something? Come on, some thing! So I would go off on my antics. Is this the way to act? Is this the way to direct a movie? And yet Narangsaab made so many hits!
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you ever offer to work with a good director?
Kishore Kumar: Offer! I was far too scared. Satyajit Ray came to me and wanted me to act in Parash Pathar – his famous comedy – and I was so scared that I ran away. Later, Tulsi Chakravarti did the role. It was a great role and I ran away from it, so scared I was of these great directors.
Pritish Nandy: But you knew Ray.
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I loaned him five thousand rupees at the time of Pather Panchali-when he was in great financial difficulty- and even though he paid back the entire loan, I never gave him an opportunity to forget the fact that I had contributed to the making of the classic. I still rib him about it. I never forget the money I loan out!
Pritish Nandy: Well, some people think you are crazy about money. Others describe you as a clown, pretending to be kinky but sane as hell. Still others find you cunning and manipulative. Which is the real you?
Kishore Kumar: I play different roles at different times. For different people. In this crazy world, only the truly sane man appears to be mad. Look at me. Do you think I’m mad? Do you think I can be manipulative?
Pritish Nandy: How would I know?
Kishore Kumar: Of course you would know. It’s so easy to judge a man by just looking at him. You look at these film people and you instantly know they’re rogues.
Pritish Nandy: I believe so.
Kishore Kumar: I don’t believe so. I know so. You can’t trust them an inch. I have been in this rat race for so long that I can smell trouble from miles afar. I smelt trouble the day I came to Bombay in the hope of becoming a playback singer and got conned into acting. I should have just turned my back and run.
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you?
Kishore Kumar: Well, I’ve regretted it ever since. Boom Boom. Boompitty boom boom. Chikachikachik chik chik. Yadlehe eeee yadlehe ooooo (Goes on yodelling till the tea comes. Someone emerges from behind the upturned sofa in the living room, looking rather mournful with a bunch of rat-eaten files and holds them up for Kishore Kumar to see)
Pritish Nandy: What are those files?
Kishore Kumar: My income tax records.
Pritish Nandy: Rat-eaten?
Kishore Kumar: We use them as pesticides. They are very effective. The rats die quite easily after biting into them.
Pritish Nandy: What do you show the tax people when they ask for the papers?
Kishore Kumar: The dead rats.
Pritish Nandy: I see.
Kishore Kumar: You like dead rats?
Pritish Nandy: Not particularly.
Kishore Kumar: Lots of people eat them in other parts of the world.
Pritish Nandy: I guess so.
Kishore Kumar: Haute cuisine. Expensive too. Costs a lot of money.
Pritish Nandy: Yes?
Kishore Kumar: Good business, rats. One can make money from them if one is enterprising.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are very fussy about money. Once, I’m told. a producer paid you only half your dues and you came to the sets with half your head and half your moustache shaved off. And you told him that when he paid the rest, you would shoot with your face intact…
Kishore Kumar: Why should they take me for granted? These people never pay unless you teach them a lesson. I was shooting in the South once. I think the film was Miss Mary and these chaps kept me waiting in the hotel room for five days without shooting. So I got fed up and started cutting my hair. First I chopped off some hair from the right side of my head and then, to balance it, I chopped off some from the left. By mistake I overdid it. So I cut off some more from the right. Again I overdid it. So I had to cut from the left again. This went on till I had virtually no hair left- and that’s when the call came from the sets. When I turned up the way I was, they all collapsed. That’s how rumours reached Bombay. They said I had gone cuckoo. I didn’t know. I returned and found everyone wishing me from long distance and keeping a safe distance of 10 feet while talking. Even those chaps who would come and embrace me waved out from a distance and said Hi. Then, someone asked me a little hesitantly how I was feeling. I said: Fine. I spoke a little abruptly perhaps. Suddenly I found him turning around and running. Far, far away from me.
Pritish Nandy: But are you actually so stingy about money?
Kishore Kumar: I have to pay my taxes.
Pritish Nandy: You have income tax problems I am told….
Kishore Kumar: Who doesn’t? My actual dues are not much but the interest has piled up. I’m planning to sell off a lot of things before I go to Khandwa and settle this entire business once and for all.
Pritish Nandy: You refused to sing for Sanjay Gandhi during the emergency and, it is said, that’s why the tax hounds were set on you. Is this true?
Kishore Kumar: Who knows why they come. But no one can make me do what I don’t want to do. I don’t sing at anyone’s will or command. But I sing for charities, causes all the time[Note: Sanjay Gandhi wanted Kishore Kumar to sing at some Congress rally in Bombay. Kishore Kumar refused. Sanjay Gandhi ordered All India Radio to stop playing Kishore songs. This went on for quite a while. Kishore Kumar refused to apologize. Finally, it took scores of prominent producers and directors to convince those in power to rescind the ban]
Pritish Nandy: What about your home life? Why has that been so turbulent?
Kishore Kumar: Because I like being left alone.
Pritish Nandy: What went wrong with Ruma Devi, your first wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was a very talented person but we could not get along because we looked at life differently. She wanted to build a choir and a career. I wanted someone to build me a home. How can the two reconcile? You see, I’m a simple minded villager type. I don’t understand this business about women making careers. Wives should first learn how to make a home. And how can you fit the two together? A career and a home are quite separate things. That’s why we went our separate ways.
Pritish Nandy: Madhubala, your second wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was quite another matter. I knew she was very sick even before I married her. But a promise is a promise. So I kept my word and brought her home as my wife, even though I knew she was dying from a congenital heart problem. For 9 long years I nursed her. I watched her die before my own eyes. You can never understand what this means until you live through this yourself. She was such a beautiful woman and she died so painfully. She would rave and rant and scream in frustration. How can such an active person spend 9 long years bed-ridden? And I had to humour her all the time. That’s what the doctor asked me to. That’s what I did till her very last breath. I would laugh with her. I would cry with her.
Pritish Nandy: What about your third marriage? To Yogeeta Bali?
Kishore Kumar: That was a joke. I don’t think she was serious about marriage. She was only obsessed with her mother. She never wanted to live here.
Pritish Nandy: But that’s because she says you would stay up all night and count money..
Kishore Kumar: Do you think I can do that? Do you think I’m mad? Well, it’s good we separated quickly.
Pritish Nandy: What about your present marriage?
Kishore Kumar: Leena is a very different kind of person. She too is an actress like all of them but she’s very different. She’s seen tragedy. She’s faced grief. When your husband is shot dead, you change. You understand life. You realize the ephemeral quality of all things.. I am happy now.
Pritish Nandy: What about your new film? Are you going to play hero in this one too?
Kishore Kumar: No no no. I’m just the producer-director. I’m going to be behind the camera. Remember I told you how much I hate acting? All I might do is make a split second appearance on screen as an old man or something.
Pritish Nandy: Like Hitchcock?
Kishore Kumar: Yes, my favourite director. I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here. Do you know any spooks?
Pritish Nandy: Not very friendly ones.
Kishore Kumar: But nice, frightening ones?
Pritish Nandy: Not really.
Kishore Kumar: But that’s precisely what we’re all going to become one day. Like this chap out here (points to a skull, which he uses as part of his decor, with red light emerging from its eyes)- you don’t even know whether it’s a man or a woman. Eh? But it’s a nice sort. Friendly too. Look, doesn’t it look nice with my specs on its non-existent nose?
Pritish Nandy: Very nice indeed.
Kishore Kumar: You are a good man. You understand the real things of life. You are going to look like this one day.
source: http://songs.kishorekumar.org/pritish-nandy%E2%80%99s-extraordinary-interview-with-kishore-kumar-in-april-1985/

Her surname precedes her and so does her reputation. Kareena Kapoor has walked into the industry escorted by a famous heritage and a temperament to match. She defies older sister Karisma's cool-n-composed approach and is eager to establish her own. "I hate being called a star, I'd rather be an actress," she declares flamboyantly. "I am here to work with the best. Second best simply won't do." Brave words from a newcomer, but Kareena just might have the mettle to match her mouth.
Comparisons are bound to be made between you and your elder sister Karisma, are you prepared for that?

• When people see me on screen they will realise that I'm totally unlike Karisma. We are poles apart as actresses. Even as individuals, we are totally different. My sister has struggled a lot, she's made it to the top entirely on her own. Her career path has been very strenuous. As for me, I look up to actresses like Nargisji and Meena Kumari and hope to bring back those times. And I feel there is no other heroine like that today.

You recently said in an interview that you don't want to work with directors like David Dhawan.

• My sister might have made her career with him, but I don't want to. I'll dare to be different. At least for the next four years, I don't see myself working with a David Dhawan. I'm not keen on that kind of cinema. I don't mean to say that I'm not going to do the regular stuff. I realise that I will have to sing and dance but that genre of filmmaking is not high on my priority. Kajol was such a good actress, people even wrote roles for her. If doing good work means doing less work, then I'll probably do less work. I only want to work with good makers.

Do you regret not doing Kaho Naa Pyar Hai?

• The film is such a huge success so I would have definitely become a star. But I don't know if I want to be labeled as just a star. There is a new star every Friday. I'd rather be known as an actress, and that would have not been possible if I had done Kaho Naa Pyar Hai. After Refugee, I'll be known as an actress.

The film was made for Hrithik. His dad spent five hours on every frame and close-up of his, whereas not even five seconds were spent on Amisha. There are portions in the film where she has pimples and under-eye bags on her face. She just doesn't look beautiful, but every shot of his was a dream. If I were in the film, I would have definitely got a better deal, but I still feel that the attention would have divided between us. So, I'm glad I didn't do the film. I'm glad that even after I left the movie there is no problem between Hrithik and me. He's still a friend, I'm very happy for his success and we are even working in two films together.
I believe you are very upset with Sanjay Leela Bhansali for not taking you in Devdas after auditioning you and making you go through a special photo-session as Paro. Is it true that he had as good as committed the role to you before signing Aishwarya Rai?

• Sanjay Bhansali is a confused director. He is a person who does not stand by his word. He doesn't have any morals and principles in life. Tomorrow, even if he is the next Raj Kapoor or Guru Dutt, and my films don't do well and if I'm a flop actress, I will still not ever work with him. I don't react this way just because I'm not doing his movie, but because he has no ethics. Firstly, his movie never inspired me, because I'm not cut out to play Paro from any angle. I'm too young to play that role. Even earlier, for Khamoshi, he had pressurised me to do that film. Then he ran behind me for seven months to do Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. He sent Salman to my sister, to ask me to do his film. I was just not interested, for me he was a nobody. Also, I wasn't interested in films then. Even for Devdas, he was the one who insisted that I was the ideal actress for his film. Sanjay had signed me for the film, after which I did the photo-shoot for him. And then he tells me that he is taking someone else. But I believe that every devil gets his due. I was upset initially, but the day after I was told I'm not in Sanjay's film, both Karan Johar and Subhash Ghai called me to do their films. And Sanjay is not a patch on both these filmmakers.

You've said somewhere that you have a major crush on Shah Rukh Khan.

• I'm totally in love with him. Don't even ask me about him because if I start I won't stop talking about him for hours. Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh are the only two actors I admire. There is something about Shah Rukh that is amazing. He has that very boy next door appeal which makes every girl want to take him home to her parents. His performances touch me.

What about the other two Khans?

• I'm not at all a Salman fan. I don't like him, he's a very bad actor. I tell him that he hams all the time. Aamir's good, I really liked him in Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke and QSQT, but out of the Khans, I'm a total Shah Rukh fan.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000818093514/cinemaa.indya.com/cinemaa/interviewskareena.html

Pritish Nandy: I understand you are quitting Bombay and going away to Khandwa…
Kishore Kumar: Who can live in this stupid, friendless city where everyone seeks to exploit you every moment of the day? Can you trust anyone out here? Is anyone trustworthy? Is anyone a friend you can count on? I am determined to get out of this futile rat race and live as I’ve always wanted to. In my native Khandwa, the land of my forefathers. Who wants to die in this ugly city?
Pritish Nandy: Why did you come here in the first place?
Kishore Kumar: I would come to visit my brother Ashok Kumar. He was such a big star in those days. I thought he could introduce me to KL Saigal who was my greatest idol. People say he used to sing through his nose. But so what? He was a great singer. Greater than anyone else.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are planning to record an album of famous Saigal songs….
Kishore Kumar: They asked me to. I refused. Why should I try to outsing him? Let him remain enshrined in our memory. Let his songs remain just HIS songs. Let not even one person say that Kishore Kumar sang them better.
Pritish Nandy: If you didn’t like Bombay, why did you stay back? For fame? For money?
Kishore Kumar: I was conned into it. I only wanted to sing. Never to act. But somehow, thanks to peculiar circumstances, I was persuaded to act in the movies. I hated every moment of it and tried virtually every trick to get out of it. I muffed my lines, pretended to be crazy, shaved my head off, played difficult, began yodelling in the midst of tragic scenes, told Meena Kumari what I was supposed to tell Bina Rai in some other film – but they still wouldn’t let me go. I screamed, ranted, went cuckoo. But who cared? They were just determined to make me a star.
Pritish Nandy: Why?
Kishore Kumar: Because I was Dadamoni’s brother. And he was a great hero.
Pritish Nandy: But you succeeded, after your fashion….
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I was the biggest draw after Dilip Kumar. There were so many films I was doing in those days that I had to run from one set to the other, changing on the way. Imagine me. My shirts flying off, my trousers falling off, my wig coming off while I’m running from one set to the other. Very often I would mix up my lines and look angry in a romantic scene or romantic in the midst of a fierce battle. It was terrible and I hated it. It evoked nightmares of school. Directors were like school teachers. Do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. I dreaded it. That’s why I would often escape.
Pritish Nandy: Well, you are notorious for the trouble you give your directors and producers. Why is that?
Kishore Kumar: Nonsense. They give me trouble. You think they give a damn for me? I matter to them only because I sell. Who cared for me during my bad days? Who cares for anyone in this profession?
Pritish Nandy: Is that why you prefer to be a loner?
Kishore Kumar: Look, I don’t smoke, drink or socialize. I never go to parties. If that makes me a loner, fine. I am happy this way. I go to work and I come back straight home. To watch my horror movies, play with my spooks, talk to my trees, sing. In this avaricious world, every creative person is bound to be lonely. How can you deny me that right?
Pritish Nandy: You don’t have many friends?
Kishore Kumar: None.
Pritish Nandy: That’s rather sweeping.
Kishore Kumar: People bore me. Film people particularly bore me. I prefer talking to my trees.
Pritish Nandy: So you like nature?
Kishore Kumar: That’s why I want to get away to Khandwa. I have lost all touch with nature out here. I tried to dig a canal all around my bungalow out here, so that we could sail gondolas there. The municipality chap would sit and watch and nod his head disapprovingly, while my men would dig and dig. But it didn’t work. One day someone found a hand – a skeletal hand- and some toes. After that no one wanted to dig anymore. Anoop, my second brother, came charging with Ganga water and started chanting mantras. He thought this house was built on a graveyard. Perhaps it is. But I lost the chance of making my home like Venice.
Pritish Nandy: People would have thought you crazy. In fact they already do.
Kishore Kumar: Who said I’m crazy. The world is crazy; not me.
Pritish Nandy: Why do you have this reputation for doing strange things?
Kishore Kumar: It all began with this girl who came to interview me. In those days I used to live alone. So she said: You must be very lonely. I said: No, let me introduce you to some of my friends. So I took her to the garden and introduced her to some of the friendlier trees. Janardhan; Raghunandan; Gangadhar; Jagannath; Buddhuram; Jhatpatajhatpatpat. I said they were my closest friends in this cruel world. She went and wrote this bizarre piece, saying that I spent long evenings with my arms entwined around them. What’s wrong with that, you tell me? What’s wrong making friends with trees?
Pritish Nandy: Nothing.
Kishore Kumar: Then, there was this interior decorator-a suited, booted fellow who came to see me in a three-piece woollen, Saville Row suit in the thick of summer- and began to lecture me about aesthetics, design, visual sense and all that. After listening to him for about half an hour and trying to figure out what he was saying through his peculiar American accent, I told him that I wanted something very simple for my living room. Just water-several feet deep- and little boats floating around, instead of large sofas. I told him that the centre-piece should be anchored down so that the tea service could be placed on it and all of us could row up to it in our boats and take sips from our cups. But the boats should be properly balanced, I said, otherwise we might whizz past each other and conversation would be difficult. He looked a bit alarmed but that alarm gave way to sheer horror when I began to describe the wall decor. I told him that I wanted live crows hanging from the walls instead of paintings -since I liked nature so much. And, instead of fans, we could have monkeys farting from the ceiling. That’s when he slowly backed out from the room with a strange look in his eyes. The last I saw of him was him running out of the front gate, at a pace that would have put an electric train to shame. What’s crazy about having a living room like that, you tell me? If he can wear a woollen, three-piece suit in the height of summer, why can’t I hang live crows on my walls?
Pritish Nandy: Your ideas are quite original, but why do your films fare so badly?
Kishore Kumar: Because I tell my distributors to avoid them. I warn them at the very outset that the film might run for a week at the most. Naturally, they go away and never come back. Where will you find a producer-director who warns you not to touch his film because even he can’t understand what he has made?
Pritish Nandy: Then why do you make films?
Kishore Kumar: Because the spirit moves me. I feel I have something to say and the films eventually do well at times. I remember this film of mine – Door Gagan ki Chhaon mein – which started to an audience of 10 people in Alankar. I know because I was in the hall myself. There were only ten people who had come to watch the first show! Even its release was peculiar. Subhodh Mukherjee, the brother of my brother-in-law, had booked Alankar(the hall) for 8 weeks for his film April Fool- which everyone knew was going to be a block- buster. My film, everyone was sure, was going to be a thundering flop. So he offered to give me a week of his booking. Take the first week, he said flamboyantly, and I’ll manage within seven. After all, the movie can’t run beyond a week. It can’t run beyond two days, I reassured him. When 10 people came for the first show, he tried to console me. Don’t worry, he said, it happens at times. But who was worried? Then, the word spread. Like wildfire. And within a few days the hall began to fill. It ran for all 8 weeks at Alankar, house full! Subodh Mukherjee kept screaming at me but how could I let go the hall? After 8 weeks when the booking ran out, the movie shifted to Super, where it ran for another 21 weeks! That’s the anatomy of a hit of mine. How does one explain it? Can anyone explain it? Can Subodh Mukherjee, whose April Fool went on to become a thundering flop?
Pritish Nandy: But you, as the director should have known?
Kishore Kumar: Directors know nothing. I never had the privilege of working with any good director. Except Satyen Bose and Bimal Roy, no one even knew the ABC of film making. How can you expect me to give good performances under such directors? Directors like S.D. Narang didn’t even know where to place the camera. He would take long, pensive drags from his cigarette, mumble ‘Quiet, quiet, quiet’ to everyone, walk a couple of furlongs absentmindedly, mutter to himself and then tell the camera man to place the camera wherever he wanted. His standard line to me was:Do something. What something? Come on, some thing! So I would go off on my antics. Is this the way to act? Is this the way to direct a movie? And yet Narangsaab made so many hits!
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you ever offer to work with a good director?
Kishore Kumar: Offer! I was far too scared. Satyajit Ray came to me and wanted me to act in Parash Pathar – his famous comedy – and I was so scared that I ran away. Later, Tulsi Chakravarti did the role. It was a great role and I ran away from it, so scared I was of these great directors.
Pritish Nandy: But you knew Ray.
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I loaned him five thousand rupees at the time of Pather Panchali-when he was in great financial difficulty- and even though he paid back the entire loan, I never gave him an opportunity to forget the fact that I had contributed to the making of the classic. I still rib him about it. I never forget the money I loan out!
Pritish Nandy: Well, some people think you are crazy about money. Others describe you as a clown, pretending to be kinky but sane as hell. Still others find you cunning and manipulative. Which is the real you?
Kishore Kumar: I play different roles at different times. For different people. In this crazy world, only the truly sane man appears to be mad. Look at me. Do you think I’m mad? Do you think I can be manipulative?
Pritish Nandy: How would I know?
Kishore Kumar: Of course you would know. It’s so easy to judge a man by just looking at him. You look at these film people and you instantly know they’re rogues.
Pritish Nandy: I believe so.
Kishore Kumar: I don’t believe so. I know so. You can’t trust them an inch. I have been in this rat race for so long that I can smell trouble from miles afar. I smelt trouble the day I came to Bombay in the hope of becoming a playback singer and got conned into acting. I should have just turned my back and run.
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you?
Kishore Kumar: Well, I’ve regretted it ever since. Boom Boom. Boompitty boom boom. Chikachikachik chik chik. Yadlehe eeee yadlehe ooooo (Goes on yodelling till the tea comes. Someone emerges from behind the upturned sofa in the living room, looking rather mournful with a bunch of rat-eaten files and holds them up for Kishore Kumar to see)
Pritish Nandy: What are those files?
Kishore Kumar: My income tax records.
Pritish Nandy: Rat-eaten?
Kishore Kumar: We use them as pesticides. They are very effective. The rats die quite easily after biting into them.
Pritish Nandy: What do you show the tax people when they ask for the papers?
Kishore Kumar: The dead rats.
Pritish Nandy: I see.
Kishore Kumar: You like dead rats?
Pritish Nandy: Not particularly.
Kishore Kumar: Lots of people eat them in other parts of the world.
Pritish Nandy: I guess so.
Kishore Kumar: Haute cuisine. Expensive too. Costs a lot of money.
Pritish Nandy: Yes?
Kishore Kumar: Good business, rats. One can make money from them if one is enterprising.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are very fussy about money. Once, I’m told. a producer paid you only half your dues and you came to the sets with half your head and half your moustache shaved off. And you told him that when he paid the rest, you would shoot with your face intact…
Kishore Kumar: Why should they take me for granted? These people never pay unless you teach them a lesson. I was shooting in the South once. I think the film was Miss Mary and these chaps kept me waiting in the hotel room for five days without shooting. So I got fed up and started cutting my hair. First I chopped off some hair from the right side of my head and then, to balance it, I chopped off some from the left. By mistake I overdid it. So I cut off some more from the right. Again I overdid it. So I had to cut from the left again. This went on till I had virtually no hair left- and that’s when the call came from the sets. When I turned up the way I was, they all collapsed. That’s how rumours reached Bombay. They said I had gone cuckoo. I didn’t know. I returned and found everyone wishing me from long distance and keeping a safe distance of 10 feet while talking. Even those chaps who would come and embrace me waved out from a distance and said Hi. Then, someone asked me a little hesitantly how I was feeling. I said: Fine. I spoke a little abruptly perhaps. Suddenly I found him turning around and running. Far, far away from me.
Pritish Nandy: But are you actually so stingy about money?
Kishore Kumar: I have to pay my taxes.
Pritish Nandy: You have income tax problems I am told….
Kishore Kumar: Who doesn’t? My actual dues are not much but the interest has piled up. I’m planning to sell off a lot of things before I go to Khandwa and settle this entire business once and for all.
Pritish Nandy: You refused to sing for Sanjay Gandhi during the emergency and, it is said, that’s why the tax hounds were set on you. Is this true?
Kishore Kumar: Who knows why they come. But no one can make me do what I don’t want to do. I don’t sing at anyone’s will or command. But I sing for charities, causes all the time[Note: Sanjay Gandhi wanted Kishore Kumar to sing at some Congress rally in Bombay. Kishore Kumar refused. Sanjay Gandhi ordered All India Radio to stop playing Kishore songs. This went on for quite a while. Kishore Kumar refused to apologize. Finally, it took scores of prominent producers and directors to convince those in power to rescind the ban]
Pritish Nandy: What about your home life? Why has that been so turbulent?
Kishore Kumar: Because I like being left alone.
Pritish Nandy: What went wrong with Ruma Devi, your first wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was a very talented person but we could not get along because we looked at life differently. She wanted to build a choir and a career. I wanted someone to build me a home. How can the two reconcile? You see, I’m a simple minded villager type. I don’t understand this business about women making careers. Wives should first learn how to make a home. And how can you fit the two together? A career and a home are quite separate things. That’s why we went our separate ways.
Pritish Nandy: Madhubala, your second wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was quite another matter. I knew she was very sick even before I married her. But a promise is a promise. So I kept my word and brought her home as my wife, even though I knew she was dying from a congenital heart problem. For 9 long years I nursed her. I watched her die before my own eyes. You can never understand what this means until you live through this yourself. She was such a beautiful woman and she died so painfully. She would rave and rant and scream in frustration. How can such an active person spend 9 long years bed-ridden? And I had to humour her all the time. That’s what the doctor asked me to. That’s what I did till her very last breath. I would laugh with her. I would cry with her.
Pritish Nandy: What about your third marriage? To Yogeeta Bali?
Kishore Kumar: That was a joke. I don’t think she was serious about marriage. She was only obsessed with her mother. She never wanted to live here.
Pritish Nandy: But that’s because she says you would stay up all night and count money..
Kishore Kumar: Do you think I can do that? Do you think I’m mad? Well, it’s good we separated quickly.
Pritish Nandy: What about your present marriage?
Kishore Kumar: Leena is a very different kind of person. She too is an actress like all of them but she’s very different. She’s seen tragedy. She’s faced grief. When your husband is shot dead, you change. You understand life. You realize the ephemeral quality of all things.. I am happy now.
Pritish Nandy: What about your new film? Are you going to play hero in this one too?
Kishore Kumar: No no no. I’m just the producer-director. I’m going to be behind the camera. Remember I told you how much I hate acting? All I might do is make a split second appearance on screen as an old man or something.
Pritish Nandy: Like Hitchcock?
Kishore Kumar: Yes, my favourite director. I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here. Do you know any spooks?
Pritish Nandy: Not very friendly ones.
Kishore Kumar: But nice, frightening ones?
Pritish Nandy: Not really.
Kishore Kumar: But that’s precisely what we’re all going to become one day. Like this chap out here (points to a skull, which he uses as part of his decor, with red light emerging from its eyes)- you don’t even know whether it’s a man or a woman. Eh? But it’s a nice sort. Friendly too. Look, doesn’t it look nice with my specs on its non-existent nose?
Pritish Nandy: Very nice indeed.
Kishore Kumar: You are a good man. You understand the real things of life. You are going to look like this one day.
source: http://songs.kishorekumar.org/pritish-nandy%E2%80%99s-extraordinary-interview-with-kishore-kumar-in-april-1985/

Venita watched that single brick sail up into the sky by continually modifying her eyes to follow as it grew smaller and smaller in the distance. The brick reached the vast fractal ruby pattern spanning the dome of the sky—and kept right on going. "The ruby's not really there... it's not solid!" She watched another distant rock shooting upwards. "The unfolded array is phased out somehow. It's dug into the fabric itself! It's underneath space!"
Below her, Edgar remained on his knees, radio gripped in one hand. Fighting for breath and nodding with understanding, he asked, "Did the brick go somewhere? Is it a teleporter at all? A portal maybe?"
"I can't tell." Looking down, she caught his utterly weary gaze.
Looking her back right in the eyes, he asked, "Here, now, is there still a grey thread of energy weaving off into unknown higher dimensions?"
Rotating her eyes through some sort of instinctive spectrum, she found it. Now that she was more in control of her senses, she could follow the thread with greater precision. "It's curving down from an incredible distance—right to the back of my neck."
"Is that where your soul is?" Edgar shuddered. Abruptly, he rasped, "Kumari! Switch to Mona!"
Broken from a trance-like state, Kumari blinked. Reading about this fresh disaster twenty years in the past had captivated her, and she'd forgotten it was still happening to them in real time from their perspective. They'd been dead and gone for her entire life, but here and now on her terminal, they were still dying. What was Edgar's plan? Typing quickly, she switched perspectives to one closer to the past version of the Soul Reader.
In fact, Mona Brace was already on her way.
Gripping a radio in one hand and Ken in the other, Mona ran with more focus than she'd ever summoned in her entire life. No surgery had been more important, no test more dire. Her boots pounded up alternating metal ramps as children screamed. All around her, the ship was shaking—because the world was shaking—and terrified parents ran into and out of the overcrowded entrances of the Grand Project of the Machine Empress of Mankind. Mona had taken a path up scaffolding along the outer hull to cut over to a higher section, but the chaos out here was just as much a hurdle. The sickly green light of a distant aurora on the horizon cast everything in putrid hues, stoking fear and panic.
It didn't help that the vast loading ramps were drawing shut one by one in slow mechanical sequence to seal the mountainous fortress for departure. Some woman had convinced those nominally in charge to lower the golden Shield in order to retrieve someone, and, since that time, far more refugees than anyone had anticipated had begun filtering in from nearby Earths unknown; some were from Sister Earths, some were Empire citizens that had gotten trapped far from the center of the Purple Madness, some were First Worlders that had not gone on with their own—and some were not human. Farther back on the steep side of the metal mountain, a soldier leaned out and popped off a few pistol shots at a spindly black thing that might have come off as humanoid if it hadn't been forty feet tall. The shots either missed or had no effect, and the entity bent down, folded halfway, and shoved in above a crowd, eliciting a choir of screams.
But the spindly black thing huddled against the ceiling of that hangar and made no move to attack. Her former squad captain, Kendrick, could be heard on a loud intercom somewhere hollering, "Don't fire on any non-human entities unless they attack us first! We can't afford to start a fight in here!"
A flight of weird electric blue gargoyle-things landed somewhere above, a knot of Yngtaks very far from home climbed a ladder in the distance, and several glowing balls of light phased into the walls far below as she took in the pandemonium. All of these, and more, were fighting simply for standing space on the last lifeboat in existence. To the human entities ahead, she screamed, "Get out of the way! Get inside! Crawl on each other if you have to!"
Straight above, the blazing star that was the Machine Empress sustained five beams of sheer will, all aimed down and moving rapidly to finish the last of the construction. As the crowd below clamored for ingress, five beams became ten, then a hundred. Up there alone, flaring with the effort, Gisela the Yellow was screaming with an agony whose lonely desperation hurt Mona's heart.
And then Ken was crying, and she covered his face with her free arm against a bright red glare from the sleek chrome wall of the mountain. No, the glare was not from the ship. That was just a reflection. Looking out across the vast flat landscape of Gi's factory mechanisms, Mona stood still for a moment in awe and watched the sky rip open. It was beautiful, as if the gates of some evening heaven were opening onto the world, but a deeper earthquake followed it, and there was no time to gawk.
Cristina Thompson met her at the base of the last in-ramp with the Soul Reader. Over a choir of people screaming in abject terror, she yelled, "I've got the book here!"
Edgar's voice crackled through radio static: "Ask it to connect to the person reading about you in the future!"
Cristina opened the book and held it between her and Mona. "Show me the person reading about us in the future."
The book ran briefly bright with a wave of blue static charge, and then—
[Edgar: Did it work?]
Kumari said tentatively, "Hello?"
Mona moved closer to the book with Ken once the sparks faded. "Yes, we read you—literally!"
Into her own handheld radio, spreading her feet for balance against the shaking, Cristina prompted, "We're connected. What's the plan?!"
[Edgar: Kumari, what are the exact facts you know about our fate? What pieces never change no matter what probability points you alter?]
Wondering at his intention, but not about to refuse, Kumari sat up straighter in her chair and said aloud, "In every timeline, the ruby cube gets activated."
Mona repeated what she'd just read from Kumari.
[Edgar: Right, but what happens after that? Exactly how does the ruby cube kill us?]
For a time, no text appeared, and Mona realized, "Ed... she's never read that far."
It was true. Overcome by a strange agony born of wonder and mistakenness, Kumari gripped her console. "When the Citadel leaves, the Soul Reader leaves the region with it. The connection gets cut before the end happens because the ship has to leave before the end happens. I've... never actually seen the Second Tribe die."
[Edgar: (weak laugh with a hint of triumph) My God, we've got a chance! After that—after everything—what do you know of our end? Down to the last detail! We could hide somewhere—we could trick Fate if we just—]
Cristina pushed against Mona and Ken to steady them as a larger quake hit. "Quickly now!"
"No," Kumari breathed, releasing herself from that moment of strained hope. "No, Edgar, you don't understand. Something incredible is about to happen, something that sparks everything, and I mean everything. This whole war, any chance we've got—it's all about to begin. Because you succeeded. The ruby cube—what you did—sometimes the only defense we have against nightmare is the power of self-sacrifice—"
Mona's face lit up, while Cristina's fell dark.
[Edgar: I succeeded? (momentary surge of static) at what?]
"The ruby cube always gets activated, and it's always because of you, and it always blasts your region with radiation—and those regions nearby. You do send a liberating army back to the Earths of the next base branch. You do save them, every single time, whether you know it or not—and it starts a movement, a philosophy, a child notion of Cristina Thompson's 'balance of Armageddons,' a more hopeful idea—the multiverse is horrible and filled with monsters, but if you can't help yourself, help someone else, because they're facing a threat that they can't beat, but maybe you can! That's what all this fighting in the future is for! We're united! You put that idea out there. It was you! And then the Phoenix—I'm not explaining it well, because I was just a baby, but I remember! In my dreams, I remember the shaking and the screaming and the red light! I'm there with you on that ship right now—because you did it! You got Gisela to stay and build the Citadel. You activated the ruby cube. I'm here, we're here, because of you! That's why Ken tells stories about you, and that's why I thought if I could just get my father to you—" She cut herself off as sudden choking emotion rose in her throat.
Glancing to Ken and then Cristina, Mona asked, "I don't understand. How does sending one army to some Sister Earth we've never seen start some sort of movement?"
"It's not just one world." Kumari took a half-sobbing breath before her final reveal. "The base branch of realities past the Waystation—where right now a trained and equipped army is returning home, soon free from that parasite for the first time—that base branch contains thirty thousand populated Earths."
Those words hung in the air for a moment, even past the apocalypse brimming like a brass horn on the horizon, even past the panicked streams of people and monsters madly pushing for safety.
Cristina's dark expression settled into downright haunted. "And I thought the Empire's couple dozen worlds made us a big deal. I still thought we were the center of things, even after the Hunger showed me how insignificant we are. We were never anything important at all."
Swelling with pride, Mona shook her head. "That's not true. Kumari's telling us right now—it starts with us. A revolution."
[Edgar: So that's why the Second Tribe always had to die. That's why luck's been working against us. It's you, Kumari.]
Taken aback, Kumari asked, "What do you mean?"
[Edgar: I've never encountered any other entity with the ability to alter probability fields, and you didn't mention one... (two seconds of silence)... I suspected, but I didn't want to believe it.]
Cristina offered, "The moment the Soul Reader came back into this region, probability turned against us. I had programs running to watch that. It might be the book doing it."
[Edgar: But it's not. That's when you started reading again, Kumari, isn't it? It's just like you said. The Soul Reader's connection to this region only works when its past version is here. It doesn't have unlimited range. When it came back after two years gone, you immediately started reading us again.]
"But I would never intentionally—"
[No, not intentionally. But in your heart, you know that your entire way of life, your people, your war in the future—it all depends on us activating that ruby cube. You didn't doom us, Kumari—you just made it hurt worse because you told us it was coming. If you could somehow help us, doing so would violate causality. I have to believe that your probability flexion points are just that: places where probability flexes, trading local positive for general negative. No matter what you do, the balance remains the same. It's not possible for anything you do to save us... and it never was... (five seconds of silence, then a single expletive, expressed hopelessly)... How long do we have?]
Kumari wiped tears from her eyes. "I don't know. I'm sorry."
[Edgar: Okay. (rising static) That's okay. You're a good person, and... (static obscures, then fades back to clarity)... closer with Mona and Ken because of you. I even got to speak to my son in your time, and find out that he grows up into a fine young man. (seven seconds of silence)... Is this the last iteration?"
It was all she could do to nod as sorrow fought with her cheeks. "I'm out of flexion points. I used my last one, and I failed. The Emperor wins."
[Edgar: No. Screw that. Your deal with that Emperor was to try to save your father, right? Well I sent him back to the ship a long time ago. He's got to be there now. Mona, can you make sure Neil Yadav is on board?]
Cristina cut in by saying, "A Rani Yadav asked us to take down the Shield temporarily so she could go find her husband, Neil. He didn't show up on time."
Horrified, Mona replied, "I know her! Are they back yet?"
"I'll go check." She pushed roughly through the crowd, radio ready to report.
"Ed," Mona said to the book—then, shaking her head, she spoke into her radio instead. "Cristina's running to make sure they made it! What's your situation?"
[Edgar: Not good. Looks like an unevenly applied anti-gravity field, growing in magnitude at a rapid rate. Random debris is flying up into the sky, along with loose dirt. (tone rises to a shout over deeper noise)...The wind's starting to pick up, but it's a strange wind, like it's falling upward—(sudden screeching burst of static)]
A vast pillar of magma erupted on the horizon. To her left, up the slanted chrome hull, one of the many prefab helijets on the upper hangar deck bounced slightly too far and began sliding past with a monstrous squeal. "Ed!" Men ran to and fro along that high ledge, trying to secure the aircraft and close the hangar the same way the ramps were slowly withdrawing. "Ed!"
The screaming was falling off now as the tail end of the refugees were finding ways to pack themselves inside the mountain.
Above, Gisela's hundred beams of willpower suddenly vanished, and she fell from the sky, limp. Mona couldn't help but stare as the unconscious girl fell for nearly ten full seconds. Sailing downward, she was caught by a dozen men using a net made of tied-together clothes, for they had suspected exactly that result when the Machine Empress of Mankind had begun expending herself to so great a degree to finish construction in time.
Mona adjusted her radio, searching for any signal.
[Kendrick: Holy hell, it's done! The ship's done! Engines spooling up. What's Gisela's status?]
[Unknown male voice: (while running) She's not responsive!]
[Kendrick: Is she dead? We don't know how to run this thing—]
[Second unknown male voice: Her pulse is barely there—we're running her—]
Her auditory search ended abruptly as the shockwave hit. The physical force that followed the pillar of magma's eruption was like a punch to the chest, and her very vision shook as she struggled with the book, the radio, and Ken with only two arms. After a beat, she realized that she was not even holding the book, and it had in fact latched onto her forearm with a gentle grappling claw to allow her to function without it getting in the way.
There was less screaming around her as the ramp's population began to thin.
[Kendrick: We're gonna have to just hit it. Does anyone know how to read these screens—]
[Unknown female voice: Final headcounts!—(brief rising choir of screams) —Jesus Christ! Get that—strap the youngest kids down first!—]
The radio static changed, and she dialed back.
[Edgar: I'm here, Mona, I'm here!]
"Ed!" She flattened against the inner side of the ramp entrance. "Ed, the realities are collapsing into each other out here! I think one Earth is starting to crash into another! Gi's done, we have to get out of here!"
The loose helijet that had come squealing free now hit flat chrome far below and tumbled into a biomechanical gulch outside the mountain's limits, where it continued to slide on the nearly frictionless slope.
[Edgar: Don't leave, Mona. Tell them not to leave.]
In the distance, a single car was making its dusty way at breakneck speed. Her heart soared in her chest. "Are you—did you find a way to get here?"
[Edgar: No. Oh, Mona, no. (single sob) But you can't leave. You have to wait for Neil. It's important.]
"For Kumari's bet with that Emperor?" she cried.
[Edgar: (unintelligible for two seconds)—ause he's my friend.]
Her heart a heavy stone in her chest, she gave a despairing nod she knew he couldn't see. She raised the radio to her mouth with a gaze that was suddenly distant and unseeing. "Kendrick."
[Kendrick: (tone goes from high stress to absolute alarm) Mona? Mona, what is it?]
"Captain," she said softly, by way of sadness. He was captain of the Citadel now, but he had also been her captain once before, and she was implicitly asking him to trust her that way again. "We can't leave. Not yet."
[channel sits open, conveying confused reports, alarmed shouting, and desperate exchanges from the bridge]
Mona stood frozen, her unfocused eyes somehow looking a million miles away at a departing love.
[Kendrick: Okay.]
The world was still shaking with intermittent rising intensity, and pillars of magma were still erupting on the horizon along the torn edges of two realities, but Mona felt none of it.
[Kendrick: How long do we need to wait?]
[channel opens again, but Kendrick doesn't speak]
[Kendrick: (sighs) Goddamnit, Mona, how long?]
Feeling like Aegeus waiting for Theseus' return with a black sail, Mona said simply, "As long as it takes." Lowering the radio, she said aside, "Kumari, since you have wrought me and mine so much pain—in return for us waiting for your father, you will do us the honor of actually watching this time."
Her tone brooked no debate, and all Kumari could feel was a sickness in her core. These people had all just been stories her entire life. Only in living the struggle with them moment to moment had she come to understand what she had been coldly manipulating from distant future safety.
Edgar felt a strangle prickling sensation on the back of his neck.
Or perhaps he was imagining it after what Venita had told him about the grey thread.
"It's back!" Venita said abruptly, pointing down at him.
Eyes wide, he replied, "I could feel it! Sort of." After a moment, he asked the mud under his arms, "Christ, what if every time anyone feels like they're being watched, it's really someone spying on them from the future?"
Above him, Venita was looking to the side, and hadn't heard him. "Someone's coming."
A thick knot of thirty-odd men and women surged around the corner, splashing bloody mud from their boots. At their forefront was the single person Edgar least wanted to see at that moment.
Conrad threw both arms out and grinned. "Hey, it's my 'buddy!' Is that the right word? How are you doing down there?" Without pausing for a reply, he looked to Venita. "That Casey's a fiery one. She's ordered the entire Second Tribe to split into cells. One radio each, a hierarchy for communication. My believers and I, here, chose you. Safest place in the multiverse is right by my very own descendant and current Imperator."
A man and a woman picked Edgar up by either side, and he groaned from the pain of movement. The sphere in his stomach had repaired the bullet hole, but it could not replenish his lost blood or drained energy. That, and he'd simply been through too much to list—and too much to keep going. Half-standing, half-leaning on his supporters, he gasped, "I'm done."
Venita turned away from Conrad to sharply regard him. "What?"
"I'm done, Venita," he said again, using what felt like the last of his strength to force the words out from a shaking and hollow shell of a body. "I can't keep going. You need to leave me here. I gotta pass out."
"You can't give up," she insisted with visible fear. "You're the last. They're all gone, and if you give up, I'll be alone."
Ah, so that was the problem. Summoning up his very best attempt at emotional understanding, he managed to keep his eyes open and looking into hers. "Venita, family energizes you. Makes you feel safe. I understand. But that's a crutch. You don't need us. You can keep going, and you can save everyone."
"No."
"Yes."
Conrad glared. "Um, hello, I'm—"
They both countered immediately and sharply, cutting him off.
Feeling out everything he'd learned from his squad and his family, Edgar tried to convey what he knew. "You can do this. You can stand in front, leading, by yourself, but not alone. Never alone. The Second Tribe needs you right now."
Venita's face was half pain, but half resigned understanding. "To do what?"
He managed a feeble laugh. "If only I knew." Looking up, he took in the disconcerting sight of the atmosphere beginning to fall away into the sky. Dust devils beyond belief were spinning at great distances, and rocks large enough to be visible from afar were beginning to join the torrents of air. The uncomfortable pulling away felt like a vacuum on his face, hair, and clothes—weak now, but strengthening.
Conrad butted in both physically and verbally. "Um, how about you just open a portal already?"
Glaring back, Venita put a hand forward. Space itself seemed to rip and tatter around her fingers. "You think I didn't think of that? It's like trying to punch a river. It just comes apart the moment I even try to form a vortex. The fabric's too ripped. Space has lost its tensile strength."
Her ancestor stood for a moment, processing that, then said, "Oh."
"Still glad you picked me to knot around?"
He muttered something inaudible over the deepening inverse roar of the wind.
Edgar looked past them both, through the houses. "Holy shit. Is that the spider forest?"
Conrad and all his believers clustered forward to look. There on the distant horizon, a massive chunk of the earth was beginning rise into view. Topped with greenery that looked black in the crimson night, it was rising in one solid flat piece.
Venita blinked. "Are the tree roots holding it together?"
"Look!" one of the men cried. "They're jumping!"
And indeed, the spiders were tiny dots trailing glinting strands, only visible because of the sheer thousands doing it at once.
"Well I'll be damned," Conrad said loudly. "They're working together to keep their home in one piece. Are those things sentient?"
Edgar stared. "We didn't think so."
Venita turned suddenly to him. "Brace, the spiders aren't giving up. You can't either. Not just yet."
His every fiber was pain and exhaustion. How long had he been on the move? Racing back and forth across the region, fighting through the nightmare of the Purple Madness, fighting actual soldiers from the next base branch... he was so tired he couldn't even finish the list. Poison. He'd been poisoned, too. That one he couldn't let pass. "I'm not like you. People believe in you, and you can keep going. But I'm only human."
"So believe in me," she insisted, her red hair floating wildly as the wind approached dangerous force. "And I'll give it right back to you. Believe in me believing in you."
Behind her, Conrad was watching with an oddly focused sidelong gaze.
Edgar ignored the other man as something occurred to him. "Believe in you believing in me?"
She nodded emphatically.
He almost couldn't believe it. "You've seen Gurren Lagann, but you haven't seen Toy Story?"
"What's Gurren Lagann?"
"Oh. Nevermind." He let out a disappointed breath, resolving to let himself pass out. Funny thing was, he really did believe she could make a difference. He didn't know how, but she'd gotten everyone this far. How would Ken view him if he gave up now, so close to the end?
Maybe it was his imagination this time, too, but his limbs felt a little lighter. "I won't pass out. I won't die here and now. That's all I can promise."
Her face lit up. "That's all I ask." Suddenly, she was taking him from his handlers and practically slinging him over her shoulder—her transmorphic multitool slunk around to lock him in place on her upper back, against her grimy jade armor.
"Are you freaking serious—"
She was. His words were cut off as she took off running.
"Well there she goes!" Conrad shouted behind them. "Let's go, people!"
Coming out from between the houses—and leaving his little home behind for the last time ever—Edgar began to take in the sights of what had been happening while he'd been hidden in his own backyard.
The world was ending.
The drumbeat of Venita's running bootfalls matched his pounding heart as he processed what he was seeing. Ahead, and to the left and right, four to seven billion people were running in the same direction. The stampede shook the earth, but that vibration paled in comparison to the tremendous cracking and falling going on along the left and right horizons. Whole pieces of the world the size of mountains were grinding and shaking free, only to fall back down—but each cycle brought heights higher and the impacts heavier.
Fighting her wildly erratic hair out of his face, he shouted in her ear, "The antigravity field is starting on the outside! If we can get to a rift before it closes in around us, we might have a chance!"
Her only response was to quicken her pace. Reaching the rear of the running sea of people, she began flitting between them, passing terrified men and women—who then saw her—
And, determined instead of afraid—no longer just fleeing, but moving with purpose—they began to run faster themselves.
"They're looking to you!" he shouted. "Faster! If you go faster, they go faster!"
She tilted forward and accelerated to a risky speed that depended heavily upon her choice of path through the ocean of backs and working legs. It was just about as fast as a person could go, Edgar reckoned, and he was a hundred-fifty pound weight on her back. Did soldiers train with heavy backpacks? He could feel her getting winded, and he sensed her speed was about to falter. "Faster! You can go faster!"
Slipping roughly, she sailed forward on one knee in the blood-congealed earth—but rose with anger and dashed forward at a speed Edgar was certain had to be a bit impossible for a human being.
The massive wave of people behind her wasn't keeping up, but they were unified, moving together, and focused. He looked back repeatedly, sending fierce hope at them. "Come on!"
But the inevitable was storming to a tempest all around, and the ground began to crack ahead. He screamed; Venita charged right up the sudden ascending slope of earth—and spun forward, completing three spins in the air before arcing down out of that patch of antigravity and hitting the ground running even faster than before.
Fighting the urge to vomit, Edgar clutched the shoulders of her jade armor and peered through the raging winds ahead. She was coming toward the front of the running sea of people now, and they were thinning out around her. Only the fittest were this far in front, and, with astonished eyes, they watched her pass them—and then bent into their runs to keep up.
A wall rose before the entire Second Tribe as the crust of the earth itself tore free and began to ascend. It would have spelled an end to the run, except that Fate had not carved quite close enough. Fifty feet in front of the colossal subterranean barrier, something glimmered darkly, overshadowed by the ascent of the continental shelf itself. "There's the rift! There!"
She angled toward it, speeding far out ahead, now in the absolute front.
Absolutely bound by horror, Edgar watched as the rift, too, began to rise. Jesus Christ, they were gravitational objects—he knew that! He did—it was the very reason why they were always on the surface to begin with, but—!
Venita reached a positively inhuman speed and leapt with a force that knocked him free from her multitool. Falling to earth in the middle of a cloud of rising dust, he reached for the closest shadow—and caught her boot. Slick with blood, it tried to slip out of his grip, and he caught her ankle with both hands.
Then, he too began to rise.
Hands gripped first one of his feet—then the other.
He couldn't see in the cyclone of dust and loose earth, but his stomach was turning inside his body in a way it shouldn't have. Which way was up? Which way was down? Screaming and holding on for dear life while trying to clear the tears and grit out of his eyes, he managed a single second of clear vision. The drumbeat was now a hammer in his ears, his own pulse, because this was what he understood: he was fifty feet off the ground, and Venita was holding on to the bottom of the rift with the four fingers of her right hand while the tornado tore at her, trying to rip her off and cast her into the fractal crimson sky. Many hands were holding onto his boots in turn, but he didn't dare look down, because—since the winds were a buzzsaw, yet he was not moving with them—he could guess what he might see if he did.
It was all he could do to close his eyes and channel his very soul into his exhausted fingers.
But then more hands were grabbing his legs, and then his body, pulling him back to level ground and out of that patch of antigravity, for the last-ditch human string had actually worked. He didn't let go until ten people had hold of Venita—and then of the rift itself.
And then they had it.
Those that had arrived first were not the first to leap through, for these brave men and women stayed to help rush others beyond. Two sweat-drenched men with resolute expressions dragged him on through, and he got out of the way by tumbling to the side.
And there he lay gasping among a hundred others who had been at the limits of their endurance.
It was night here.
It wasn't lit.
It wasn't red.
Actual wild grass was bent underneath his pained hands.
Was it actually possible—
No.
His sight lit up red as the sky tore away above. Looking down, he saw tatters of space around his fingers fluttering in the raging wind, and he suddenly remembered what Mona had said about Earths crashing into one another. Behind, he could see the Second Tribe as a giant wall of people rushing toward him and the others, but he waved them back. "No! No! We have to get away from here!" If the fabric of space ripped any further down, reaching into the actual ground itself, then—
Others around him took up the call, and suddenly the Second Tribe was turning around and going back toward Concord Farm.
This time, they were moving at a jog, if best.
Feeling like a zombie himself, Edgar stood and began meandering after them. The pain was nothing now. His nerves were all ice.
That had really seemed like it was going to work.
Conrad and his big knot of followers finally reached him and Venita. Looking at the vast rising wall of rock beyond, and at the tempests and tumbling pieces of the earth in the distance to the left and right, the immortal asked, "Shouldn't we be doing something more dramatic than walking back home when the world is literally tearing itself apart around us?"
Red-faced, breathing hard, and squeezing sweat out of her hair, Venita just looked at him sadly and kept walking.
Edgar limped after her, blank of thought.
"Come on!" Conrad shouted at them. "Do something heroic!"
The walk back was silent, save for the old Emperor's constant heckling. As Edgar walked, some deep part of him processed what this meant. The Second Tribe's spirit hadn't been broken, not exactly. There was just nothing else to do or say. The rising randomness and intensity of the fractal ruby's antigravity field was awe-inspiring and heart-stopping indeed, but he was too tired to look anymore. Between four and seven billion people gathered in and around Concord again as the ring of roiling destruction worked its way closer. A few figures on the fringe began sailing away into the sky in the distance as he, like everyone around him, hurriedly found a place on the biomechanical conduits to tie himself.
Because the conduits would be the last things to go.
Despite anticipating what it would feel like, the animal that was his lower brain still went into absolute full holy screaming panic as the world began to turn upside down.
It wasn't turning upside down, really—that was just his sense of orientation.
The earth angled and tilted repeatedly, sometimes nearly letting him go, often taking him back. When he finally hung completely from the conduit by his tied belt and his hands, with only the raging and roaring sky beneath ripping away the atmosphere and the world in a torrent, he was nothing but absolute panic and terror.
To his left, Venita was holding on to a biomechanical cable with her multitool and her hands. She wasn't looking down; she was staring up at chrome.
He didn't know which was worse: the vacuum pull of the planet's atmosphere cycloning away in a storm the size of the entire planet, or the sensation that up was down and that the only thing waiting below was an infinite void. He watched Venita's face—and she actually seemed afraid.
But not of the storm.
Not of death.
She gasped it out as she held on next to him: "I had nightmares—I was terrified as a child—because my parents left, I think—of falling into the night sky. Of absolute loneliness. Void forever. Exactly this. Why did it have to be this?!"
To his other side, holding on by main strength and a single loop of rope, there was Conrad, and his eyes—
Held tears.
Conrad said past him, to Venita, and sincerely, "I'm sorry, little one."
Edgar stared. "Oh wow, we are fucked."
Around him, four to seven billion people were hanging from the very tumorous conduits he himself had shut down, and which he had hoped to break open using that very ruby cube now unfolded below across the bowl of the sky. The dust and dirt of the world's crust circled madly in a giant vortex in the crimson depths, screaming unholy oblivion, hungry to shake free those puny humans that dared hold on for dear life.
His radio began to speak, and he risked one hand to grab it from his waist, for he knew who it was. He'd even been expecting it; with the walls between worlds ripping to shreds, it had only been a matter of time before he had a clear signal again—one way or another.
"Ed!"
"Mona!"
He knew she could tell from his voice. "You're—you're—"
"Mona." He was absolutely calm. The animal panic was gone. "You need to go."
"No—we'll wait as long—"
"Mona. If we're talking directly, that means you're out of time. You have to go."
"You can think of something! We'll help brainstorm. We can still win!"
"We already won, Mona. You're safe. Ken's safe. The story of the Second Tribe will continue. We got to live so much more, say things we might never have said to each other, because of all this."
He heard Kendrick's voice, then. "Ed?!"
"Kendrick." All his fear was gone, and he knew what to do. "Is Neil Yadav there?"
It was, of all people, Cristina Thompson that answered. "I see her! I see Rani Yadav! That's Kumari in her arms!"
Huh. How about that. Success, in the last moments. Saving the Second Tribe had never been the goal, but saving a girl's father was a worthy win, too. "Kendrick. Go. Now. You're out of time."
"Godspeed, Ed."
Mona's voice was last. "Ed! Goddamnit, Ed, you find a way! The engines have already been spooled up, you've only got a few seconds to figure something out—"
The conduits were beginning to crack. He abruptly dropped an inch, but, still there was no fear. "Mona, we'll always have our little cave inside that dead amethyst. I never told you, but I already loved you then."
"Ed! Ed, I—"
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CPU v801.02.50 initialized
Press DEL to run Setup
Uncorrupted core memory… 100%.
Initializing command translation matrix… done.
Initializing obfuscation and encryption protocols… 56%. WARNING: OPERATION FAILED. Interactions with primary device may not be hidden until re-establishment of protocols. Proceed?:>
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Proceed?:>
Kumari sat with her face in her hands.

Something was wrong inside. That much, Venita knew. All her life, she'd had to overcome extreme physical and mental trials. On every mission, there'd been cunning enemies in pursuit or determined antagonists to get past. The multiverse had presented vicious creatures and deadly hazards around every turn. She'd even gotten to shoot a sapphire turret and blow up a flying mountain or two.
But to have a legion of heroic souls turned back by nothing but cold emptiness was something else entirely. There was something unfair about it, perhaps even disrespectful. The entire system of merit and challenge that had defined her life—the system that had threatened to crush her at times, yes, and once had even killed her—had been thrown out the window. There was no outsmarting or overpowering cold emptiness. There was no feat of courage to make, and no opponent to use life's lessons against. There was just physics, plain old logistics, saying you cannot do this.
And that felt horribly wrong in a way that made her angry.
No, not just angry. The spark within her was something deeper than that. For a few moments, the flames of her warrior spirit had turned crimson red, something that had never happened before, and her heart had been encircled by pain. It was a bad thing, a wrong thing, that had happened inside her.
And she was weak now. Without Sampson by her side, without her friend the Senator, and separated from the Noahs by pure population flow, she was alone in a crowd of thousands. They were heroes, all, but none knew her personally, even though they had thrown themselves in the way of the enemy's bullets en masse simply to keep her alive. Now through the spider-forest and entering the crowded fields of Concord Farm once more, she fought exhaustion in her limbs and raw resistance in her lungs.
It wasn't that the red flames had weakened her directly. Strangely, they'd been hotter, fiercer. Looking back at the spider-forest in the dark night, she understood: part of her was terrified that she'd sent Sampson to his death. Retrieving the wounded Senator was the right thing to do, because he was family now, but that meant she was by herself. Without her family by her side, and with half the volunteers that had carried the vortex drill dead, the energy of the group was gone. She was only human.
And humans hurt. The road had been long and the injuries many; these things she now felt. Scrapes burned, joints ached, and her muscles nearly refused to operate. Sweat-soaked, trembling, and struggling to breathe, she remembered the omnipresent feeling of vulnerability she'd had most of her early life, like the return of an old friend. Above all, her ribcage ached where the previous Legate Blue had stabbed and killed her over two years before.
The eerie thing, now, was that the sea of four to seven billion people at Concord Farm were no longer milling about.
They were looking up.
Curtains of light shifted in the sky, illuminating the world with tones of emerald, amethyst, and ruby. It was an aurora, at first simply noteworthy, but growing in size at a visible rate across the dome of the night.
They seemed to know, on some instinctive level, that this meant the end was nigh. In circles, in groups, in lines, and in a thousand other little clusters, the entire Second Tribe was simply standing there in the bloodied mud under the stars, watching the celestial tide. Some spoke to their neighbors, some held hands, some hugged, but none were in motion save her own returning group. One of those, a tired woman with ragged white hair and an aging face, helped her limp through the sea of sitting people and toward the central farmhouse.
All eyes fell upon the two of them as they entered, and all conversation stopped. Those within understood what this exhausted return meant. Communications officers stopped relaying information, map men stopped updating the enemy's position on the central table, and Casey Concord and Caecilia, the two relevant commanders, glanced at each other with grim intent.
Casey said openly, with no attempt to curtail her words for morale purposes, "That's it then."
The large and normally busy room remained silent. No one needed to reiterate that they were completely surrounded and completely out of options.
Caecila was the first to speak. "Venita, we've seen enemy craft exploding in the sky as they attempted to use their portals. Our type of portal device is also starting to become unstable. Do you know anything about that?"
There was that feeling of vulnerability again, paired with what she hoped was not despair. Looking the gathered men and women in the eyes, she said sadly, "Our attempt to forge an escape path tore up the walls of every reality from here to the wall of the region." She turned her extra senses outwards, feeling the vibration rising. "These lands have been spatially abused in many drastic ways. Natural rifts caused by the Devastation, the explosion of Her Glory's Heart machine, millions of biomechanical conduits growing in and out of every Earth underground, and now a war fought with thousands of portal-using aircraft flitting back and forth. The vortex drill may have been the tipping point."
One of the Amber centurions asked, "You think it's that bad?"
She nodded. "Back at Her Glory's mountain, after the explosion, I already had to pull rips in space closed with my bare hands. I didn't even know what I was back then, but my instincts screamed at me to do it, lest the entire region tear itself apart. Tonight, with that drill, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but we had to try anyway—and we failed. The damage is beyond repair now."
As if marking her words, a spray of multicolored light glared briefly through the window behind her.
Reminding her very strongly of her pseudo-mother in ways more than just her face, Casey took the news in stride. She was not one to fall into panic. "How long?"
Was this why the Sun had been so pale today? Was this why reality itself seemed to have been singing that high vibrating note? It was the war, and the aircraft and dropships portalling about madly. The fabric of the multiverse in this region had been pulled taut to near snapping already. Nature had known, and had begun a dirge for itself. When would the crescendo of that song come? She could feel it, like watching a zipper slide open. "A day or two. A week at most."
Casey was deadly intent on clinically gathering information. "What can we expect?"
Some part of her understood these matters. Some part of her had an idea of what was to come. "The ground itself, the locked-together matter, may hold longer, but the air is more vulnerable. The walls of reality will continue to rip and tear, combining the atmospheres of the many Earths of the region. We can expect tremendous storms."
"And after that?"
She could almost picture it. "When the ground starts fighting for space, there won't be enough of it, literally." She trembled at the magmatic visuals coursing through her imagination. "Mountains smashing into mountains, then continents tipping into one another."
"The end result?" Casey's face had acquired drawn lines of masked adrenaline.
Venita shook her head, trying to dispel the images. "One big soup bowl of mixed-together realities. One gigantic Earth a hundred times its natural size, a ball of molten rock on which nothing can live."
There was not another rapid-fire question this time. Casey looked to the Amber World's Legate. "We thank you for your assistance. You've done more than we could possibly have asked of you. But that's over now. It's time for you to go."
Standing stiffly in her jagged blue uniform, Caecilia gave a slow nod. "I am sorry we could not do more. If our worlds hadn't been devastated multiple times over, then maybe we could have—"
"If many things," Casey replied, holding up a diplomatic hand. "If many things. You need to go, and you need to escape with that backup plan you talked about."
Caecilia nodded again.
But at that, Venita's heart seized. "You don't mean to Rotate again?"
"We do." The other woman's cheeks were cold and confident for her gathered men, but her eyes held a certain underlying emotion that Venita had only seen once: many years before, when Caecilia had looked through that first rift before the Siege of New Rome. That day, she had turned around and ordered them to defend their position as if there was hope, but she had seen legions of spheres without end. That same divergence of doom-knowledge and command behavior was in her now, though her concern was for the Second Tribe, not her own people. "I specifically mandated the rebuilding be better suited for a Rotation. The disaster we endured because of eight centuries of negligence will not happen again."
Sensations of the world turning on its side and upending all civilization flashed through her thoughts. The dolphin charm around her wrist still reminded her of the little girl and the old man she'd helped that day—and the woman she'd failed to save, who had gone sailing away into the sky, still pounding on the window of that truck. "It won't?"
"It won't."
She touched the silver charm reflexively. "Good."
Caecilia turned to Casey. "We could take some of yours in our dropships. Maybe forty people."
"There's a triage center on the way to your ships. Take those wounded that you think will live."
"I understand," Caecilia said after a moment's processing. "Venita, let's go."
Part of her did thrill at the prospect of escaping the closing trap that had been shrinking around them for longer than she could remember. It was stupid not to go. But a greater part of her felt that such an escape would be a coward's way out. Caecilia and hers had a duty to the Amber Worlds, but she herself had already discharged that duty with her very life. More than that, thousands of the Second Tribe's bravest had sacrificed their lives to return her here not half an hour ago. She swallowed down the heaviness of her choice. "I have to wait for Sampson."
"We'll leave one craft for him."
It was far harder than she expected to countermand someone she looked up to so dearly, but she did manage to stand taller with the help of the older woman that had assisted her to this building. "No."
Caecilia narrowed her eyes. "You're too great an asset to simply let you die here."
Venita shook her head. "That's not the reason."
Her former mentor's face actually trembled. The resolute mask of the leader of the Dangerous Three had actually broken, if only for a moment. In her cheeks, there were visible reactions to memories of days back in training, when they had both been much younger. "Don't stay behind. You're my friend."
For that, she managed a weak smile. "I know. But Sampson is my family, and I won't leave without him."
It was Caecilia's turn to say it. "That's not the reason."
Venita studied the stone faces of the men and women in the command area. Had they given up? Or were they more determined than ever? More than simply waiting for Sampson, it was the right thing to do on a level that could not be denied. "I won't leave these people."
"I could order you, as your Legate."
"And I could order you, as your Imperator."
Caecilia sighed, then, but with a sad smile of respect. On her way out with the rest of the Amber soldiers, she made as if to grip her forearm—but then pulled her in for a surprise hug. "Find a way through. That's what we do."
Returning the embrace weakly, but with as much strength as she could, she replied, "We will." As parting advice only she could give, she said, "Fly higher. The portal disruption is related to Earth's gravity well. The higher you go, the safer using portal devices will be."
Nodding resolutely once, Caecilia said a world of goodbyes with a firm momentary gaze.
And then they were gone.
The command area now seemed half-empty, with large spaces unoccupied and two rows of laptops sitting unattended. Nobody was going back to the work; all were at a loss as to what to do next.
After a minute or two of thought, Casey looked up. "Someone tipped off the Zkirax that the conduits were making humans sick, so they directed their entire hive toward mining out all the conduits and sealing the interdimensional holes with stone." She tallied up the traits she was thinking of. "They're underground. They're also many realities away, on the edge of the cold lands, and nobody is fighting there. No portal-using aircraft. Will they survive what's about to happen?"
Feeling even more sickly for the effort, Venita closed her eyes and tried to extend her thoughts outward along the worst of the ripping spaces. They were quite loud and bright in ways she wouldn't have been able to describe to someone without the same senses, but that just made it easier to see the distant damage. Opening her eyes with faint but renewed hope, she gave her answer. "Yes."
Edgar awoke with a start and a gasp. At first, all he could see was a wooden ceiling, but then he noticed that he was surrounded by other people who were also lying down.
Leaning above him, Lian said, "I gave you a stimulant-type poison."
Eyes wide, he asked, "Poison?!" He grabbed downward, feeling the bandages around his midsection.
She nodded. "You've still got holes in you, and in your stomach. Pixley said you might die of sepsis in a couple days."
"Sepsis?" His heart raced so loud he could hear it in his ears. He could even feel his pulse in his stomach somehow, or so he imagined. "Why would you give me a poison, then?"
"Because you needed to be awake now. The sepsis is irrelevant. If you don't get up, you won't even live long enough for it to kill you." Taking his arm, she helped him stand. Together, they moved slowly to the main door of the triage center.
The Legate of the Amber armies and her assorted men presented tall presences a bit further in, where they were loudly and hurriedly talking about taking some of the wounded with them.
In his ear, Lian whispered, "As soon I heard, I stabbed myself and bandaged it. Let's go. They're going somewhere safe from all this."
Damn, she was cold. He knew what she was, but sometimes it still surprised him. "I can't."
She kept him moving forward anyway. "You have to survive, for your wife and son."
He wasn't fooled. "You're manipulating me. You have a better chance to get on those ships if you're with a Senator. They know me."
She didn't try to deny it. "Yes. But am I wrong? There's nothing more you can do here, Captain. It's time for both of us to go."
No, she wasn't wrong. He was stunned, too, from finding himself still alive. Even as he grew nearer the Amber men, he suddenly realized: "Wait, where's Sampson?"
"He got through the spider-forest long after the rest of us, carrying you. He collapsed from exhaustion a few steps into safety." Lian gazed around the wide area, scanning the cots. "I don't see him here. There isn't time to save him."
"Goddamn, why am I so stupid?" Edgar sighed and disengaged from his squadmate, managing to shakily stand on his own thanks to the tingling adrenaline in his veins. "I keep turning down ways to escape. Maybe that's why I'm doomed."
"Doomed?" Lian angled her eyebrows inquisitively. "We are all doomed. Life itself is a game of the world trying to kill us, while we do whatever it takes to survive. Nothing matters except living one more day."
He looked her right in the eyes then, watching for her reaction as he said, "Do you still feel that way when you think about Bill?"
Her face went stone cold.
For a moment, he saw the murderer in her.
But her reaction was to say quietly: "We have to stay. If we go the Amber Worlds, they've got their own problems. They'll never find Bill."
He couldn't help but crack a small smile. "I believe you are not nearly as dead inside as you think you are."
No emotion showed on her face at all, but she whispered, "Don't tell anyone." Looking down, she muttered, "Good thing I didn't stab myself too badly."
They began to turn away, but, listening further to the Amber soldiers, Edgar slowed. "No."
"No?"
He took a deep breath against the fire tingling along his skin. "You've got to go with them."
"But you just said—"
"Your best hope is with them. They just said they're going to Rotate away. I have no doubt in my mind that our people on Gisela's ship are going to seek out the Amber Worlds for aid no matter where they end up. You need to get on that ship when they do. Cristina Thompson's looking for her husband, and if he's anywhere, he's at the same place Bill is. They both used amethyst suicide devices."
"What about you? You could meet up with Mona."
He gave a feeble laugh at himself. "I'm going to save everyone."
"How?"
"I don't know yet. I really don't. But I gotta be here for that last minute development. Something will happen. I have to believe that." He didn't believe it, not in the least, but he did know that he was the one person he knew for certain would not survive this. If he went on those transports, they would never make it home. "Go. Consider it my last order, squadmate."
She was a skilled liar, so she knew what he was doing, but she didn't pause for a goodbye. She nodded once, then staggered toward the Amber soldiers, playing up her injury. They quickly caught her as she 'fell', and she went with them as they carried away others on stretchers.
And then he was alone.
He wanted to put his head in his hands and curl up in a ball, but the stimulant was burning stronger in his veins. Limping out the main doors, he pushed between people until silhouette heads opened up enough to reveal wavering red curtains in the sky.
Staring up at that aurora burning a hundred curtains overhead, his heart sank further—but then rose on the uplifting winds of an odd notion. "I forgot." It was true. With everything that had been going on—"I forgot to talk to Caleb about activating the ruby cube!" It had been his primary theory that Time could not be changed on purpose, but what about by accident?
Where was Venita?
He looked left and right, but could only see red-lit faces.
Where was Sampson?
He shouted, but there were too many people for his voice to carry far.
Where were the Noahs?
Goddamnit, where was anyone?!
He focused on recalling exactly what Kumari had told him about the end. There had been some sort of retreat, and fires, and he'd been shot at some unknown point before using a radio to tell Caleb that the cannibals who had eaten his mother and step-father were among the enemy like he'd asked.
Surrounded by strangers under wavering red light shifting to emerald, Edgar Brace froze.
Among the enemy?
Why would any members of the Second Tribe, even cannibals, be among the enemy?
Oh God.
The end Kumari had told him about had been the one where they'd been overrun by crazy people, either under the control of the parasites brought back by those that had been swallowed by the titan beast, or by those who had gone insane during the Purple Madness.
It had to be.
Those were the only scenarios that made sense.
Some group had gone on a mission to get the cannibals among the crazies, and that had been what Caleb had needed to prompt him to activate his ruby friend.
How many of these ends had Kumari seen? The Second Tribe could have been destroyed by any number of these continually rising threats. The way she'd talked about it, she'd probably changed history a number of times, but in ways that still ended with the Second Tribe destroyed and her father dead. Had every single one of Kumari's successes simply pushed the scenario to the next apocalyptic danger? That had to be the case, because the rate that they were coming now was absurd, one after the other—the Purple Madness ended, only to trigger an invasion from the next base branch, which itself had led to spatial instability that would also cause mass havoc.
He didn't need Venita around to tell him what the blazing sky meant. He'd personally helped tear those gigantic holes in reality after reality.
And if somehow the Second Tribe managed to stop or escape the regional collapse of reality itself, there would just be another existential danger after that.
Around him, the crowd began to align with purpose, and move.
"What's going on?" He grabbed a man's arm. "What's happening?"
The older man told him, "We're going to make a run on foot for the Zkirax homeworld. We can survive in their tunnels!"
He gasped against the pain of that strategy. "But that's in the direction past the spider-forest. I just came that way! The enemy's all over the place back there!"
"It's our only hope," came the reply.
Edgar let go of the man's arm. How many goddamn times had they said that in the past few years? Our only hope... limping toward the main farmhouse and pumped up on the fire in his blood, he continually shouted, "No! Stop! No!"
He was ignored.
Pushing harder through the crowd that was all heading against him, he screamed with need. Before he could fall, someone caught him.
It was his long-time mentor, Casey—exactly the person he needed to see most. "Oh thank God." Beside her were many men and women of command, and a very sweaty and weak-looking Venita still in her depleted jade armor and dirty grey uniform.
Casey asked, "What do you mean, stop?" while Venita asked, "Where's Sampson?!"
Regaining his footing while the crowd continued to move around their emerald-and-gold-lit pocket, he breathed, "Sampson survived. He's somewhere. Lian said he collapsed." Looking to Casey, he continued, "We just came from the direction the Zkirax are in. We'll be charging straight through enemy lines unarmed. We'll lose half our number or more."
Nobody looked surprised. They already knew that. The decision had been made with heavy hearts.
"Don't you see?" he insisted. "We can't keep doing this!"
One of Casey's lieutenants asked, "What's the alternative, Senator?"
All eyes were on him, and he knew they were desperate enough to consider his idiotic plan. "To hell with losing another chunk of us! Aren't you tired of that game? It's not going to stop. We all know it isn't going to stop. So let's tell the world we won't play its shitty game anymore."
Casey watched him with gold-shadowed eyes. "What are you suggesting?"
"We stay." He stood a little taller, burning with the insanity and necessity of his suggestion. "We activate that ruby cube, not as an act of desperation, but as an act of mercy." When he saw that they didn't understand, he continued rapidly, "On our way back from using the vortex drill, we found that breaking conduits open irradiated the men from the other base branch. They screamed. They held their heads. And I think one of them almost understood me. They'll be in full retreat soon once they realize what's happening to the realities here, and we can send them back to their Earths with dying parasites. They'll see the truth. We'll be sending back a liberation army."
His mentor understood. "By breaking open the entire conduit system here, with a ruby cube."
He nodded vigorously. "On purpose. As an act of defiance against the seeming desire of existence itself to destroy us."
One of the lieutenants responded, "And kill ourselves in the process?"
"Do you know what a ruby cube does?" Edgar suddenly rasped. "Does anyone? Do you?"
Casey shook her head.
"Then we can't say for sure that we'll all die. Maybe it's a mass teleporter like the amethysts. Maybe we'll all end up somewhere else." He looked to his friend for support.
Venita's expression rose with pride. "That's the way."
Sighing with disbelief, Casey added, "Hearing it put that way, I do think it's our best bet. Technically, all I know is that those who were around for the one ruby cube that ever activated in all of Empire history—well, nobody ever heard from them again, and nobody could get back to the Earth where it happened. Heath stopped the ruby cube that started to open on the First World during the Crushing Fist, so I don't actually know for sure what it does. It never occurred to me to question that little detail." She and her lieutenants discussed it a bit further, but the final conclusion was simple enough: "Take this radio so you can listen in. I'll make the call, though. I'll give Caleb the order."
Accepting a handheld radio, Edgar fought his own racing pulse for control of his animal self. He wanted to panic and run, but he didn't. He hefted the handheld. "I think some of us need to go face the enemy and tell them to run. It's not really a win for their Earths if they just all die. They have to get away, but with dying parasites."
Casey nodded. She seemed more proud than worried. "I taught you well. Good luck."
"I'm going with him," Venita said, stepping forward.
Together, he and Venita began moving with the crowd. There was no way to stop the order that had been spread by word of mouth to start moving toward the direction of the Zkirax homeworld, but there was no need to stop it, either. The enemy would do that. He was sure of it.
As she walked alongside him, her presence made him feel more confident, at least for the moment. As he repeatedly glanced over, she went from sweat-soaked and nearly falling over to walking with more purposeful energy. It was the first time he was truly seeing the effect firsthand. "You seem stronger when you've got family at your side."
Walking taller, and towering over him once more, she smiled down at him. She understood that he had meant it as thanks for saving his life.
Yet despite her smile and renewed energy, she scanned the crowd constantly.
He knew she was looking for Sampson.
It didn't take long to find the end of the crowd. The Second Tribe was holding itself back in a vast abrupt line, beyond which was open space lit by gold light shifting deeper into auroric emerald. Across that open ground, having gone around the spider-forest completely, was a thick line of darkly-uniformed men holding automatic weapons at the ready. They were shouting; the Second Tribe's seething line was shouting; Edgar tried to shout, too, but the grasping arms holding him back and others screaming defiance and caution drowned him out.
Taller than the rest of the crowd and attracting enemy notice, Venita yelled, "What do we do?!"
"Shut up!" Edgar screamed shrilly with all the energy the poison in him could burn. "Everyone shut the hell up! I have to talk to them!"
These were not unruly fools. These were men and women that had survived countless disasters. They fell silent in a wave so succinct that it was downright disturbing.
The enemy line took an uncomfortable step backward. Many of them glanced to one another for reassurance.
Casey's conversation with Caleb had already happened. He hadn't heard his handheld radio over the noise of the crowd. He knew this because the enemy line took another step backward, this one fearful, and the light in the sky shifted back to red.
Turning his head, he saw it there like a looming ominous thunderstorm with perfectly smooth edges.
Somehow, it was so much bigger than he remembered.
Even from this distance, he could see a tiny speck atop it raising another tiny speck that he knew to be a staff. The tapping of it would convey what Caleb wanted.
It was activated by the focused awareness of a large number of sentient beings, wasn't it? It was. As he watched—as those around him, friend and foe alike, watched—the gigantic ruby cube in the dome of the glowing night, right there in the shifting auroras, began to unfold.
But it was not a last act of desperation, the way Kumari had seen it so many times. This time, they'd seized the reins of fate and done it on purpose.
Turning to the open ground, he shouted into the silent air, "You guys need to run."
Several sets of enemy eyes focused on him. They likely couldn't understand his specific words, but there was no way they misunderstood the intent.
He prompted them again. "Run." Letting the poison's anger bubble up, he screamed, "Run, you idiots! Do you have to wait for someone's order? Go!"
They looked to the sky again, where the cube had started to take on impossible geometries, opening into something greater.
Then—almost impossibly, for it felt like a dream to Edgar—one of the darkly-uniformed men turned and ran.
Two more followed.
Then, the whole line broke.
He knew that those men, whatever their stories might be, had seen what the Second Tribe was made of. If the Second Tribe was activating an enormous super-weapon in the sky, it was no feint.
Despite the parasite, some things had been communicated.
He hoped they would understand and remember what had happened here. Likely, the parasite had shown them something horrific, and they'd probably been told they were fighting monsters. When and if the parasites in their temples died, would they start to wonder why those monsters had so defiantly stood up against them? He had no doubt the strange types of resistance they'd encountered had baffled them. What had they made of Venita's lone stand with Sampson against the might of their entire army? What did they think of the vortex drill escape attempt? What did they think now of a people choosing to self-destruct rather than submit?
As the world turned crimson red under a burgeoning glow within the unfolding ruby, he felt all his strategizing mental systems slowly roll to a halt.
The endless game was over. Survival was no longer the goal.
The stimulant, too, was fading. He could feel his energy ebb.
What now? He'd never been so free from the eternally spinning gears inside his head. His tactical thoughts had completely stilled all the way down to his core. There was no next move.
Venita echoed his thoughts with a, "What should we do?"
He suddenly knew. There was something he had put off that needed doing. Pushing his way through the assembled skygazers, he fought his way towards his little house.
Venita followed him behind it. The bulk of the crowd had surged away from the center of Concord, and no one now remained here between the buildings. "What are we doing?"
With shaking hands, he grabbed his cast-aside tools and began laying bricks. The remaining section of the back wall of the new room of his house was small, but he had been 'working on it' for an embarrassingly long time. Had Mona known he'd been spending most of that supposed building time talking to Gi? He felt transparent and pitiful. "I promised my wife I would finish this wall."
"Is this what you think we should be doing?" She looked aghast, as if he was crazy.
Desperately placing bricks and slapping traces of grey mud between them haphazardly, he cried, "It's the end of the world, Venita! Where do you want to be right now?"
She looked down between the buildings, clearly thinking of trying to find Sampson.
He dropped a brick, and then fell to one knee, clutching the bleeding bandages around his stomach. Tears ran down his face, yet he had not truly had time to process why. He'd spent so much of his life moving step by step like a player in a game, but this was no game, and death was nigh. He'd literally asked for it; suggested it; was dead anyway to sepsis in a few days. Goddamnit, why had he ever left Mona's side? All that talk of bravery and rejecting cowardice seemed ridiculous now. He was just some guy crying and dying in the mud under bright red light.
But then his friend was helping him up, and she handed him another brick before taking one herself.
He choked out, "You don't want to go look for Sampson?"
She responded kindly, "We've already said our goodbyes, and I don't think I have the strength to find him in time. Anyway, this wall needs finishing."
Together, they placed and patted and paved, then placed some more. For a time, he wasn't afraid, and he didn't even bother looking up as the tremendous gemstone array in the sky took form. Every remaining second needed to be spent building this wall, finishing this hole, making the structure complete—so that his promise would have been kept.
Venita kept working as he began to falter. He clutched his bandages as they began to soak through with blood; she just grew more determined and worked faster.
He fell into the mud.
She kept working. "Stay with me. Just five more bricks left."
"Four more, just four more. Stay awake."
"Three left!"
"Stay awake, Brace. Stay awake! Two more bricks!"
"Brace?"
"...Edgar?"
She was pushing a brick into his hand.
"It's the last one. Come on, you have to place it. I can't do it for you. Get up, come on. Here. Lean on me. Don't drop it. Here, I'll lift your arm. Just place the brick. Place the brick. You're so close to done. Just place the brick."
His consciousness was a pinpoint of ruby light barely bigger than one of Death's eyes. He had nothing but fingers somewhere distant, and then not even that, yet still he focused all his remaining thoughtless will on finishing that goddamn wall. The pattern had to be completed. The hole had to be filled in. The bricks had to be placed. It was the last thing he could do for Mona, no matter how small, no matter that she would never know.
For some unknown time—because he'd lost his sense of time—he was wholly the will to complete that pattern.
Venita's voice entered his awareness: "You're done. You did it. The wall's finished. You kept your promise."
He'd done something else, too.
He'd regained a stomach.
And that stomach was violently heaving.
All the senses of his body came rushing back like a punch to the brain, and he curled forward in the mud, vomiting up vile-looking liquid that glimmered blackly under the blazing ruby cast. Simply from the smell, he knew it was the poison Lian had given him.
Reaching one shaking hand down, he felt under his bandages.
The bullet wounds were gone.
Still partially holding him, Venita asked, "What's happening? Are you coming back from the dead again?"
He shook his head, and then began to laugh. "For once, something coming back from the past is helpful rather than a disaster."
"What is it?"
He vomited once more, and, through the tears, he continued to laugh out his words. "I've got a reprogrammed transmorphic sphere in my stomach. I think it responded to me, somehow, the way they respond to Gi. I was trying to fix the wall, complete the pattern. It did that—inside me."
She kept him propped up while he heaved. "That's sort of amazing, but it might be the shortest miraculous healing of all time."
He looked up, trying to blink his sight clear. "My God. It's... beautiful." He blinked harder, wanting with all his being to see the true majesty of the fully unfolded ruby cube. "I wonder specifically how it's going to kill us."
The ground began to tremble.
Just above him, Venita turned her head left and right, scanning where he could not. "You said once that the spheres were agravitational, but gemstone lifeforms are anti-gravitational, right?"
Slowly catching his breath, but still unable to truly see, he said, "Yeah, why?"
Oh.
That he could see.
A foot in front of his face, small pebbles began smoothly rising into the air in uneven patterns. For a long moment, he tried to comprehend what that meant. When he finally settled on a certain indicated suspicion, he could only breathe, "Oh shit." The ruby cube was not a teleporter like the amethysts. The ruby cube had simply inverted itself in whatever dimensions its higher form occupied.
To his left, the last brick he had just placed began to vibrate.
One end of it lifted half an inch briefly before dropping back down.
Watching that, too, Venita mirrored him. "Oh shit."
What exactly would a massive enough anti-gravity field do to a planet? In a nuclear flash, his tactical mental mechanisms were grinding again, trying to compute once more, but before he could think, his radio crackled to life with a familiar voice he'd expected to never hear again.
Of course. The enemy was running for their lives, and no doubt they'd stopped jamming the network.
His first reaction was to grab the handheld and blurt, "Mona, I finished the wall!"
"You did?" his wife replied. "Because we're seeing some worrying things going on. Gisela's minutes away from being done with the ship. Can we stay? Are you safe over there?"
He could finally see it in all its true glory. Backlit by a horizon-to-horizon emerald aurora the likes of which only a world on the verge of destruction could ever see, the ruby array in the sky was a monumental fractal of crimson light with claws angling out in every direction, stabbing into space itself and disappearing out of sight at their limits. It had hooked into the gravity well inverted, phased somehow into the spaces below physical, neither here nor absent—and it was growing brighter as part of a process that could not be stopped now that it had begun.
His brick tore away from the wall and went sailing up into the sky of its own accord.
"Safe?" he gasped, still in awe of the tremendous vista above. "No."

October 22, 2019 at 01:02AM
https://www.a108.net/blogs/entry/31016-a-phoned-glorification-of-kartik-month-part-1-shrila-bhakti-vedanta-narayana-swami/
A Phoned glorification of kartik month (part 1) // Shrila Bhakti Vedanta Narayana Swami
Tridandisvami Shri Shrimad Bhaktivedanta Narayana Maharaj Vrindavan, India, 28 October 2002 [In Vrindavan, India, October 28, 2002, at 6am, upon the first glimpses of sunrise, five hundred devotees from India and around the world were sitting in the beautiful Shri Rupa Sanatana Gaudiya Math in Vrindavan, India. Surrounded by Rajasthani pillars, colorful bas-relief and other paintings of Krsna's pastimes on the walls, walls painted in shades of yellow, saffron, and beige, sastric verses appropriate for entering vraja-bhakti painted in large letters above the archways, and lush creepers hanging from the balconies, the devotees had just finished singing their morning bhajanas. They were now waiting to be connected by a loudspeaker phone system to the voice of Paramaradya Shri Shrimad Bhaktivedanta Narayana Gosvami Maharaj. He was in Delhi, some four hours away by material calculation, resting in the home of his disciples as he performed his naravata-lila (human-like pastimes) of recuperating from a recent heart operation. As baby Krsna liberated His devotees Nalakuvera and Manigriva, although His own belly was bound by ropes, so Shrila Maharaj now performed a heart operation on his followers, although in his naravata-lila he was recuperating from his own. Shrila Maharaj began his phoned discourse in English, but then he said he would continue in Hindi. The doctors had allowed him only ten minutes to speak, and in Hindi, his mother tongue, he would be able to reveal much more than in English. After his lecture was completed, Shripad Madhava Maharaj, who was present with him, translated his Hindi into Bengali, and after the receiver clicked, Prema-prayojana dasa translated it into English. The following is a transcription of part 1 of that English translation:] Very rapidly and very energetically, practically without pausing for any breath at all, and having so much taste and relish in the glorification of kartik vrata*, Shrila Maharaj explained many things, and I will try to repeat them one by one. First he wanted to impress upon us how fortunate we are. He said, "I am not fortunate because I am in Delhi, so close to Vrindavan yet so far away. But you are lucky because you are in Vrindavan dhama during this time of kartik and you are observing kartik vrata there. What is the significance of this kartik month and Damodara vrata? Shrila Maharaj said that this month is called the month of Damodara; Damodara is He whose belly was bound by the rope of Mother Yasoda. He was not actually bound by a rope, however; He was bound by prema, by pure vatsalya-bhava (parental love). Krsna is anadi; He has no beginning. And He is ananta; He has no end. Still, although He is Parambrahma, that unlimited beginningless and endless Supreme Lord can be bound and trapped by prema. Therefore this month is called Damodara vrata, and those who observe it will attain the prema by which they can bind Parambrahma, the Supreme Lord. Those who can observe this vrata are very fortunate. This month is also called Urja vrata. Urja means sakti, and it specifically refers to Krsna's internal potency, antaranga sakti – Shrimati Radhika. Urja vrata actually means Radha vrata, a vow taken for the happiness of Shrimati Radhika. If one hears Her glorification in this month, the fruit will come in the form of gopi-prema. This month is also called kartik. The adhistatri-devata, predominating deity, of kartik month is Kirtika-kumari, the young daughter of Kirtika, Shrimati Radhika. Those who honor this month, of which Radhika is the predominating deity, by going to the pastime places of Krsna, will certainly, without any doubt at all, have all their desires completely fulfilled. They will attain jugal-seva, service of Radha and Krsna in the anugatya (guidance) of the Vraja gopis. Shrila Maharaj then explained that Satyavata Rsi has glorified Damodara month by the verses in his song Shri Damodarastakam, beginning namamisvaram sat-cit-ananda-rupam lasat-kundalam gokule vrajamanam. Rudantam muhur netram-jugman mirjantam. Rudantam means that Krsna is crying and looking towards His mother who has held up a stick. Krsna is pleading, "Don't beat me! Don't beat me!" because Mother Yasoda held the stick as though she was going to throw it at him. He was afraid, and she caught him. Mother Yasoda is so fortunate that she could catch Krsna and then bind Him with her love. nemam virinco na bhavo na srir apy anga-samsraya prasadam lebhire gopi yat tat prapa vimuktidat (Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.9.20) ["Neither Lord Brahma, nor Lord Siva, nor even the goddess of fortune, who is always the better half of the Supreme Lord, can obtain from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the deliverer from this material world, such mercy as received by mother Yasoda."] Even Brahmaji, the direct son of Bhagavan, is not so fortunate as to have a love like that of Mother Yasoda. Even Sankara, who is called Hari-hara-ekatma and who thus feels oneness with Bhagavan, cannot have a love like this. Even Laksmi-devi, Bhagavan's full aisvarya-sakti, never has the chance to bind her consort. This is impossible for all of them. But Mother Yasoda has attained this, and she is therefore glorified by Shrila Sukadeva Gosvami: nayam sukhapo bhagavan dehinam gopika-sutah jnaninam catma-bhatanam yatha bhaktimatam iha (Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.9.21) Unless one has love that of like Mother Yasoda, Krsna cannot be bound. He cannot be bound by those who have a bodily conception (dehinam). This mercy is very far away from them. Those who may be liberated (jnaninam), and those who may even be associates but with aisvarya-jnana, knowledge of Krsna's opulence, also cannot bind Krsna. And even for those who have yogic siddhis (atma-bhutanam), this mercy is inconceivable and inaccessible. This type of mercy was attained by Yasoda Maiya, because Krsna can only be bound by prema – not by any other quality. Shrila Maharaj then explained that in this month, when Krsna's babyhood came to an end, He began his boyhood pastimes and went out to graze calves for the first time. Because He was very small, at first He only grazed calves, and the day on which He began is called Gopastami. Then, when He was older, more mature, and entering His kaisora age, He had another Gopastami. This was the first day He went out to graze the cows. Why does Krsna graze calves and cows? He is the son of a king, without any duty. The answer is that on the pretext of grazing cows He escapes the confines of His home and the vigilant glances of His parents and seniors, so that He can go to the forest and meet with Shrimati Radhika and the gopis. Gopasthami marks the day of the fulfillment of Krsna's desires to directly have their first intimate meeting, and this pastime also took place in the month of kartik. This month is also auspicious because Krsna's leaving the village and going out for cow grazing has been described by the gopis (in Venu-gita: Shrimad-Bhagavatam Tenth Canto Chapter 21) in this month. Shri Sukadeva Gosvami said: sri-suka uvaca ittham sarat-svaccha-jalam padmakara-sugandhina nyavisad vayuna vatam sa-go-gopalako 'cyutam (Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.21.1) ["Sukadeva Gosvami said: 'Thus the Vrindavan forest was filled with transparent autumnal waters and cooled by breezes perfumed with the fragrance of lotus flowers growing in the clear lakes. The infallible Lord, accompanied by His cows and cowherd boyfriends, entered that Vrindavan forest.'"] Acyuta, Krsna, along with His friends, entered into the forest in this sarad (autumn) season. The first night of kartik was Saradiya Purnima, the full moon night of the autumn season. Shrila Maharaj explained how beautiful Vrindavan is at that time. All the lakes and rivers become muddy during the summer, but when that season ends and the sarad season begins, all the lakes, like Manasi Ganga and Kusuma Sarovara, become clear and beautiful. Upon these lakes sit many blossoming lotus flowers that emit a beautiful fragrance, and the breeze carries that fragrance everywhere. In this beautiful atmosphere, Krsna, Acyuta, has gone out to graze cows. kusumita-vanaraji-susmi-bhrnga dvija-kula-ghusta-sarah-sarin-mahidhram madhupatir avagahya carayan gah saha-pasu-pala-balas cukuja venum (Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.21.2) ["The lakes, rivers, and hills of Vrindavan resounded with the sounds of maddened bees and flocks of birds moving about the flowering trees. In the company of the cowherd boys and Balarama, Madhupati Shri Krsna entered that forest, and while herding the cows He began to play His flute."] In Vrindavan there are many rows of flowering trees, which are attracting the bumblebees, who are now intoxicated by their honey. Many types of birds are singing various tunes, and these birds play on different mountains like Giri Govardhana. At that time, Madhupati Krsna, who is full of madhu, sweet and attractive qualities, entered the forest surrounded by His friends. In this month the gopis stay in their homes and feel great separation from Krsna, and at the same time, by their bhava-netra, the eyes of their ecstatic love for Krsna, they can see Him entering the forest. barhapidam nata-vara-vapuh karnayoh karnikaram bibhrad vasah kanaka-kapisam vaijayantim ca malam randhran venor adhara-sudhayapurayan gopa-vrndair vrndaranyam sva-pada-ramanam pravisad gita-kirtih (Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.21.5) ["Wearing a peacock-feather ornament upon His head, blue karnikara flowers on His ears, a yellow garment as brilliant as gold, and the Vaijayanti garland, Lord Krsna exhibited His transcendental form as the greatest of dancers as He entered the forest of Vrindavan, beautifying it with the marks of His footprints. He filled the holes of His flute with the nectar of His lips, and the cowherd boys sang His glories."] All these verses are the glory of this month. It was in this month that the gopis remained in their homes and spoke to each other: aksanvatam phalam idam na param vidamah sakhyam pasun anuvivesayator vayasyaih vaktram vrajesa-sutayor anavenu-justam yair va nipitam anurakta-kataksa-moksam (Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.21.7) ["The cowherd girls said: 'O friends, those eyes that see the beautiful faces of the sons of Maharaj Nanda are certainly fortunate. As these two sons enter the forest, surrounded by Their friends, driving the cows before Them, They hold Their flutes to Their mouths and glance lovingly upon the residents of Vrindavan. For those who have eyes, we think there is no greater object of vision.'"] O sakhi, in this world the vision of this scene is the fruit of having eyes. Krsna is going slowly, remaining somewhat behind the other cowherd boys, so that Balarama will go ahead. Meanwhile, He is looking here and there, hoping to have a glimpse of Shrimati Radhika. [Endnote: A vrata is a vow to observe the rules and regulations and ceremonial functions of a particular holy occasion.]

Was it wrong to be having fun? Running as fast as she could in some moments and simply leaping at others, Venita held her arms tightly around the writhing end of the streaming portal energy while it continually tried to form into a vortex. Its blazing glow was warm, not hot, and contained a tumultuous mix of violet and sparkling rainbow-prismatic diamonds. This, then, was that conglomeration of Yngtak and Her Glory's technologies, compatible for one having descended from the other; ethereal organic blue raced down the scintillation behind her, joining the mix from her bare hands, guiding the otherwise random beast as it propelled forward with tremendous force down Concord's main dirt road. Despite the desperate context of the situation, unexpectedly having to sprint and jump and pull to try to guide this force of nature was oddly exhilarating. This was a part of her nature she'd rarely gotten to explore, and her poorly understood extra senses thrilled with feelings she imagined her father must have experienced on journeys through the stars and spaces of the vast multiverse.
Her laughter was unintentional, but her attitude spread to the crowd on either side as they parted hastily in surprise. After seeing her race by wildly whooping, they blinked at each other, then left the setting sun's dim crimson cast to join the brightly lit effort. Closing ranks in a continual stream of determined arms, they grabbed hold of the thrashing compressed vortex, dragging their feet to try to slow it down. They, too, hollered and laughed at the sudden absurdity, and she felt their hearts swell. After so long spent battered about by events beyond their control, they could finally do something, and they literally leapt at the chance.
Directly behind her, his bulky arms straining, Sampson shouted over the spiraling hurricane winds of their flight, "What's the plan?"
Across from him and on the right, a Noah yelled, "Can you aim it?"
She now regretted not having her helmet on, not just because her hair was whipping about, but because they could have spoken by radio. "I think so!"
"Copy us!" a second Noah yelled.
She couldn't spare time for a glance back. Her feet were too busy keeping up with the racing earth below. "Copy you?"
"Copy us so you can feel what we feel!"
She had, at certain times and with varying levels of awareness that she was doing so, employed the emotion-sensing ability of the Noah she'd known on Amber Three; now the call was for far more than that. She knew he had been a single person who had been duplicated thousands of times by Cristina Thompson using a quantum rift, but his nature as a gwellion had formed into a sort of collective entity born of narrative awareness. The original Noah Fulmer had been exceptionally conscious of his place and direction in the flow of Time and in what he called quantum choice-trees, thus, somehow, thousands of Noah Fulmers indirectly shared memories and experiences by being aware of each other's paths. It was this collective consciousness which she had to join.
Summoning up thoughts of her antikin, Celcus, and his ability to lead and manage people, she split her thoughts into a team. To a baser and more animal part of herself, she assigned the task of running and holding the vortex. That was one of the animals inside her; that one had evolved from apes to be suited to this world. The other animal had evolved among the stars, and that one was put on extra-sensory duty, feeling the worlds ahead on instinct and need. The rest of her—her sense of self, her thoughts, her logic—focused on shaping the mutable parts of her higher-dimensional form to match Noah's.
For Noah, too, had pieces in the higher dimensions of mind and imagination. To call those pieces limbs was not exactly the right concept, nor was the word organs exactly right. They were part brain-hemisphere, part arms, and in some cases, part eyes. Truly looking and trying to understand for the first time, she realized that all the people around her had mental and emotional limbs/organs in that higher space—except Sampson. Below the membrane of dreams and beliefs, his mind was alight as his neurons flared and his heart coursed with emotion, but his presence was more a raised impression against the fabric rather than an actual living extension into the mental plane. Amber Worlders had always been far more difficult to sense, and now she partially understood why: they were actually different. The men and women of the Empire were more like her, with some small portion of their forms cast after her higher self.
And on that mental plane, envisioned now like a vast grassland of small green plants no more than a few inches high, her spiritual self was a notable landmark: a young tree ten pedes tall, ever grasping for the sky despite its limited reach. Remembering how it felt to be around her father, she knew he would have seemed a towering ancient oak many leagues in height, with a canopy that had become one with the clouds. The only thing she'd ever felt even close to that had been the presence of Gisela the Yellow, the Machine Empress of Mankind, who played at appearing a naive young girl, but whose true inner wisdom and power had been a solid pillar of steel fifty acti high. These and more she understood now, the way a baby might begin to understand the world flowing in through its eyes over its first few years.
But the Noah Fulmers around her had no height to match Gisela, her father, or even Empire men. She knew where the Noahs were standing, but upon those spots there existed only empty blanks in the lush grasslands of the mindscape. There wasn't even an underlying impression like Sampson's. Turning her head back, she shouted, "Noah, I can't sense you!"
The many Noahs behind her seemed to understand. Looking at each other over the blazing light and winds of the compressed vortex as they ran, they made a wordless decision. The blank spots were some natural defensive property, and they lowered that defense together.
She was not on an open grassland of the mind. She was in a forest surrounded by fellow trees, but unlike any she had ever seen. These trees were strange, angular, and ordered. She perceived everyone else around her as organic, as plants with wild and unpredictable growth, but these bizarre trunks almost seemed bio-mechanical. The closest comparison she could make was to the feeling Senator Brace's book had given her when in operation, and she had been more than glad that he had given that twisted thing away. Her mental mouth agape, she asked without spoken words, "What are you?"
The answer, from all the angular exotic trees at once, like breeze among the leaves in a rustling wood, was a subtly sad, "I don't know."
At first, she reviled the thought of forcing her spiritual self into those twisted and alien angles, but then she saw something that inspired her: a small portion of each ordered biomechanical tree was new, and clearly not part of the rest. It beat like a heart, and it was human, full of emotion—compassion. Noah Fulmer had been born a gwellion, whatever that meant, but he had learned to care. That he had done himself. "You're not supposed to be helping us, are you?"
"No." Gears rolled within the ordered trees to produce the thought. "I'm supposed to be telling your story, not participating in it."
She immediately thought of her friend, Senator Brace, who was fated to die. "Does that mean you're fated to survive?"
"Often," came the many-voiced reply. "But all that truly matters is that the story survives. The form doesn't matter. I could die and leave behind writings to be found later—"
"Or someone could be reading our story from the future," she suggested, thinking of Kumari.
"Yes."
Well, it had been a faint hope, anyway. Employing her mental muscles—quite literally, in this case—she began to bend and shape herself into the form of the gwellions around her. It hurt in strange ways, and, for some reason, she briefly experienced an innate genetic memory of hating and fearing whatever force the gwellions represented, but that passed when she thought of her friendship with one particular Noah.
As she reached a close approximation of his mental shape, she began to hear the whispers of the forest more clearly. There was a great river running through them, that of constant analysis of plot lines, emotional arcs, and the meaning and the purpose of existence; these things the Noahs debated constantly. She could also sense his secrets. She could sense the results of his hundreds of debating selves.
Noah Fulmer's gwellion hive mind estimated that it was over eighty percent likely that all of them—the Noahs, the Empire, the Amber Worlds, the Yngtaks, and even the men from the next base branch, which Noah called 'the horror genre'—were living, breathing, and fighting in a text-based universe. He believed this because he'd experienced a text-expressed reality once before and sometimes recognized certain textures of that existence in his current life, and because he could still sense some unknown audience reading somewhere even when the Twisted Book was not in the picture.
Noah Fulmer's gwellion hive mind had come to believe that each of them would only be allowed to continue to live as long as their actions and experiences remained interesting. In some sense, he believed, these repeated disasters were a blessing in disguise, for all of them—everyone—got to live as long as there was danger to be faced. The ultimate secret at the core of his being was his belief that the story had gone on as long as it could, and that this was it. One way or another, he was certain that time was up. The entire region had clearly been designed as a funnel of destruction; all the plot lines were converging to ensure the death of the Second Tribe no matter how many challenges they defeated. This portal to Gath would not work, and would only cause yet another foreshadowed but unexpected disaster. They were doomed, not just by chance, but because Fate had willed it so.
Never in her life had she been so stilled. The fire drained out of her; her lower self kept operating her feet and her middle self kept guiding the vortex, but the furnace in her heart went dark and quiet. Her thoughts were silent.
The alien trees darkened in shame at this revealing of their hopelessness, but from the small ounce of compassion the Noah Fulmers had grown themselves there came words: "Don't let my dark interpretation get to you. As a gwellion, that's how I must perceive life: in the form of a narrative. And you know what? I thought the same thing about the Crushing Fist. I was certain the Empire was doomed—but here you all are, still fighting to find a way forward years later and a hundred realities from home."
Cautiously, a pilot light emerged once more beneath her inner furnace. "But what if our existence is fake, like you think?"
"Not fake," he continued. "Expressed in the form of stories. Is it possible to tell the difference? We tell the history of our worlds and societies and families in the form of tales; we recall our own lives with memories of what happened. Both formats drift, meaning the narrative changes slightly every time we tell it. We are all, each of us, just lattices of evolving stories. Each day, we turn those lattices, carving, polishing, making something new and better, always trying to find a way forward. I have always lived with the fatal cynicism you're sensing, but I have chosen to fight for a better story, because if God exists, I think he's a shitty writer."
Together, she shared a beleaguered mental smile with the Noahs. "Let's make a better ending?"
Their smile widened. "Yeah." Biomechanical branches lifted in unison, mimicking arrays like those she'd seen on radio towers. This, then, was how they sensed emotions at a distance, likely to better their gathering of the stories of existence.
Emotional resonances began to shiver through them all, and through her now that she shared their shape. A great cloud of feelings surrounded them like a storm at close proximity, but this was a torrent of forgiveness, relief, and shared sorrow rather than the hopelessness she'd expected. Further out, there was a gap, and then—through vectors not expressible in three dimensions—she could feel the invading men from the next base branch, who were dimmer and quieter on that plane, like Sampson. Beyond that lay a vast void of nothingness.
Across the many in-region realities in the direction of the Empire, absolutely no human beings were present. They'd all been drawn to Concord during the Purple Madness. Then, there was the Zkirax, a mound of insectoid clicking emotions completely inexplicable to mammals.
Beyond that was icy chill.
On the physical plane, the growing vortex continued to carry its hangers-on forward, moving them all out of the heart of the crowd of billions at a rapid pace. Her feet kept running and jumping, but her mind was focused on hearing even the slightest echo of emotion from the distant cold worlds of the Empire.
She could almost hear the polar winds encircling planets once dominated by civilization. Lack of warmth was an emotion all its own; snow and ice glimmered under lonely and empty skies. The sun itself was dimmer fifty times over in the worlds of the Empire, for the neighboring canyon of multiversal nothingness left by the Devastation was draining away energy of all kinds.
No.
Lack of warmth was not an emotion all its own, or so the Noahs thought with suspicion.
There was something out there on the cold horizon—something glacial, something slow. Beyond that, at the heart of the Empire, something golden slowly glowed.
Slowly glowed...
She'd felt a Seed of hope once before. She'd even used her hands to open a hole in a golden Shield powered by one not too long ago. It was that same pulsing feeling, but... slower.
The thoughts of the Noahs whispered to parties unknown, Oh my god, what did you do?
But she didn't understand the images they were sharing.
Beyond the vast glacier, beyond the slow golden Seed, there came a region of screaming.
The Noahs reeled.
She felt their pain, and took as much of it as she could to lessen their burden. "What's happening?"
It hurt too much for them to answer immediately. The noise coming from the region beyond the Seed was sharp, high, and keening, like a video stuck on fast forward.
As she took more of the pain for herself, she began to recognize the pattern of the blazing winds of emotion. It was hard to recall exactly when and where, for she had visited the place only in the realm of human dreams, but somewhere there existed a flat-roofed city of gold and bronze populated by men and women with blurry faces and distorted voices. The people there wore patches of primary colors on rugged brown and black clothes, and they always, always moved extremely rapidly, at times racing to dangerous and terrifying speeds.
It had never occurred to her that such a place might have a real-world analogue. That place had been populated by real people who had been dreaming at a speed all their own.
This screaming roar was the emotions of those rapidly-moving people. They were blurry and distorted in dreams for the same reason—they were fast in dreams because they were fast in life. But how was that possible? She could feel them blinking in and out of sleep; awake, asleep, awake, asleep. Even as she listened through the monsoon of love, bitterness, determination and hopelessness, she felt some lives flicker out forever, while others flared brightly, born into existence for the first time. A single tear flowed down her face as she focused on one and watched an entire life go by, from learning to understand the world, to pure innocent playing, to emotional teenager; first love, first heartbreak, becoming an adult, mastering the world, fighting cynicism, finding love, starting a family, developing parental feelings and responsibilities, aging, seeing their kids have kids, getting old... gone.
It was everything she herself would never get to experience, and it had all happened in moments.
The experience left her stunned.
Around her, the Noahs asked themselves, "How?"
Small as grains of sand next to the sun, there existed seven normal minds in close proximity to the Seed. These were the only handful not glacially slow nor blazingly fast. The Noahs recognized the feel of one mind, and the Shadow hovering above it.
To the Shadow, the Noahs called out, "Aspect of Hunger, can you hear us?"
It turned with surprise, peering back at them from the distant horizon. Yes, I hear you.
"In accordance with our alliance with you, please tell Danny that the Second Tribe still lives. We're facing great danger, but we'll find a way through. Also, his adopted mother is alive. She survived the end of the Crushing Fist. We would also like to know the status of the First Tribe."
The Shadow turned away for a time.
Venita struggled to get a hold of herself as the sensations of that entire life faded from her immediate senses. "How—what alliance?"
The Noahs murmured, "The First Tribe made an alliance with the minor Shadow aspects of the eternal concept of Hunger, with the Mictlan, and with a group of Architect Angels, which they called brownshirts."
She hadn't heard more than passing mentions of the first two, but to the third, she said, "My father's people?"
"Yes."
The Shadow now turned back, and whispered: In accordance with our alliance, Danny wishes me to convey his utmost happiness at the survival of the animal named Cristina Thompson. He says that he has tried to live by her example by pitting different armageddons against one another, and, with that in mind, he and the Council had the remaining automated Empire farm systems plant certain genetically engineered crops that have been home to dangerous small organisms in the past. Because those organisms warp the curvature of space, most of the First Tribe now moves in blue slow motion to conserve their last resources, while a small number of volunteers entered red fast motion to begin rebuilding critical Empire systems. They are small in number, so their task will take thousands of years from their perspective, but only twenty from yours.
"Can they accommodate maybe seven billion more people?"
The Shadow turned away only for a moment. Its reply was a simple: No. After a moment, it elaborated with Danny's words as it understood them. There is too little food for the existing animals, even stretching resources out in slow-time. The animals are already of the understanding that they are not all going to make it. If you were to come here, the situation would only get worse for everyone. He is... sorry.
"Thank you," the Noahs said solemnly. "Here's an interesting memory in return for your help."
Venita watched as a moment of action and daring that the Noahs had witnessed radiated out across the mental plane; the Shadow in the distance grabbed it eagerly and devoured it happily before turning away a final time.
The Noahs laughed with a sense of surprised victory. "They actually did it. Ingenious."
"What does that all mean?" she asked, again running her senses over the distant vast region of glacial quietness and small area of screaming emotion.
"One of the sister Earths was destroyed by time-dilating bacteria," the Noahs explained between happy disbelieving laughs. "It got too hot because they were receiving more and more light from the rest of the universe as the difference in time rates increased—but heat is exactly what the people of the Empire need right now." One Noah in particular felt great relief. "Those sons of a bitches actually found a way forward."
That much Venita understood. It was hope. "Then we can find a way forward, too."
That specific Noah nodded warmly and looked over at her on the physical plane. "Let's do this."
Together, they cast their thoughts out as far as they could, soaring past the Empire, past the great canyon of void in the multiverse, to the unknown worlds beyond. Here, too, it was cold, but with no emotion whatsoever. Here, there was no great population of people living in slow-time; the glacier was gone, replaced with a sense of emptiness.
Except for a single note: a laugh in the dark.
Somewhere, a woman with a formerly bitter heart had laughed at a joke she'd been told.
But, by the sensing of human emotion, she was alone. Who had told it?
"That's her," the Noahs breathed. "Has to be. The ice-computer of Gath wouldn't have emotions we can sense, or at least I assume not. She has to be talking to it."
"Then that's where we're going," Venita said with determination, focusing her awareness on that incredibly distant location to keep it with her as she ran. "I hope they're ready. They're about to have seven billion guests."
That single Noah grinned at her, and she suddenly understood that he was the one that had been her friend on Amber Three. He'd fought on her team that day she'd first died, and he had said he would be there until the end. His promise still held true. He whooped, "That's the spirit!"
Returning her senses to her physical body, she looked around and found that the extending compressed vortex had taken them far out into the fields. Behind her, tens of thousands of men and women had hold of the writhing violet and diamond energies, running with her even as the crowd of billions around them began to thin and disappear. Their blistering pace had taken them even past the spider-forest, which was passing on the left, and it was around that wood—giving it a wide berth—that Venita directed their path. The ethereal blue joining the vortex from her bare hands grew in brightness as she took the reins and began trying to aim the uncooperative thing in the right multi-dimensional direction.
It seemed to be raining somewhat, too, but in a way that made her inherited senses tingle ominously. As she leapt over the shimmering little drops on the ground, she saw that they were actually tiny little rips in the fabric of reality, and tremendous foreboding erupted in her heart. The last time she'd felt something like this had been after the explosion of Her Glory's Heart, which had cast countless ruptured portals all over and nearly caused a ripping-apart of the local region. Her instincts had directed her to use all her strength to close the worst rips with her bare hands—but now she was going to cause a tremendous rift.
She looked to Noah as she ran; he understood. This was the next big threat. Even as she told herself to be extremely careful with the volatile vortex, she realized what it was the engineers of the Second Tribe had truly created.
It was not a portal.
They'd intended it to be a portal.
But it was not.
She learned this at the same moment that everyone else did, save for a split second of absolute inner terror as her inherited senses felt it happening before it became visible.
Like hitting a vast wall of tissue paper, the compressed vortex slammed up briefly and then continued on, turning space itself into a brief cyclone of distorted visuals. Ahead, the blue sky became slightly green past the edges of an enormous shimmering border, an uneven curve similar to the outline of a mountain. That slightly green sky soon raced overhead, leaving the blue one visible only through the horrible schism behind as hurricane gales burst between.
The engineers of the Second Tribe had not created a portal.
The energies had ripped right through the wall of this reality and into the next.
Her inherited instincts screamed critical danger even as she consciously realized what was happening. A second wall of tissue paper ripped wide open right to the clouds above, revealing a pale red sky, under which they now ran. The wind became a tremendous chaotic force, sending her hair whipping around madly and causing people behind her to scream in terror.
It wasn't a portal.
It was a drill.
It was a drill, and it was violently tearing mountain-sized holes between realities, leaving space to flap and rip in the hurricane winds between different atmospheres.
Worse: the red sky tore open, leading them back to a different blue, but here the invading men from the next base branch were walking in great number through a lightly scrubby forest. They were caught completely off-guard, and she turned the compressed vortex sharply, knocking many of them over, but another dozen raised their rifles and began chasing after. They were clearly completely dumbfounded, but somebody somewhere would soon give the order to fire. Anticipating that with her trained soldier's instinct, she curved away, hoping to get the people behind her out of range before that happened.
But, as with her other instinct rising to a fever note as space began to shake, it was only a matter of time. She looked to her friend, but Noah just looked back at her.
She was in charge. There was no one else to consult, and only moments to decide.
He screamed, "What do we do?!"
The vortex drill was extremely dangerous, but it was their only shot. Holding it tight, she pulled hard, curving it away again as the air ripped open to reveal another startled legion of enemy soldiers. The instincts of her father's people told her it was deadly wrong, but her human and soldier experience told her to do it anyway. If somehow they could drill a path around the frozen Empire and the void canyon beyond before the entire region collapsed, they would have a small chance to escape, and small chances were all that the Second Tribe had left. "We keep going!"
Sampson, the Noahs, and the other men and women down the line donned grim expressions. The absurd levity of their task was gone, and it was back to cold hard reality.
But not a one of them held despair in their hearts.
And from that, she took strength. No longer did she try to slow the vortex; now she, and those behind her taking her cue, ran faster, leading it on. If they were going to die, it was not going to be while being dragged kicking and biting—it was going to be at a full run, choosing that path themselves.
Space tore again, opening right into the heart of a startled legion of enemy soldiers and tanks, but this time, she did not curve away. She barreled right at them, screaming with her voice—and the thousands of others behind her.
Amazingly, the enemy began to scatter and flee in terror. It wouldn't last, but, at least for a moment, it seemed like this might actually work.