Page 349 of Light Leech

Fewer people occupied the smaller halls of the top floor. Those who did were occupied with their own business in the neurospace or in quiet conversations, granting us a moment of anonymity. A massive, gold-gilded door stood before us as the hall wrapped around the perimeter of the room in the floor’s center. Jade pendants and statues adorned the hall up until the door itself, which was engraved with dragons and emperors of ancient Chinese legend. It looked like it had been pulled from that ancient history itself, save the lens in its center that shined a white light upon us before opening and permitting our entrance.

We stepped in after the Eunoch. My heart pounded and my hand was slick against Naoma’s increasingly firm grip.

We passed through a thin veil of light that obscured the inner portion of the room. Beyond it, we saw a titanic man upon a violet-infused golden throne atop a crimson dais. A plethora of servants surrounded him, all with a variety of inhuman implants on their otherwise human bodies. One approached him on mechanical tentacles in place of legs, offering him a steak as he tossed the remains from the previous steak to a servant whose head had been transformed into a bowl. A female servant wiped the steak’s juices from his mouth, extending her arm twice as long as any other human appendage.

He looked at us, then tossed a half-eaten stake into the servant’s bowl. A female servant with multiple bushy tails rushed to him with a bowl of water for him to dip his hands. One just like her, though male, stood at the ready to dry his hands with towels. The whole time he cleaned his hands, the man stared at us from beneath bushy eyebrows. He wore a minaguan crown with tassels hanging down to the middle of his forehead.

The tailed woman set her bowl between her and her male counterpart as they cleaned any drop of steak juice or sauce from the superhuman muscles of the man’s chest, then adorned him with crimson longpao dragon robes. Yellow light glowed from the silk as Arabasian characters pulsed and images of dragons moved around the clouds on the fabric.

Despite the abundance of indulgent food and substances piled up in multiple bowls next to the bowl servant, the man was beyond human perfection. Every visible muscle was flawless. Looking at his face, I could not tell if he was thirty or seventy. Either would be a compliment to the ageless god that stood to meet us.

Naoma pulled me forward to stand beside the Eunoch. We bowed after the titan, who then invited us to sit on two mats brought before his throne by his servants.

Upon closer inspection, I understood better why reality rejected the perfection of his image. Despite the flawless replication, his skin was not real, at least most of it. Thin lines of chrome ran down the sides of his face and increased in width as it reached his chest as if there were a zipper down the center of his torso. He had a few plates on his arms and hands, like most people who enjoyed implants, though I could see nothing suggesting their purpose. His eyes did not attempt humanity, but more so embraced the dragon that he loved, as seen by the multiple dragon light constructs that swam around the ceiling like koi.

There was a slight metallic ring to the bass of his voice, yet I still felt he was more human than and. “I never worried about your producer’s restraints. I am a patient man and knew we would eventually meet, Neon Idol.”

With the slight cock of her chin and spike in her voice, Naoma spoke as the Idol she had once been. “You’re that confident in yourself?”

The man smirked. “I’ve been around long enough to see my desires play out.”

“And how long is that?”

“My dynasty has stretched through many eras.”

“Do you always play like you’re some emperor? Is that why you enjoy weaving plots for the world’s hottest names?”

“Oh, I am no story. The world only fails to accept the truth of my narrative. Enough about me, though. The plots are for you and a world that can’t be satisfied with reality. Why let our audience suffer normalcy when we can fake a celebrity’s death? Spin the tale of a scandalous love affair? Blame one of my enemies for abusing one of my celebrities?”

“And what do you gain with that?”

“Me? Nothing. That attention is for you. For my people.”

“And you see yourself as an emperor? Is that the point of this farce? So that we all might bow before you, Emperor Zhou?”

His smile turned to sour disappointment. “Are you going to refer to me as your enemy when I have invited you into my home?”

“How am I to understand your narrative without any prior knowledge?”

He smirked. “You think I will believe that you dug your way into an invitation without knowing my customs or who I am?”

“I’ve heard rumors, but looking at you now, I can see that the stories don’t do you justice. You are magnificent–”

“Don’t waste your time flattering me.”

“Then tell me who you are. Why Shou versus Zhou? Who are you?”

“I am Di Xin. I am the great king and emperor who orchestrates this Dynasty. I am also known as King Shou or plainly Shou but have been mocked as ‘Zhou’ by those who do not see as I do.”

“And what is all of this?“ She gestured around the room, but I could tell that her question referred to more.

“The Dynasty?”

She nodded.“It’s not much more than you see. A collective of elites who need to escape from the eyes of the public to live their own lives here, no matter how brief these experiences may be. But my hand stretches beyond these little parties. These narratives I spin are for the benefit of us all. We are all a collection of stories, actors in a grand play, people who guide the citizens of the world through the stories we tell. You have as much of a story as a star athlete. Each of you have a purpose to play in swaying the public through what they call ‘entertainment.’”

“And what do you call it?”

He raised an eyebrow.