Siddhārtha had appeared behind Asura where she stood on an outcrop of stone.
“And what is this cakravarti-rājan of which you speak?”
“The Brahmins can tell you as well as I. He is the King of Kings, the master of karma. He stands outside this world and has viewed its life and growth for more than one trillion years.”
“And have you ever met this cakravarti-rājan?”
“My prince. No one has seen the cakravarti-rājan. Nor do we know where he might be. Yet all who know his name know that, not long from now, the cakravarti-rājan will appear among us. And when he does he will rule over all as the one great God, the Creator, he who transcends karma.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Now she faced not Siddhārtha, but the King of Kings himself.
“My king,” Asura said, “am I to understand that you have existed here, upon this single planet in the Andromeda galaxy, and that from this place you presided over the rise and fall of many, many other planets?”
“My schemes and structures have all crumbled and scattered. I have stood here on this ancient slope, devoid of all life, watching the universe transform into something beyond the ability of my power to contain. I watched those who believed that Maitreya would come to their world and save them . . . I watched them build a statue to their supposed savior within the Pearl Palace, as I watched Maitreya himself assume direct authority over the kingdom of Atlantis. He caused the man Jesus of Nazareth to believe that he, Maitreya, was a god in heaven above, and from here I watched Jesus perform miracles in his name. Asura, even among my best and brightest followers, there were some who believed Maitreya’s words and laid the blame for the ruination of the world at your feet.
“Śakra, Vajra, all fought against the wasting of your world—your universe, believing in the Pure Land promised them by Maitreya. Yet they never once thought to seek that which gives birth to ruination in the first place.”
Asura thought back on the long road she had traveled, the vast span of time during which all of these events had taken place. It all seemed part of an even longer voyage, one with no beginning and no end.
“Let me ask you one thing, my king.”
“Yes?”
“What exactly are these beings that desire the destruction of our universe? From whence did they come?”
“Before I explain, I must ask you whether you have ever thought about the limits of your reality.”
“I have. I would assume they lie at the edge of the expanding universe, where the rate of expansion has reached the speed of light, forming a single, defined space, like an enormous sphere.”
“True—but this is not a complete explanation. If we speak of a finite space, no matter how large, we must also accept a larger, infinitely vast space outside it, of which your universe is only a part.”
The universe encompassed billions upon billions of galaxies. What did it matter if it was expanding or contracting, or doing something else entirely? What was the use of such knowledge?
“Time is the same, you know. The time that defines the reality inside those expanding limits of space is just a part of the time that exists in the infinity beyond. The flow of time began at the origin point of the universe you know, two hundred billion years ago, and its flow ceases two hundred billion light-years in the distance. Yet that is merely a fragment of the transcendent time stretching out into infinity.”
The voice of the cakravarti-rājan was filled with the regret of one who had watched the entirety of the universe’s long journey and knew its eventual fate.
“So, King of Kings, perhaps then you can tell me who Shi is? The absolute being who controls this transcendent time of which you speak?”
A long silence followed. The blue light falling on the bleak landscape around her, the great unbroken stillness, seemed increasingly bizarre, like something that belonged to another universe entirely. If this truly was the place from which the cakravarti-rājan had observed all change in the vastness of space she knew, then here, she thought, even a god would be little more than one aspect of that change.
Again, she heard the cakravarti-rājan’s voice within her mind.
“Once, Asura, I had a vision. Though I do not know if it was a true vision, or just a shadow drawn in my weary mind . . . Perhaps I never saw it at all. I am no longer sure. Yet I remember the contents of this vision quite clearly. I will show it to you now, Asura—I will give it into your mind directly. I’m sure its meaning will be very different for you than it was for me. But that is to be expected. You, who have already traveled so far, will have to choose for yourself whether you will return whence you came or continue along a far more difficult path than any you have known.”
As the words of the King of Kings ended, the vision began:
Wrapped in incandescent light, two spiral galaxies quietly devoured a third. Then the three galaxies became one, advancing toward the heart of another galactic cluster. Radioactive nebulae—the remnants of other galactic encounters—shimmered with light, moving through the full spectrum of colors as they gradually faded.
The scale grew greater and greater still. Now, several thousand galactic clusters swarmed in every direction, drifting at near the speed of light. The radiation they emitted destroyed other clusters billions of light-years distant.
The darkness of intergalactic space gradually lost its hue, as the drifting galactic clusters lost their shape and transformed into flowing bands of light. Coruscating bands of brightness twisted in the darkness, amid occasional blasts of brilliance. Again the darkness and light reclaimed their territories, then all began to brighten rapidly. Still the light was organized into bands . . .
Eventually, the true darkness came. All light was extinguished, making it hard for Asura to tell whether her point of view was in motion or completely still.
An immeasurably long time passed—the kind of time span during which the Milky Way could have emerged from the energy at the center of the universe and formed into a massive spiral galaxy, which then expended all of its energy and faded to nothing.
Asura herself became a spiral galaxy, adrift in the void. She sensed that she had already lost most of her interstellar material, and the vast majority of her stars had released all their energy, subsiding into cold, hard shells.
Suddenly, she felt herself flying through space at a frightening speed. It was unclear whether she was actually traveling faster than the speed of light, or whether the entire universe was moving. She could sense that Siddhārtha and Orionae had joined her in this changed reality.
So they made it after all.
Asura realized that they were watching over her, protecting her.
She heard their voices.
Here is the beginning of all existence.