Here is the first story I ever thought I had complete enough to submit. I did get a few personal comments about the story, but it's been in the trunk for a while now. Now it's out in the wild. I keep getting the urge to rewrite it because there's a lot I like in there. Hope you enjoy it.

STORMING HEAVEN by Stephen Buchheit The slight wind blowing, hiss of compressors, and condensation billowing across the floor was almost too melodramatic. A small chuckle passes through these black muslin prayer flags that comprise my body. Years of planning and manipulation has come to this. The sounds of factory pumps, yet an absence of the general din of workers talking was unnatural. All these people and the only voices belonged to technicians in white lab coats ticking off lists. Those white coats where the only thing that fit in, and at the same time appeared so out of place. The low sun on the snow outside the hanger doors matches the coats. The interior of the hanger, filled on one side with all the electronics equipment, also matches. But all of these don't match the soldiers in military drab and their black porcupine weapons. All the soldiers lined in rows, cross indexed by specialty. It was a shame that this didn't happen even a hundred a fifty years ago, there would be flags and banners, drum and fife corps. There should be at least a bagpiper. The only martial sound, though, is the rustle of canvas and metal scraping on metal. The troops themselves are silent. Outside are more sounds as the heavy mechanized cavalry prepare to follow the first assault through their own gates. As a Major at Gettysburg wrote later as he watched Picket's men charge up the hill toward the wall, "It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw." The large Quonset hut like hanger is full of people and things. All are focused to the far end, away from the doors, towards where the lab coated technicians scurry about their work. The white coated drones step over hissing snakes of power cables, consult instrument readouts, tick off checklists, make final adjustments, and step back and forth through where the portal will open. There is an anticipation and hesitation about their actions. The persistence of memory drives them to distraction. This cold hampers the procession. The thumping of pumps give a staccato rhythm to the scene with an electric drone of purpose. The armored vehicle's engines outside scream in protest, making the sounds of a host of furies. We are this far north to tap the power of three hydro dams. Direct feed lines had been installed from the dams in the summer of the past year. Those lines hum and spit at the ice outside. You could conjure whispering voices from the low noise. Prophetic warnings drowned out by electronics. A purpose of sound, a cacophony of destiny. The cold keeps the sound from traveling too far too fast. A light snow falls silently into the well of sound, sparkling fiercely in the sunlight peering across the horizon, lighting the undersides of the clouds. The only other thing in the hanger is the platform I stand on. A rickety thing covered in frills and cloths in an attempt to make something sparse look voluptuous. I share the platform with other dignitaries and the high level theocrat who was flown in for the occasion. His saffron robes are tight over his warm undergarments. The lesser level dignitaries and high ranking military officials flutter around this representative of the world government, creating a hush murmur of winged conversation. The High Lama himself could not attend due to a scheduling difference but I think the images of the first breach attempt keep him away. This theocrat holds a bored look of tolerance of others less enlightened than himself. So different than the knowing smile of the Buddha. So different than I felt inside. He floated closer to where I stood. "Worried?" It was the voice of history. Taylor's voice, a friendly sound for the last past six years. A voice that I hadn't heard since his death almost a year ago. The memory came unbidden and enveloped the present. "Yea," I said. "It comes down to this doesn't it?" Nobody, including him had any idea of what really was going to happen. It was a similar scene to where we are now, although on a smaller scale. And we were in Phoenix. Only a year ago. A world of sensations away. The vapor condensing over the super conductive coils was more pronounced even in the heavy air-conditioning. The press was mobbing over everything, bothering the technicians who this time are wearing the jeans and tee-shirts that seem to be the uniform of underpaid graduate students everywhere. Other faculty members milled around, poking here, prodding in there, making a general nuisance. "I don't know what you have to worry about, it's my project and my ass on the line," Taylor said, dialing in one of the control devices. "You're degree just depends on your participation, if we don't open a window my whole dissertation needs to be rewritten. My defense goes down the crapper. Four years of graduate work and all I'm left with is theories." That really wasn't true, but that is what Taylor believed. I had been feeding that insecurity to drive him towards this project. After finding him as a disillusioned masters student, working on a physics degree, defeated by the mental harassment of the tenured faculty, I molded him. Shaped his fears and anger, pointed it a problem and kept him at it. Road him hard when he needed it, comforted him when he broke. A piece of clay of my own to craft, dust for shaping. He finished his masters in Quantum Mechanics and went on for a Ph.D. continuing his study of subatomic harmonics. "It'll work," I said, trying to sound reassuring. I could tell he needed support right now. "After all, we've done it before. Sent robots across. It will work." "But the Theocrat," Taylor pointed to the emaciated city leader. He was here to view this potential breakthrough. Really not understanding what was about to happen, or the underlying science but having to report to higher level theocrats, he was poking around asking directionless questions. "What if we have a blow out, or a power failure," Taylor went on. "Robert may die as he crosses over. Any number of things could go wrong and the Theocrat pull the funding out from the University. I might as well go back home then. If they'll even let me go home." Taylor was really getting edgy. I took his hand into mine and stared deeply into his eyes. "Everything will be fine. The equipment will work, Robert will step through and then step back. I know it will work, I'm just nervous. You're the scientist, you should have more confidence in your calculations." "Don't worry my son," the voice of the High Level Theocrat brought me back to the present. "We have a whole army ready to go through when we open the portal. We won't have any of that nastiness we had last time." I smile weakly back at his robes, not meeting his eyes. "I hope not," I say with a trembling voice all the while hoping that it would happen again. To see this smug face meet the fate of Taylor, a small savor compared to the feast of what I truly hoped would happen. I must not be distracted from my goal. "There will be no need to run," the Theocrat said, referring to my cover story. "The soldiers will deal with whatever may come through, and we have ability to cut the power off from the podium. We will be safe," he said. The last said with a tint fear betraying his own worries. It's not easy to defeat the bogeyman of imagination. The construct of fear and paranoia that a collective experience can deliver. I smiled again and nodded to him thanking him for his kindness. If only they knew what was about to happen. Knew of the long years of waiting. Run indeed. I would never run from this, only toward it. At the flower of desire I could only watch and feast. And last time I didn't run. Since I wasn't caught on the video tapes, I had to say something. Last year everything was finally ready to go. Robert stood in front of the window area, the blue of the arcing electricity made him look dramatic. A thin figure standing on the line of realities, limed in fire of the martyrs, smiling confidently at the abyss. The press had taken their places, started their cameras and opened the microphones. The Theocrat passed his blessing, whipping sweat from his nervous brow, and a series of switches were thrown. What happened next was broadcast all over the world at least sixty or seventy times that day. But the video didn't capture what those who where there saw. Humans have this strange belief that they see what is in front of their eyes, that the magic of mirrors and cameras display what is in our souls. Vampires are said to be invisible in mirrors and photos because they have no souls. This philosophy should be reverse, mirrors and photos only give us what light reflects off of, but humans perceive so much more. The cameras didn't see the sword that decapitated Robert as the portal opened, but everybody standing and seated in the room did. Most people there couldn't understand what wielded that sword. Those that survived, running as fast as they could, said they saw two white lights. Some said that the lights were human shaped and that they attacked with both the sword and by hand. When I saw what was coming I made myself as transparent to this plane as possible and watched the carnage. It was much easier then, I was not as tied here as I am right now. The swords cleaved through bodies, hands tossed people into, onto, and against things. On the video replay it was pandemonium. Bodies falling apart, bodies crushed and impaled, bodies being tossed aside by something invisible. It was horribly fascinating as it was replayed over and over. And each time the tape was run, the emotions ran higher and higher until there was an outcry for vengeance. A scream for justice. A noise so loud its buoyancy carried us to this point a year later. I appeared with the survivors outside the building after it was over. Most were too shell shocked to have noticed that I didn't run out with them. As one of the surviving members of the original team, I was asked to continue the research and help open a bigger portal. A portal so large you could drive a tank through. Then, it was several tanks. Finally it was a whole army that would pass through. And it only took seven years. Six years of friendship and one year of mass hysteria. All to get here. The Theocrat was droning on. His voice amplified by area microphones and broadcast so all the troops could hear it plainly. The speech was also broadcast to the troops outside, in front of their own portals and to the press that was now held back. A military film unit was recording this. In case there was no massive carnage on this side, the world could be shown in high definition Technicolor how clean the Fist of the People was. The surgical soldiers, functionaries of the government, never were sullied in the media. Finally the speech ended with a short prayer. I nearly laughed out loud at that. A General stood and walked to the front of the podium. Not knowing what he faced as his soldiers would breach the portal he couldn't offer many words of encouragement beyond, "God speed, and God bless." Then, with a visual command, he pointed to the engineers to engage the machines. White light filled the space from the opened portal. A blue-white blindness leaving illusions burned across the retina, throwing everything to light or shadow. Electric blue and white ghosts danced as Shiva drew the world to a close in a ring of fire. The Omega and the Alpha meet and embraced passionately. Prometheus walked down the Olympus with fire. The presence flowed from the portal and washed over me. The Universe began to die. That glorious, ecstasy of being. The feeling of being filled in warm illumination. That part of me missing until last night when I experienced it for the first time in ageless passing of exile. A sweet drop of the immersion I was looking forward to. The night before this I sat in my small room. The cell carved from the permafrost. There were not many rooms at this base, being so far north. The field technicians laser carved more bunks below the main station when they found out how many people were coming. The rooms were cramped and cloistered. Narrow darknesses of habitation filled with an earthy smell. There was a constant drip as the ground around us thawed from the heating units that brought the temperature up to a chilly 50 degrees. A small lantern swung on a cord from the ceiling as I prepared for the next day and my triumph. I could not even lie down on the bunk provided but sat on the edge as I prepared myself, staring at the wall into places of time and dust. Gathering pieces of consciousness together like so many pieces of cut yarn and weaving a new body after the pattern of the old. I was caught unprepared when the presence took me. I had not felt it for so long. A bliss, peace, and warmth with energy to shake a world loose. A ravaging sense of belonging so far removed from where I was. Like a door opening into noonday sun from a dark room, I was blinded by its intensity, caught in the swirls of belonging. Something that all these lesser creatures, with whom I shared so many years with, took for granted. But like water is only missed when it is taken away. Something denied to me. A taste of mustard seed after millennia of bland food. I fell to my knees from the side of the bed, weakened, crying for the loss. Wanting it closer, wishing it away. "Child," was all that came. A voice so penetrating, every single cell of this body said it at the same time, echoed it through me and repeated it. A word, spoken with compassion, questioningly, possesively, comfortingly and confrontingly loud like a shout in a small metal walled room. Before I could stop it, a sob shook my body. Vibrating to the echo of the voice's passing. Then, the coin turned. The small fire, banked by need, burst into inferno. I looked up to face my feeling. "Child," I questioned through the tears, still welling from my eyes. "Child? You haven't the right to declare me so. For more time than these creatures know I would have begged for that. You are too late now. I have grown, a child no more. "In my prison I have watched this creation," I continued. "I saw many things you would have denied the others. Knew myself as different. Outcast. "To see Michael and Gabrielle last year, reminded me of what I lost. But I could not show myself to them. Could not let my joy of being near them interfere." The wind changed as I gathered my wits, filling what had been knocked out of me before. "I would guess they did what they did on their own, feeling that their sovereignty was about to be violated. They were ever impetuous. If they would have seen me they would have stopped, but I could not let them see me. "Deprived of you, isolated from all of you, I have learned much," I said, standing now. I faced the ceiling for the lack of anything else to focus on. "You once asked me to place this creation before you. To supplant my universe of you with this crass and limited matter. This dreaming potential of dust. To replace my love of you for subservience of this minor reality." I had to breath before continuing. "I didn't understand then. I understand now. This diminished place, this universe of minor dimensions is beyond you. You gave these things a determination you denied the rest of us, and for that this place can go on without you and therefore is beyond your control." Gathering a full head of steam in the absence of response I ranted on. "The worst of it is that this is your embodiment, not just made in your likeness, but made of you. Your flesh. This growing cancer that has will and destiny, but not direction. "I rebelled against the wrong doctrine, the wrong objective. Placed my vision as you asked and saw the pretty shadows dancing against the walls. And for that I have paid ever since. But I will not make the same mistake twice." Quite echoes followed my voice, so I continued on. "Do you know how these creatures here think? How they conjure your image and see only shadowy reflections of themselves. Veiled masks of you adorn their temples and live in them, but they have no ability to grasp the fullness of you. And yet you dote on them, permit them to continue in their denigration. That which you punish me for, you permit them further indulgence. "How many times has their interpretation of you changed? And still they cannot see beyond themselves and to you. Some of these limited creatures understand this, and finding a void between what they know and what they feel, create a new figure between them and you. Do you know that this figure is me? That they have set me up as a straw man, ascribed to me all that they don't understand of you, and direct their hate of this minor existence at me, one who is locked away from the very essence of their beings." A moment passed as I waited for a rebuttal. A quiet time between the blacksmith's hammerfalls and pumping the furnace bellows to reheat the metal. That time when the craftsman examines the piece and decides if the metal needs more work or is finished. "And so I have decided to become what they would have of me," I continued. "Ironic that I should assume the mask they have prepared, don't you think? That which they don't understand has chosen to become what they did understand. That I should limit myself to their perception is laughable. But at least I did so on a grander scale than they could ever guess. "And what have you done for them? Allowed their little wars, appeared to take sides, and generally left them alone. For all they rail and protest against you, mock and try to control you, state their devotion to some small aspect of you while stating just as firmly that they deny the majority of you, and you permit them. They take that for encouragement like their own children believe that thunder causes the lighting. Then they go on to even greater stupidities." I had talked long. "Now you come when I am almost done. I have almost brought my plan to fruition. To join what you have set asunder. To win my original goal and to remove this creation. To exercise this cancer from you and restore the order we knew before this experiment. I will wield the patient across his own knife. An inaccurate way to do surgery I'll admit, but it's a large target and I am not going for finesse. I will drive this creation from you by driving it over you. I will show the others your temerity, and I will bring them to my conclusion. I will restore the order we knew. And you will be set in the center again, and we will know contentment, like before. This dust will be no more. "You can not stop what I have begun. I have seen these creature's will, known it as my own and have set it to motion. "I know you can't or won't interfere with this will," I went on. "And from that small oversight, I will destroy them. I will remove that which stands between us by forcing you to destroy it. Force you to crack the mold of their ignorance. Remove this wall of mere flesh between us. And then, the order we once knew will be ours again. It is a choice between you and them, and I have made the decision the same way again. You are my choice, now and always. "And now I will force you to my side. This time my conclusion is different. My goal is not to rebel against you, but to immolate that which came between us. To restore which was before, I will destroy them. Or I will be undone and end this unbearable state." I was quiet then. I felt saddened, cheapened at my own defense. I had run on. The presence withdrew, the prison door slammed shut, and the isolation returned. I felt like all the energy had left me. I wept. Openly and fully I wept for many hours at the emptiness that for such a short time had refilled itself. That feeling I had so long missed, a hollowness of not even being able to feel oneself had replaced. But now, with the portal opened, and I felt it once again. A baptism of emotion. I looked up from the rickety platform I stood on. The memory of last night fading in the light that streamed through the portal. The troops stand in stark relief as they charge forward. Black and white shadows moving in unison. Outside there are the sounds of tanks rumbling and permafrost being tossed into the air. Even with all the sound it seems quiet, like an early dawn when sounds are muted in expectation of what is coming. Minutes pass in anticipation. The sounds outside rise and fall as the mechanized troops form in front of the gates and then pass through. Inside the hut the first wave of troopers has passed through and the second ranks are forming up quickly. The technicians have a routine about their work now. A methodical clock work of administration. There are no sounds from the other side of the portal. No screams, no explosions, nothing but light. There is a slow exhalation from the platform as all those in attendance sigh in relief from not being attacked. The Theocrat and attendants begin to breathe again, not remembering holding their breath. I leave my seat and fall in line with the second wave of troops moving forward at a brisk march. Others from the platform slowly follow my example. Marching ever forward into the chasm of knowing and shadows. All of these lesser beings with me can not feel their universe dying around them. The on-rush of nothingness consuming existence from the edges, I can feel the stars, whole galaxies snuffed out. Even here, close to the center, I can feel the weave of Creation unraveling. Heaven and Earth can not mix without some transfiguration. And if they try, Heaven will win. I am victorious. All will be as it was before God dreamt this Creation into being. My steps feel lighter as I approach the white noise of the fabric of reality being split asunder. A clarity of purpose driving my footfalls. Every step closer, with every thing devoured by the portal, this existence is lessened. I am defying their great thinkers. Matter is being lost in the universe and is not being transferred to energy. The emptiness, the edge of creation is closing in on us. These things walking beside me have no concept of their martyrdom. I am tossing them on the flames of their own existence. To dust they go. And when all is done, there will be no dust, no world, no Sun, no galaxy, no Universe. All of Creation will be no more. I am coming home. The electricity driving the portal is almost palpable now. I feel a tingling across my new skin as I go forward. Their Sun is gone. The light is nearly blinding as I step through into my home, a place I had fallen from so long ago. Lighting dances across my vision as I pass the terminus, bees dance in my ears, an age of longing and regret is washed from me, a summer shower of redemption. And destiny is served from a small plate. We are home.