Disclaimer: The tale that you are about to read has been illegally extracted from the Orion Five’s incomplete galactic archives and therefore any information provided in it should be deemed non-canonical concerning historic databases that document alternate timelines for educational purposes due to the possibility of third-party alterations.
Trigger Warning: Contains Strong Language, References to Rape, and Graphic Violence
Even for the emperor who had amassed more wealth than any capitalist in the multiverse could ever hope to acquire, the technological possibilities during his reign were only limited by the progression made of the Earth that he was born. On one particular Earth in the middle of the Mali Empire’s height, a group of inter-dimensional hippie backpackers comprised of several advanced species taught him about the scientific discoveries on their home planets and bartered with him books that they often read throughout their travels in exchange for half of his wealth. The language of these books automatically translated themselves for the reader and the knowledge that would be gained in the course of this time period due to remarkable studies would vastly change the future in ways that Gods did not predict.
This paradisal world that Mansa Musa would be responsible for conceiving is referred to by many as Earth-Eden because it has the lowest crime rate, unemployment, and homelessness in the multiverse. Its security measures are also the highest and foreign visitors, humanoid or extraterrestrial life, from outside of the planet have been banned in order to maintain relatively peaceful relations among classes. Deities have also found the rarity of war and terrorist acts to be notable contrasts to other Earths. Most believe this could be attributed to the millions of artificial trees that produce a synthetic version of Hímoxide-8, a chemical that was extracted from an unknown plant, known to lower the levels of aggression in humans and significantly enhance cognition.
On Mansa Musa’s deathbed, he left plans for a unique mansion to be discretely constructed, not
on land or in the sea, but somewhere in space where only his descendants could access it and Gods could not see. This mansion would ultimately be built over the period of a millennium in a pocket dimension by tricking genies out of their lamps after carefully placing them on a Heaven Mu symbol that was thickly drawn with the blood of chupacabras. This would be orchestrated in a temple with the assistance of an inter-dimensional witch who was cast out for practicing hoodoo from The Book of Alucalb. She would drain them of their energy and use it to fuel a portal machine underground that would allow parallel realities to intersect through entrances of the property above. To pass through these entrances into this mansion would require genetic compatibility with Mansa Musa. Otherwise, all that would be seen is what was physically designed on the surface.
The temple would eventually become a three-story house with a distinctive Taurus Cape buffalo door knocker among many in a suburban neighborhood populated by many upper-middle-class African-American residents, and one day, five counterparts of a man descending from Mansa Musa named Guus L. Makuto IV would find themselves among one another while in its living room following a lengthy ride inside their respective home vacuum elevators once stepping into them alone.
The buff clean-shaven Billionaire wore a black turtleneck with white khaki pants, a modestly thin gold chain, and a magnetic hematite bracelet on his right-hand wrist. A stunningly beautiful Khoisan humanoid female robot with Black pigtails known as Nia shined his dark brown dress shoes while on her knees as he sat on a long curved sofa in the living room, observing the other counterparts through security cameras that his tablet was connected to.
The anxious Vagabond rummaged through the kitchen’s refrigerator in grey sweatpants, a matching color hoodie, and black tactical boots. He also wore a broken leather watch decorated with music note symbols behind its glass screen and wore a cap to cover hair that he had naturally loc’d using a military brush.
The amazed Student browsed the mansion’s library, which was stocked full of thousands of books. Many of them were from the Library of Alexandria and the House of Wisdom. The student had on rectangle glasses, a white dress shirt with a black sweater vest over top of it, dark blue jeans, and knockoff Nike Lebron Soldier 9 IX PRM sneakers. He constantly squeezed
a baseball stress ball in his right hand and at times would loosen up a wedding band on the ring finger.
The Miscreant sported a short rugged goatee and mustache with three diamonds in his right ear, a white studded punk-style leather jacket over his wife-beater, and black cargo pants long enough to cover his ankle before reaching the Dexter Comfort Crosby slip-on loafers on his feet. Holstered on his side was a pair of nunchaku. Unlike the other counterparts, The Miscreant’s hands were covered in tattoos, which The Billionaire noticed when The Miscreant took off the white silk du-rag on his head to moisturize his cornrows with a spray bottle.
The Billionaire placed together then parted both his middle finger and thumb on the section of his touch-screen tablet viewing The Miscreant from a security camera to enlarge the screen. He could now hear that The Miscreant was listening to a documentary on the legacy of Earth-Eden’s Mansa Musa in the Mansion’s museum. The museum itself was filled with priceless artifacts, recovered weapons, statues, and exotic plants from across the galaxy.
“Lucky you to be born in such a luxurious reality.” The Miscreant said after looking directly at the nano security camera on the ceiling.
This briefly spooked The Billionaire before he calmly responded with “You would get bored of mine, my friend” over the intercom. “Too many rules and not enough chaos…”
“Why are we all here?” asked The Vagabond as he sat beside The Billionaire with a cold bottle of Midnite Gulu kombucha in his hand.
“Wait until the others are done taking their tour of the mansion so I can answer that question without the strong probability of repeating myself.” said The Billionaire. “You and I are aware of what this place is, but the one from Capital Earth, may be feeling a bit overwhelmed.”
The Vagabond gulped down his bottle of Midnite Gulu Kombucha before handing it to Nia for her to discard.
“It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.” said The Vagabond. “The CIA is still looking for me, so what better place to hide than in between somewhere and nowhere.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be able to pick up where you left off.” The Billionaire said sarcastically. “Our shared abode exploits the confines of time and every hour we spend in this mansion, is a second, outside of it.”
“But you already know this–“
The Miscreant slowly walked behind The Vagabond and put his hands on both of his shoulders.
“You know…I still can’t believe that I would ever be a fucking spook, even with all of the foreign white anorexic-lookin’ pussy you’ve probably gotten.” The Miscreant whispered in The Vagabond’s ear before knocking the cap off of his head and sitting down on the opposite curved sofa in a slumped posture.
“Forgive me if I appear shocked that an embarrassing lowlife counterpart such as yourself is intelligent enough to access files stored openly on this mansion’s computer mainframe.” The Vagabond said, unamused then letting seconds pass of him and The Miscreant staring at one another staring.
A brief smirk then crossed The Vagabond’s face.
“Did following in our former marine father’s footsteps finally make you a man?” The Miscreant tauntingly asked while smiling back.
“Did killing ours make you one?” The Vagabond replied, slightly irritated.
The Student cautiously walked into the living room with a closed book from the library in his hand and kept a safe distance from the three other counterparts on the sofa looking at him.
“Hey, I read about you too!” The Miscreant exclaimed. “You’re the pussy!”
“Don’t mind him.” interrupted The Billionaire. “Have a seat so that we can get started.”
The Miscreant patted a spot near him on the sofa and The Student reluctantly sat down beside The Miscreant with the book laid on his lap.
The Billionaire, while holding a remote control, explained how each one of them is a descendant of Mansa Musa and recounted the history of Earth-Eden’s rise to preeminence by using holographic imagery that a floating cerulean blue sphere presented in the middle of their curved sofas.
The miscreant inappropriately yawned. “Tell us something we don’t know,” he said.
“Like how did we get here?” The Student asked, briefly puzzling everyone with his North American accent as opposed to their distinct African accents, while only The Vagabond spoke with a slight British accent due to often being stationed in Manchester, England U.K.
“I re-activated the Aztec obsidian mirrors that the machine generates portals through after they had been disabled for centuries.” The Billionaire answered. “Then I waited for you all to find the elevator below it and beamed you to the mansion.”
“Fascinating.” The Student thought to himself before asking out loud “But why aren’t there more than four of us?”
“Aside from the discovery of this location being dependent on chance, it was imperative to me that I secure survivors of a serial killer, who seems to be picking us off, one by one.” The Billionaire said.
The Vagabond stood up.
“I suppose this is where I chime in,” he said before The Billionaire handed him the remote control.
The Vagabond switched the holographic visual on display to a device called “The Breacher”.
“On Earth-Bond, I discovered that my government was planning on using this contraption to infiltrate Earth-Eden and recover technology for the purpose of advancing our military by thousands of years.” The Vagabond said. “This was during a mission in Algeria, to assassinate the chief scientific officer who oversaw its invention and survived a poisonous gas leak.”
“Wait, multiverse travel is normal on your guys’ worlds?” The Student perplexingly asked.
“Politicians and the prisoners forced to build infrastructure on uninhabited planets and transport them through dimensions for species on dying worlds are well acquainted with the concept, yes.” The Miscreant said. “Some like mine, yours, and Daddy Warbucks over there have bans.” The Miscreant looked at The Billionaire and gave him a thumbs up.
“As I was saying, I completed my assignment not too long after acquiring this information.” The Vagabond continued.
“Tell us why you were blacklisted!” obnoxiously shouted The Miscreant. The Miscreant then nudged The Student’s shoulder with his elbow. “This is the good part, kid.”
“Apparently, I talk in my sleep, which I learned shortly after having relations with a foreign journalist who I regrettably did not mindwipe.” The Vagabond said. “What followed was a burn notice, however, I fortunately still had millions of dollars worth of SnipeCoin in my crypto wallet that I converted and used to purchase the house that masks this mansion.”
The Miscreant held back laughter and covered his mouth with the back of his hand while looking away.
“What does the Breacher have to do with a serial killer?” The Student asked.
“We believe someone under the orders of their government is using the Breacher to find our ex-spy and is willing to kill several of us until they do.” The Billionaire answered.
The Vagabond switched the holographic imagery of “The Breacher” to a video of the three-story house, riddled with bullets.
“Whoever tried to tie up loose ends in my world is aware of the existence of this mansion and must have reverse-engineered the technology necessary to travel through parallel realities with The Breacher.” The Vagabond said. “Any other scenario would have raised more red flags than an invading army of Martians.”
“You’re joking about that Martian part, right?” The Student curiously asked The Vagabond. The Vagabond, The Miscreant, and The Billionaire stared at The Student.
“So, anyway…what are we going to do about this?”
“Before the infamous Ja’Net Tsujimura was taken care of, she hesitantly provided my company, Makuto Industries, with the algorithm necessary to hack the consciousness of a dreamer, in a trade for secretly funding her now-defunct operation.” The Billionaire said.
“I then had my team of scientists reconfigure an astral projection device with the algorithm and seek me out in other realities so that I could direct who I could here as they slept.”
The Student felt violated after he made sense of it all and visibly seemed disgusted. He wondered how many of his actions were actually manipulated by The Billionaire because he based certain decisions on fears or suggestions that were repeated themes during dreams. Then the thought of it all being a lie occurred. The Billionaire noticed The Student’s facial expressions and was unsurprised by his show of disbelief when eyebrows were skeptically raised.
“1 80-90-35-3, 18-190-35-3, 80-19-35-3.” The Billionaire recited. The Student’s mouth briefly dropped.
These were numbers that The Student had once been told in the exact same sequence during a dream by a stranger who rescued him from a burning house that he could not get a good look at to describe it.
“How do I know that I’m dreaming right now?” asked The Student.
“You would believe him if you were.” The Vagabond answered.
“You think a lot about Marisol more than any of us did.” The Billionaire said. “It was far from challenging to make you codependent enough to get you two engaged with the promise of a three-story house.”
“I saw her burn alive before you saved me.” The Student told The Billionaire.
“I should have thought about that!” The Miscreant said aloud as he smacked his own forehead. “See, I kept the fucking cunt as a pet for the crew after I found out she had cheated on me but
had to put her down with a shotgun to the stomach when she got pregnant.”
“You’re lying…” The Student said, looking at The Miscreant with a serious demeanor.
“That boy Garcia’s not just a friend, friend.” The Miscreant whispered in The Student’s ear. “Hogtie the bitch like the chubby pig she is, then pound that tight little Mexican asshole of hers until your dick’s soaked in blood, and bust the fattest nut you can on her caked-up babyface before taking your balls back, son.”
The Student looked away in an attempt to ignore The Miscreant but found a hand grabbing his crotch. The Miscreant squeezed The Student’s hardened cock until he had his full attention.
“If you don’t fuck life, it’ll fuck you!”
“If you’re going to suck him off too, let me know so that I can leave the room.” The Vagabond chimed in.
The Miscreant let go of The Student’s private parts and stood up.
“Don’t act like you’re above voyeurism now, you fuckin’ spook.” retorted The Miscreant. “The only difference between our tapes is I jus’ beat my meat to mine, while you blackmail bipolar mudsharks married to old-ass senators, like Jocelyn Bloom.”
The Vagabond golf clapped as he stood up and walked over to The Miscreant’s face.
“Once again, your ability to skim through a few paragraphs and retain a line or two of information about my life to distort for the sake of spewing a forgettable comeback tickles me pink.” The Vagabond said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you murdered a family that was living in the house on your world.”
“How close, Lead Investigator Lee!” The Miscreant said.
“My crew and I stumbled upon a couple of spoiled housewives to ravage after getting them lifted, but we had to let ’em go when they figured out who we were.”
The Miscreant went into great detail about carefully dismembering their bodies on durable plastic wrap covering an abandoned hotel room’s floor and selling the two older women’s organs on the black market. The Vagabond remained unphased by the nonchalant attitude that The Miscreant used to discuss the gruesome process of skinning their flesh to be used as cannibal bait and vulgar references to the privileged female victims he had coerced into a gang rape. The Billionaire was mildly annoyed but knew that The Vagabond could restrain himself and didn’t have The Miscreant’s impulsive tendencies. The Student scooted farther away from the two in case a fight were to have broken out.
“Ironically, one of ’em was married to an ex-pat livin’ in a Sundown town that we ransacked not too long after.”
“Cinemoors Studio shot an indie movie about it on your world…” The Billionaire shared with The Student. “The Last Sundown Town Up North.”
“Doesn’t the lead antagonist get his dick ripped off by one of the teenage daughters’ teeth after she seduces him with a blowjob?” asked The Student.
“And then later has his doped-up tattooist girlfriend tug a jackknife in his back until he peaks as they kiss!” The Vagabond chortled.
“How oddly romantic…”
The Miscreant threw a fast cross at The Vagabond which was met with a Wing Chun arm lock and a strong elbow strike to the face that knocked several teeth out of The Miscreant’s mouth. The Vagabond then mercilessly snapped The Miscreant’s arm, causing him to shriek in agony while everyone noticed a bone sticking out of his forearm. The Vagabond ended the fight by front-kicking The Miscreant back on the couch.
“I’ve fought henchmen who have lasted longer than you.”
“You’re just going to let him get away with this?!” shouted The Miscreant at The Billionaire.
“I have no quarrel with any man who speaks even less than I do.” The Billionaire responded while standing up and pointing at The Student.
“I’m more concerned about why out of every single book in this mansion’s library, he is holding The Book of Alucalb.”
The Student was puzzled and told everybody that he had selected the book based on its strangely unique text-less cover art, which showcased a myriad of mythological African creatures at war on a neon-lit post-apocalyptic battlefield full of dismembered human corpses scattered across the ground. While all four of these Guus L. Makuto IVs were atheists, they shared similar upbringings that involved being raised by parents in a religious cult and thus maintained a healthy paranoia concerning what’s generally considered to be supernatural beliefs. The Billionaire insisted that he did not know the mansion’s library was in possession of it, otherwise, he would have securely locked it in a vault.
“While without this grimoire, we would not have met one another today, it is imperative that I place it somewhere safe.”
The Student tremblingly handed The Book of Alucalb to The Billionaire who had Nia take it away. The Miscreant admired her long browned caramel skin legs in black peep-toe cut-out bootie stilettos and lifted up her faux suede lace-up skirt to take a gander at her large pantiless bubble butt as she passed him by.
“You have an eye for design when it comes to fleshlights.” The Miscreant said to The Billionaire. “But I bet you’ve programmed it to make conversation, so can we trust that android with the book?”
“Her…” The Billionaire corrected the pronoun that The Miscreant used to refer to Nia. “And she is an extension of my mind unless I install a specific personality in her programming to break up the monotony of servitude.”
“Since you’re so proficient at pulling strings, why haven’t you located our assassin yet?” The Vagabond questioned The Billionaire.
“If I could triangulate The Breacher’s signal, it wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to pinpoint the primary location where it’s activated and find our man.” The Billionaire said. “That would be the easiest part, and the hardest requires a layout of the area so that an escape
without too much of a fuss is achievable.”
“Obviously, only one of us can go.” stated The Billionaire.
Enough time had passed while the group slept, and The Breacher was tracked down to an underground base in an Algerian Intelligence Headquarters, in The Vagabond’s reality. Nia woke them all up from their quarters and they gathered in the living room one more time. The Student complained about how warm it was where he lay and awkwardly made a joke about how space should be too cold for the type of heat that he endured. No one paid him any mind.
“It would seem America no longer has the Breacher and you can be thankful that your own government is not hunting one of its former employees.”
The Billionaire put his hand on The Vagabond’s shoulder and gave him a special mobile phone.
“The entire map is on there, along with plenty of forged documents for identification, and an account that holds more SnipeCoin than you’ll need to purchase from local arms dealers in the country under the table.”
The Vagabond slipped the phone into his hoodie’s right pocket, began to walk toward the elevator, and stopped.
“You’re coming with me.” The Vagabond said. “You’re under arrest for collaborating with a terrorist organization and if you come peacefully, I won’t have any other charges added for helping us retrieve the Breacher.”
“You were never burned.” The Billionaire said.
The Vagabond turned around, took out the phone that The Billionaire gave him, then placed it on the floor, and crushed it with the heel of his boot.
“As a show of good faith…” The Vagabond said.
“Well, color me fuckin’ mind blown!” The Miscreant exclaimed. His arm was in a cast and the teeth that The Vagabond had knocked out were replaced with gold fillings.
“You may have fooled the boy into buying your preposterous tale, but I’m well aware you concocted it to have me fetch the Breacher for you.” The Vagabond said. “The CIA did in fact burn me to lure you into devising a predictable plan that involved an attempt on my life, in this case, by your crony.”
“So we’re not being systematically wiped out?” The Student asked.
“No, we were just being told lies by a tech vulture and a dickless bandit after what’s between your legs.” The Vagabond answered.
“The brilliance of using this mansion’s technology to reacquire what your government stole from another and ultimately implement it in a reconnaissance mission against the wishes of mine was unexpected.” admitted The Billionaire as he walked over to The Vagabond.
The Vagabond whistled with his fingers and The Vagabond turned his head to the right to find Nia with a smoking gun in her hand. The Vagabond then noticed a tranquilizer dart in his neck.
“You’ve been injected with a very high dosage of Midazolam, which I estimate will kick-in, in about thirty seconds or less.”
The Billionaire quickly punched The Vagabond in his gut, then grabbed the back of his head, and kneed him in the face. The Vagabond stumbled, fell on his back, and tried crawling to the elevator before passing out.
When The Vagabond woke up moments later, he was strapped down to an operating table in an infirmary, staring at a holographic surgery screen with the top of his head completely opened as Nia stood over top of him on one side of him. On the other side, was The Miscreant, who took a hit of a blunt that he was smoking and coughed into his arm while sprinkling ashes from it onto The Vagabond’s exposed and wired brain. The Vagabond screamed and struggled frantically while The Miscreant laughed maniacally at his pain. Nia suddenly grabbed The Miscreant’s throat with one of her hands and raised him in the air.
“My apologies for that, hero!” The Billionaire exclaimed over the intercom. “Your suffering will cease when the computer has finished copying your memories and we replace the brain in your
skull with an artificial replication that I can tap into like Nia’s.”
“Let me fucking down, man!” yelled The Miscreant, unintentionally urinating in his pants.
“Your consciousness will be separated and discarded momentarily.” said The Billionaire, ignoring The Miscreant’s pleas. “Consider me truthfully informing you of my plan a professional courtesy.”
“We’re still not on the same wavelength, but I’ll fix that in a second.” The Vagabond said looking at Nia who then crushed The Miscreant’s larynx and tossed him at a wall. Nia then unstrapped The Vagabond from his operation table and disabled the siphoning procedure via the holographic screen in front of The Vagabond.
“It’s hard to detect a virus when the software is familiar with it as an administrator.” The Vagabond said ripping out the wires attached to his brain. Nia closed and sealed the top of The Vagabond’s head by transforming her fingers into medical tools. The Vagabond stumbled off of his operating table with Nia’s help, limped over to The Miscreant, kneeled down beside him, and checked his pulse.
The Vagabond was dead.
“While the implant that the government installed in my cerebral cortex started slowly rewriting code as soon as I entered the mansion, I couldn’t assume control until you shut off your firewall…which I never thought you would be so unwise to do.”
The Billionaire did not say a word and watched as Nia led The Vagabond outside and to the location of The Student, who was passed out from shock on an operating table after clearly having his penis and testicles surgically removed.
“The lunatic didn’t have money.” The Billionaire stated over the intercom. “He went on a rant about needing a do-over with his unmentionables, and while I felt sorry for the boy, his path is nothing special.”
“Why is he still alive?” The Vagabond asked.
“Because I haven’t torched the body and sent it to your government.” The Billionaire answered. “That’s where you would have come in, but I just had to have someone on my IQ level to talk to!”
“I would say don’t flatter yourself, but that’s all we do.” The Vagabond said.
An elevator sound was heard in the background and The Vagabond told Nia to care for The Student when he woke up as he ran into the living room to find that the elevator had been used. The Vagabond scanned its panel and saw that The Billionaire chose to travel to Capital Earth as it required the least amount of charge to generate a portal. When The Vagabond tried to choose it as a destination, he was met with a notification telling him there were insufficient resources and thus was incapable of following him. The Billionaire had sealed the gateway to the elevator on The Student’s world with a spell that he had memorized from the Book of Alucalb under the assumption that his wealth in cryptocurrency would be accessible. However, unbeknownst to The Billionaire, the type of cryptocurrencies that he owned did not exist in The Student’s world, and The Billionaire became furious when he realized that he was stuck with the identity of The Student indefinitely.
The Vagabond knew that he couldn’t return to Earth-Bond and report an unsuccessful mission to his superiors without a solution that would benefit his government, and the castrated Student needed to return home, so The Vagabond proposed an untested swap of minds across dimensions using the algorithm Ja’Net Tsujimura had supposedly provided The Billionaire, counting on a blend of fact and falsehood from his dishonest recollection of transpired events. This unethical exchange between consciousnesses would place The Student and The Billionaire and each other’s bodies as they slept. Allowing The Vagabond’s government to arrest The Billionaire, and The Student to be returned to Capital Earth in an uncastrated figure.
The Vagabond’s government desperately approved and the transfer overnight on Earth-Bond was a success! The Billionaire was now in the custody of Earth-Bond’s American government and awaiting trial for a cornucopia of federal offenses, including galactic violations. The Vagabond was reinstated in the CIA as the Director of National Intelligence and assisted with the allocation of the mansions’ technological resources for his country’s military without disclosing a decision to confiscate The Book of Alucalb for himself. Earth-Eden awaited an invasion that
never occurred.
While The Student had nothing to show for his time in the mansion other than The Billionaire’s muscular physique, mature voice, and clothes, he also gained an astounding eidetic or commonly known as photographic memory, after drinking from the water Fountain of Mnemosyne near an indoor garden during the night that he stayed at the mansion. He spent a month rewriting every single page from the Book of Alucalb and had his younger brother Gordon, who was a comic book illustrator, draw its cover’s exact artwork. Once the book was reproduced, Guus reopened his house’s vacuum elevator’s gateway, traveled in it back to the mansion, and has never been seen again on that Earth since.
Gordon was given the spell to unknowingly re-seal the gateway and Guus made him promise to use it after his departure. Gordon did so in jest…
Whether this particular Guus L. Makuto IV abandoned his Earth to retaliate against The Billionaire, replace his position on Earth-Eden for power, find permanent residence and what he now deemed to be freedom on another world, or simply live out the rest of his life in the Mansion of Mansa Musa is a mystery that has yet to be solved, despite unconfirmed reports suggesting the pursuit of each. The only certainty is that there is at least one pair of eyes in the empyrean always making sure that The Student doesn’t cause uncontrollable anarchy in the multiverse. While they all hold contrasting views from one another, every single counterpart of Guus L. Makuto IV comprehends the likelihood that tampering with forces beyond their physical plane of existence might bring forth a catastrophe worse than an apocalypse, and currently, two of them possess the paranormal text to do so.
To Mundïus, the Mansion of Mansa Musa is the modest equivalent of a flashy treehouse full of expensive toys for children and pales in comparison to the smallest scientific laboratory in his heaven. Although Mundïus was intrigued by how it circumvented security measures on a small scale, he, overall, was unimpressed.