Mitsuse Ryu - The greatest Japanese science fiction novel of all time. Jesus as an energy weapon-wielding badass going up against Plato, the Buddha Siddhartha, and the war-waging demigod Asura, in an endless battle for survival through the cycle of history—from our humble origins to our destruction by the inescapable hand of fate

Mitsuse Ryu, Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights, Trans. by Alexander O. Smith and Elyse J. Alexander, Haikasoru, 2012. [1967./1973.]






Ten billion days—that is how long it will take the philosopher Plato to determine the true systems of the world. One hundred billion nights—that is how far into the future Jesus of Nazareth, Siddhartha, and the demigod Asura will travel to witness the end of all worlds. Named the greatest Japanese science fiction novel of all time, Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights is an epic eons in the making. Originally published in 1967, the novel was revised by the author in later years and republished in 1973.


As the title suggests, Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights thinks big. Very big. While a good chunk of the novel takes place during the early civilized era on earth, it also extends much, much further -- in both time and place.
A Prologue and first chapter begin to set the scene -- of world-creation, including the biological foundations of life on earth -- but by the second chapter a familiar face -- Plato -- pops up. And in the following chapters Mitsuse brings in several other larger-than-life historical figures -- Siddhārtha, the big Buddha himself, and Jesus Christ. They are introduced in circumstances that at first seem fairly familiar: Mitsuse offers a take on Jesus' last days, while Siddhārtha and Plato set out on other sorts of journeys and quests. Sure, Plato is looking for Atlantis, but for the most part Mitsuse doesn't rewrite history and legend too much -- at least not in the parts that have his characters setting out on their journeys. But soon enough .....
Plato certainly finds more than he bargained and could have hoped for (including the new moniker 'Lord Orionae'). Never mind Atlantis being real, or shadows in caves -- there's a whole lot more to this entire universe than his philosophy had conceived. And he finds himself asking -- rather desperately -- why humans had been kept in such misguided ignorance:
Why did you tell them there were gods and not tell them about the Planetary Development Committee ?
Yes, Mitsuse is proposing a very different universal story than the ones familiar from myth, religion -- and even most current science.
The historic characters come with their own ideas about where things are headed: Jesus is selling that whole 'final judgment'-concept ("an interesting one", Pontius Pilate admits, though he is not convinced) and Siddhārtha had been taught that a mere 5,670,000,000 years in the future the being Maitreya: "would save humanity by opening the way to a perfect world". It seems there's more to all of this, however, and they find themselves transported across time and space -- far beyond what is soon failed earth (time flies on the cosmic scale, and even Tokyo -- "Capital of the Inner Planetary Alliance" -- is a mess already by 3905) -- in a cosmic chase and puzzle.
There may be a guiding Planetary Development Committee out there, but, as is so often the case with committees, they apparently don't have an adequately strong grasp on this whole universe-controlling and stabilizing idea. With the occasional hell-in-a-handbasket conflagrations -- "There was an overall trend toward destruction and ruin in all that he had seen", Siddhārtha notes, and that's an observation that can repeatedly be made by several of the characters -- it's nevertheless also often hard to tell where exactly things are going right, so different are these various realities they encounter from life on earth as they knew it. But these varieties of brave new worlds out there are nicely (and creatively) conceived by Mitsuse, even as in the mad rush through time and catastrophes there's rarely opportunity for much more than incidental description.
Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights is an ambitious novel of and for the ages. What American science fiction tradition would likely plump up into a multi-volume space saga, Mitsuse compresses into a relatively short novel that nevertheless manages to take things slowly in part as well -- Jesus' end, for example, is presented in conventional leisurely style. The pace is unusual -- ranging from the slow and casual to the vertiginous, truly a roller-coaster read -- and in keeping with the repeated radical transformations the worlds that are presented undergo. There is little stability in Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights -- which is also part of the point. Mitsuse mixes philosophical, scientific, and theological speculation into a vey heady brew -- and it's no wonder the characters repeatedly voice uncertainty about what exactly they're dealing with; readers at times face a similar problem. Yet it's also a very impressively presented Gedankenexperiment, as Mitsuse really is trying (and largely succeeding) to convey a whole vision of nothing less than the entire universe, from conception to end (two terms that take on much looser meanings in his picture). One might regret that parts are underdeveloped -- there are some ingenious ideas here that could be spun out in far greater detail -- but the novel still works well. Mitsuse does heap on a bit much after a while, ambition complicating his ambitions, but it is an intriguing work, and even if it is ultimately too restless to completely satisfy, there's a lot here that is very well done. - M.A.Orthofer
  Siddhartha paused, unsure of what to say. In truth, he had no real purpose in coming here. He had jumped onto the spaceway in pursuit of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet he still didn’t know why he even had to fight Jesus. The only thing he knew were those words: “Yellow 17 in the New Galactic Age, the Planetary Development Committee on Astarta 50 received a directive…” and a vague sense that this curious, shielded city was somehow connected to the Kingdom of Atlantis where Orionae claimed to hail from, and to the barren flats and ruined city that Siddhartha had found upon emerging from the sea. There was an overall trend toward destruction and ruin in all that he had seen, and lately Siddhartha had begun to think that some power had placed him here for the sole purpose of investigating that trend and possibly divining its cause and origin.
***
Check it out: Jesus as an energy weapon-wielding badass going up against Plato, the Buddha Siddhartha, and the war-waging demigod Asura, in an endless battle for survival through the cycle of history—from our humble origins to our destruction by the inescapable hand of fate.
What’s not to love, right? I mean Jesus isn’t just Jesus here. He’s the man from Nazareth. He’s Clint Eastwood rocking an end-of-days speech, and he isn’t fucking around.
Somewhat hyperbolically billed as the greatest Japanese science fiction novel of all time, Ryu Mitsuse’s 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights is nothing if not ambitious. In a scant 284 pages, Mitsuse introduces curiosity and conflict in equal measures, documenting the path to spiritual and intellectual enlightenment through the origin of all life, the existence and fall of Atlantis, and the crucifixion of Christ, through to the 3900 A.D. and beyond, all the way to the heat death of the universe.
Mitsuse’s science-meets-spiritualism epic skips through history in giant leaps, as Asura, Siddhartha, and Jesus Christ meet, do battle, and ruminate on their existence—on the purpose behind all existence, and the question of their impending judgement. That’s judgement with a capital J—as in, our days our numbered, decided long before we even had the brains to know right from wrong and up from down. Touching upon certain events with a wide brush allows Mitsuse to cover an expanse few science fiction novels would ever attempt. He employs a predominantly eastern philosophical approach to the events that bring the principle characters in conflict with one another. Though the first few chapters are a bit slow off the mark, the latter half of the book brings the many threads together in intriguing ways that swiftly bridge the scientific and the philosophical.
Two caveats: without at least a passing understanding of the myths and legends surrounding the primary cast of spiritual and philosophical superfriends, it’s likely a lot of the book’s narrative weight will be lost; and if the idea of technologically primed warrior deities doesn’t tickle the hairs on the back of your neck, you might struggle to accept any part of this premise. Those details aside, Mitsuse’s 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights is a fascinating take on the battle between existence and the concepts of fate and pre-determined universal extinction. - backlisted.wordpress.com/

My relationship with science fiction—at least in literary form—was fairly brief. Although I don’t remember how or why, I picked up a copy of Dune in the sixth grade and just loved it. It lead to a few other sci-fi classics, including Brave New World and an aborted attempt at A Stranger in a Strange Land, but by the end of middle school it was pretty much over. I had discovered manga, which had the same crazy adventures, but also pictures, and could be read in one sitting, and reading actual books of any kind took a back seat for a couple of years. Basically, my exposure to sci-fi is limited. But I found after finishing Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights that this novel sort of suits me perfectly in what I expect and want out of science fiction—and even literature in general. Not like a glove, so much, but after a long, long absence, I found myself sliding right into it.
Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights quite literally spans billions of years. Opening with the creation of the universe, and quite possibly ending at its close, the novel is ultimately an audacious attempt at trying to find meaning—the literal “meaning of life” as we often think of it—in a three hundred-page novel.
If that sounds like too much, too heavy, too ponderous a thing to try and read, well, it isn’t. The most wonderful and ambitious aspect about Mitsuse’s magnum opus is how it’s able to blend serious and inquisitive “hard” sci-fi with the fun, goofy, Saturday morning cartoon kind of sci-fi. Yes, reading Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights requires knowledge of actual science-y things like Dirac’s sea and Eastern theological conceptions of the “asura” and “Maitreya,” but you’re also rewarded with particle cannons, huge explosions, and insane, Dragon Ball Z style one-on-one fighting.
I hate to spoil some of the surprises of reading this book, since I went in knowing nothing and found it to be a book of fun discovery, but it does tie Plato, Siddhartha, Jesus, Atlantis, post-apocalyptic Tokyo, aliens, robots, cyborgs, and other elements together into one surprisingly cohesive narrative.
At least, “cohesive” depending on your perspective. Although I would hesitate to call it a “problem,” Mitsuse is a demanding and unmerciful writer. Not only does he constantly introduce strange technologies and terminologies with no explanation (their use and meaning inferable only by context), he also writes for an audience that has a very thorough understanding of Western and Eastern theology. It might make your first reading of the novel either very difficult, or will cause you to Wikipedia a lot of things. It is certainly a work that needs to be read more than once for things to start making any real sense.
But science fiction is all about metaphor. What does Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights have to tell us about ourselves, here in the present? What are we left with, when this ambitiously grand and complex novel is over? Well, that’s a good question, and you might have your own answers when you get there. For me, Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights illustrates that man will never fully understand the workings of the universe, and by extension, God. One of the strengths of Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights is the way science and religion coexists, not peacefully, but dynamically, and organically. I feel like the way religion plays out in this novel is how a scientist might see God, if God was a “being” with whom we could somehow communicate—ultimately unknowable, merciless, and too easily misunderstood. And that misunderstanding is what leads to violence and our own self-destruction (not that we need a book to tell us that either I suppose, when it’s apparent in the newspaper every day).
But again, for all these heavy conceptual themes and lofty philosophical arguments, this is still a fun adventure story that has cyborgs and explosions. No matter how you might try to describe Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights, it is certainly unique, ambitious, and well written (I am sure this was a difficult translation for Mr. Smith and Ms. Alexander, but they certainly rose to the challenge). It might not be the most well constructed novel—in a way it feels like the first two-thirds of the novel is really just the set-up for the “real” plot of the last third—but it is certainly one of the most thought-provoking and unabashedly fun novels I’ve read in a while. - www.junbungaku.com/
  According to its cover, this book is “the greatest Japanese science fiction novel of all time.” They didn’t attribute that quote to a source, but it’s impressive sounding nonetheless. Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse is a bizarre book. It covers a huge amount of ground in just under 300 pages. Starting from the origins of the universe and the formation of our planet, the novel takes us through major philosophical and religious milestones of our species: after describing the evolution of life, we’re introduced to Plato, then Siddhartha, then Jesus. The book continues well beyond that, ending up near the heat death of the universe.
Mitsuse isn’t content with simply blasting through history. The main hook of this novel is the mixture of religion with razor-sharp hard science fiction. Without giving too much of the plot away, the novel tells a story of an alien influence on the growth and development of humanity, and how it has manifested itself in different religions and philosophies throughout history. These are the parts of the novel in which Mitsuse is at his best. The writing for each time period resembles the religious and philosophical texts of the time, and the reactions of the characters to the science fiction elements of the plot are interesting and revealing. It brings to mind one a famous quote from Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Perhaps we could substitute out “magic” for “divine intervention.”
Such breakneck pacing is hard to pull off without feeling forced or rushed, but if anything the problem of Mitsuse’s novel is that it is, at times, far too deliberate. I’m willing to grant that most of the awkward writing is likely due to the translation — I’ve heard that a translation can be either beautiful or true, never both — but the science-heavy portions of the book are sometimes convoluted. It doesn’t help that the science is noticeably outdated (the novel was originally published in the 1960s). It’s the rapid pace and gigantic scope of this book that save it from being occasionally boring and painful to follow.
As an example, one of the few action-heavy scenes in the novel is a laser gun fight with Plato, and Siddartha, and the goddess Asura on one side, and Jesus on the other. As inherently ridiculous (and awesome) as this sounds, it’s a testament to Mitsuse’s storytelling ability that it fit well into the story and didn’t cause me to lose my suspension of disbelief. Actually, the real complaint I had was the focus on unnecessary detail in the description of the scene on things like robotic sensory mechanisms. Paragraphs and paragraphs were spent detailing the robot’s re-routing of power to different operations and extending or retracting different types sensors (yes, one of the characters in the scene is a robot).
These problems end up being relatively minor, and a couple of absolutely brilliant passages more than make up for it. In one scene, Siddartha visits a city divided into upper and lower classes. He enters the tower where the upper class citizens supposedly live, and sees only rows and rows of metal cabinets, with a crab-like robot suspended above. He talks to the robot, which identifies itself as a god. In each cabinet, the robot explains, there is a single chip which contains all the necessary information to create an individual human (while that human’s body has long since died and rotted away). The robot runs a network that connects all these chips together in a vast simulation, allowing them to live forever. Siddartha objects, arguing that the citizens are no longer alive. The crab responds by asking Siddartha how sure he is that the planet on which he was born, the objects in his life, and the events he has witnessed have all been objectively real and not aspects of some grand illusion.
“Physical phenomena are not an emergent property of reality. No technology or means of observation can prove that they are.”
“Strange to hear an agnostic argument from a god,” Siddartha said.

“To call something unknowable is to assume that anything can be known,” the crab replied.
Siddartha smiled. “What happens to the self when you’re on one of those cards?”
“What happens to the self when you’re asleep?” the crab rejoined.
I very much enjoyed this book. It’s ambitious and earnest, in ways that many novels these days aren’t. It assumes quite a lot of prior knowledge about both physics and metaphysics, and it moves so quickly it can sometimes be confusing, but in my opinion it was well worth the effort to read. - recurial.com/reviews/
Just for fun, I went to the SF community on Mixi (Japan’s largest social network) and asked, “Is this book really the greatest Japanese SF novel ever? Because the publisher here says it is.” I failed to kick up a hornet’s nest, but did get a general admission that, “Greatest” or not, it’s certainly one of the most revered and influential SF books to come out of the country. (The ensuing discussion also inexplicably prompted someone to call me, roughly, an “ill-mannered poser.”) In that sense, 10 Billion Days is rather like Japan’s Dune or Foundation, which makes reviewing it slightly intimidating. It also means that, as a self appointed ambassador of Japanese fiction, I’m under that much more pressure to deliver a profound and life-altering review.
The basis of any claim that 10 Billion Days is the greatest anything is this poll from 2006, where the readers of SF Magazine (a Japanese publication) voted on the best stuff. My Japanese sources countered with the 1998 poll, which swapped numbers one and two. This is an annual poll, but our assumption is that 10 Billion Days is going to feature in the top five or so every year, much the way there is a general consensus here on the “best” five or ten SFF novels. It’s also one of only a few in the top twenty that have been translated into English, other high ranking books including Japan Sinks and Yukikaze.
10 Billion Days defies easy description. It begins with the emergence of life on Earth and sprints in 250 pages to the end of the universe, with a cast consisting almost entirely of prophets and deities. Plato and Pilate are the main exceptions here, but mostly we’re dealing with Jesus, Siddhartha, Maitreya, and Asura. (The latter two are Buddhist and Hindu divinities, respectively.) One should not expect a strict historical reconstruction of any of these, nor any sort of reverence toward the religions they are associated with. I can’t say anything about Hindus or Buddhists, but I’m pretty sure a large number of Christians would be angry about Mitsuse’s Jesus. This is not to accuse Mitsuse of writing an atheist hatchet piece, because I don’t think that’s his purpose. His story requires giants striding across the landscape, so these are the characters he chooses. That they are also cyborgs is entirely beside the point.
To summarize the plot would basically spoil the book. Suffice it to say that it involves the above mentioned characters, something called The Planetary Development Committee, Atlantis, Andromeda and the Milky Way crashing into each other, extinct civilizations, warring Hindu gods, Jesus as a killer cyborg, and the end of the universe. After finishing the book, I had to just sit there for awhile, trying to make sense of it all. 10 Billion Days demands reflection and leisurely consumption, rather than frantic page turning. It reminds me somewhat of reading the Old Testament, with its cold and distant narrative voice, the sudden and jarring leaps through time and space, and the patchy sense of history and myth. Likewise it is dense prose, with each sentence crafted for maximum economy and impact, and multiple meanings packed into each phrase. I’m going to have to read this again someday, because I am certain that I missed plenty the first time through.
Reading early on, I thought that 10 Billion Days didn’t feel much like a Japanese book, or at least not compared to a lot of the contemporary stuff that Haikasoru publishes. It lacks the distinct character interaction that immediately identifies Japanese human relations and gives no nod to anime culture. (To be fair, there wasn’t anime culture as we know it when this was originally published.) By the end though, it was very clear that this is not a book that could have been written in the West. Without rampant spoilage (I hope), I want to point out the differences. I periodically refer here to the David Brin theory of SF and Fantasy, which is that they are basically extensions of the Enlightenment and the Romantic Movement, respectively. The first looks to a brighter future, brought about through Science, while the second looks toward an idealized past, which we must return to for redemption. (That’s a bit oversimplified.) The key to both of these is our effort, which brings about one or another form of salvation.
What we don’t see here in the West is a third way of looking at things, an idea that comes from, among others, Buddhism and the Yoga Sutra. These philosophies stress the lack of action, of finding peace through acceptance of things as they are. “Desire is the root of unhappiness” is the most often seen aphorism in these Eastern traditions, so the focus is not on improving things through one’s own efforts, but on sidestepping unhappiness through the elimination of the appetites that bring dissatisfaction. Max Weber’s striving Protestants would find this incomprehensible. 10 Billion Days is suffused with this ethic, especially as the book ends. [Some spoilers to follow, in as vague a way as I can.]
I don’t think that a Western author, especially an American, could write the end of 10 Billion Days. An American would most likely set up one side as Evil, or at least as a clear antagonist, and provide the viewpoint character some way to overcome that Evil. There would be a resolution, there would be an improvement of the character’s situation, and there would be effort expended in some way for people to help themselves. Mitsuse thinks not. There is a Japanese term, shikata ga nai, that poorly translates to “it can’t be helped.” We don’t have good words for it in English, because it is a mindset with which we are unfamiliar. To say shikata ga nai means to accept that something can’t be changed and to move forward by mutual agreement, with the understanding that whatever unchanging thing it is will be accepted as a given. This is not just things like gravity, or the Earth’s rotation, or other such inevitability, but it extends to places that we Americans might say, “Wait, let’s not accept that, let’s improve it!” The end of 10 Billion Days is an end-of-the-universe-sized shikata ga nai. It is the ultimate expression of acceptance and resignation, of denying desire in an attempt to find peace. I suspect that it would be wildly unsatisfying for a reader who can’t wrap his head around this way of seeing the world.
What about those of us who are somewhat accustomed to this worldview? I almost feel like I won’t be qualified to pass judgment on this one until I’ve read it a couple more times, pondered deeply its truths, and emerged a much older, wiser man. Still, there are a few things I can say. The book’s narrative tone is somewhat standoffish, as though Mitsuse is keeping us at bay while he recites his tale. He gives us hints of the characters and their worlds, occasional flashes of intense action or vivid description, and stretches of frigid mystery. The outlines are sharp, but scarce, leaving fleeting impressions of forces and personalities beyond our comprehension. Even the viewpoint characters are finally unknowable, to say nothing of grander forces manipulating them. With some authors, this would be a flaw, a mark of poorly thought out or executed writing, but with Mitsuse, this seems to be exactly what he intended. We are left at the end with a sense of mystery and wonder intact, knowing that something amazing is happening, but not grasping it completely.
This may be because Mitsuse understands that the payoff in these things rarely matches our expectations. This is a wise dodge, but the overall effect leaves 10 Billion Days similar to The Book of Judges, or perhaps 1st Samuel. For a final, pithy summation of the book, I’m torn between the mystery and philosophy on one hand, and the lack of engagement on the other. It was a haunting read, one that will no doubt hover in the darker corners of my mind, but it wasn’t very much fun while I read it. One can’t go wrong though, with a book that contains the line, “Siddhartha was acutely aware that as long as Jesus of Nazareth was alive, this could be a trap.”
Rating: This is a massive reach, but perhaps Leeds United? The universe ends in 10 Billion Days, Leeds taking their top ranked form and nosediving into League One was pretty much like the end of the universe for them. Not that 10 Billion Days has anything in common with a despicable club like Leeds.
http://twodudesff.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/10-billion-days-100-billion-nights/


http://www.bulletreviews.com/10-billion-days-100-billion-nights-2011/       Excerpt   Siddhārtha lay half buried in sand, still as a lump of stone. His tri-D antenna opened slightly, shedding a tiny stream of dust.

He could sense his enemy nearby—everywhere, it seemed.

No—there he was, not more than a hundred meters away, moving from left to right across Siddhārtha’s field of vision.

I wonder what he’s up to?

He resisted the temptation to fully extend his antenna. In the quiet that now reigned, even the slightest movement could draw attention from a considerable distance. The release of kinetic energy was one of the easiest to detect. It would be far too dangerous to reveal himself; the last attack had proved beyond the shadow of a doubt his enemy’s hideous strength.

So what is he doing?

Unable to restrain his desire to know, he let his antenna push another ten centimeters above the top of the sand.

Unthinkingly, Siddhārtha tensed every muscle in his body.

A thousand meters ahead of where his enemy slowly made his way across the flats was his destination—a small black shadow atop a dune. Asura.

Jesus of Nazareth was moving slowly, leaving footprints in the sand. The flames and explosions had singed his already tan skin to such a brownness that he threatened to disappear into the desert landscape altogether.



Jesus was almost out of Siddhārtha’s range when his path began to curve as he headed directly toward the top of the dune where Asura was standing.

The sky and land were lit with scarlet for a moment. Then as Jesus began to climb the dune, the world faded again to its former monotone, and an icy wind blew in between the swirling flames. The brightness of the flames waxed and ebbed. Even the rapid energy shifts and massive discharges generated by the Nazarene’s weapon lost much of their power in this world near death.

Siddhārtha searched around for any sign of Orionae, but could not detect him anywhere. Finally, he fully extended his antennae, reasoning that his enemy’s attention would be fixed on the far-off dune where Asura was standing.

As he did so, he felt a terrible and urgent need to act. I have to distract him!

Siddhārtha struggled out of the sand to stand. “Hold! Jesus of Nazareth!” he cried, yet his voice only traveled from the top of his throat back down his neck into his own body, reverberating up into his ears, but never reaching the outside air. Siddhārtha panicked, realizing that if he did not draw at least half of his enemy’s firepower in his own direction, Asura would not be able to withstand another of Jesus’s attacks.

Jesus of Nazareth stopped abruptly, then slowly lifted his right hand.

Suddenly, the far edges of the flats erupted toward the sky without a sound. Higher and higher they rose into the gray atmosphere, creating a valley with impossibly steep sides, while at the same time the edges of the sky plunged toward the ground. At the limits of Siddhārtha’s field of vision, sky and land joined together, fusing into a single curved wall. Lighter than shadow, more indefinite even than the void, the flats and the gray sky formed a giant cylinder, as if the very laws of geometry had broken. Far out in that vertiginous space, like a fragile image in a kaleidoscope, he could see Asura looking very small.

The howling of the wind had ceased entirely, leaving a sickening emptiness in its place.

“Stop! Do not do this!”

Siddhārtha sprinted through the deathlike silence, lacking the time to consider why Jesus of Nazareth grew no nearer no matter how much he ran.

As Siddhārtha sped across the sand, the battle structures in his body prepared for combat. Palisade tissues—resembling those in a plant, but more closely akin to the electroplaques of an eel—linked his processors and his core reactor to his weapons units; discharge panels on his shoulders opened like unfolding leaves. Automatically, his metabolizer revved up to maximum capacity as the circuit from the reactor connected to the roots of the panels. In an instant the leaves were ready to unleash their deadly stores.

Siddhārtha did not hesitate. Still sprinting, he released the high voltage inside his condensers in a single blast.

With a flash sky and land turned ghostly pale. The electromagnetic waves pulsed toward their target, tracing a circle of pure blue ions around Jesus of Nazareth.

Less than a breath later, Siddhārtha struck again. This time, the gray sky turned a dark leaden color. Seen from within, all the objects inside the great cylinder lost their individual colors, becoming translucent. Then, a circle of ultramarine light began to spread, enveloping all.

Siddhārtha watched as his attack ran its course.

The shining ring of the electromagnetic wave was rapidly spreading in all directions, losing its coloration as it went. It dispersed like a broken circlet of chain links, some sections clinging together, others severing completely until all had disappeared. Siddhārtha spotted Jesus’s emaciated back standing just beyond the fading circle of light.

He shook his head and resumed his mad dash across the sand. While he ran, the gray sky and the vast desert ground into motion, moving with increasing speed until all was rotating around him. Gaping vortices formed in the sky, while the flats transformed into a faded spiral that spun at a frightening velocity. The only things not carried by their motion were Siddhārtha and the man from Nazareth.

Siddhārtha’s thoughts raced. Why, when everything around us is spinning at such a furious rate, am I and Jesus alone still able to stand? He felt cold sweat trickling down his back as understanding slipped from his grasp.

Then suddenly he understood: he had been pushed into a separate space from the one where Jesus and Asura stood—a fold in space-time, or a separate plane entirely.

“Let me out!” he shouted with all his strength. “Let me out of here!” But all his voice accomplished was to vibrate the air that closed around him.