The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

A stream of consciousness narrative by Eric-Anderson Momou.

Copyright 2025.

–Last edit, 7/27/2025

“Attention Sargent Watts, you have been deferred.”

My deferral form arrived on my holo-feed.

The personal letter, written in the discernible script of my Captain, outlaid the terms of my discharge from the Euripides complex, and how I was to be placed on permanent executive leave aboard the Daedulus, holding ship. My charge was the man.

“Take a break from shepherding the stars, Watts.”

“But what about Ymir?”

“What about it, Watts?”

“The crew. How will they—“

“I’ll put Om in charge.”

My feed went silent. Then the writing began, superimposed on the miniships holographic panel like some archaic writing on the wall.

“We don’t need you anymore, Watts.”

A pause.

“Have a good life.”

The holo-feed fizzled out, as the last vestige of power waned.

I imagined it deflating like a balloon, as if it’s own artificial life were squeezed from it.

He had been sent to an uncategorized ether plane, of an unknown star system by the Monarch Constable’s command.

An Incarceration in the tomb of his miniship, the final miniship.

He’d been shipwrecked now he needed to find shore.

The thing that looks at me through the pane is not an animal. The beast holds a tension in his jaw. Where the mandible affixes to the cheek, it possesses a bitter tension. So much so, that the sinews in its flesh ripple to a tempo. A vibrato.

Malaise. I feel it.

That is man.
I look at the angels in our unit. Incarcerated. Held behind a blue electromagnetic field.

We see the look in his eyes. They reveal a wilderness, yet his domicile nature. Pallor of the skin, I see his muscles tense.

“You are too dangerous for your own kind,” I say. The words leave my many mouths in tandem. I have learned to do this, especially ominously.

I flutter my wings, that surpass within inter dimension.

“I would like to think that in the most wildest of beasts roam the most docile of dreams.” – said the Angel.

But a dream is just that. A fabricated manifestation. A mere fabrication.

It has kept its composure since times immemorial.
It has kept its watch. Yet, it is not as most animals.

For one, it possesses wings. Not of the simple archangel archetype. They tend to flex and flay to the side at haphazard angles.

Of its plumage: each eye rests upon every surface of the ground. It’s vision is as myriads.

An observer would liken it to the precipitous nature of which rain falls.

*

From the other side, I discern

This was the look, my reflection gave me as I looked through the mirror. I wager, it is the same look that Cyrus gave as he opened the narrow gates.

He had won. He had conquered.

I suppose this was the man I was meant to be. The man, who should be in the wake of the fall before the crashing of waves, and the inescapable current of Ninevah.

My life has been one of trial. It has been one of want. There is little I can say of these trials.

Because they are of a simultaneous nature. One of many. There are others in my wake. Others that I seek to rouse from slumber.

But they have not yet awoken, yet.

I feel as though I am one amongst many. One amongst the fallen Few, who have roused the Sleeping to a state of slumberance.

There is little I can say to them. There is little I can do, to rouse their state. What they do know, despite their melancholy is only the unearthed vessels of the Few. They know the sultry, and placid clay of their youth. They know their moulding, and they know their form.

Yet, nothing I speak is of their accord. My word has little authority.

How they played amidst golden fields of wheat. How their families stood amidst Kings, and Presidents, and Dignitaries. Amidst the greatest of ceremonies.

All saw this. All wondered. All wept.

None understand the eccentricities of their plight; how feeble they’ve become as a result of their Sleeping.

I wish to rouse them from this sleep. I wish to rouse them from their predisposed sights. The ones who saw riches as serfs, and vassals. The ones who served as knights for the cause of ministers; alluring the masses – tempting them into repose. To begin the hopeful cycle again.

Those are the ones I seek.

Those are the ones I challenge for the reason that I exist. They do not recall their state before Our meeting. They do not recall their sullen state of affairs as a result of their subservience.

I wish to wake them from this sleep.

Yet, it is not a normal sleep. The Scribes have said it so.

The King, as well.

These, who have fallen asleep do not ponder the World as we do. They do not understand the perceptiveness of the Scribes. Because of this, I fear that they will not understand the state of things when they wake.

Waking is a terrible business. It is not for the ones who seek salvation. It is for those who have not understood the things Before.

It is for those who have not understood the Dream Time.

Perhaps there are those Outside who wish to seek those things: the things sacred, the things unknown to most. But I, as a Scribe, do not wish to hear those things.

I, as a Scribe, do not wish to hear the things of the Past.

I, as a Scribe, do not wish to hear the things of the Future.

Perhaps, I will wish to hear of the things in the Present.

There are those who wish for the Future-Present. There are those who wish for the State of Affairs, as they once were.

Such are few, but we will find them.

They are the denizens of citadels long past, the ornate ones — subject to the showiness of gold and silver, which we seek. The platinum and silver, for which they have lived for. Those are the ones which we rouse from eternal slumber.

And once we have roused them, we see the look in their eyes. The dying look of Polyphemus amidst the grains of sand. Upon the distant shore they weep. And despite being dust, there is no repose for them.

I am amongst them, who have exceeded my purpose.

I am amongst the Few.

And yet, we denounce him. We seek the fault within him, as there is too much to be said. As though, there is fault in his denunciation, and for this reason we cast him Out.

For He, who speaks too much is He who must be cast out. He who speaks against Our mandate must be taken to the Beyond.

And who knows what is in the Beyond. That is only for the Angel, Domisticles.

The Beyonders know. They have accessed this place. They have understood the nature of its fibre.

It is not as most places. Most places would tell you their location. The Beyond does not. The wayfaring Men have called it 0.

There are no planes, no axes to describe its location.

What they do tell you, is that it is the nature of all things. The Origin.

How things came to be, in their state of being, regardless of their stories. That is what the Beyonders say.

The Beyonders, know many things. It is incredulous, the things they know. Yet they do not know where they have come: rather why they are.

Irrespective of this fact, I suppose Our job is to rouse those who have not yet become.

It is to open the minds of the ones who seek to be risen.

Holding a lure in their midst is not sufficient. Only the state of affairs, in which they can grasp and bite it.

I am amongst the Rebels, who believe it must be spent. I am amongst them who believe they must see the sunrise when the Few awake.

The Beyonders tell lies. They do not know when the sunrise sets.

It is up to speculation, and the few who see it do not wish to speak. They do not wish to be found out, for they may be the ones left in eternal sleep.

And as I plummet from on high, I do not think that I will die.

He felt a difficult desire for the creature, a subtle sense of wanting, by which was emotively conduced.

Just then the holofeed read, the time.

The Monarch Constable’s feed turned on.

“What do we have here?”

“It is the angel domisticles, being sent to his Sector F, Quadrant 1 of the Keplar-451.”

“And what has he told you?”

“He has told me nothing.”

The Monarch Constable, paused for a bit, and ticked her tongue. The tassels of her golden crown, so dubbed a Pschent, fell to her shoulders.

“There isn’t much time.”

Sargent Watts looked at the interior cabin of the ship’s minideck. He sought to find an exit.

Sargent looked through his holofeed, and saw a pale ghastly form, tall and strong, much different from the creature he’d seen in the tube. The wings stretched at least two feet above its head, and the skin glowed luminescent. Whatever height the creature had was unlike any he’d had before. Far from the decrepit, and small creature he’d seen, the Angel grew in height and in girth.

“Who, there speaks?” said the Monarch Constable.

“It is I, the angel, Domisticles..”