Ban Eylen's Interview

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I shuffle into the empty room, and I feel it – a change. The thin air is charged and ready to burn. Tiny weights seem to pull on every atom of my body in different directions. Something seeks to drag me apart into trembling plasma. I almost drop my notes. I steady myself against the wall.

I feel a gaze – I really, really feel it, cold and angry. It knifes into my back and soaks through my body.

The Unknowable Ban Eylen is watching me.

“At last,” he says, and the air whistles and eddies at his voice. “Are you the dotard interviewer for this affair?”

I don’t dare turn round. The words almost don’t come out of me. “Y-yes, I am…”

Famed entrepreneur and Omniversal super-superstar Ban Eylen has never before agreed to sit down for an interview in all his millenias-long life. Why he’d agreed to one now, and with our multiversal news agency, is unclear. It goes without saying that our agency shot up to superstardom overnight – we could be the ones who would finally unveil all of Ban Eylen’s multi-centillion dollar secrets. Days and days of preparation have led to this moment: quadrillions of fans vying for their questions to be answered, millions of shareholders asking for the next big economic prediction, and hundreds of hours putting together a golden list of questions for the great Ban Eylen. It’s all led to this moment. No do-overs. No missteps.

And I’m already botching it.

I hold my breath and turn around, and sitting before me is the most famous person in all the Multiverses I will ever see for the rest of my life. He sits upon a… Chair? Table? Throne? I can’t seem to place the object in my mind. Is he sitting at all? I strain my eyes upon Ban Eylen’s body, but it’s all a blur. The surrounding room is as clear to me as ever, but he is a blank. I try to focus on any one feature of his face – but then it seems as though he doesn’t have a face at all. I observe the way he moves, the way he speaks, but it all shimmers and changes before my eyes.

“Well?” he admonishes. “Are you going to sit down with me? I’ve got things to get back to. Make this quick.”

And suddenly he is sitting down, quite relaxed on a simple stone chair, gesturing to an identical one across from him.

I take a deep breath, try to remember everything I am to say, that I’d rehearsed to infinity. But I take my seat, drowning in perspiration, and can’t remember a thing. “I-I… Greetings, good sir.”

“Don’t sir me, dotard,” Ban Eylen reverberates. “Am I a sir to you? Look at me.”

I take a look at him (her? them? it?). I see a swirling visage of infinites, every pixel of his body swarming in chaotic fizz buzz. Not one bit of him distinct, not one trace of him truly there. The rules of the interview stipulate no cameras, no other persons listening in except me, and I may take out of this room only that which I remember. He could be in this room, or he could be far and away, on the other side of the Omniverse.

“And the way this is going,” Ban Eylen simmers, “I might as well be far and away making better use of my time.” He utters a grumbling growl, and my vision flickers and wavers in funny shades as he does so. “You have three questions, dotard, and I shall answer them all truthfully. Then we’ll be done with this.”

I don’t know how to protest. My eyes flick down to my notes; the list has hundreds of questions. I have to pick three?

I can feel Ban Eylen’s gaze upon me, but I don’t dare look back. I’ve heard the stories – stories of people who go mad spending too much time with the entrepreneur. Stories of people succumbing to cosmic horror in seconds. I’ve already been in his presence a minute. How much longer do I have?

This is the founder of a brand that stretches across all the Multiverses. Everyone knows his jingle: :“You don’t know Ban Eylen, but Ban Eylen knows you!” His corporations fund behemoths of retail and commerce. His products are ubiquitous: Ban Eylen’s OmniAir, Ban Eylen’s Bots, Ban Eylen’s Dimensions, Ban Eylen’s Wonder-gears, even Niwar Noodles… He’s the ruler of everything, second only to the Omniverse Organisation itself or the unknowns beyond. What do I ask a ruler of everything?

“Who… Are you?”

Ban Eylen’s head cocks back and he sighs, disappointed. “Inane question. Well, dotard, I’m 🎵 The Unknowable Ban-”

“No-” I interrupt, and my soul skips a beat. “Who are you really?”

Ban Eylen whips his head back up. His body seethes. Oh, why did I do that? I can feel all his thought now bent unto me. Is this how I die? For daring to play cheek with a godly celebrity?

10 seconds pass. Ban Eylen’s net worth increases by a million times my own in the interim.

At last, he stifles a laugh. “Ha! Now there’s a question. Brave, I’ll give you that. Not a dotard after all.”

Ban Eylen leans forward again, a smirk on his imaginary mouth. “Have you ever felt a presence in the air whenever you were alone? Have you ever felt a room-filling aura in the deep sanctums of your mind? Have you ever felt a sensation of trepidation ripple through your very bones, as if a person - of great and grand omnipotence - is watching your every move? Observing the minutiae of your emotions? Peering through the very molecules of your body and grasping at the pulsating soul within?”

I sit frozen. I don’t know whether my thoughts are my own or of some other mindless design.

Then the room tremors in tenor as he barks a laugh. “Well, if you are, you’re very paranoid.”

Ban Eylen leans back again, eye(s) boring hole(s) into my flimsy notes, expectantly. I contemplate asking for clarification.

“Go on, interviewier, next question. I’m quite excited now. Do you know how glad I am you’re not just another dotard? That you’re not just a meek little mouse? Go on.”

My dissociation dissipates, and my eyes pick out a question on the list.

“Which… of your business endeavours… have changed the Omniverse the most?”

The whirling nothing that is Ban Eylen grows into thoughtful quiet.

Ear-popping anxiety surges through my cheeks as I stutter, “Could you… Share your thoughts as you think? For the interview.”

“How refreshingly direct. I should go out and talk to your kind more.” The whirling nothing becomes whirling everything. “Everyone I’ve spoken to for the past hundred years have been yes-men and sweatshop workers. Since you’re so brave, let me ask you: what do you think I’ve done that has changed our worlds the most?”

“I-” My mouth goes dry. “I, well. I. Well, Niwar Noodles are-”

“Oh, not the space ramen!” Ban Eylen waves a hand, spinning my eyeballs into a frenzy. “I didn’t even create that. I just invested in it and advertised it and came up with all their good marketing decisions and I get half their profits, but still: even if I hadn’t done all that, someone was going to do it. It’s mass-produced multiversal travel food, how basal can you get? So what did I change there?”

“…”

“The answer is Nothing. So no – I’m hijacking your question, the only changes anyone can possibly make in the worlds are the changes that no one else could have made.”

“That would still be… A lot… You’ve done a lot.”

Another bark of laughter. “You’re well on your way to being a yes-man.” His laugh is a lot clearer this time; I can almost hear somebody – not a messy conglomeration of somebodies – behind all the chaos. “There are many things I am known for: My OmniAir, My Bots, My Dimensions, My Wonder-gears. Each idea from my very own mind, my very own being. Each one has its own unique flair that none other can replicate. I say this not with the falsetto of advertising, because it’s the truth. But all of these are replicable. The Multiverses are infinites within infinites: all of those things could have be done by other limbs and minds.”

He leans in close, dragging the chair with him. We gaze into each other’s eyes. I can see his eyes now. Three of them, twisting and twirling about his face, orbiting it like electrons in the Classical Atom. They flicker as they move, and every millisecond each eye changes: blue and kind; green and fierce; black and brave; yellow and mellow. Each time a new eye.

“The greatest of my business endeavours, the one that has changed the worlds the most… Is me. I put my name in all the things I deem fit for it, and everyone goes wild for it. They’ll call this interview Ban Eylen’s Interview, if it ever gets released to the public. I’ve found the one thing that no one in all the worlds has found, and I’m rich because of it.”

‘Rich’ is an understatement. “And what is that thing you found?”

“Is that your third question, interviewer? And are you sure you want to ask that?” He cocks his head left and eyes me. “Let me repeat: I’ve found the one thing no one else has found. And I don’t think anyone else ever will. Are you sure you want to know what that thing is? Do you know what it might do to your mind?”

He grins and his face jiggles, multicoloured teeth popping in and out of view. He cocks his head further and further and further until it’s upside down, and his eyes dance in a circle around his pouted, whispering mouth.

“Do you want to know what makes me Unknowable?”

“No.”

A sizzling bang, and Ban Eylen scoots back again. “Good answer, interviewer.”

He’s back to his abnormally normal self. I stare at him still, but his presence is hazy and indistinct again. I can hardly remember how many eyes he has.

I don’t like this. I don’t care about the interview anymore. I want to get out of here.

I ask my final question. “What more do you want to achieve in your lifetime?”

“I don’t like that question. Ask another.”

I frown and rifle through my notes. “Wha-”

“I changed my mind. I’ll answer it.” Ban Eylen stretches and shimmers. “Do you know why I do what I do?”

“No.”

“Well on your way to being a no-man. Well, I do what I do because I have a purpose in life. That purpose is not to make the most change in the worlds or make people love me.” He smirks. “That one’s a side-purpose. But what I truly want – is to speed things up.”

“What does-”

"Shush, you’ve run out of questions. The paradigm of the Multiverses is that only two things ever happen: everything, or nothing. It’s inviolable. Either the chaos of infinity renders into random noise where nothing happens; or they oscillate together and surge into a tsunami, and everything goes. It’s subjective – everything for you might be nothing for me. I want things to go faster: if everything is happening, I want nothing to happen; if nothing is happening, I want everything to.

“It’s why I promoted your beloved Niwar Noodles: you people weren’t travelling anywhere, so I gave you space ramen to sustain them. It’s why I created the OmniAir that we’re breathing right now: no one could breathe alien air, so I made an air that all people could share. To advance as a culture in the Omniversal Life, we need to be one and the same, completely on the same page. Forget melting pots of societies and multicultures – we need a monoculture! I hate this trend of adaptors and translators to make things work. Gas bottles and translating devices and personal transversal vans. I hate them all! It breeds complacency… But it has its uses, I admit. That’s why I created the B.E.Ds, My Dimensions: I wondered if people would stoop so low as to buy themselves a personal universe, so I tore down the Fediverse and birthed an ensuite of marketable verses.”

“Tore down the what?”

"The- you really don’t know that? The Fediverse! An old system of synthetic universes that was a whole waste of space and pushed an agenda I found quite distateful. I paid the Fediverse a lot to use their infrastructure for my R&D. I cranked out millions of B.E.Ds. Oh, it was glorious. Then I screwed around with the Fediverse’s equilibrium. Overloaded their systems. One day the Fediverse just… Flipped inside out and imploded. No survivors. All their tech gone forever.

“It left a big Void in the process, and it’s still there all the way out at past the Superior Brim. Truly funny business, that Void. A lot of junk from the Fediverse was left behind, floating around in there. Apparently you can still hear everyone that lived there, too; something about how quick the implosion was, that preserved all the final sounds and voices. Bouncing back and forth in the dark for the rest of time. I should start running tours out there. I could hire a couple transversal vans and slap my name on them. I’m sure I could coax some unsuspecting backpackers.”

Ban Eylen blinks a couple times. “You got me rambling. No one ever makes me ramble in public. Good on you, interviewer, I should hire you someday.”

Quite the contrary, I think. Only one question fills my mind. “How many people lived in the Fediverse?”

“Ha – too many to count. Unknowable.”

I feel a lump in my throat; it tells me to run. The way Ban Eylen talked about this – how nonchalant he spoke.

“Such a shame,” I venture, “all those people who died…”

“What? It was hilarious!” A third bark of laughter, and how clear it is now, dirty and insane. “I’m so glad I did destroy the Fediverse, because then I was able to market the B.E.Ds as limited edition without competition! And oh, how the masses paid me! Do you know how much money I’ve made selling B.E.Ds? Maybe I should change my answer to the second question – this was my favourite business endeavour. That’s what you asked, right?”

I don’t even remember anymore. I start to edge out of my seat. “Thank you for your time, Ban Eylen. This, this has been an honour. I’m sure our readers will be very excited to learn the things you’ve told me today. They’ll be excited to know more about you.”

“Huh?” Ban Eylen frowns. “What did you say? Know more about- no no no.” Ban Eylen slumps, the blurriness sagging. “You didn’t really learn anything from this, did you?”

I try to stand up. I find myself unable.

“Don’t you remember what I’ve been trying to drill into all your pliable little heads from birth? No one will know more about me. You don’t know Ban Eylen, and you never ever will. But Ban Eylen-” for the first time in our meeting he stands, and the cloud of static expands and billows into a stormcloud- “Ban Eylen knows you. I know all of you. I know what you all want, and I can’t help but give it to you.”

“I want to get out of here.” I strain against my seat, but I’m stuck. “I want to get out!”

I drop my notes and they disappear. Ban Eylen’s body sucks up my surroundings and consumes the room. I’m stuck to this chair, I’m stuck in this room. I’m stuck with Him, this Omni terror. I’m stuck. I’m stuck. I’m stuck. I’m stuck.

“I think I rambled too much. I don’t think anyone still knows what I did to the Fediverse. I couldn’t let that secret come out, so I silenced everyone who knew; and my propaganda system is terribly efficient. So you know what?” Ban Eylen strides closer, each step rending a hole in my vision, sending spasms into my neurons. “I think I’m going to tell you. I’m going to tell you why I’m Unknowable.”

“No! Get me out! GET ME OUT! HELP! HELP!”

The last thing I see is Ban Eylen’s smile. A smile that widens and widens until the ends meet and merge and multiply, warping his face into a twirling kaleidoscope of flesh and muscle, pixels and numbers, words and letters.

“Just a dotard after all,” he murmurs. Then he leans in, and my whole world becomes a writhing screen of flashing lights and flickering noise.

He opens his mouth(s) again to speak.