The Man From Taured

by Bryan W. Alaspa

  Shaw replied, "Exactly. That's because we believe that Whitten or someone working with Whitten is conducting experiments again. Unfortunately, I also believe that someone is working with Gemini and using my past experiments and equipment. That's why Duveen, a Gemini employee in another dimension, was somehow targeted. It was a major breach of the dimensional barriers, Noble, and I think the experiments are getting stronger. Void is able to get into our dimension more easily. We are getting reports of the black-eyed children all over the place and from all over the world."

  "I can't do this," Noble replied. "I cannot accept this. I mean, that was a great story and there are great villains. I mean, there's some formless black entity thing that destroys entire worlds. Then there's some Steampunk villain matched with an equally Steampunk good guy named Ezekiel. Where is he, by the way? Why isn't he here?"

  "He died," Shaw replied. "Years ago."

  Noble looked at Shaw, waiting for a further explanation. The man said nothing. Noble cleared his throat.

  "OK, then," Noble said. "Well, this is great. So, do you have one of those coats and outfits? Are you going to show me alternate worlds? What's the next step?"

  "Well, I do think that you and I need to spend some time together," Shaw said. "There are things I need to show you. There are things about yourself that you have to be comfortable with. There are things we need to do. However, I need your detective skills, too."

  Noble sat back in his chair. "Let me guess," he said, "we need to track down Whitten or whoever is doing this at Gemini and, what, kill them? Banish them? What are we doing here?"

  "Exactly," Shaw said. "You need to become part of IDEA, Noble. We have to do this or the entire thing is going to collapse."

  "What happened to Francis Duveen?" Noble asked. "Was he banished to some pocket dimension? Was he part of this?"

  "There are others working on breaking down the barriers," Shaw replied calmly, as if speaking to a child. "Void is trying to get others to work on this. We have managed to bring about technology like we have in this dimension to try and stop Void from breaking through in other realms. However, that has only increased Void's desire to reach into those other dimensions with the black-eyed children and other methods. They are searching more and more for weak spots to exploit."

  Shaw leaned forward, folding his hands on the desk. He was fascinated that this elaborate ruse continued to get more complicated all the time.

  "We think Duveen was an accident," Shaw said. "Something went wrong with an experiment at Gemini and one of their employees got sucked through a rift. When he was put into that hotel room - something that we engineered, by the way - we appeared to him, put him to sleep, and then got him back through a rift. It was risky, but we got him through without too much damage."

  "How did you influence those people?" Noble asked.

  "You saw the footage," Shaw said. "One of our shadow men was there in the room. We have improved the technology since my first days. We can subtly influence people when we have to. Again, there are risks. If we don't do it very carefully, a full breach can happen, and you can end up driving someone insane. A whisper in the ears of those two agents, after they were completely exhausted, and they were more than willing to break the rules and put Duveen up in the hotel."

  “So, the shadow men are you guys? IDEA? No one else? The shadow men are the good guys?” Noble asked.

  Shaw and Dashiell nodded in sync.

  “And those creepy black-eyed children?” Noble continued, very animated and waving his hands around. “What are they? They’re something the Void constructs? Am I getting all of this right?”

  “Yes,” Shaw replied. “The Void creates them to try and get into places inside this dimension. They are his avatars, if you will.”

  “Why all of the creepy knocking and asking to come in?” Noble asked. “If he can manifest them anywhere, why not just inside the homes?”

  Shaw said: “You heard us mention the machinery in place that protects this dimension? You should see the place where it’s housed, Noble. It’s underground and these days it’s enormous. As the Void grows in power, we have to improve the machinery. Some of the machines go back to the early 1900s and some of them are brand new with touchscreens. It’s a hodge-podge of old and new. The machinery prevents the Void from doing what you just described. It creates a kind of barrier around the people in this dimension, particularly around the places they live. It’s not perfect and, as we soon found out, if the black-eyed children are invited into the home, they can defeat the machines and break through the barriers.”

  Noble whispered: “Like vampires?”

  Shaw shrugged. “Something like that.”

  Noble laughed. "Oh man, this is all just too much. What about my wife? Are Void and Whitten going to go after her?"

  "We have some men watching your house, but there are risks," Dash said.

  "I need to call her," Noble said. "I need to talk to her. I don't know how to feel about this. This sounds insane, but I have to admit that nothing about the man from Taured was making any sense. I feel betrayed, Dash. I feel completely betrayed."

  Dash said: "Look, Noble, I know that this is all a lot to throw at you. But there are dangerous events happening. It was not our intention to bring you in this way, but things have been moving very fast and it keeps moving faster. There have been breaches from other dimensions coming faster than we’ve ever seen. People are vanishing. There are…things…creatures coming through. We've had to speed things up because of this. The Duveen thing was just the final straw and we had to bring you in. I pulled the strings and got you on the case."

  "This is just too much," Noble sighed. "This is just too much to take in. I feel like nothing about my life has been my own decision. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

  Shaw and Dash just stared at him for a long time and the longer they stared the angrier Noble got. "I don't know what to tell you," Shaw replied. "Everything we did was with the best of intentions. You are special and important to IDEA. IDEA is important to the entire fabric of reality. Do you understand what will happen if Void succeeds in tearing down the barriers?"

  "Yeah, I get it," Noble said. "The entire multiverse falls apart and we all die. However, that's a rather nebulous thing to think about right now. Right now I’m worried about my wife and trying to get over the fact that my entire life might have been planned out. I mean, one day I'm just a guy working for Homeland and now I'm a guy who has the responsibility of saving, not only this world, but the entire multiverse. Oh, yeah and the fact that the multiverse is something that I only just now have been told actually exists. Can we also throw that into the mix? Just yesterday I was convinced that this was the only dimension and had a pretty standard idea of what the world was. Now, I am being told that there are infinite amounts of alternate dimensions and realities."

  Shaw stood up and whispered into Dash's ear. Dash nodded.

  "OK," Shaw said, "let's do this. You go ahead and head back to the hotel and take the night. Talk to your wife. Tell her whatever you want, but I would suggest you do not tell her about the alternate dimensions. It may be too much for her to deal with. But I ask that you spend time with me tomorrow. I am going to show you some things that are going to change your views, your entire life."

  “Haven’t my views on the world, the universe, been changed enough?” Noble pleaded.

  Shaw leaned forward again, trying to look somber, staring directly into Noble’s face dramatically.

  "I must warn you, though," Shaw said. "Void must know about you by now and what’s happened here today. Whitten must know about you right now, too. They are going to try to get to you. They will try to turn you to their side, but if they cannot do that, they'll try to turn you over to Void."

  Noble put his head in his hands. "Oh my God, please stop this," he said. "Just stop. I'm going to head back to the hotel. I am going to lock myself inside the room and I am going to watch bad movies on cable. At some point I am going to call my wif
e and try to explain to her what the holy fuck is going on here. I have no idea what I’m going to tell her as she already was thinking I’m hiding something from her."

  "There's more," Shaw said.

  "I was afraid that you would say that," Noble said, throwing up his arms and sitting back in in the chair. “Lay it on me, already.”

  "The people who were there that day at the airport are in great danger," Shaw said. "You know that. You saw the black-eyed children just last night, didn't you? That's just one incident and already people involved with the Duveen case are vanishing. That is going to continue. If you try to reach out to them, you are likely to run right into them or Void."

  "How do we stop that?"

  "I don't know," Shaw replied. "That's another reason that we need you with us, Noble. We have to find the rest of the people who were there that day. Anyone who was on that flight is in danger of hearing from Void via his creepy avatars. When that happens, they will touch those people and the people will vanish."

  Noble thought of Eveline Paulson, terrified, in a hotel somewhere waiting for his phone call and hoping that he would have something to tell her. What the fuck was he going to tell her? How the hell was he going to explain this so she could stay safe? There was no safety now.

  "There's a woman," Noble said, "Eveline Paulson. She was working at the passport counter in customs that night. She was the first person to talk to Duveen. I was at her house just last night and she was visited by a whole bunch of those freaky kids with no eyes. We got out of there and I got her a hotel room. I told her I would call her and tell her something. What am I supposed to tell her?"

  "We know about Ms. Paulson," Shaw replied. "You were being watched last night."

  "Why didn't anyone help us?" Noble said, getting agitated again. "Why the hell did no one step up and help us?"

  "Because we couldn't!" Shaw yelled. "There are times when we can step in and help and times when we cannot and when Void is there doing that, with the people we had watching you, it was not proper for us to step in. We would have weakened the barriers around her house and Void himself might have come pouring in. There are rules, Noble. It's time you start learning them."

  "Fuck you, Shaw!" Noble yelled back, standing up. "Fuck you and fuck Dash and everyone else around here. You at least had a choice about which way your life was going to go. Apparently I didn't! Apparently everything I did or was going to do with the rest of my fucking life was being planned out by a bunch of people who were not even from the same goddamn dimension I'm from! My wife is in danger. My friends and family are in danger. There are people out there who have no idea what the fuck is going on and they might be vanishing, being touched by those creepy fucking kids. You act like this is some great thing you have me involved in here. Let me tell you, partner, this whole deal sucks and you can shove your sanctimonious attitude up your ass!"

  There was silence in the room, those words ringing off the walls. Shaw’s expression had not changed a bit. The old man was standing there staring at Noble with a bemused, tired, frustrated look on his face. Dash, meanwhile, was still doing his very best not to look at Noble at all.

  "I'm going back to the hotel," Noble said. "I am going to call my wife. I am also going to call Eveline Paulson. Shaw, I am going to suggest that someone with IDEA or Homeland get over to where she is, provided she is not already gone, and provide her some kind of protection. Is that too much to ask? Is that breaking the rules?"

  "What about the rest of the people who were there?" Dash asked. "Are we supposed to provide protection for them, too?"

  "I don't know!" Noble said, throwing up his hands for emphasis. "Right now I know that I made a promise to Eveline that she would be safe. I know that at least one person, someone named Whitlock, is already gone. I know that you, Dr. Shaw, tried to get hold of him. Am I right to assume that you also tried to contact a lot of the other people who were there that night? What are you doing for them? What did you want to do with Whitlock?"

  Shaw held up his hand to calm Noble. "Yes," Shaw said, "you are correct. I was going to try and help Whitlock. We were too late to do so. Yes, we have reached out to others. We can do some things to protect Ms. Paulson, Noble. I can see to that. I cannot promise that we can stop the black-eyed children."

  Noble wasn’t sure what to say to that. At least it was something.

  "There is real danger here, Noble," Shaw said.

  "So you keep telling me," Noble said.

  "I want you to understand that we may not be able to stop Void," Shaw said. "Even if we provide some kind of protection for Ms. Paulson and some of the others at the airport, it will mean nothing if we cannot stop it. If we cannot stop Whitten and whoever is doing these experiments with the dimensional barriers, then all of our protection will be for naught.”

  "I get it," Noble said quietly. He was too tired to fight anymore. "Can I go now? You've turned my entire world and my life upside down.”

  Shaw and Dash looked at each other. Dash also looked exhausted, but Shaw just had that statue-like mask on his face. They both shrugged.

  "Go," Dash said, at last.

  Noble had never felt so tired. His head was still spinning, as if the top of his skull had been removed, his brain also removed, and then stuffed with cotton and other material.

  He shuffled out of the office, feeling defeated, deflated. Last night, he thought he would have answers. Today, two people had given him what they said were answers, but he felt betrayed, tired, sad. More than anything else, he felt confused.

  For years Noble had had dreams that he would go home to the house where he grew up and find his parents and family there, but that they would not recognize him. They would be robots or aliens and they would not recognize him at all. He always awoke terrified, screaming, sure that he was lost somewhere. Now he felt like that was actually the case.

  How many others knew? How many others had been aware of what he was and what Shaw told him that he could do? Had any choice he made in his life been of his own free will? It was too much to consider.

  Noble pushed through the doors and walked out into the darkening night.

  ***

  The sun was going down, the sky still blue, but very rapidly turning to purple and darker colors. The horizon was a spectacular array of colors. Noble admired it, wondering what the sunsets looked like in other dimension, but glad that he was where he was and seeing what he was seeing. The shadows were growing, but he now knew that the shadow men were not to be feared. In some ways, they were protectors, even if they had insect faces.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and began shuffling his way toward his hotel room. He had never felt so unsure of himself. Throughout his life he had always been confident about what he was and what he wanted to do. He had always wanted to help people. When he was a kid he would pretend that he was a cop or a fireman. How had he ended up at Homeland? Right now, he couldn't even remember.

  Noble could remember other strange times when he had felt that tingling feeling in his gut, as if he had suddenly gone down a steep hill on a roller coaster. He remembered times when he had looked around and seen strange things, strange people, weird vehicles. Funny, he thought, how he had been able to push those thoughts aside, get on with his life, convince himself that he had been drunk, tired, or dreaming. Other times he had just pushed it away into some compartment in his brain and only now had the thoughts and memories come back to him.

  "Jesus," Noble muttered.

  When he was a child he had a complete police outfit including a hat and a gun and a holster. He had run around pretending to arrest people for various crimes. He sat in front of the television and watched cop TV shows and ate them up.

  When Noble went off to college, he had picked a relatively small university in Missouri. He studied psychology and then law and criminology. After he graduated he had headed off to the East coast and law school. There he also studied criminology and applied, after he graduated, to join the FBI. One day, out of the blue
Dash showed up at his apartment and asked if he could talk to him about opportunities with Homeland Security.

  Now that Noble thought about it, the whole interaction was weird and probably not the standard way that Homeland approached someone. Dash, standing there, at night, in a dark suit and asking if he could come in and talk. At the time he had thought nothing of it, it just seemed like something that Homeland would do. Dash sat in his living room and drank the bad coffee that Noble made and told him that he had great opportunities to protect the country, the entire country, if he would consider joining up with Homeland. Dash had used just the right words to appeal to Noble's sense of justice and helping people and it was a no-brainer after that.

  How had he thought that was normal? Why had Noble never asked any of his co-workers how they had been recruited? Had they been recruited or had they applied and had they taken rigorous tests to get where they were? Given the relatively secret nature of the organization, had everyone just learned to shut up and not ask questions of each other?

  Noble ran a hand through his hair. Looking back it all looked obvious. Just like that, any delusion he carried that he was a brilliant detective vanished. The biggest mystery of his life had been his own existence, his own career, and all of the warning signs had been right in front of him and he hadn't noticed a goddamn thing.

  He looked up and saw that the sun had now descended behind the trees and buildings. There was still a bit of light near the horizon, but the sky over his head was dark and there were stars. Noble wondered if there were other planets out there in addition to the multitudes of dimensions that he now knew existed. Were there people up there that knew about those dimensions? What were UFOs? Were they really people from alternate realities that punched through into our dimension?

  So many questions.

  So few answers.

  The shadows were longer and deeper and still menacing. Each bit of red was a potential red eye and another shadow man. Had they always been there? They must have. How had he not seen them? Perhaps you only saw these shadow men once you had been exposed to the reality of alternate dimensions. The uniforms must have allowed the men in them to vibrate at a different frequency and that allowed them to jump into the in-between worlds. Could Noble do that automatically?