by Damien Boyes
“I need to get to him—to them—but I was told they aren’t in any one place, that they live outside of time. Can you tell me what that means?”
“I believe so,” she says. “But not how to get there.”
“Is there someone who can?”
Her eyes go unfocused, like she’s reliving some long-lost memory, then she says, “One of the others who’ve come to join us—Dr. Jabari—postulates a technique for accessing what he calls ‘nullspace.’ Does that term hold any significance for you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Delta said that’s where the station is.”
She squints like she’s reading something, then frowns. “I’ve never particularly cared for the theoretical flavor of mathematics,” she states. “Here—”
Then Antheia is someone else. She’s turned into a small man with a bald head and dark skin. His round eyes are blurred behind heavily smudged glasses. He’s wearing a collarless black jacket, like fancy pajamas, and when he speaks his voice is strong but breathy, as if emerging from a large wooden instrument.
“Nullspace isn’t to be trifled with,” he says, shaking his finger at me. “You could be lost forever—you understand this?”
I nod. But of course, I don’t—not any of it, but Thrane is planning another invasion, and if I don’t get to Gibzon billions of people will cease to exist, so I’ll risk it.
“No you don’t,” he says, brows raised, blinking at me like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. Which, come to think of it, maybe he does. “You have no concept of forever.”
“You’re right,” I say. “Teach me.”
He purses his lips, removes his glasses, and spends a good long time polishing them with a white handkerchief that materializes in his hand, but when he returns them to his face they’re already thick with smudges.
Finally, a wooden chair materializes next to me and I sit, fold my hands on my lap, and wait patiently. When he deems me ready, he pushes his glasses up on his nose and begins.
“The chronoverse,” Dr. Jabari says, “is infinite. A churning sea of possibility. A set of unlimited coordinates in every direction. Boundless, you can move anywhere, time and space are no limit.” He checks in with me to make sure I’m following and I nod to let him know I am. “However, there exist realms outside of time and space ...” A chalkboard appears in front of him and he begins to write out equations, algebra, but more advanced than anything I took on the SATs. I don’t even know most of the symbols, so he teaches me those too.
It takes a while—I want to say weeks, but I don’t once get hungry or tired, so who knows—but eventually I catch on. Mr. Reilly would be proud.
Once we’re done, we’re surrounded by chalkboards scrawled with numbers and equations, explaining to me that if the chronoverse defines everything that exists, nullspace is everything that doesn’t—that it’s the nothing everything comes from. Which isn’t exactly intuitive, but I roll with it. Whatever it takes to get to Gibzon.
“So if I can only reach places that exist,” I ask, “how am I supposed to jump somewhere that doesn’t?”
He sighs as though I’ve missed the point entirely. “Shall we review the equations?” he asks, reaching for the brush to wipe the board clean.
“No,” I say, maybe a little too emphatically because he gives me a look over his glasses. “It isn’t the math—it’s the practical application. I get the concept. The nullspace of a song is all the notes that aren’t played. Or the nullspace of a map is all the directions that don’t lead me where I want to go, but if I’m presented with an infinite set of options, what’s left?”
“Ah-ha,” he says, as if I just said something important. “That’s it exactly—what is the nullspace of an infinite system?”
I wait for him to tell me but he stays silent, as if he expects me to answer.
How am I supposed to know?
I shake my head at him and his cheeks squeeze up and turn his eyes into frustrated slits. “If all vectors of the chronoverse are included in the matrix,” he asks, “what is left out?”
“Nothing?” I guess.
He claps his hands. “Exactly!”
“But how am I supposed to jump inside nothing?”
“How do you jump outside it?” he asks, his voice leading.
“I don’t know, I just do.”
He cocks his head. “Is that true?”
I guess it’s not. I picture a place or a time or something at least. “I usually have a destination in mind, forward or back. A reference point I can hold in my head.”
“Then jump without a reference point.”
“Is it that simple?” I ask and stand, ready to try for myself.
He holds up his hands. “Oh, absolutely not. Without a frame of reference, you could end up in deep space, or worse. You must concentrate not only on nothing, but on the space between nothing. Even for the boundless this is a nearly impossible task. From what I understand, Gibzon uses powerful equations and a massive energy source to maintain his presence in nullspace. For a human, even one boundless, moving yourself there presents an indomitable challenge.”
“But it can be done?” I ask, unsure of myself now. I don’t want to end up floating in space forever.
“I have done it,” he answers, with a smile on his face that is clearly masking pride. “As have a few others, over the millennia.”
“Then I’ve got to try,” I say, and take a few steps away from him and his chalkboards, as if I might explode if I do it wrong. “Can you tell me something though?”
He angles his head at me. “If I’m able.”
“If nullspace is everything the chronoverse isn’t, what’s this place?”
He raises a thin eyebrow, and a smile cracks his face. “That depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
He takes off his glasses, produces the white handkerchief again, cleans them, and once more returns the smudged lenses to his face. “A blank slate. An equation yet to be solved. Not everything, not nothing. Mere potential.”
“The potential for what?”
He winks. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand.” It’s become my mantra.
“Why should you? You may be able to walk between worlds, but no one can truly understand eternity.”
That’s probably for the best. There’s enough in my head already without having to cram eternity in there too.
“Thanks, Dr. Jabari,” I say.
“Remember,” he says. “Inward. And if I never see you again, it’s been a pleasure to once again have a student.” He blinks away and leaves me alone in the tunnel.
Nothing to do now but get on with it.
I ball my hands into fists and concentrate on the inside of my head, but can’t think of anything but jumping into the airless vacuum of space and learning firsthand if asphyxiation or flash-freezing will kill me first.
I’m way too tense for this. I shake out my hands as I lift up into the air, and bicycle kick a few times to loosen up. You can do this.
Once I’ve settled my nerves I take some deep breaths, in and out, concentrating on breathing in through my nostrils and out through my mouth. I try to picture everything, starting as big as I can, with the chronoverse itself, multiple timelines all running parallel, and then with each breath, I narrow it down.
One timeline.
One galaxy.
One solar system.
One planet.
Then I think even smaller, through the buildings and rocks and into the molecules themselves, then even further, into the spaces between the molecules, where electrons exist as glowing rings of probability, and once I get to the churning quantum foam that reality springs from, once I’m as far down as I can go, I take one more breath and jump.
28
Eternity Station
I’m falling.
I gasp in a breath but there’s no air, and when I realize I can’t breathe all I can think about is breathing, and my chest flutters as my lungs strain
to find something to inhale.
There’s absolutely nothing around, nothing to grab or cling to as I plummet toward the colors and vibrant shapes racing up toward me. I curl, bracing to hit the ground, but somehow the ground never comes.
Suddenly my frame of reference changes and I’m not moving at all; it’s the surface of the nothing below me that’s churning in a fractal bloom, rising and stretching in fantastical colors, twirling green and pink octopus arms and topographic sand dunes of orange and blue and circles of black lightning that zoom into yellow-capped mountain ranges.
Once the initial I’m going to die panic fades, I realize I’m not in any immediate danger. I still can’t breathe, but now that my lungs have stopped trying, my body doesn’t seem to mind. I don’t even feel my heart pumping anymore, and when I raise my finger to my neck I can’t find a pulse.
I guess I made it. If this isn’t nullspace I don’t know what it is, but now how am I supposed to find Gibzon?
The answer to that question is surprisingly easy. One quick look around shows me a series of shapes hovering motionless above and to the right of me. Rectangles mostly, but also a few larger circles and one pretty big square filled with shimmering liquid. They look like doors, all floating in place, sketching out the walls of an invisible structure.
That’s got to be Eternity Station. But I’m a few hundred feet away from it—how do I get over there? What if I jumped this far just to miss it by feet? I don’t see any windows. What if no one notices me floating out here? Could I be lost out here forever like Dr. Jabari warned?
“Help,” I yell, but nothing comes out. The sound is swallowed up by something the second it leaves my throat, or maybe it never leaves at all. I clap my hands and feel them slap together but the sound never reaches my ears. “Hey!” I yell again and even though my throat is vibrating hard enough to hurt, it isn’t making so much as a whiff of noise.
I close my mouth and huff inwardly. Now what? I can’t spend the rest of forever staring at Gibzon’s front door.
Maybe I can move myself. I cup my left hand and throw it out behind me like I’m trying to turn underwater, but nothing happens. Then I use both hands and put them over my head and pull and still don’t go anywhere.
My face burns with frustration. I’ve made it this far, jumped into a place that doesn’t exist, but now I’ll be stuck out here for the rest of my life—and who knows how long that might be.
If only I had something I could toss out and catch on to Eternity Station with, like a grappling hook or whatever. I imagine holding the rope and pulling myself closer, and I’m not sure if it’s a trick of perspective or what, but the doors appear to get bigger. When I stop picturing the rope between me and the station the sense of movement slows. I tug again and the doors glide closer once more.
I let loose with a silent laugh. I can move. It isn’t exactly fast, but at least I’m not trapped out here.
I aim for the shimmering open box. The rectangles are all solid-looking, closed doors I have no way of getting through, but the box is rippling with an internal light that almost looks like a pool, water constrained by solid nothing, and once I get closer I can see right through it to whatever lies inside, above the surface. I can’t make out any details but it’s the only source of light out here other than the bright colors swirling around me, so I figure that’s the best place to start.
The pool gets bigger as I pull myself through nothing, and either I’m moving faster than I thought or distance is weird here. I try to slow down but can’t, and instead plunge straight into the pool sideways. It catches me and drags me to a stop, and after the odd slippery nothing outside, the water’s friction is somehow comforting in its familiarity. I float for a moment, letting my body adjust to pressure and temperature and sound once again, and then kick my legs and break through to the surface.
My body wants to breathe again and I let it, find my heartbeat has returned too. I swim to the edge of the pool and hang off the side a minute, just breathing. The room’s rectangular, with doors on either side. The pool isn’t bigger than about ten by twenty and the room itself not much larger than that. The walls are all glossy white, with strips of bright white light running along the edges. I glance down through the water and see the spiraling riot of color and movement outside distorted through the thin layer of water. Hell of a place for a swim.
I pull myself out, soaking wet, and realize I’m still wearing the same clothes I was when I first escaped my body back in Buffalo. I wonder if I’ll be wearing these same clothes forever.
As I stand dripping all over the white floor, a man appears through one of the doors. He’s a little taller than I am, standing stiff in a silvery-gray suit with a jacket that hangs to his black slippers. His hair is perfectly smooth and parted, molded to his head like plastic. He’d be good-looking—in a bland, department store mannequin kind of way—if it weren’t for his eyes, which are perfectly, unsettlingly white, glowing just like the walls.
This must be Gibzon.
He blinks twice then watches me, features frozen, while a puddle forms under my boots.
“You don’t have a loop,” he finally says. His voice isn’t deep, but it echoes in the small room. “Yet here you are.”
There’s a commotion on the other side of the room and I turn to see Alpha and Delta emerge from the doorway, weapons raised.
“Well what do you know,” Delta says, and smiles down his sights at me. “We thought we’d never see you again.” He elbows Alpha and she flinches, tightening her face, but they both lower their guns.
“Lucky us,” she says, her voice leaden. “Just what we needed.” She turns and passes a young man who’s just arriving. He looks familiar, like the younger brother of someone I once met, but I can’t place him.
“Tau,” Alpha says on her way out, “Jasmin’s back. The new one.”
“Ye owe meh a mustache,” he says.
That’s Tau? He’s just a kid, a kid with a nearly impenetrable accent. It takes a second and him rubbing his smooth upper lip to realize he said “You owe me a mustache.” The last time I saw him he looked fifteen years older, and he had that robot arm that disintegrated under Dhemant’s energy whip …
Then he died.
Just like me.
His memories returned to the Aperion, and when he came back out it was in a new young body. We’re all immortals, this is happening, and now I need to warn them a madman from the future is about to launch an attack on their world.
This is crazy.
“How did you get here?” the white-eyed man asks. He still hasn’t moved.
“You’re Gibzon, right?” I ask, just to be sure.
“We are,” he replies. “Now we’ll ask again. How did you get here?”
“I jumped,” I answer.
“Interesting,” he says, but doesn’t seem terribly upset or anything. “Only one other person has ever come here without assistance.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “Me, right? The other me?”
Gibzon’s eyes flicker. “No,” he answers. “Not her.” He looks across the room to where Delta and Tau are standing. “But, as with all boundless, we are pleased you have arrived.”
“I have a message for you,” I blurt.
Gibzon doesn’t react. “A message?”
“Thrane,” I say, and hear Tau swear in Scottish from across the room. “He’s coming.”
29
Revelations
Gibzon leads us through the halls of the station while I drip a trail of water behind us. No one offers me a towel. The station walls are all like the pool room: glossy with glowing white seams, and a clear glass ceiling that looks through to a gray haze of nothing. It’s like the waiting room in a high-tech afterlife. We pass closed doors and I occasionally catch glimpses of movement down what I think are hallways, but I can’t tell if they’re other groups or reflections of us.
Delta falls in on my left with Tau to my right.
“You were there?” Delta asks. “De
adworld?”
“That place with Midtown trapped under glass?” I say. “Yeah, I was there.”
“How?” he asks.
“I jumped,” I say. “Same way I got here.”
Delta shoots Tau a look and I turn my head to catch Tau’s reaction but can’t read his face. I’m not sure whether he’s impressed or scared.
“You’ve never been there?” I ask. It’s hard to believe I’m the only one who’s ever seen it.
“None of us ’as,” Tau says, his accent less pronounced than a moment ago. “’Cept you.”
“This way,” Gibzon interjects, and that shuts the conversation down. “We must confer.”
The glowing network of passages ends in a “T” intersection with another glassed-in hallway, but this time the outside walls are clear, and on the other side of the glass is New York. Not the New York I remember, or even Thrane’s version, but more like the one I saw in between. The one that looked like it had figured itself out.
From the looks of it we’re in a building somewhere downtown, facing north, and very high up. Manhattan stretches out in front of us, all the way up to the sparkling Oz of Midtown and past. Central Park, Harlem, the Bronx—I can see them all from here, and the city looks amazing. Like with my first glimpse of this place, I immediately notice the completely greened-over East River. I don’t know if they built over it or drained it or what, but it’s all trees and farmland, a massive green space running up between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Vehicles stream through the skies, like it’s the Jetsons or something, and from up here the city looks clean and safe. It’s New York of the future. I can’t wait to see it.
If it lasts long enough.
“Is that really New York?” I ask as we walk past the windows. “I thought we were in nullspace.”
“An illusion, to remind us what we fight for,” Gibzon says as he leads us into an open conference area where Alpha’s already waiting. At the center of the room is a large display table like back on Captain Fan’s boat, but it’s showing a weird kind of graph, like a three-dimensional heat map, with spikes rising out of a foamy gray baseline. One of the spikes dominates the map. It’s gotta be four times as thick and twice as tall than the second largest, like a volcano with a white-hot core towering above a smaller mountain. There are other bumps, but they’re all tiny by comparison.