Jack James and the Call of the Tanakee

by J. Joseph Wright

  “It’s too late for that,” Jack spouted.

  “Jack!” Liz warned.

  “I’m serious, Mom!” he answered with even more fury. “There’s no way he can be the True Soul! No way!”

  “Son, listen,” Ben crouched down and met him face-to-face. “We have to all work together to fight Essinis, and we can’t be fighting one another. That’s what Essinis and the Nagas would want.”

  “But…but…” Jack tried to make eye contact with Takota, but had no luck. His chest became heavy and his breath got tight, with a stomach full of manic butterflies. “But if Takota isn’t my protector, who is?”

  “We’ll have a briefing about that and many other things,” announced Commander Klein. “Until then, I recommend you all get something to eat, get some rest, and familiarize yourselves with the Black Pyramid.”

  “Black Pyramid?” Jack glanced at the surroundings. “What’s that?”

  “We’re inside a secure compound deep under a mountain system in Alaska. This is your home from now on. The Nagas and their human followers are everywhere, and they’d snatch you up the moment you stuck out your head. They almost did back at Winmart. It’s safer this way, with you guys living here. So get used to it.”

  Jack observed Argus and Takota with a keen eye. The furry fellow still didn’t want to look at him.

  “Don’t worry, Jack,” Enola reached a little, furry white paw and patted his knee. “We’ll protect you.”

  SIXTEEN

  JACK SPENT THE NEXT three hours by himself, wandering. A state of profound shock set in as he tried to accept, or somehow come to grips with, all that had just happened to him. Argus? The True Soul? It just couldn’t be. And Takota. How could he lose Takota?

  He roamed the myriad passageways and chambers of the underground complex known as the Black Pyramid. A mammoth place. One of the guards told him the structure was almost twice the size of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and probably much older, though nobody could say for certain who built it and why. A network of elevators traveled up and down ninety-nine levels, terminating in a hot and steamy, dark and dingy place. They told Jack it was the reactor, and said the entire complex got its power from what was a new form of clean fusion. Jack only knew it was cooking him like an oven, so he didn’t spend much time there. He also didn’t spend much time in the mothballed areas which made up most of the pyramid, vast spaces that hadn’t been used in centuries.

  Everything was larger than life, and, though ancient, looked more modern than anything he’d ever seen, with architecture way beyond its time in accuracy and engineering. Precise, seamless fusions of some kind of unknown metal alloy, rounded off and no hard angle in sight. And the scale. Every room he went into was gigantic. Every floor bigger than the last. He found the dining hall, known as the Commons, and it looked like it could hold two thousand easy. Same with a room they called the Connections Center. And another place called the Discovery Room. Lastly, he came to an area that the guards told him were the dorms. Jack’s lungs emptied involuntarily as he walked in and saw rows and rows of bunks, hundreds of them, lining the room. A grand hall, really, extending the length of a football field.

  He saw Amelia lying on one of the beds and sat next to her.

  “Are we expecting someone?” he half-joked about the seemingly endless cots, though his nerves wouldn’t die down.

  Amelia laughed halfheartedly.

  “You might say that,” she sat up somberly. “Listen, Jack. I know it’s not helping right now, but I truly am sorry about this.”

  “How could this happen, Amelia? How could you not see this coming?”

  She looked past him, or through him, to somewhere else. Perhaps a place that didn’t really exist but in her imagination.

  “Amelia,” he shook her from her waking dream. “You okay? You’re starting to act like I do sometimes.”

  “Oh,” she shook her head. “Sorry. I was…Jack, there’s something I want to tell you. It’s about my abilities. Things have been happening. Strange things. I think I’m being manipulated.”

  “Manipulated? How? By who?”

  “I’m not sure, but my Eteea powers have been used by someone, or something. They’ve been invading my mind, coming to me in my dreams and scaring me. But I think they’re doing more than that. I think they’re using me to find you. That’s why I’m here, why we’re here. This place is safe. The Nagas can’t see us here in the Black Pyramid.”

  “Why can’t they see us here?”

  “This is a sacred place, with an ancient magic protecting it.”

  “Kind of like Wind Whisper Woods.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Kind of like that.”

  The entrance sparkled and fizzled, then peeled away like an electrified skin and in barged Argus.

  “Hey, guys!” he smiled wide. “Let’s go to the Discovery Room for some work with our Eteea machines, you wanna?”

  Jack only wanted the kid to leave. He’d had enough of Argus for a lifetime. Then the smart-aleck said something that forced the competitive spirit out of him.

  “Betcha can’t control your machine better than me!” he then ran down the hall, disappearing from view.

  “That…that ARGUS!” Jack stood abruptly. “I’m gonna teach him a lesson!”

  “Wait!” she held his wrist. “Jack, don’t!” she forced him to meet her stare. “Argus is powerful. He’s strong and knows how to use the Eteea machines better than anyone.”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Jack said. “You mean because of that hovering thing? That’s just a trick. When it comes to actually using the device, I’m better than him!”

  She looked at the floor.

  “What? I am better, aren’t I?”

  She didn’t say a word, and refused to make eye contact.

  “I can’t believe this,” he turned away. “You like him. You like him and you want me to just go away somewhere and crawl into a corner!” he faced her again. “That’s not gonna happen!”

  He strode from the dormitory in a huff. Amelia followed, begging him to reconsider, but he would hear none of it.

  “BEFORE YOU SET foot in the Discovery Room, you must put on your body armor,” insisted Rory, one of the Eteean lab chiefs. She ushered Argus and Jack to the center of a small buzz of activity. Technicians scurrying about. Computer readouts blinking in midair.

  “What body armor?” wearing nothing but a towel, Jack searched for a rack of suits, some hangers with clothes draped over them, something. All he saw was Rory in her sterile white, smiling, holding an eye dropper.

  “This body armor,” she squeezed a globule of black liquid onto Jack’s wrist, and then placed one on Argus’s. Instantly, the darkness spread. Up Jack’s arm, across his shoulders and down his chest to his toes, pushing the towel off his waist and creating a tightfitting outer coating over his skin. Jack’s lungs constricted. He felt a sense of suffocation.

  “Just relax,” Rory advised him. “It goes on and shapes to your body automatically.”

  In a matter of seconds he was covered neck to feet with the strange substance. Not a liquid after all, but not a solid either. He imagined it was going to be uncomfortable. Body armor sounds so bulky and restricting. Yet this stuff wasn’t stiff or awkward in any way. He liked that it was black, and the thin channels of light pulsing in peculiar patterns up the legs, arms and chest gave him the feeling of wearing an Eteea machine.

  “Try the helmet,” Rory suggested.

  “The helmet?” Jack said, and the second he said it, the black substance ran up the back of his neck and enveloped his whole head except for his mouth. He thought he’d be rendered sightless, but it was quite the opposite. His vision seemed enhanced with brighter colors and more distinct contrasts.

  “Look at you, Jackie Boy,” Argus grinned mockingly. “Now you’re looking like a real Eteean!”

  Jack shook his head. Then his eyes felt like they bulged from their sockets when Amelia showed up from the girls’ fitting area, sporting her snug on
e-piece, the sleek lines blending nicely with her slender physique. It was the first time Jack really noticed Amelia had a feminine shape. He blinked and felt his face becoming red, heart fluttering like a hummingbird.

  “Amelia!” Argus gasped. “You look…you look amazing!”

  Jack glared at him. He wanted to say that.

  “What?” Argus glanced at Jack and shrugged.

  “Nothing,” Jack said, then turned the topic back to the suits. “What is this stuff?”

  “Bioengineering,” Argus answered. Jack’s memory flashed to the first moment he laid eyes on Argus, back at Teresa’s house, when he thought the kid was a bad guy. He still wasn’t too sure.

  “Bioengineering?” Jack directed his question at Rory. “You mean this stuff was engineered by mimicking nature? It feels so…” he moved his arms, admiring the freedom and flexibility. “It’s as light as a feather.”

  “Yeah,” Amelia laughed. “Doesn’t even feel like I have anything on.”

  “It’s neovestis,” Rory said matter-of-factly.

  “Neovestis? What’s that?”

  Rory snickered.

  “I keep forgetting you guys just got here. I’ve been living here so long, it all seems like old hat. This material has been synthesized and patterned after the shell of a longhorn cowfish and the slime of a hagfish.”

  “Fish?” Amelia glanced at the suit again.

  “Sure.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, brushing the suit with his palm. “I remember reading about this kind of thing before. Using nature for inspiration for tougher, better body armor—”

  “And lighter aircraft, and more flexible, durable materials. We’ve bio-engineered all kinds of other technologies.”

  “Like what?”

  Rory smiled.

  “You have a lot to learn yet. I know. I remember when I first was introduced to the real world, not the fake one the Nagas want us to see,” she shook her head. “It’s a shock, learning just how advanced human technology really is. Hidden lunar and undersea colonies. Invisible aircraft over the major cities. It’s remarkable.”

  “What?” Jack was stunned. “I thought it was just the Eteea machines.”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. It just begins with the Eteea machines. Those machines represent an even higher level of our technological evolution. They’re more than just machines, as you and your friends have found.”

  “So come on! Let’s go and find out what they can do!” Argus led them through a short passageway into a larger area, much like a gymnasium. Only this gym had no basketball hoops, no wooden court, no grandstands. It did have some of the most ingenious things—mazes made of beams of light on the ground and in the air resembling a mishmash of trapeze wires in a futuristic circus tent. Jack was mesmerized for a moment as Argus hurried to the far wall where an open cabinet seemed to shimmer with life.

  The closer Jack looked, the more he realized he was looking at a sort of weapons locker, and inside were several Eteea machines, one of them the O/A.

  “Hey! What are these doing here?”

  “The Eteean staff brought them in here for us,” answered Amelia, and Jack went to pluck up his machine, but Argus got in his way, taking it for himself.

  “Uh-uh,” he shook his finger. “Remember? This is my machine, now.”

  “Jack, here,” Amelia pointed to a machine with an amber glow. “Your dad said you should use this one.”

  He held the device in his hand and felt the awesome power of the multiverse. The connection was instantaneous, and, though the machine seemed less powerful than the O/A, he knew it would work. The things he could do. He’d show them who was best at operating these machines.

  The mazes suspended above them started to make sense. The passages of light. The spinning objects and the intersecting tracks. It was an obstacle course, and Jack prepared to run it, but before he got started, Amelia took a machine in her hands and it flared up with a rosy hue. Jack could see right away she needed help. Problem was, Argus saw it too.

  “It’s okay,” Argus edged close and held her hands as she handled the machine. “You can feel how strong it is, can’t you?”

  “Yeah,” she said breathlessly. “Jack, this is amazing. You never told me how this feels.”

  Jack was about to tell her to hold on because the feeling would only become more intense after she actually achieved omnidimensional energy absorption. Argus, as usual, beat him to the punch.

  “Just wait,” he said. “It gets better. Now press and hold.”

  She hesitated for a moment, saving a special glance for Jack. Then she did as Argus instructed, holding her palm on the machine. Whistling. Chirping. Churning. An internal lightning storm. Her machine powered up rapidly, and Jack saw a familiar sight. Duplicates of Amelia. Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, merging into her one after the other, so fast it was a blur. When it was all over, Amelia glistened with ethereal energy.

  “Oh my…oh my…” she looked at her hands, watching the slight trail of duplicates follow her movements. “This is so weird!”

  “Okay,” Argus nodded. “You’ve done it. Maximum power absorption. Good job. Now we can use this facility for what it was intended. We call this the Discovery Room for a reason—to discover our Eteea machines. So, Amelia…discover away!”

  She seemed mystified.

  “I-I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s easy,” Jack seized his chance to help. “Just think it, and it will happen.”

  “Yeah, watch,” Argus pressed the O/A and an instant translucent globe appeared around him, lifting him off the floor five, ten, twenty feet. “Come on up, the air’s fine!”

  With a giggle, Amelia closed her eyes, then had to open them again quickly when her own pinkish sphere popped into place, surrounding her and taking her up. Soon she was hovering at the same altitude as Argus, and together they began to follow the light maze in a series of twists and turns, climbs and dives. Faster and faster they flew, spinning and circling each other as they went.

  All Jack could do was watch, feeling a bit more dejected with each squeal of glee from Amelia, each self-assured chuckle from Argus. And it didn’t help that the two were doing so well they began to attract attention. Starting with Rory, one person after the next filed in—lab technicians in sleek white smocks, soldiers in sturdy, solid body armor—all to see the kids strut their stuff. The crowd oohed and aahed at the mid-flight spectacle of speed and agility. Everyone but Jack. He just wanted it to end.

  “Jack, did you see me?” Amelia was at his side all of a sudden. “I’m really getting the hand of this Eteea machine stuff.”

  “Yeah. Congratulations,” he glanced at the machine in his hand. Powerful, yes. But not nearly as potent as the O/A. He wanted his machine back.

  “Oh, Jackie Boy,” Argus sped so fast to Amelia’s side it was basically instantaneous. “Don’t be that way. We can be—whoa!” he reacted to Amelia as she powered down her machine and nearly toppled over from the sudden energy loss. Jack knew the feeling well. He also knew Argus had powered down too, which presented Jack the perfect chance to snatch the O/A from him.

  “That’s mine!” Jack struggled with him for control of the machine. Argus stayed calm and cool, but Jack could see him straining too. Both boys fell down, sending the weapons rolling on the floor. Amelia shrieked, then Jack saw several streaks of color, brown and orange and silver and white. Suddenly, all five Tanakee stood around them, and they pulled the two boys apart.

  “Stop it!” Takota ordered. “Didn’t you hear a word the commander said? We can’t fight each other!”

  “You’re just protecting him!” Jack accused Takota.

  “Jack, that’s not true,” Takota’s eyes filled with grief.

  “It is true,” Argus stood, wiping off and straightening his uniform. “Takota, you’re my protector now, got it? Mine!”

  Takota sighed, ambling closer to Argus and letting his sorrowful stare drift to Jack.

  “I can’t let you to
uch him, Jack,” he said. “Argus is right.”

  “What’s going on in here?” Commander Klein, escorted by a pair of bodyguards, made a hasty entrance into the Discovery Room, scrutinizing the fallen Eteea machines.

  “He thinks he still gets to use the O/A,” Argus told him.

  The commander gave Jack an agitated smile.

  “Listen, Jack. I know this might be a little hard to take, but you’ll understand why I put Argus in charge when the time comes,” he pointed to the other Eteea machines. “And you get a machine, just not the most powerful one. That goes to the True Soul.”

  “But, my dad made it…for me,” Jack sniffled.

  “He did make it,” Commander Klein said. “But not for you. Now, we’ve gone through a lot of trouble to find the other machines, and your father has been working very hard to get them running again. For you. For all of us.”

  “But what about Takota? He’s my friend. My protector.”

  The commander shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jack. But you don’t need to be worried. We’ll find your protector.”

  SEVENTEEN

  IN THE ROOM CALLED the Connections Center, which looked like a giant circular auditorium, Jack was stricken by the amazing technology which, to the commander’s staff and other personnel, was commonplace. Jack had gotten used to holographic monitors and sleek, simple control panels with no physical buttons to press or wires to plug in, but only in his dad’s tiny lab. This room was like taking Ben’s ideas and equipment then blowing it up to a massive scale. Dozens of reclining chairs, much like that in a theater, arraigned in circles, faced a large display in the center, with several suspended, holographic monitors showing various locales around the globe.

  Amelia sought Jack out and placed herself in the neighboring seat. He wanted to move, but his mom and dad boxed him in. The Tanakee were there too, though at that moment Jack felt all alone.