by Dan Glover
"Oh, I see we're awake. Good. I was hoping we'd get a chance to talk yet tonight."
The creature crouched in the gloom of one corner hissed more than spoke. It had a human voice made metallic as if someone was talking through an intercom system back at her old prison. Her eyes couldn't seem to focus upon its body as it writhed and swirled inside the mist growing out of the floor to cloak the horror.
"Who are you?"
"Please don't act stupid. It doesn't become you, my dear. You know who I am, darling Lily. I've been waiting for this moment for what seems an eternity. But of course you'd know far more about that than I."
"You're Micah, Karen's friend."
"Was that my name? I somehow doubt she'd call me a friend in any real sense of the word. We parted with a good deal of enmity, I fear. I dearly wanted her to stay with me but it had to be of her own accord. She betrayed me, just like everyone else in my life."
"No one betrayed you, darling Micah. Karen wanted to go home, that's all. Isn't that what you desire as well?"
"I've been alone here so long, Lily, that I no longer crave human companionship as I once did. I take that back... I never did socialize much. I hated most humans. They were so dull, so ingratiating. They all made me sick.
"This is my home... the only place I've known for centuries. I belong here as did Karen, if she only would have realized it. I thought she was smarter than that but I've been wrong before.
"Still, Karen was different. She could actually hold a discussion with me. I have to admit I was amazed when she showed up here again after being away for a hundred years. I had no idea there were any other survivors after the plague killed everyone. She told me a strange story, sweet Lily. She said it was because of you that she was still alive. I didn’t believe her until I began reverting to my normal self."
"Is that why you kidnapped me, darling Micah? Do you wish to study me too? Your darling Karen spent a lifetime studying me when I would have gladly given her the answers right off. All she had to do was ask."
"That is so magnanimous of you that I am almost tempted to ask for your secret myself. But then again I already have studied you, Lily of my heart. My little friends have been quite busy while you slept."
"What have you discovered, if I may be so bold as to ask?"
"Your ribosomes are completely unlike any other animal on earth which makes you my unique Lily."
"What are ribosomes, darling Micah? I am but a dullard. I have no knowledge of such things."
"A ribosome works inside a cell as a protein synthesizer. You see, a ribosome is scaffolded with molecules called ribosomal RNA, or rRNA for short. In all vertebrates, each ribosome has three rRNAs. But your ribosomes have four rRNA molecules. That’s because one of the rRNAs in your ribosome, the molecule I've named 28S, is cleaved into two."
"What does this mean, sweet Micah?"
"In the structure of all living organisms I've examined to date, ribosomes are fallible: sometimes, a ribosome will insert an incorrect amino acid into the protein chain it is making corrupting the lineage. That's what causes the aging process, or so I surmise.
"But I've found that your cells manufacture proteins that are up to forty times less likely to contain mistakes than are normal proteins. In other words, your ribosomes are unusually faithful copiers, as precise as a cloistered medieval scribe, or a sequestered group of mermaids.
"And I'm guessing that in your ribosomes, that precision apparently has life or death stakes, since protein errors are highly correlated with aging. While a young body has little trouble recycling out junk protein, an older body does so much less efficiently, allowing the junk to accumulate. This junk then clogs the cell and manifests as various diseases."
"How will this knowledge aid you in your quest, darling Micah?"
"I'm not exactly sure yet but I am guessing that I've been blind to the biological aspects of longevity. I thought I could manipulate the human body in ways that would preclude all disease. Since I mistakenly assumed death is a disease too, I thought I could sidestep certain heretofore unassailable consequences of the aging process by constantly rejuvenating the body from inside out.
"By making use of my nanobots—who were so good as to transport you here, by the way—I was certain I could offer anyone optimal health and immortality. I am beginning to see now that to marry inorganic particles with biological matter will always result in unintended side effects such as you see standing before you even now."
As Micah moved out of the dark corner Lily stifled a gasp at the horror of his countenance. His body was but a blob of movement as deep under his skin tiny eruptions were taking place like miniature volcanoes spewing forth in a simultaneous dance of creation and destruction. He had swelled to grotesque proportions and being incapable of walking he seemed to slither across the floor like a serpent rather than walking.
"I was actually much worse before you arrived, Lily my savior. I am reverting quite quickly which tends to upset the equilibrium of my little friends, hence the movement you are witnessing beneath my skin. I am guessing that will soon abate."
"Is that why you brought me here, sweet Micah? To help you?"
"Yes, but not in the way you mean, my darling Lily."
"Perhaps we might help each other, precious Micah. Tell me... do your tiny machines talk to you? Have they informed you as to my condition?"
"I'm not sure what you mean, my one-of-a-kind Lily. What condition? Are you ill?"
"My species goes through what we call the diminishing. It is a kind of cellular death too although I'm unaware of any of my kind actually dying from it. Rather, we become tired of life. Most of my ancestors simply floated deeper and deeper into the Lake until their bodies imploded from the great pressure.
"I fear I am going through the early stages of the diminishing. I thought perhaps your little hellions might have informed you as to my weakness. It may be a way of exploiting me... but then again, your mischievous little rascals might help to reverse the process... bring me back to the land of the living, so to speak.
"They are like maggots cleansing a gangrenous wound... gorging upon the imperfections building up inside my bloodstreams... and once their job is done they will drop off my body, satiated with the putrid matter that had heretofore afflicted my very being. I bear no animosity toward you, my beauteous Micah for you have come into my life exactly when I needed you."
"That's interesting, my heretofore perfect Lily."
She noted a tinge of uncertainty in Micah's voice that hadn’t been present before. Up until now he had seemed so sure of his conquest and suddenly that misplaced confidence was gone. Still, he prattled on like a child seeking to impress his mother.
"According to the good doctor Karen you and your kind are immortal. Not only that, but you confer immortality upon any human being in your presence. Are you saying she is wrong?"
"Our precious Karen doesn’t know as much about my species as she would like to think she does. I have told her what I want her to know. We are full of secrets, my darling Micah. What is visible is but a fraction of what we are. Karen and her friends thought they could study me by putting me under their microscopes and discover what it is that enables my ability to heal others, including human beings.
"You too believe you can dissect me bit by bit and thereby inform yourself about my propensity for eternity. You look in all the obvious places and like a child grow excited over discoveries that mean nothing.
"Like you, Karen and her cohorts did not reckon that, as a mirror of Lake Baikal from where I emerged, what is beneath the surface is steeped in profundity that is impossible to discern, even with their magnificent instruments of perception. You too believe by playing around the edges that you will find the biological secret that has eluded you thus far. You have not fathomed the depths of my magic.
"Instead, you rely on science. You congratulate yourself on what a genius you are. But compared to those of my kind, you're but a babbling baby. We existed millions of years befo
re your ancestors climbed down out of the trees and learned to walk upright. You thought you kidnapped me. Again, you give yourself too much credit. Do you really believe I would allow such a thing to happen to me again?
"I willed your instruments of destruction to take me to you. I dreamed of those dragons of devastation night after night, bringing them into being just as surely as you. I have come here of my own accord, darling Micah. And now that I have arrived, it is time that I begin to set things right."
Chapter 27—Fairy Tales
"I met the most amazing man today, sweet Kirk."
A wave of jealousy washed over him as a sinking feeling enveloped his heart. Kirk was used to being a loser at love. His whole life had been a migration from one partner to another always in search of something he could never define much less find.
"What is his name, darling Luciana?"
He didn’t remember when he began addressing others with the same qualifications of love as the Ladies had always done but now he couldn't seem to help himself. Luciana had picked up the same habit.
"Kāne... he calls himself Kāne. While you were busy working with Mr. Nate I went to visit with Amanda and Ginger. Kāne was in the kitchen having breakfast. He said he just arrived here. He told us the strangest tale of how he is Lady Lauren's son and how he was born beneath Lake Baikal ages ago."
"Kāne is here? I better let Mr. Nate know about that. They cannot be around each other for any length of time."
"Why is that, sweet Kirk? Are they enemies?"
"No... Kāne puts off some kind of psychic energy that causes Mr. Nate to begin forgetting things and acting irrationally. We had to take him on a trip to old America once to help alleviate the symptoms."
"Kāne said he has news of Lady Lily. She has gone to old America again. He said another trip there is required to save her life."
"Lady Lily is in old America? Why is she there?"
"He didn’t say. You've been to old America, darling Kirk?"
"We sailed there some two hundred years ago aboard the Nautilus. That's where we found Chester, or where he found us. A mad scientist held Dr. Karen captive for weeks. He had developed some weird little machines that were so small they could go right through skin. I saw the nest."
"I've heard stories about that trip all my life, sweet Kirk. I always thought of them as fairy tales... you know, stories that the adults made up to entertain children. You know my mother is here in Toulon too, right?"
"Ena is here? No, I hadn’t heard that news, darling Luciana."
"I guess I'm kind of silly. I thought she came to visit with me and Niall but she didn’t. She's working with Mr. Nate and Mr. Pete on their new invention. I haven’t even seen her yet. I hear they’ve been in the workshop for three straight days and nights now."
"That must be the anti gravity unit they're working on. Mr. Nate tried to talk to me about it but I had no idea how to help him. He began spouting equations at me but I've never been good at math."
"I've always heard anti gravity is impossible. My mother taught us many things while we were growing up on the Isle of Skye. I remember our physics classes. According to relativity, gravity isn't a force. It is mass impinging upon space causing a dimple. That's why the earth rotates around the sun... the sun is so much bigger that it makes an indentation in space. The earth and all the other planets are not held in place by gravity so much as they roll around that hole the sun makes."
"I never went to school, sweet Luciana. But if Mr. Nate is working on an anti gravity device, he must believe it's possible. I'm sure he'd never waste his time otherwise."
"Of course you're right, darling Kirk. So do you think they'll take Kāne with them to old America?"
"I imagine if Mr. Nate goes, Kāne will not accompany him. Why do you ask?"
"Kāne said something strange. It was almost as if he was talking to himself. He talked about how a sacrifice had to be made and how he would rather it was him than anyone else, especially someone he called Daughter. What do you suppose he meant, sweet Kirk?"
"I never talked to the man. He always scared me... there was something weird about him, almost animalistic. When he first showed up, the Ladies were ecstatic. Lady Lauren is his mother so of course she was happy to see him again. But Lady Lily, she was the one who really took to him... and your mother too. Ena is the one he called Daughter.
"I didn’t know it then, but Lady Lily and Kāne had been lovers ages ago. Mr. Nate knew it and it bothered him a lot. We used to talk about it. I got to where I hated Lady Lily for how she treated him. Now, though, I get the sense she acted the way she did on purpose... to give Mr. Nate his freedom. He never would have had all those children. Between Ginger and Amanda they have sixteen babies so far. He only had Maon with Lady Lily."
"Why didn’t he have more babies with her, darling Kirk?"
"Lady Lily couldn’t have but one child. I heard it is a quirk of her biology. Perhaps because of their longevity, all the Ladies of the Lake were only able to conceive but once."
"So Lady Lily, knowing she couldn’t conceive, pushed Mr. Nate away in order to give him the chance to have other children? Is that what you're saying? That sounds like a noble gesture though it seems mean too."
"I think so, sweet Luciana, but I could be wrong. All I know is that she left Mr. Nate to be with Kāne. She lied to Nate. She broke his heart. If she really wanted him to have other children, it seems as if there were better ways to go about it.
"I know he still thinks about her, even after all the years they've been apart. Once in a while he'll come down to the beach and sit around a campfire like we used to do and he'll tell me his thoughts, especially after we've drank a few bottles of wine."
"They say Lady Lily has disappeared and no one knows where she went."
"She's probably in hiding because she is ashamed of herself. I know I would be embarrassed if I ever acted like that with someone that I loved."
"But you're too special to do that to me, my precious Kirk. That's why I fell in love with you, you know. I'm sorry if I made you jealous talking about Kāne. That was cruel of me."
He wanted to deny it but she was right... he had been terribly angered by the thought of Luciana with another man... a man like Kāne, who seemed so virile... everything he was not.
"That's why I love you too, my precious Luciana... because you know me so well and accept my faults along with my excesses."
"Lady Natalia said something attacked Lily and carried her away. Kāne seemed convinced she is in old America. He said there is a monster living there that is made of metal. It wants to know Lady Lily's secret. And when the monster discovers what it is, it will come for us. Do you think he is right, my darling Kirk?"
"I hope not, sweet Luciana, but if he is, then we must be ready."
"That frightens me, my special Kirk. What must we be ready for?"
"I'm not sure... not yet... but if what I saw in old America portends anything, we could all be in grave danger, my darling Luciana.
Chapter 2 8—Machines
She saw the machine in front of her so clearly she could take it apart in her mind.
"I'm still having problems with the anti-gravity unit, darling Ena, or we could take it to old America."
"Tell me about the trouble you're having, Grandfather Nate."
Ena had arrived at Toulon Castle that morning after talking Pete into flying her to old France to make up for his consternation about going even farther.
"I don’t mind flying to old France, Miss Ena. I want to confer with Nate about our latest project anyway. But I'm afraid old America is too far for us to travel. I'm sorry. I don’t think I'd be able to refuel even if we managed to find a landing strip."
She'd been disappointed but accepted his offer to ferry her to old France. The flight to Toulon Castle took less than an hour. Stepping from the plane Ena drank in the day while making her way around the back of the castle to the old warehouse where Nate worked on his experiments.
She ha
d been sequestered in the north of old Scotland for so long that she forgot how splendid the sunlight felt upon her flesh... in a flash she knew exactly why Luciana and Niall insisted on coming to live in the south of old France and she absently wondered if she would ever find her way home again.
Nate and Pete were the resident Toulon experts... despite their far flung homes they'd been working together for years. She knew her presence hadn’t been requested nor was it especially appreciated but that had ceased to matter the moment she realized Lady Lily was in trouble.
The three of them were in Nate's workshop standing in front of a bench where a quarter-sized prototype model of the full size machine sat. When he applied power to the unit, twin pillars began spinning around a central mass.
"According to our calculations, the spin from the two pillars creates a field above the apparatus. We have to reach resonance of synchronicity in order to reverse the relativistic effects of gravity. The super conducting pillars should achieve a figure eight pattern whereby the center mass is propelled or perhaps I should say compelled to move in the opposite direction.
"We're not seeing any appreciable effect, however. I've considered adding two more pillars to the unit, or perhaps swing arms may enhance the field. On the other hand, we may have to rotate the entire unit with a second electric motor to achieve a second angular velocity for propulsion purposes."
"What is the purpose of the two balls at the end of the arms, Grandfather Nate?"
"They're meant to actuate the angular velocity of the first rotation. If you look here at our equations you'll see that in order to control the motion of a rotating mass we needed to add counter balances in the form of spheres one quarter the size of the object we intend to propel."
"I don't know anything about mathematics, Grandfather Nate, but I get the sense watching your model that you require a third sphere. The size of the spheres must vary according to the distance of central mass."