Eunoia

by R J Johnson

  Triumphant, Kline takes the stone from Ododa and retreats to his plane, more powerful than ever before to head back to America. Kline wishes to turn his attention on Alex and his stone. While watching TV on board the plane, they learn of Collier and his mad rampage through San Diego, and his current hostage situation at the San Ellijo Nuclear Plant. Understanding Collier has and what’s at stake, Kline teleports to San Ellijo to confront Collier and take the fire stone for himself.

  Alex and his crew reach San Ellijo and they rush into the nuclear control room. After another pitched battle, Alex kills Collier, and saves the West coast from a total meltdown by the San Ellijo nuclear plant. Kline, badly burnt by Alex who now possesses the fire stone, retreats to his New York penthouse to regroup and recover.

  Alex and Emily take Collier’s body, escaping the FBI and Army’s response to Collier’s hostage situation. They get away, and Scott, who has shape-shifted into a dragon, burns Collier’s body, in tribute to what he had become.

  The Twelve Stones: Petrichor

  In Iceland, there’s a beautiful waterfall known as Skogafoss Waterfall. Behind it, is a supposed buried treasure left behind by one of the local town’s original founding members. That’s what Lorelei Decklund is there to find. An intrepid explorer and novelist, Lorelei is always on the hunt for the next mystery.

  It’s during her expedition to get behind the waterfall that she discovers – that’s right – a crystal chamber left behind by the Alien intelligence. We learn a bit more about the alien species and their motivation to leave the Twelve Stones. Their star is about to go supernova and destroy their world – what’s known as a Dyson’s sphere, which encompasses their entire star. They currently live in a matrix life with the ability to live whatever life they desire. However, because the population inside has no concept of time or space any longer, just their simulation, they have no idea that their civilization is about to end.

  The artificial intelligence that runs their star decides to send the twelve stones to our world to see if we are worthy to join the galactic sphere. If we use the stones for good, and help prevent their star from going supernova, we’ll be invited to evolve into the next level. If we use them for our own selfish means, then their star will go supernova, and our planet, which is in the path of a deadly beam of radiation (known as a Gamma Ray Burst), will be destroyed forever.

  Meanwhile, back in San Diego, Alex and a grieving Emily watch as Scott returns back to the beach where they stood. Scott shifts back into a human form, and Alex immediately recognizes that something’s wrong, his friend seems different. Fearing that Scott has fallen under the stone’s spell, he tries to talk Scott into giving the shapeshifting stone back. Scott refuses, saying that he needs the stone to settle some business. Alex tries to stop his friend, but, is too late as Scott shapeshifts back into a dragon, flying up and away, escaping into the night.

  Alex, Emily, and Christina return back to their hotel in Downtown San Diego, without Scott’s Hypertruck. It attracted the wrong kind of attention and police impounded the futuristic stealth vehicle.

  On the other side of the world, Johan Decklund, Loralei’s husband is working on an oil pipeline that stretches between Iran and Turkey. Hoping to keep Europe off of Russian gas, the new pipeline is being built in a dangerous part of the world – a fact made clearer during a raid by militants who kill and capture several of the oil workers – including Johan Decklund.

  Johan is sold by the militants to an insane billionaire – Justin Halprin. Halprin likes to hunt men for sport on his expansive Swiss estate. Justin Halprin also happens to be the brother of Charles Halprin – a defense contractor in the same line of work as Rupert Kline. Charles Halprin and his company were also the ones who helped fund Scott’s stealth Hypertruck.

  During the initial pursuit, Johan stumbles into a crystal chamber, discovering a stone of his own. Desperate for a drink, he wishes for water, and gets all that he can handle and more. Johan finds that he now has the ability to control any sort of water. He uses this ability to escape Justin Halprin and his insane game of hunting a man for sport.

  In San Diego, Emily tells Alex that she wants to get off his crazy ride of a life. She’s not up for all this mayhem and craziness – but that doesn’t mean she can’t help. She tells Alex that she wants to go to the Hawaiian telescope on Haleakulah and look for the Alien’s star that’s supposed to go supernova and destroy them all. Alex isn’t happy with the plan, but decides that Emily and Christina will be safer in Hawaii and hidden away from Kline. In the meantime, Alex can track down Scott and try to reclaim the shapeshifting stone from him. Alex doesn’t believe his friend is crazy… yet. But, he’s not sure what he believes. Using contacts and some of that money he had stashed away, he sets Emily and Christina up with airplane tickets to Hawaii and fake documents to go along with it.

  Lorelei is sitting in her hotel room, staring at the stone that she discovered behind the waterfall in Iceland. She knows it helped her escape the cavern somehow, but, couldn’t quite understand how, or why.

  While attempting to figure out the stone and what she found, Lorelei receives a phone call from her husband Johan’s company informing her of the kidnapping. Furious, she grabs her newfound treasure and swears she’ll do anything to rescue her husband. She is his “rock” after all.

  Meanwhile, as Alex is dropping Emily and Christina off at the airport, he’s spotted by security, raising all sorts of alarms. For their part, Christina and Emily remain anonymous and manage to get on their flight safely. They weren’t spotted at the nuclear power plant like Alex had been, nor were they subject to the misinformation campaign begun by Geoffrey Tate as part of his plan to bring Alex down.

  In a thrilling scene of bravery and expensive set pieces, Alex just barely manages to get away, falling several miles away off an airplane into a park’s pond. He spots the Old Man for the first time, but is unsure what it means.

  For his part, Scott is busy trying to break back into his old company where he originally designed the Hypertruck. He’s looking for evidence about the accident that took his fiancé’s life three years ago. Unfortunately, for him, the man he’s impersonating – Charles Halprin, happens to show up for an inspection at the same time he attempts to infiltrate the company. Alex, catching up with the mayhem, attempts to stop his friend from destroying half of downtown Los Angeles while Scott is shapeshifted into his monstrous dragon form. He manages to talk his friend down, and they escape out into the wilds of LA.

  Lorelei arrives in Berlin, where her husband’s company is headquartered. She’s told that there’s nothing that the company can do, and she… reacts badly. The stone, now infused with her wish to be a “rock” for her husband allows her to control the earth underneath her. She learns how her power works, and sets off into the night to rescue her husband on her own. While learning how to control her powers however, she’s caught on video which instantly goes viral around the world.

  Kline sees the video of Lorelei’s power and deduces that another stone has been revealed. He teleports to Berlin to the MARS Security local offices, using it as a base of operations.

  Emily and Christina land in Hawaii, and immediately head for the telescope to search for the Alien star. They aren’t there long when they’re interrupted by… Nathaniel Ash – Alex’s old commander and the man who recruited Alex on the mission to steal the money from the government.

  Ash isn’t playing it straight with the girls however. He tells Emily that Alex went rogue long ago, and he had been sent to track him down. He also knows about the stones, and has been assigned by the US Government to track them down, and keep them out of Rupert Kline’s hands. Emily isn’t sure at first, but after all the lies, she decides to help Ash bring Alex in and get the stone into the right hands safely before it’s too late. After the emergency at the nuclear plant and seeing two of her close friends go crazy (relatively speaking) while holding a stone, Emily decides it’s not worth the risk to allow Alex to continue to hold the stone
s.

  Lorelei is in Berlin and begins searching the company that’s responsible for her husband’s pipeline project. She breaks into the building using her stone and learns what really happened. One of MARS security on the scene was corrupt, and sold them all out. MARS knows this but won’t tell anyone for the sake of their company’s reputation.

  That’s when Kline arrives at his office, and sees Lorelei for the first time. They battle briefly, and Lorelei barely manages to escape. She’s ready to retreat and give up, believing she’s outclassed when The Old Man introduces himself to her.

  Lorelei and The Old Man take a tour of the dyson’s sphere and he shows her what could happen if they let Kline get ahold of the stones and the star explodes. He shows her an alternate future where all life on both planets are dead and gone. She’s convinced. He only asks her for one favor. She instantly agrees. He whisks her away to accomplish the mysterious favor he asks.

  Alex and Scott have flown up to San Francisco where Scott originally created the Hypertruck project. They break Halprin company headquarters to find a video of the night when Molly (Scott’s fiancé) died in a fire at their laboratory. At the time, JT and Charles Halprin had blamed Scott for poor maintenance of the oxygen tanks in the lab and only agreed to cover it up and not press charges against him in exchange for him finishing the Hypertruck project. Scott had agreed at the time, but always suspected something else had really happened.

  Watching the video of that night, he’s horrified to see what really happened. Charles Halprin came into the lab one late night while Molly (his fiancé was working by herself). He forces himself on her, and in her attempts to fight back, she falls, busting her head wide open, and breaking her neck. Halprin decides to cover it up with the fire and pin it on Scott.

  Scott’s outraged, and now, even Alex can’t contain him. Scott and Alex battle their way out of Halprin’s company. On the way out, Scott captures JT Halprin, taking him to Coit Tower. There, Alex manages to barely talk Scott down from killing JT. However, JT’s treachery knows no bounds, and he attempts to kill Alex and Scott. However, Scott saves the day, throwing JT off the top of Coit tower at the last second (hooray for the good guys!).

  Alex attempts to comfort Scott about what he’s done – killing a man shouldn’t be taken lightly. He tells his best friend about when he knew it was time to get away from Ash and his rogue band of agents wreaking havoc in the tribal lands of Afghanistan. Alex and the crew he was with, was responsible for killing a bus load of civilian children. Alex decided he’d had enough of what Ash was up, using the money, and decided to get out. He escaped and disappeared into the bush. Alex tells him that’s when he decided to take Ash’s rogue company down. Scott is flabbergasted by the admission.

  After completing the mysterious mission for the Old Man, Lorelei is close to finding her husband, and Charles Halprin’s Swiss Estate. Yes, as it turns out, that’s who Lorelei’s husband was sold to. The stones have a nifty habit of bringing people together. They’re crafty like that.

  While outside Halprin’s estate in the Swiss Alps, Kline appears, knowing the same intelligence Lorelei does (it is his company after all). Thinking her husband is dead, she decides to confront Charles Halprin in his estate and kill him, as well as spring a trap on Kline, and attempt to take his stones away from him.

  During the confrontation, Lorelei uses her stone of stone to turn Halprin into a statue. She nearly gets Kline too, turning his left hand to stone. Kline nearly gets the upper hand on Lorelei, but, is interrupted by Johan who shows up, using his stone of water to blast Kline all over the place.

  The battle continues and ultimately, Kline wins, although with a price. He’s hurt, even worse than before, and his left hand is nearly completely granite. He is rewarded with two new stones, giving him a total of four so far.

  On the other side of things, Emily gets in touch with Alex, and lures him into a trap on Alcatraz Island. There, several dozen specially trained forces take down Alex using a variety of non-lethal means. Alex is shocked to see his one-time mentor in charge of the squad looking for the twelve stones. Scott manages to get away with the shapeshifting stone. He’s about to make a move when he’s stopped by The Old Man. He tells him that he needs to help Christina for now, who was taken by Ash and his special forces back in Hawaii.

  Alex and Emily are shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where Ash promises they will both never see the light of day again. While on board the airplane, it’s attacked by Kline, who had Tate watching Alex’s every move. Without any stones to protect himself, Alex is nearly killed by Kline, when at the last possible moment, Scott, shapeshifted as a dragon, swoops in and saves Alex at the last minute. Christina who also appears years older, stands with Scott, holding the fire stone.

  Surprisingly, this is not the Scott we knew and loved from only a few minutes before. This Scott is scarred, visibly older, and much more confident in himself. He hands Alex the healing stone back, bringing his friend back from the dead.

  Kline and the four friends square off. Ultimately Scott is turned into a hellish half-man/half-dragon gargoyle statue. Alex, Emily and future Christina (hereafter known as “Chrissy”) escape with the Old Man who promises Alex answers about the Twelve Stones, where they come from and why they have to stop Kline.

  The Twelve Stones: Orenda

  Deep underground in the northernmost part of Tokyo, William Ip sits in his control room monitoring a series of instruments for the existence of neutrino particles. During a strange blip on his equipment, William is caught up in an earthquake that reveals a strange crystal chamber. Inside, he finds a stone from the Patrons (as we’ve come to know the alien intelligence who left the twelve stones on Earth). Dying from a particularly aggressive brain tumor, William Ip wishes for more time with his family. The stone grants him the ability to travel through time.

  Alex, Emily and the future version of Christina (known as Chrissy), teleport to Alex’s childhood home. After some neat deception with the FBI guys watching the place, Alex, Emily and Chrissy settle in to regroup and get some answers from The Old Man who has been watching their group use the twelve stones and battle Kline over the last week or so.

  Chrissy explains who she is and where she comes from. She’s a version of Christina who is currently sitting in Maui, in jail – arrested by Ash and his band of rogue agents who are after the Twelve Stones. She tells them how Scott suddenly shows up outside her jail door with the shapeshifting stone and rescues them. She goes on to tell them about a sudden disaster that will change everything.

  That disaster is William Ip. Eager to use his newfound power to travel through time, he first approaches the lost love of his life – his ex-wife JuneKo. She rejects him, saying it’s too late for them. William decides to try again and inadvertently causes a paradox that essentially wipes Hong Kong off the map. However, protected by the Time Stone, William survives and vows to try and fix his mistake.

  Scott and Christina are sitting in an empty Maui home they’d broken into when while watching TV, they see the disaster unfold live in Hong Kong. Shocked, Christina tells Scott that her mother still lives in Hong Kong – or did – and demands that they go investigate, thinking that there’s another stone to be had. And with no way of knowing where Alex was, they decide to go after the stone themselves. By the way, Christina’s last name is Ip. She doesn’t know it yet, but, her father is the one who found the time-traveling stone and accidentally blew up Hong Kong.

  Ash, in possession of the healing and fire stone, heads for New York, where he’s scheduled to meet with his mysterious benefactor and man who told him about the Twelve Stones. Unfortunately, along the way, Ash is intercepted by Kline, and the pair duke it out. Ash gets a taste of what using the stones is like, and finds himself especially adept at using them. He escapes, and heads for a safe house in New York. Kline, learning how powerful he’s actually becoming with the four stones available to him now, flies off, chasing Ash.

  Alex is frustrated with the lack of answers fr
om the Old Man about the Stones. He feels like the Old Man is playing a game with his life, and threatens to attack him. Emily holds Alex off, and brings him upstairs to his childhood room to cool off. They reconnect, and Alex decides to sleep off the last few days since no one knows where they are.

  Unfortunately, that plan is interrupted with the news coverage about the explosion in Hong Kong. Immediately recognizing it as the work of a stone, they look to Chrissy for confirmation. She slowly acknowledges it as fact. Alex wants to immediately head for Hong Kong to investigate and possibly retrieve the stone, but Chrissy tells him no. It’s only through hard work and sacrifice that she and Scott survived the encounter, and if Alex interfered now, he could cause another paradox that might destroy the entire world this time.

  Feeling helpless and sick about his past sins, Alex thinks back to what he saw before disappearing and stealing the remaining $1.6 billion from Ash. On a small island, about fifty miles east of Diego Garcia, Ash had set up a base to run his rogue agency. That’s where Alex had stolen the $1.6 billion. At the time, hadn’t noticed the strange crystal wall deep within the caverns of the island. Remembering it now, Alex and his party decide to go to the island and see if a stone remains in the cavern. If so, they’d be in good shape against Kline again.

  Speaking of Kline, he decides it’s time to stop hiding and come out as Humanity’s last great hope. With all the power available to him, he begins recruiting an army – performing miracles using the stone of strength as well as using the stone of control to mesmerize ordinary citizens into obeying his every command. Slowly but surely, he turns Manhattan into a Citadel, complete with 2,000 foot high walls surrounding the island.

  I’ll do my best to summarize what happens to William, but, since it’s time travel, the timelines and characters can get a bit confusing. Sufficed to say, William’s careless use of the time-traveling stone essentially “broke” that moment in time. Like a mirror with spiderwebbing cracks, so are the timelines that are breaking out from William’s use of the stone. The explosion that wipes Hong Kong off the map is the universe’s way of smoothing things out before it gets out of control. That is, the explosion caused by the paradox essentially erases any further damage to the timeline.