“Does he answer to you?”
He answers to no one.
“What is his purpose?”
We believe he is an emissary, a facilitator, left over from whomever or whatever created the great Web of Life that binds the universe together.
“So he’d be millions, perhaps even billions of years old.”
That is correct.
Nadia could not take her eyes off the Collector. “When you say Web of Life, do you mean the wormholes? The Blue Light?”
The Web of Life is so much more than wormholes. It is, in itself, a highly evolved lifeform. We do not know who created the Web. We do not know if its builders were mortals or gods. They disappeared eons ago. We do not know where they went or if they will ever return, for they left few clues as to their identity. Perhaps they are alive in some incomprehensible way. Perhaps they are the Web. In any event, the builders left a facilitator, a creature that moves freely through space and time, unencumbered by all natural laws.
Nadia’s head snapped back.
“Is he the only one?”
Only one is needed.
“From what I’ve heard he’s a monster.”
He is both devil and angel, warrior and protectorate. Without him Ariel would not exist.
“How do you mean?”
He took the best the Web had to offer and he gave us Ariel.
“He created Ariel?”
The Web created Ariel. The Collector is merely a facilitator, an extension of the Web. A tool.
“So he doesn’t act with impunity?”
Hesitation.
“You don’t actually know, do you?”
The Web is the greatest mystery in the Universe. We do not know its secret heart. It allows us to use it. For that we are grateful. Perhaps no species will ever unravel its true purpose.
“That monster destroyed lives, and you trust it?”
We have no choice. Many lives have been destroyed to save what is important. Many more will be destroyed.
“So Ariel isn’t human?”
Oh yes. She is all the best aspects of humanity. But in her DNA she carries echoes of the creators, the gods, the builders of the Web.
“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” Nadia felt an all-consuming dread engulf her.
The prophesy has already been spoken, said the alien. But nothing in space/time is irreversible. If we take the proper steps now we might be able to alter the future. We believe it is why the Collector was sent here. It is why the Web summoned Ariel. It is why we saved you, Nadia, from the World Trade Center disaster. We have come here from the far future in an attempt to arrest this moment in time. We need to prevent a catastrophe here on Earth, and therefore a catastrophe in our own star system, perhaps a galaxy wide catastrophe, and we need your help to do so.
“What do you want me to do?”
We will show you. First you should retrieve your weapon.
Nadia stepped forward and tentatively picked her assault rifle up off the floor. The Collector was suddenly there beside her. She did not see him move. One second he was standing immobile by the wall and the next he was there beside her, his single red eye glowing like a hunk of molten metal, his silvery black skin-cloak drifting in and out of existence like some poor resolution hologram. Nadia tried to look directly into the eye but a sudden and intense migraine engulfed her brain wanting to crack her skull like an egg. She averted her eyes and the pain subsided. The Collector lifted his right hand and a three meter round portal hummed into existence. He nodded at Nadia and she stepped forward toward the portal, then hesitated. The Collector took hold of her upper arm and she felt both pressure and a numbing pain. Nadia considered pulling back, but her curiosity was stronger than her will to flee. In the next moment she and the Collector both stepped through the portal.
CHAPTER 36
Ice Caves. Northern Maine Wilderness. July 6th.
When the ceiling came down the dust was so thick Doug lost sight of Annie. Choking and coughing and calling her name, he staggered over tons of fallen rock and debris. A layer of granite perhaps three feet thick had broken free from the cave ceiling, crashed to the floor and shattered into hundreds of pieces. Above it there was an uneven surface where the layer that collapsed had been loosely attached to the layer above it. Doug knew that geologically, the planet had been formed in many layers, some shale, some sandstone, some granite, all deposited over eons. One only had to venture to a place like the Grand Canyon to witness Earth’s layers of time. It looked to him like the layer above the one that had come loose was solid. But he could not be certain. He would have to take his chances. He needed to find Annie and Ariel.
“Annie, where are you?” he called for the umpteenth time, but no answer came back to him. He spat rock dust from his mouth and set about physically moving stone fragments the size of microwave ovens trying to make a path through the rubble. Some pieces were as small as his fist, others weighed tons. These he could not budge. It was no use. He could not do this alone. As he worked he briefly wondered where everyone else had gone. The answer that came back to him was unpleasant so he dismissed it.
The passage to the rear section of the cavern—where the bedrooms were located—was completely blocked, and Doug knew it would take a major effort to get through that mess. He could see openings through the debris with light on the far side, but it was clear that there were no openings large enough to squeeze his body through. He was marveling at the small miracle of the lights still being on when something solid struck him on the head. He felt just a brief moment of searing pain before everything went black.
It seemed a very long time before cognizance reclaimed his mind. He was in a dark place wandering. Nothing new in that. He’d spent a good deal of his life wandering in dark places. But now light was coming back into his world. At least some semblance of light. And out of the murkiness swam a face he knew. It was the woman he loved, the only woman he had ever loved.
—Annie? He said in his sleep coma, hearing the timidity in his own voice. —Are you okay?
—You need to make sure Ariel is safe, she said.
—I’m trying to get to her. Where are you, Annie?
—Doug, don’t worry about me. Find Ariel.
—First I need to know where you are. I need to know you’re safe.
—I don’t know where I am, so I can’t help you right now. You have to get to Ariel.
A red light as bright as a million suns nearly blinded Doug with its intensity, its presence diminishing Annie, pushing her out of his dream sleep. —No, Annie, come back, I need to find you. It was no use. The small blinding furnace of red light was too powerful to ignore and Annie was gone. There was no doubt about the light’s source. He’d seen it dozens of times in his life, starting when he was seven years old as he lay unconscious in a friend’s dooryard with a bone shard driven into his frontal lobe. The light was some sort of eye, but not really an eye at all, but an all-seeing all-knowing force that had the power to turn living things to fossils. He was not surprised at the Collector’s reemergence into his life; truth was, he never really believed it was gone.
Like a thrown lance the eye exploded from beneath the collector’s fleshy cowl. Doug turned to flee, but it was too late. The point of the lance caught him on the back of his neck just below the brain stem and attached itself there. The pain was immediate and intense, like being stabbed with a hot knife. Doug reached around and tried to rip the thing free, but the pain of attempting to detach the cord far outweighed the discomfort of it being there.
Slowly the pain receded and Doug began to relax. He drifted in space for what seemed a very long time. Fiery stars, swirling solar systems and entire galaxies sped past. And connecting everything together; a mind boggling web of glowing blue strings that seemed to span the entire universe like some cosmic super highway system.
Too soon the travelogue began to fade as Doug began to feel the numbingly uncomfortable sensation of something streaming into his brain through t
he Collector’s umbilical. He sensed that it was not something physical, but something more like data, elemental numbers; zeros and ones, letters, words, codes, tons more information than his simple, fundamental brain could process. That was his initial thought, at least. Soon the data stream slowed and became linear. And Doug began to see the richness of it and understand what was happening; the Collector was passing knowledge directly into his brain through some sort of neural network.
But now something else was happening. A window in Doug’s brain was opening. He was standing high on a balcony overlooking a city square. After his real or imagined journey through the cosmos the sensation of being earthbound made him feel ill. Weary he looked around for a place to sit but found none, so he gripped the balcony railing firmly with both hands and hung on. Below him, disparate groups of people were gathering in the square, coming from all corners of the city. Most wore tattered clothing covered in soil and blood. Some hobbled on crutches, some limped; others were being carried or pushed in wheel chairs. A few rode bicycles or Segways. Ragtag children held parent’s hands and dragged dolls behind them. It was obvious that these people had been through some great catastrophe, the sort of hell reserved for survivors of a great world war. Doug was considering going down to join them and offer a hand when he noticed that they had coalesced around a man standing on some sort of podium in the center of the city square.
The man was speaking, and his amplified words drifted to Doug over the heads of the crowd. He was preaching a rant about evil and the devil winning over God and that it was the end of humanity.
“Evil has ravished the world,” the preacher raved in his best evangelical voice, placing all the emphasis on the last word of each carefully constructed sentence. “We must find and destroy the ones who made this happen; all the non-believers, the homosexuals, the prostitutes, the heroin addicts and drug dealers, the money-grubbing lunatics that chose profit over GOD. They are the ones responsible for this. But not just them. Our decadent and blasphemous society has fueled the very seeds of our destruction. Modern medicine, the internet, cell phones. These are the tools that have paved the way to Armageddon. Our souls are lost, I tell you. Our only salvation is to find and destroy all those who have forsaken the lord.”
The crowd, hungry for a savior, roared in commiseration and closed in on the platform, moving in a single wave.
From above the noise a gunshot rang out and the preacher’s hands went to his chest where blood began leaking around splayed fingers, an expression of shocked incomprehension on his face. His knees buckled and he keeled forward falling face first onto the platform. Another louder roar—this one of rage—went up as the stunned crowd surged ever closer to the podium, hungry to catch the perpetrator, crushing those in front. Women and children screamed and some were trampled. From where Doug stood it looked as though the gunman had been identified, for the crowd became a mob and literally tore him apart, flinging arms and legs into the now chaotic mix.
In the next moment another man had taken the gunned-downed man’s place on the podium. He was thin, and not very tall, but his presence spoke of authority. He was handsome, almost beautiful with white/blonde hair and deep blue eyes, the bluest eyes Doug had ever seen. He did not say anything for a long time, just stood silently facing the crowd as if willing them to be still. Eventually they complied, and a thick silence filled the square. Doug felt the man’s staid, almost hypnotic presence like a weight.
The last messenger had been mercilessly gunned downed before their eyes, and Doug was shocked that another was brave enough to take his place. These shell shocked citizens were hungry for salvation and waiting patiently for a word that so far had not been spoken. Doug hoped, for the man’s sake, that it would be the right word.
“I am not here to lay blame,” the man on the podium finally said, the deep, soothing timbre of his voice carrying clearly out over the crowd. “Blame is what got us to this point. Blame is what killed my predecessor, for he did not offer solutions, only accusations. I am here with information about your plight, and some possible solutions. As you all know only too well, the human race has just undergone a terrible catastrophe. A pathogen, the likes of, man has never before seen, was loosed upon the world. More than half the people of Earth have died. Almost everyone here has lost someone close to them, some of you have lost entire families. The ones who did not die directly of the plague were murdered by the left over husks, the soulless corpses of those resurrected by the plague’s terrible persuasions.”
“It’s the devil’s work,” someone yelled, which elicited a loud cheer from the audience.
“Are you a religious man?” a quavering female voiced asked when the tumult had finally settled down.
“I care about humanity, and the sanctity of life,” answered the man on the podium. “I can assure you the devil had nothing to do with this, and God is not going to swoop down and save you.”
“An angry roar went up, and Doug was beginning to think that this would be the end of the new speaker when he said, “I’m here to tell you that the plague is over.”
The noise stilled almost immediately. The crowd watched the stage with rapt attentiveness. The speaker watched back and waited. Finally he said, “I know that some of you are skeptical. And I do not blame you. But I speak the truth. The pathogen, although deadly, contained a self-destruct gene, which is to say, it ran its course and vanished. In short it no longer exists.”
“How do we know it won’t come back?” asked a voice from the crowd, followed by other raised voices.
Again, the man on the podium waited for the crowd to still. He never once raised a hand, only stared. “You don’t know. You only have my word.”
Another voice asked, “Where did it come from?”
“We do not know, and that is the truth. There have been rumors, but I do not hold much stock in rumors and you shouldn’t either. One rumor says it was developed by the government as a weapon and was stolen from a secret laboratory. Another rumor says that it was brought to Earth by aliens. There is no evidence that confirms either of these rumors.
“There are people in cities and towns all over the world at this very moment doing exactly what I am doing, talking to folks like you about your plight and offering possible solutions. There are also people working to get the power back on, get communication and social networks back up and running. Neither crops in the fields nor livestock were affected by the plague. As soon as the power is on, trucks will begin moving again and stores will be resupplied. Hospitals are being re-staffed and some are open and accepting patients. If you’re in need of medical attention, please seek help. In an effort to curb looting, food and clean water will be free but rationed. At least until things start to return to some semblance of normalcy. In the meantime, most cities are hosting foodbanks for those who are in desperate need of food and fresh water. Presently there will be people going through the crowds passing out flyers pointing the way to foodbanks, medical facilities and emergency shelters. Also the bodies of your dead loved ones are being collected and cremated in order to prevent the further spread of disease. We are asking for volunteers in this effort. Those who wish to help can sign up here or at specified locations throughout the city.”
“Who’s doing this?” A voice shouted from the crowd. “Are you with the government?”
“No, I am a different kind of emissary. The kind that does not care about the things governments care about, which is to maintain the status quo. We care about sustaining life in as peaceful and as harmonious a way as possible.” The man’s voice was so soothing, so calming, that Doug was lulled.
“Where is the government?” came another voice from the crowd. “There were soldiers and police here two days ago. Now they’re all gone.”
“Though they mean well, soldiers and police would act on the orders of their superiors, and become an intimidating force. Your Rule of Law favors the rich and the powerful. What the people of Earth need right now is gentle guidance, not forced obedience.
When systems are back up and running, and food and shelter have been provided, only then will your normal military and law enforcement activities resume.”
As Doug watched, men and women seemed to appear out of nowhere and make their way through the crowds passing out bottled water, flyers and sign-up forms. All seemed gentle and patient and uncommonly polite.
“Why should we trust you?” another voice railed from the ever burgeoning crowd of people around him. “We don’t even know who you are.”
“Ah, yes, the man on the podium said with a touch of irony in his voice. “Skepticism. A uniquely human quality. You are being offered food and shelter and possibly even salvation and still you are suspicious.”
“Cattle are offered food and shelter on their way to the slaughterhouse,” another voice shouted.
The man on the podium smiled for the first time. “You do not have to trust me. It is up to the individual. Those who do not wish to follow the course I am setting out here today do not have to participate. You may follow your own course. There will be no repercussions. However, those who make trouble for fellow citizens will be dealt with swiftly and surely.”
A small rumble of disapproval went up in the crowd but nobody left. In fact, more were showing up all the time. A harried looking man rushed the podium waving a gun. The emissary merely pointed his finger at the man. The gun fell from his hand and the man tumbled over. Several people went to his aid.
“He will be all right,” the emissary said, and it was true. In a moment the man stirred and sat up.
“What did you do to me?” the still groggy man angrily asked.
“Much less than you were planning to do to me. Violence will not be tolerated.”
The man grabbed for his gun, but another citizen scooped it up first.
“It will do him no good anyway,” the emissary said. “The weapon no longer fires.”
“How did you do that?” someone asked.
Song of Ariel: A Blue Light Thriller (Book 2) (Blue Light Series) Page 34