Dangerous Designs

by Dale Mayer [paranormal/YA]

  Unless that had copied over too...

  Oh God.

  Please not. And if she had copied an entire world, which one was she in now?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Eric tried to remember the emergency instructions drilled into him during his first years of training. Like so much of his early learning, his training had been mindless rote instructions, ignored the minute the tests were over. There'd never been a conflict or a war in their immediate history and no one had considered the possibility of a fight in their future.

  They'd been so wrong.

  He had yet to see any Louers, and his images of war, gleaned from the archives, had all focused on screaming crowds and bloodshed everywhere, fighting and chaos erupting on every corner. This deathly silence didn't fit the image.

  Making it to the ground floor, he wasted more precious minutes looking for the entrance to the basement. The steel door stood implacable in front of him. It wouldn't be automatically keyed for him and he couldn't remember the codes to get in.

  Damn it.

  Shocked at the swearing, even silent curses, he stepped back. Storey's bad habit was rubbing off on him. Not good.

  He massaged his temples and tried several combinations in his head. As soon as the right one showed up the door should click open. Numbers flitted in and out in a steady stream as he reviewed the various codes he'd been forced to memorize throughout his life.

  The massive door made a series of clicking noises and unlocked itself. Relief washed over him. He pulled the door open. With a final glance around at the deserted hallway, he entered the darkness.

  ***

  Storey sat frozen, ever nastier possibilities filling her mind. All thoughts about returning to Eric's world fled as she realized she had to put her own reality back to rights. How? She had no frickin' idea.

  Lost in thought, she didn't recognize for a long moment that her hand had stopped moving. The stylus was done. She gathered up her bag and slipped up the stairs to her room. Not wanting to attract her parent's attention she quietly shut the door and slipped into her bed. Under the covers she used her flashlight to study her drawing. She didn't quite understand what she was looking at. The picture appeared to be earth displayed as an onion with multiple layers wrapped on top of each other. Were the layers dimensions? Had she created a layer here? She'd wondered about it but...

  She grabbed her school eraser and scrubbed at the center layer. It wouldn't erase. Changing tactics, she worked on a smaller mark on one of the outer layers. Again, she couldn't. Were these creations permanent?

  Sick awareness settled into her gut. What had she been thinking about while drawing? So many things. Most recently her parents. Before that, wishing her mom would conform a little more and Eric, well all she'd had on her mind was how she'd hated to leave Eric's arms. After that, her thoughts were consumed with trying to find another dimension for the Louers.

  She gulped. Could the power of thought, when paired with a stylus, change a person's belief system? Change their history, too? And those around them? Dear God.

  It didn't make sense that she could, without training, change something so drastic, so major in life so easily. And if the changes had happened to her parents, had they also happened to other people? Did her mom still have the candle shop? Did the townsfolk still look down on them? And what about Jeff? Was he or had he ever been her boyfriend? Or had they never met?

  Storey gulped. Was she still Storey? She didn't feel any different. But apparently she acted differently in this place. Homework? Caring about her schooling? Nuts. Did she even live in Bankhead anymore?

  She ran to the window. The same overgrown oak tree scraped along the sill. Her familiar backyard shimmered in the moonlight. Relief washed over her. So that much was still good. More had to have changed though to have her father in her life, not to mention a change in her mother's religious beliefs. And if her mom's clothing tastes had changed, that meant the alterations were old and very deep.

  The power of what she'd done scared the crap out of her. For the first time she understood Paxton's fear. And what was the chance he knew the stylus could change reality like this?

  Laying the stylus down on the bed, she sat a little away from it. It had taken a long-held wish and brought her Dad home. It was her fault, she fully accepted that. Now she needed to understand how she'd done this, so she could fix it. Then she'd be more than happy to stop playing God with laws and tools she didn't understand.

  Studying the stylus, she had to consider giving it back. "If you're so dangerous, you shouldn't be running around my planet loose like this."

  So how did she become one of those in the know?

  Then it hit her. If the pencil could change her parents' belief system, then surely it could give her more information – like an instruction manual on using the stylus and information on Eric's world. For that matter, it might be able to tell her how to defeat the Louers.

  How could she get the stylus to release the information? Through a drawing? Storey grabbed a granola bar from her bag and munched. She was hesitant to draw herself; who knew if her poor rendition would create that face on her bone and tissue. She could put her name down.

  Wincing, she realized that knowing more of the potential disasters she could create made her hesitant to do anything. A little information went a long way, and she was terrified of making things worse.

  But she had to fix this.

  "Stylus, how do I make this all better?" She picked up her pencil and grabbed her sketchbook.

  ***

  Eric walked through the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust – except they weren't adjusting. Of course, he hadn't thought to bring a light with him. Who'd have thought the basement wouldn't have the same control system as the rest of the building where the lights came on automatically? "Hello? Anyone here?"

  Silence.

  What if no one had come here? This area appeared to have been closed for decades. Centuries. He stopped, recognizing a wall in the gloom in front of him. He placed a hand on the wall. Relief overwhelmed him when he realized he'd reached another doorway. He searched for the number sequence and managed to retrieve it in half the time. The door opened, light spilling his way.

  Thank heavens for that. He stepped around and into the glow.

  And stopped in shock.

  ***

  As a test, she sat crossed-legged on the bed and asked the stylus to give her information on Eric's people in a safe manner. A curious lightness washed over her as her hand moved across the paper. She gave it a moment to do what needed to be done without her mind filling in the pieces, which might or might not affect the picture, she then opened her eyes and looked. The picture appeared to be a large filing cabinet. One drawer was open. The label on the slightly raised file said Eric Stodd's Memories.

  Way cool.

  She blinked several times and looked around her room. Everything else appeared the same. Placing the tip of the stylus on Eric's file, she closed her eyes and thought about him. Instantly, she could see him running as a child, then scenes started flashing of him in a uniform, first at school then through training. She gasped at the sight of Eric in a clinch with a young woman. Her hand jerked back and the flood of sensual memories stopped. The sense of having invaded Eric's life didn't. She winced. She really hadn't planned for that to happen.

  "Oh boy."

  So, there was more to his girlfriend issue. Still, not her place to ask. Curiosity just might kill her though. At least she was on the right track. Now to fine-tune it. "Remove all references to Eric's love life."

  There was a pause, then her hand dropped and started circling lightly on the same picture. She kept her eyes closed and could only hope that the stylus was doing as requested. A quick moment later, she opened her eyes to find the folder showing, but the label now held a series of weird marks on it. She didn't know what it had done.

  She thought about Eric's life and was relieved to see him as a child and in several other stages of his
life, even as an adult.

  Using her sketchbook, she fanned herself to cool off, finding it hard to remove the images she'd seen so briefly. Her attraction for Eric stemmed from a lot of different things. He was unusual, which was part of it. He also felt comfortable, easy to talk to. He had a sense of confidence that was very attractive.

  She'd never considered it before. She'd wondered about sex a lot, had experimented some with Jeff. Then he'd moved away. She was an idiot thinking about sex at a time like this. Eric might perish in the war going on his world, and if he survived, his own father might kill him. She sat up straight again. She'd returned to her world. That meant the death sentence on Eric's head was in effect.

  A groan escaped her. That so wasn't good. Why hadn't she thought of it before leaving him alone? Why was it that for every step forward she made, she ended up further back? It's what she didn't know that got her. Like her parents and their religion. Not quite believing she was planning on changing something she'd wished for ages, she realized it had to be their choice, not hers. Closing her eyes, she asked the stylus to reverse the changes she'd made to her parents' belief system. She didn't know what to say about her father's presence. Could she reverse that, too? And what if she didn't want to reverse it. Was that cheating?

  Quickly deciding this wasn't something to fool with, she asked the stylus to reverse the changes she'd made unknowingly since this mess started. Hit the reset button, so to speak. Was there an undo function on this thing?

  The stylus went to work. Then it stopped. The work was over so quickly she could only assume it was a minor fix in the fabric of things.

  Or something beyond the scope of its abilities.

  Had anything been fixed? Now wasn't the time to check, her parents would be asleep and she wasn't going to wake them. She needed to spend her time now learning what she could. She needed more information on the history of Eric's people and the Louers.

  She settled into what had become a routine and let the stylus do its thing. This time she concentrated on gaining information so she was at least on equal footing with the others. A tiny niggle of worry bugged her. What had Eric said? Something about potential damage from crossing the veil. His people limited their research trips and monitored them closely. Was it for that reason they didn't travel back and forth on a whim?

  Could this system of learning cause her physical harm? Was brain damage a consideration? Deliberately, she shut those thoughts down and replaced them with happy, healthy thoughts about how much smarter these sessions were helping her to become. And how harmless they were to her. She didn't know if it would work, but her parents' conversion had happened as a result of a random thought. She didn't dare take a chance.

  A shiver went through the house.

  She opened her eyes in shock and gulped hard. She hadn't done that, had she? Her hand rested on the side of the sketchbook like normal. The picture appeared to be of more file drawers, the information archives. What about the Louers? Please don't let that be them. She closed her eyes, "Stylus, did Louers cause that odd vibration?"

  She read out the answer. "No."

  Her shoulders slumped in relief. "Well, thank God for that," she whispered under her breath. Then it hit her. A realization that chased all other thoughts from her mind. This experience had been taken to a whole new level. She'd asked the question – instead of writing the question. She gulped, her mind racing forward. For all the weirdness, it would make communication so much easier.

  Quickly, she asked if it had information on how to stop the Louers from entering her world and how to get them out of Eric's world.

  Her hand never moved.

  She turned to a clean page and concentrated hard on the same question. Once again, nothing. Panic set in. What if the stylus didn't have the answer?

  Where were the answers coming from anyway? The archives of Eric's people. Maybe, their archives didn't have the solution to the problem. Several questions and much reading later, she finally understood. At the end of the war between the Toran and Louers a portal had opened, accidentally it seemed, and the scientists at the time had taken the opportunity to force the Louers through in an act of desperation. But her files contained more than just that general information. In truth, the Louers had been tricked into going through the portal. Eric's people hadn't even looked to see what was on the other side. They hadn't known if the Louers could even survive the crossing.

  They hadn't cared. They were trying to get rid of a problem.

  Therefore, the Louers had been exterminated.

  She closed her eyes and shuddered. The Louers had suffered. She knew it. The archives hadn't been specific, but she'd seen those bony fingers coming through her living room. They were not normal looking. They'd been forced to adapt, evolve under extreme conditions. She read more. Originally a larger boned people, normal looking, they had been peaceful at first. Now they were a war mongering species.

  Why though? Why had the Toran people had such a problem with the Louers? What could the Louers have done that was so bad? With her eyes closed, she searched further. A few minutes later, she opened them again, her gaze hardening in anger. The Louers had been slaves. They'd attempted a bid for their freedom and revolted. Banishment had been their punishment, at least for the few that survived. She hurt for them.

  Were they only mindless animals intent on revenge? Could they even remember their origins? What were the chances of that?

  She closed her eyes and asked her stylus if it had information on how to stop the current war going on in Eric's world. Still no response. Then she ran through a series of questions that touched on the same subject. Could the Louers be captured? Could they be sent back home again? Nothing she asked made the stylus move.

  Finally, she picked it up and inspected the stylus, turning it over and over. Did it need batteries? Maybe it had quit working.

  She pondered the tool again, and then asked it for information on how to save Eric. Her hand jumped back to the sketchbook to race across the page. Keeping her thoughts focused on Eric, she watched as a picture of her bedroom emerged. She understood. Eric wasn't safe over there. He'd be safe here. The good news was that her world appeared to be the safe zone. She asked the stylus if, with all the changes they'd made, the gates to Eric's world were still functional. Could the people leave?

  Could she bring everyone over here?

  The stylus glowed in her finger tips. The writing on the side shone in the darkness. Storey realized for all her new information floating around in her brain; she didn't know how to read this language. How could that be? Hadn't Eric been taught to read this language? Wasn't it part of their history? Or was it another ancient element lost to the ages?

  She closed her eyes and asked the stylus for the information to understand the written word and symbols of its world.

  It struggled with its movements, as if reluctant, but forced to answer. Was it truth bound? Not that she understood what that might mean. "Is there a reason not to teach me your language?"

  The answer blazed in her mind. However, her hand wrote out the word Yes.

  Wow. Direct contact. Almost beside herself with joy of discovery, she asked, "Why?

  It's dangerous.

  "I'm making dangerous mistakes because I can't understand what I need to know. Isn't that more dangerous?"

  So few of us know the language.

  Us? She stared at it curiously before asking, "Are you a person?"

  No.

  "A consciousness?"

  Yes.

  Storey dropped the pencil and jumped to her feet. "I'm so stupid! Why didn't I try this earlier? Everything will be so different now." She paced the room in an attempt to calm down. It made so much more sense now. Finally, she stopped. There was so much more she needed to find out. She snatched up the stylus and her sketchbook. "Stylus – are you alive?"

  No answer. She kept her hand on the sketchbook but there was no movement. Okay, so more questions.

  "Can you think?"

 
; Yes.

  "See?"

  No.

  "Feel."

  No.

  She frowned. Had there been a bit of hesitation there? "Reason?"

  Yes.

  "Okay, that makes you a computer-like thingy. I can live with that."

  It stayed quiet. Of course it did. But talking with it made it a lot easier to communicate on her end. It must have built in microphone equivalent. "Stylus, do you know how to preserve your world?"

  Yes.

  Relief swept over her. "That's great. How?"

  Remove the threat.

  "Yes. Exactly." She shifted to sitting cross legged again. "How do we do that?"

  The stylus was quiet. She rephrased it. "Do you know how to do this?"

  No.

  "Does anyone?"

  Yes.

  "Who is that?"

  Paxton.

  "Paxton knows how to get rid of them?"

  Yes.

  "Where can I find him?"

  In the lab.

  Damn. How could they get in touch with him? "Can we communicate with him from here?"

  Yes.

  Storey's eyebrows shot up. "Really? How?"

  I can communicate with his stylus.

  "Of course. He'd have one too, wouldn't he? Okay, let's see if Paxton's stylus is responding, please."

  There was a weird humming in the room. Storey scrunched her shoulders against data streams flowing into the air. This must be the way the Internet worked. That's exactly what she had right now – an intranet, like big companies had for their different offices to connect. Could the other styluses be reached too?

  "Stylus, do your people know that you can talk to each other?"

  No.

  "Is this something you've kept secret?"

  No.

  "Are we causing any harm doing this?"

  No.

  She slumped back on her bed at that answer. Thank heavens for that. Ever mindful now about the consequences of her actions, she waited for the two styluses to talk. "Can I communicate with Paxton now?"

  Yes.

  Exasperated at the short answers and lack of instructions, she said, "How?"