Seeing little more she could do to attract the couple’s attention short of inflicting actual bodily harm, she concluded that a different approach was necessary. When she had first found herself on the ferry, she had noted the location of the bridge and that was where she now wished to be. When she got to it, she found the door unlocked, but it was stiff and it took an effort to push it open.
Once she was on the bridge, she may as well have been invisible. Just like the young couple, none of the people in attendance was aware of her. The difference was that this time she was glad of the inattention. It allowed her to put her plan into action. Without opposition from the crew, she strode toward the control console and began to haphazardly press buttons and throw switches.
Nothing.
Everything she touched simply sprung back to its original position once it left her hands. Her actions were unable to make a lasting change. She hoped that if she could increase the pressure applied, it would finally make a difference.
A fire extinguisher hung on the wall and with a little more effort than should have been necessary, Emmy was able to pull it from its mooring. Rather than set it off, she raised it above her head and then rammed it down into the centre of the console. A bone crunching crash accompanied the cracking of the instrument panels. Relieved to finally have achieved a breakthrough, she repeated the action all along the length of the console. When she got to the end she turned to survey her handiwork.
Everything had returned to its immaculate and undamaged state of a moment earlier. The fire extinguisher was even back on the wall, which was impossible because she could still feel it in her hands.
She looked down - empty palms stared back at her.
How was this possible?
The captain was standing directly behind her and before she could talk herself out of it, she spun around and punched him squarely in the face. She may as well have struck him with a feather for all the effect it had. He was as oblivious to her presence as people were to her astral form in the real world. There seemed to be no way possible that she could influence anything or anyone in this strange parallel reality in which she now found herself.
Determined not to give up, she hurried back out onto deck. It was busy with bodies all around.
‘Can anybody hear me?’ she shouted, waving her arms high in the air.
Not one person acknowledged her. They each carried on with whatever they were doing, blissfully unaware that Emmy was even among them. She tried waving her hands in front of their faces and screaming in their ears as she had done with John and Mary.
Still nothing.
A young boy, probably no more than thirteen or fourteen years old was perched precariously on a guard rail running along the edge of the vessel. The kid sat with his back to the boat and held on with both hands, whilst his feet dangled over the side. Whoever was supposed to be supervising him was obviously not doing their duty. A sharp nudge was all it would take.
If Emmy kept a copy of the book of ethics, its margins would be filled with scribbled notes. Crude justifications for repeated indiscretions made while pursuing her scientific goals. Nothing, however, could compare to pushing a child overboard in the middle of God-Knows-what-ocean. Her only defence was the hope that death, in the sense that she knew it, did not exist in this place. So with no attempt at subterfuge, she brazenly strode up to the unsuspecting boy and rammed the palms of her hands into his back.
The kid went over the side without any trouble. She did not hear the splash, but there were so many people about that they could not have failed to notice her or what she had just done. As she turned around, she expected to face a mob of people rushing to the aid of her unfortunate victim. Not one person so much as flinched.
‘What is wrong with you people?’ she screamed on deaf ears. ‘I just pushed somebody’s child overboard!’
The crowd were unmoved and when she turned back around, she knew why. Sitting on the edge of the railing without a care in the world was the same young boy who moments earlier had been sent plummeting into the ocean. Just like the fire extinguisher, he had magically returned to his original position. He was fixed to a certain point in time and space, and it could not be altered under any circumstances.
Emmy now had no doubt that she could neither be seen, heard, nor exert any kind of influence on the situation at all. Like with her earlier revisiting of a day from her childhood, she was trapped in limbo with no obvious means of escape.
‘Jimmy!’ she screamed. ‘Jimmy, can you hear me?’
Her friend did not come. He no more belonged in this world than she did. He could not help her. Nobody could. She was on her own.
She turned her attention back to the boy on the railing. What if this time she was the one to go overboard? Would jumping ship improve her situation?
As she glanced down into the turbulent water, she concluded this was probably not the best idea. What if she did not spring back like the others? Since she did not belong in this time, at this location, there was no reason for her to. Being trapped on the boat was hugely preferable to being trapped at the bottom of the ocean.
She had no choice but to accept that she could be stuck in this place for quite some time.
***
‘Should I call somebody?’ asked Marie.
‘Like who?’ replied Charlie.
The senior scientist was standing over Emmy’s resting body with the defibrillator pads in his hands, poised and ready to use.
‘I’m not sure.’ The tech glanced awkwardly at her boss. ‘Maybe we should have a medic present, before you...y’know?’
‘I’m not going to kill her, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’
‘Can you be certain?’
Charlie avoided her gaze. He was not really sure what he was doing, but he had to try something. Risking his friend’s life seemed a much better option than risking her soul, which is what he would be doing if he did nothing.
‘There is no other option,’ he told the tech.
To an observer it would appear that Emmy was at rest. The only movement produced by her body was the rhythmic expansion and contraction of her breathing lungs. Charlie knew differently. He knew that wherever her mind was, it was alert and most likely searching for a way back. All he had to do was send her a beacon.
‘On the count of three,’ he said.
The tech nodded.
‘One...two...’
***
How long does it take to sail from England to Australia? wondered Emmy. One month? Two? Without a soul to talk to, the journey was a prison sentence. She also had no idea what would happen when it was over. Would she have to stay close to the couple or could she try to find her own path through this retelling of history?
Now that would be something - spending a lifetime as an invisible observer for the entire duration of somebody else’s life. And what would she do when the end came? Would she have to spend eternity sitting by a graveside? Would there even be eternity or would reality as she knew it come to an abrupt end or, worse still, reset to the beginning and forever continue on a never ending cycle of repetition?
All of these questions terrified her, but they also served to remind her how much she could detest her own company sometimes. Being orphaned at such a young age had subjected her to more loneliness than most would experience in a lifetime. Too much time alone fosters all sorts of neuroses and it is little surprise to her why she had ultimately created the apparition of her one time love.
She would have given anything to have Lucy with her at that moment – even the fake Lucy. But the rules were different in this place. To consciously summon the tulpa would require her to enter a trance. With her consciousness already separated, how could this even be possible? It would be like a trance within a trance. Just thinking about it tied her brain in knots.
Why had she not listened to Charlie? He warned her not to cross over and now she had nobody to blame for her predicament but herself. If she made it back, it would be difficult con
vincing him to let her do another journey without much more stringent protocols being put in place.
If she made it back.
Was her fate really that uncertain? After overcoming so many hurdles and beating such narrow odds, it did not feel right to be defeated like this. To go down without a fight. She had to find a way home.
I am energy
I am energy
I am energy
She closed her eyes and repeated the mantra over and over. With each word she imagined her physical form dissolving and freeing her consciousness from this artificial prison.
There did not seem to be any obvious change, but when she opened her eyes she found that things were different. Her body remained intact, but everything else around her was losing substance. Even time itself no longer felt constant. It jumped rather than flowed as the ghosts around her spontaneously lurched from point to point in a staccato dance. It was not what she had intended, but her mantra was having an effect nonetheless.
I can do this, she thought.
Take me home
Take me home
Take me home
She remained fixed firmly to the spot while everything around her moved. The deck of the ship gave way to ocean, which in turn gave way to land. First she was surrounded by the bricks and concrete of a bustling port and then she was racing through the suburbs, across fields and forest, and over a vast desert.
An Earth shattering thunder and a flash of lightning brought her journey to an abrupt end. All motion ceased, bringing her to a standstill in the centre of the desert. She was so disorientated that she fell to her knees, trying to make sense of what had just happened, but before she could reach any conclusion, a second crash of thunder echoed across the landscape and this time the flash of lightning pierced her chest, striking her in the heart. The electricity latched onto her like a harpoon, its luminous tether stretching off into the distance.
She looked down at the light extending from her chest and realised that it was a tether. He had found her.
‘Come on, Charlie,’ she shouted to the tumultuous sky. ‘Give it your hardest pull!’
Another flash. This one lit up the entire landscape in one all encompassing brilliant light. Then there was only blackness.
‘Emmy?’
Rather than answer straight away, she took time to savour the moment – the relief. Charlie had done it. She was home.
Chapter 7
Emmy took the rest of the week off. It actually came as a relief knowing that she would not have to worry about anymore astral trips, at least for the immediate future. That last one had taken away a lot of the magic. To know that death, removing all consciousness, was effectively the end, completely redefined her objectives. The memories survived, but the people did not. Finding out why was the task she now faced.
When she eventually returned to work, she found that Charlie had been busy in her absence. The jolt of electricity he used to pull Emmy back into her body had provided an unexpected and most auspicious side effect. It had strengthened the signal to the extent that the computer was able to provide him with exact co-ordinates of her location. He now knew to where she had travelled.
‘This is for real?’ she asked, when presented with the location of her surreal adventure.
‘According to the computer program that you wrote,’ he replied. ‘Unless you think you might have left a few bugs in there.’
‘Not likely,’ she replied. ‘It was based on my grandfather’s equations. To err is human. Pops would never let his standards slip so low.’
As the words left her lips, she realised that she was smiling. Charlie was too. Just a week earlier, any mention of their former mentor would have encased the atmosphere in concrete. They both knew what had brought about the change. For three years they had lived in the fear that the doorway opened to disembodied spirits could swing both ways. That Jackson Fox might find a way back. According to their latest observations, this was now impossible.
‘In that case, you can take a look at where you’ve been going. I pulled this image from the database. The star in question is more than a billion light years away.’
He handed her a printed image displaying thousands of pinpricks of light. One of them, a pale blue dot on the picture, was circled.’
‘I was inside a star?’
‘That pretty blue one right there.’
She handed the picture back to him.
‘This has to be a mistake. That place could not exist on a star. There was water, an atmosphere, it was...real.’
‘Like I said, unless we got the equations wrong, that is where you were. Not that it matters, of course, because you are not going back there. We have collected enough data to keep us busy for months. Until it is analysed, I don’t think we should initiate any more post mortality encounters.’
‘Post mortality – where did you pick that one up?’
‘It was in Dr Stark’s notes. She made a lot of useful observations whilst you were busy in Tibet. Are you sure you don’t want to bring her back onboard?’
‘I’m certain. She didn’t care about the people we were trying to help. All she was interested in was furthering her career. Her carelessness led to the deaths of several patients.’
Emmy sensed a change in her colleague’s demeanour. Charlie was holding out on her.
‘There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there? You’ve got another reason for bringing her back or you wouldn’t have brought it up.’
He averted his gaze from her whilst collecting his thoughts. Nobody liked to be the bearer of bad news and it did not get any worse than what he had to tell Emmy.
‘They’re considering pulling the plug on maintaining the victims of Jackson’s Hill. Unless we can prove those people aren’t clinically dead, their life support will be removed. I’m sorry.’
Emmy had often wondered how she would feel upon hearing those words. That all hope was lost and the mistakes of the past would never be atoned for. Surprisingly, she felt very little at all. She was emotionally numb to the pain.
‘And you think Dr Stark can help to stop this from happening?’
‘I don’t know. At the very least she may be able to delay it. At this stage, we have to consider all of our options.’
Emmy did not know what to say to him. She conceded to his better judgement and agreed for Dr Stark to be reinstated to the project. Her will to argue was lacking. Her head was with her heart. That was where she needed to be. She could no longer deny the possibility that her lover may never return from the sleep into which she had fallen.
When she got back to her room all she could think of was the day that she had left Jackson’s Hill. At the time she had no idea she was alone. Lucy had been with her. At least, what she thought was Lucy had been with her. She now knew it to have been nothing but a cruel creation of her own fancy.
‘You came back,’ she had said, at the time still dazed from her out of body, near death experience in which she finally rid the world of her grandfather’s evil.
‘I could never leave you,’ replied the tulpa, with a flawless impersonation of the young out of towner whose love had promised so much. ‘We can finally be together without anybody to come between us.’
The lure of new love, especially one started under such extreme circumstances, was strong, but her responsibilities to the town were far from over.
‘I want to,’ she replied, ‘but we have to check for survivors. I brought this poison upon Jackson’s Hill and only I can do something about it.’
‘You heard Pops, there were no survivors. Trust me, Emmy, you have to come with me. It’s the only way.’
‘Not until I’ve seen for myself.’
She took her lover by the hand and led her to the car. Looking back now, she tried to recall if there had been any clues. If her lover’s touch had felt off somehow. So far as she could remember, it had not. Her skin had been warm. Her embrace comforting.
Lucy’s backpack was still in the car. It
contained a change of clothes for each of them and the urn containing the ashes of her late father. Emmy wondered if he was still there with them, but in her heart she already knew the answer. Like her own father, he had crossed over. His work done. There was no longer any need for him in this world.
On the drive into town they passed the remains of the road crash that had facilitated her escape from military confinement. A fire was still burning around the blackened shell of the lead truck. Bodies of the fallen soldiers lay by the side of the abandoned vehicles. She pulled the car to a halt and got out to take a closer look.
She knew straight away that none had survived. Though the men could only have been dead for a matter of hours, their bodies looked to be in advanced stages of decomposition. Her grandfather had sucked the life force right out of them in order to replenish his own. If she had contact with any of these men when in their confinement, they were no longer recognisable. She felt no sadness at witnessing their demise, only frustration and regret at the senseless waste of life.
The car, in which she had been held prisoner when the convoy was attacked, lay overturned about twenty feet from the road. This vehicle was not burned up and there had been a driver and three other passengers inside when she fled from it. As she approached, it was all too apparent that these men were also dead. Unlike their comrades, they had not had the energy sucked out of them this time. Judging by the injuries, she assumed the driver and his passenger in the front were both killed in the crash. The general, however, had made it out of the wreckage. His body sat upright against the overturned side of the vehicle. His head twisted at an impossible angle. Clearly his neck had been broken after he escaped the wreckage. Her grandfather did not drain this man’s energy, but murdered him anyway. Bastard.
Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 67