‘If you say so, Miss Emmy.’
Only one person called her Miss Emmy. She always hated it. It came about because she refused to be called Miss Rayne and he refused to call her simply, Emmy. Charlie had managed to sidestep such awkwardness by being known merely as Doctor. How she wished she had thought of that first.
‘Sammy – is that you?’
‘Look and you will see for yourself.’
‘Damn it, Sam. My eyes are open. I’m standing in the kitchen of my apartment. Apart from junk appliances and empty shadows, I am alone. I can’t see you no matter where I look.’
‘What you see is merely a virtual representation of reality created by your mind. It is based on external information gathered when reflected photons of light hit the back of your eyes. Ignore your senses and open your mind. Look with your inner eye.’
‘Who told you to say that, Sammy? You’re not alone, are you?’
‘Open your mind and all will become clear.’
Open her mind – what did he mean? She closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb, trying hard to block out all distractions and to clear her mind so that she could think.
That was the answer!
She needed to completely clear her mind of all conscious thought. To shut out interference and ignore the clutter.
When she had learned how to meditate that is when she had been able to exercise limited control over the tulpa. She had then willingly ceded the ability to manifest her subconscious by placing it into Lucy. Now Lucy was dead it seemed plausible that the power would have been released. The tulpa may even have crossed over like all the others.
Logically, there was only one way for her to know for certain. She had to find the tulpa and she had to once again take control of it.
Chapter 34
Charlie always ensured that the lab was kept in immaculate condition. His daily routine could be considered as borderline obsessive. While it was reasonable to insist that any sensitive material be filed under lock and key, demanding all unessential stationary also be confined to drawers would be considered too authoritarian by many. And God help any of the techs who forgot to power down their computers and push back their chairs at the end of the shift.
So when Emmy stepped through the door to find papers spread clumsily on the floor, chairs not where they should be, bins unemptied and even an overturned desk lamp, she suspected trouble. Her first thought was that her good friend and colleague had simply lost it. His anger at her act of destruction and the effective dissolution of their professional partnership could have tipped him over the edge. It did not take her long to dismiss this idea, however. Even given the extreme circumstances, this was too far out of character to have been done by Charlie.
Her partner had never been one to snap under pressure. He had come face to face with Jackson Fox at the height of her grandfather’s destructive powers, endured imprisonment, interrogation and even faced a firing squad at the hands of his old masters in Tibet, and then he had fought those same forces alongside Jimmy, Esteban and Emmy herself. No - Charlie could not have caused this mess. Somebody else had to have been responsible.
Emmy called his cell.
No answer.
She tried his apartment phone and again, there was no answer. The front security gate confirmed he had not left the complex so she reasoned he had to be in his apartment. But why was he not answering the phone? Charlie may not have caused the mess in the lab, but she suspected that he knew about it. She made a few more calls to see if the techs had heard anything and then set about looking for clues.
Having to clean up such a mess was the last thing she would have expected on her return to the lab. She had come prepared to argue her case for returning to work. There was so much to tell Charlie about her experiences the previous night. About the hope it offered for the coma patients. When she looked back on the earlier missions, she could not believe how short sighted they had both been – how narrow minded.
She repositioned the chairs and levelled the desk lamp before picking up the scattered papers. There was no order to them. The files were inconsequential and scattered at random. They did not appear to have been selected for any particular reason. Nothing had been stolen either so it was unlikely to have been caused by an intruder. If not done in rage or due to a break-in, whatever could have caused such a mess?
In order to better think things through, Emmy leaned back against the side of a desk to make herself more comfortable. When placing her hands on the edge to adjust her position she felt a sticky substance on her fingertips.
Blood.
Was this Charlie’s?
Emmy powered up one of the computers in order to log onto the security footage from the previous day. She was not surprised to find the file was empty. At first she assumed whoever had caused the mess in the lab had erased the footage, but then she remembered she had effectively done this herself by disconnecting the cameras before her last astral trip.
The hall camera had been recording as normal so she was at least able to see who had visited the laboratory. Three hours after she had left, two people whom she did not recognise approached the door with Wes, the security guard on duty. Wes granted the pair access to the lab but only after much coercion, which involved the showing of some form of ID by the woman and a show of strength by the guy, who towered over Wes despite the guard being six feet tall and a former pro footballer.
The pair had been inside the lab for less than ten minutes before leaving unaccompanied. It was a further hour before Charlie came out. He was wearing his lab coat, which was unusual as he would normally leave it at the lab, and he had some files in his hand that he appeared to be using to shield his face. There was also a noticeable slowness to the way he walked, like each step caused him pain, but he was trying real hard to mask the discomfort.
Emmy knew right away that Charlie had been assaulted by the man and woman in the suits. Though she was yet to have evidence, she did at least have a good idea these two were connected to the black-ops team that had pursued Lucy to King’s Canyon. She wondered how much they knew and if Charlie had talked. The fact he walked out of there unaided suggested they got nothing out of him. It would have taken much more pain to get her friend to betray her.
She tried his cell again. When he did not answer this time, she had no choice other than to go to his apartment. The news she had to share simply could not wait.
When she knocked on his door she was surprised to have it answered not by Charlie but by one of the lab techs, Marie.
‘Oh,’ Emmy said. ‘I er, is Professor Nguyen in?’
‘Charlie!’ Marie called over her shoulder.
Emmy’s partner limped painfully to greet her.
‘I better go,’ Marie said. Then turning to Charlie, she added; ‘if you need anything else, just let me know.’
The tech left in a hurry and avoided looking Emmy in the eye as she did so. Emmy was curious, but once she laid eyes on her partner that curiosity was quickly forgotten.
‘Jesus, your face,’ she said as she followed him into the main living room.
‘It’s nothing,’ he told her. ‘This is friendly compared to the job they did on my ribs.’
‘Who?’
‘You know who. The same people who have been pulling the strings all along. They’ve been using us. First by stealth, then by coercion and now by force.’
‘What do you mean?’
He motioned for her to take a seat. The layout was much the same as hers. They were both workaholics and neither had the time nor the inclination for filling their living space with personal trinkets. She sat in a chair whilst he positioned himself awkwardly on the couch to avoid aggravating his injuries.
The painkillers Marie had earlier given him were having little effect on the pain in his side or the ache in his jaw. He wondered if his immunity to astral radiation extended to all foreign agents. Was he now completely and utterly impervious to all types of pharmaceutical as
well? If so, old age was not going to be much fun. If he ever lived to see it, that is.
He had been a fool for thinking their work was not being monitored. With hindsight, he could see that the military had given up far too easily on Operation Sleepwalker. Like the Chinese general who betrayed him in Tibet, they had simply moved their area of interest away from the primary technology and onto its potentially catastrophic side effects.
‘They’ve been monitoring everything,’ he told her. ‘They were even responsible for leaking the NASA data we used to find the alien world. It was supposed to keep you distracted while Constance artificially inseminated Lucy with that demon child of theirs. Originally, they planned on using you as the unwitting surrogate, but they were worried that implanting an egg infused with Professor Fox’s DNA into his granddaughter would lead to undesired abnormalities.
‘We’ve been blind this whole time. I walked from one bunch of lunatics, hell bent on abusing science for their own ends, straight to another. The worst part is that we can’t do a thing to stop them. Every advancement that we make will be stolen and abused by these people.’
‘So let’s shut down the project. Cut them off that way.’
‘It won’t work. I already threatened that. They have enough data to replicate our technology with a team of their own. It would be less brilliant and progress would be slower, which is why they prefer to piggyback on our successes. The only thing that stops them from having a rival team already is the fact that we could detect and shut them down just like Tibet.’
‘So we keep working. It serves them, but at least we can limit the damage somewhat. If the work is going to be done no matter what, it is better done by us than by those with less ethics,’ said Emmy. ‘Esteban allowed the CIA to recruit him for exactly the same reason.’
‘We’d be constantly living in fear. What if one day they no longer have any use for us?’
‘If that’s the case, we go public,’ said Emmy. ‘They can’t touch us if the world knows about our work and how it may benefit humankind.’
Charlie shook his head.
‘Who will believe us? The world will think we’re crazy. There’s a worse possibility too – we could be held accountable for the disaster at Jackson’s Hill.’
Upon hearing Charlie’s words, Emmy suddenly felt a lot more reassured and confident. She had been so caught up in him being beaten up by those creeps that she had almost forgotten why she had sought him out that morning in the first place. The answer to all of their problems was within their grasp.
‘What if we had undisputable evidence that clears us of all wrongdoing regarding Jackson’s Hill? What if we could show the world that not only do alien civilisations exist but provide them with a miracle to go with it?’
‘What are you talking about?
‘Jackson’s Hill. That’s why I came to the lab this morning. I wanted to tell you about Jackson’s Hill. I’ve found them, Charlie. All of them. The population of the entire town is alive and safe. We thought consciousness didn’t follow the memories through the wormhole to that place, but there are exceptions. One hundred and thirty five exceptions to be precise.’
‘How?’
‘The radiation. It kept their consciousness alive even when their cords were cut.’
‘No, I mean how do you know any of this? What you’re telling me doesn’t correspond to any of the data we collected.’
Emmy took a deep breath. She then told him about how when Lucy died, her spirit was the tulpa and that is what crossed over. Once there, Emmy’s secondary consciousness found Sammy and the Aboriginal had explained to it about the survivors and how he, along with Lucas and Emmy’s father, had made a pact to protect them until the day that help arrived to take them away.
‘And you got all this from a dream?’ asked Charlie, sceptically.
‘It wasn’t a dream,’ she replied. ‘I’m still connected to the tulpa. When I put it inside Lucy I thought the connection was broken, but once it was free of her body it came back. Sammy used the tulpa to speak to me. By putting myself in a trance I could see through the tulpa’s eyes. He explained everything.’
Charlie tried to stand, but pain prevented him. He winced before giving up.
‘You say that the tulpa was inside Lucy, but it only supplied her with the energy her body needed to run.’
‘Yes. It was definitely my Lucy and not the tulpa that I spent the last few weeks with.’
‘Something still troubles me,’ said Charlie. ‘If it was your Lucy, the real Lucy, then from what you’re saying there’s a chance that her personality imprinted on the energy inside her. The tulpa is no longer just a part of your subconscious but it will now be a part of hers too. It will be imprinted with all of her thoughts, her feelings and memories. If this is the case then your judgement is clearly affected. Please tell me this isn’t just an elaborate ruse to resurrect your dead lover...again.’
‘Her body was vaporised by my hand. I couldn’t bring her back even if I wanted to. Trust me, Charlie, please. This is our one hope. We can bring all those people back and when we do we can finally go public. You know there’s no other way.’
Charlie sighed.
‘Okay, we do it your way. But if this goes wrong and you end up getting us both killed, I am never going to follow any of your crazy schemes ever again. Is that clear?’
Chapter 35
Preparations were made through the night. Emmy theorised that the connection she had with the tulpa would synchronise the different time streams, but should that connection become broken or suffer any interference the extreme dilation would be reinstated. Suffice to say, they needed to act urgently if they were going to co-ordinate a full scale evacuation of the Jackson’s Hill survivors.
Before they could implement their plan it was necessary to verify that Emmy’s connection to the tulpa was actually real. It was decided that she would make contact first and then meet Charlie on the other side. This is where things started to go wrong. She ran into a problem from the outset. No matter how much she focused, how hard she concentrated, the required trance did not come.
‘Something’s wrong,’ she told Charlie.
‘At which end?’ he replied.
‘I’m not sure. I can feel the connection, but for some reason I can’t grasp hold of it. It’s almost like the tulpa is sleeping.’
‘How can that be?’
‘I don’t know. The last time I channelled my thoughts through it I was limited by the amount of control I could exert. It was more like a viewing window, but now it’s like the curtains have been drawn. I can feel it’s there, but for some reason it’s blocking me.’
‘In that case we’ll both have to use the pods,’ said Charlie. ‘With luck, we should still be able to find Sammy or your tulpa now we know they’re there.’
They piggybacked through the wormhole via a recently released spirit they picked up travelling over the nearest major population centre. Once on the other side, Emmy used her memories to lead Charlie to the place where she had previously encountered Sammy.
It was deserted.
‘So where is he?’ asked Charlie, stretching his metaphysical limbs, glad to be free from the bumps and bruises of his physical body.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Emmy. ‘He told me to meet him here.’
‘Could we have arrived too late? You know, with the time dilation?’
Emmy shook her head.
‘He’s expecting us, which means he’ll be looking for us. The tulpa should also be alert to my presence, but I still can’t establish a connection.’
‘Are you getting anything at all?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So what are our options? You’ve been to this place more often than me. I know you must have a theory on what it is.’
Emmy looked around at the vast desert surrounding them. They were standing at the centre of infinity. It possessed so many possibilities; so much potential. One thing was clear to her, however. This was most definitely no
t Heaven. It was too clinical, too clean. A pale blue opacity separated it from being an exact duplicate of reality.
‘The final three minutes,’ she told him.
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Come on, you must’ve heard of the idea. Some think that the universe will end in ice and others think it will end in flame. A cold universe comes about when everything keeps on expanding until every bit of matter is spread so far apart that there can no longer be any interactions, any movement – it effectively becomes frozen. The alternative is if it ceases to expand and begins to contract, getting ever smaller until it is compressed back into the singularity from which it came. If this is the case then all of the energy, the heat, will accumulate. If this energy can be harnessed, its potential is without limit. In theory, one could construct a supercomputer with infinite processing power.’
‘I know the story,’ said Charlie. ‘With that amount of processing power you could reconstruct the entire universe inside a computer and slow time to a standstill. In the last three minutes of existence you could effectively live forever. It’s a crazy idea. Just another fairy tale about Heaven.’
‘What if it’s not a fairy tale?’ asked Emmy. ‘Look around you. How else do you explain this place?’
‘Let me get this straight – you’re saying that the universe is about to end and we’re now inside some cosmic computer program?’
‘No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. This is just an experiment. Nothing more. An attempt to see if the hypothesis could one day become a reality. You earlier told me that this place is a star. What if an advanced alien race were able to tap into its full potential – to harness all the power it contained compressed deep inside its core? They could have created the technology to put the final three minutes hypothesis to the test.’
‘If this is the case they must also be broadcasting a signal. Whatever it is must be what causes the reaction between the disembodied life energy of the dead and brings it to this place.’
Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 83