‘You looked older then,’ she replied. ‘I think the wheelchair made a difference too. I guess you must have been mistaking sympathy for respect for all of those years.’
‘Is that so?’
He waved his hand. The classroom became his study. He was seated behind his great oak desk. His true age had returned minus the chronic disease and life support apparatus that it had previously brought with it. She felt herself shrink an inch just having to look at him.
‘Do you know what Lucas’ final thoughts were?’ he asked.
‘You know I don’t. I wasn’t there when a cowardly psychopath murdered him – first or second time.’
Fox smiled, cruelly, but with genuine pleasure.
‘He hoped that we would destroy each other. To him, we are no different, you and I.’ He paused briefly. ‘Actually, that is not entirely true. He did make one distinction. He understood all that my injuries had denied me. Perhaps not a justification by his standards, but a reason nonetheless. Whereas you had no excuse. You poisoned an entire town just to further your career.’
Another blow struck. Another inch shorter.
‘That’s not fair,’ she protested.
‘Fair? What is fair? Is it fair that your father took away my legs? Is it fair that I lost my beloved daughter at so young an age? Is it fair that you allowed some poor innocent to be sacrificed at the altar of science just so you could satisfy your perverse carnal desires?’
Hearing him talk of Lucy pushed Emmy past the point of rationality. Her anger took over.
‘No!’
She lurched forward, intending to leap over the desk and throttle him, but as her hands touched the wood she was unable to pull herself onto it. It had become larger, more imposing than previously. Likewise, her grandfather sitting across from her was now a giant of a man. He was now at least ten feet tall. Unless...
...Unless it was in fact she who had shrunk.
She glanced down at her hands. They belonged to a child not more than four years old. Fear had caused her to regress back to that frightened little girl of her youth. As the walls towered around her on all sides she felt completely powerless. Like a fish in a bowl.
The lights went out.
She turned and fumbled for the door handle. Mercifully, it was not locked. It took all of her infant strength to get it open, but she eventually managed to force her way through.
The corridor was shrouded in complete darkness and she was not alone. A monster stirred in the void. She knew it was him. It had to be. He had locked onto her fear and was using it to draw strength. The more she was afraid, the more power she yielded to him.
A single spotlight came on at the far end of the corridor, illuminating her grandfather. He was young again. Strong and in control. A second light shone down on Emmy, exposing her position and highlighting her vulnerability.
The man standing opposite her radiated pure power. He had been strengthened beyond comprehension by the souls of his many victims. Lucas, Jimmy and countless others had all involuntarily contributed to this madman’s cause. He was channelling the love and compassion of Emmy’s closest friends, twisting it into the very thing they had sacrificed their lives to overcome. Building himself up for his moment of triumph.
Emmy turned and felt for the door, but it was no longer there. She tried internalising her thoughts, searching for a road out of there. Every way she turned he was there – taking over her memories like a virus. She could not escape him. He was in her head, in her heart, part of her DNA. There was nowhere for her to run.
Nowhere for her to hide.
She was trapped.
‘Welcome to your worst nightmare,’ said Fox. ‘This is where it ends.’
As he spoke, Emmy felt a reassuring presence approaching from behind. It was invisible, hidden by the darkness, but it was also strong. Stronger than she had ever thought possible.
‘You’re right,’ she told her grandfather. ‘It does end here. But you did get one thing wrong.’ She stepped to one side, allowing him to see the figure that had been hiding behind her. ‘This is not my nightmare – it’s yours.’
Fifty years were added to Jackson Fox’s appearance in a microsecond. Dazed, off-balance, he fell back and landed in his wheelchair. The tubes from his oxygen tank snaked over his shoulders before curling towards his face and burrowing into his nostrils. His breathing turned heavy and raspy. It was the sound of a scuba diver choking for the last dregs of air in his failing tank.
‘It’s...not...possible,’ he said, struggling to force out each word.
The tulpa smiled. It was wearing not the form of Emmy’s former lover or even the body of the scientist herself. It had assumed the visage of the person dearest to Jackson Fox’s once beating heart.
The woman he had betrayed.
The daughter he had banished.
‘Why did you push me away, father?’ asked the tulpa, through the mouth of Felicity Fox. ‘Why could you not let me be happy?’
‘I...didn’t...mean...to,’ he struggled.
‘LIES!’ the tulpa snapped back. ‘All of it lies. You had a choice and you chose the path of hatred. Of suffering. Of death.’
‘No - it was an accident.’
‘There are no accidents. You pushed me away and it killed me. You killed me.’
‘That’s not true. I never meant to lose you. You have to believe me, Felicity. I’m not a monster.’
The tulpa turned to Emmy, a mischievous smile parting one side of its mouth. The scientist knew its thoughts for they were her own, as she and it were two faces of the same spirit. She nodded her approval. The tulpa then turned back to face Jackson Fox, taking measured steps toward him as it did so.
‘You may not be a monster, but you helped to create one,’ it said. ‘Tell me, father, what are the limits to this Hell we now inhabit?’
‘We are subject only to the constraints of memory,’ he replied. ‘Only that which we touched in life can manifest here. The unreal cannot deviate from the real. Why do you ask me this now?’
‘Because I want you to understand explicitly what I have to say next. You see, it may be true that you are not literally a monster, but that is not to say that they don’t exist.’
‘I don’t understand.’
The tulpa closed its eyes and tilted its head to the ceiling.
‘What she is trying to tell you,’ said Emmy, still talking through the lips of a child, ‘is that monsters are real!’
Before Fox could respond, the tulpa dropped its head, but it no longer bore the face of Felicity Fox. Its eyes were polished orbs of ebony. Its mouth was a bear trap, rimmed with sharp protrusions of metallic death. The clothes it wore were replaced with a cowl of the blackest fur. When it roared, the corridor shrunk around it as the beast expanded to three times its original size.
The professor did not stand a chance. Emmy’s yeti ripped apart the very essence of his existence with no more difficulty than it had shown in destroying the astral dogs back in Tibet. It absorbed his soul, purifying it, wiping all traces of his memories, his identity clean away. Jackson Fox was no more.
With the removal of the last radiation infected spirit, the partition separating this miniscule part of the database from the rest of the mainframe fell. Emmy was inside what was essentially a black box recording of galactic proportions – a virtual encyclopaedia of the known universe. She also had the key to unlocking its every secret. Her tulpa had become fully integrated with the AI interface of the universe’s most powerful supercomputer. She was in a position of which her grandfather could only have dreamed.
That night, more than three years earlier, when she had set fire to the Sly Fox, Emmy had gotten her first taste of real power. She had seen the true potential of the astral technology. For the briefest moment, she had seen the world through the eyes of a Goddess. The power had been hers for the taking, but she had stepped away from it. A Goddess did not belong on Earth. A Goddess belonged in the Heavens, which was exactly where she now found he
rself.
The sum of all knowledge, all power, was within her grasp. She only had to reach out and take it. She only had to open her mind and a Goddess she would surely become. All of time, all of space, now belonged to Emmy.
She was November Rayne, granddaughter of the great Jackson Fox, Mistress of the universe...
***
‘Almost there,’ said Charlie.
He waited with bated breath for the computer to confirm the weapon was fully primed and ready to dispatch.
‘Five, four, three, two...’
As he finished the countdown he slammed his palm down onto the trigger switch. Sparks cracked from the casing surrounding the circuitry of Emmy’s projection pod. Her cord burst forth into the material world as it was ignited into a thick column of electricity, burning up towards the sky like a powder trail leading to a keg of gunpowder.
In the time it would take a firework to leave the ground and explode into a bushel of fire, a distant sun in a faraway galaxy went supernova.
Though this Heavenly spectacle would not be viewable from Earth for countless millennia, its after effects were witnessed by a sole astral traveller originating from a small unremarkable blue planet nestled within a spiral arm of an unremarkable galaxy.
Although the black hole was not visible to Charlie, he could not mistake the vast vacuum that it created. Where there was once an entire solar system, which many eons ago had been populated by an alien civilisation with technological advancements beyond his wildest dreams, there now was nothing. Only the desolate void of space.
‘Goodbye, Emmy.’
There was no time for grieving. He had a job to do. He had an entire universe to explore.
Epilogue
She opened her eyes.
The world was sideways. It was like the room had been tipped to a ninety degree angle. It took her a moment to realise that it was not the room that was tilted, but her. She was lying down. On a bed in a room that was vaguely familiar. The layout was similar to the master bedroom at the observatory, but the decor was completely off.
The master bedroom had belonged to Pops. It was the private living space of an old, diseased and disabled man. It had been dank and stuffy. This place was light and airy. The walls were painted in pastel colours, a faint smell of perfume permeated throughout – this was a female’s room.
‘It’s not time to get up already, is it?’ asked a voice from behind, the speaker pressing closer into Emmy’s back, savouring the warmth of her body.
‘Lucy?’
The other body rolled away, breaking contact.
‘Who’s Lucy?’
The question shocked Emmy. It made her feel vulnerable. Violated. She pulled the sheets up to her neck and turned to face the speaker.
‘Toni?’
The other woman shook her head in disbelief.
‘Who else were you expecting? Let me guess; is her name Lucy by any chance?’
Emmy struggled to process what was happening. Toni had been her first serious girlfriend. They met at university, but the relationship did not last for long. The local trolls had made sure of that.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Emmy.
‘That’s a question I keep on asking myself,’ replied Toni, stepping into a pair of grey sweat pants and throwing on a black t-shirt emblazoned with a logo for a rock band. ‘Why we always have to spend the holidays in this backwater, I’ll never understand.’
Emmy stared back at her. She did not know what to make of the situation. It felt real and it was certainly not a memory; that was for sure.
‘Aren’t you at least going to explain yourself,’ said Toni, clearly frustrated by her partner’s behaviour.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Emmy. ‘What am I supposed to say?’
Toni rolled her eyes.
‘Have you been experimenting on yourself, is that it? I know you’ve been desperate for a breakthrough, but you can’t go taking unlicensed drugs. They have clinical trials for a reason.’
Emmy had no idea what her supposed ex was talking about. If she was to make any sense of the situation then she needed answers fast.
‘Where’s Pops?’ she asked.
‘Who’s Pops?’
This time Emmy was the one growing frustrated.
‘My grandfather. Where is he?’
Toni’s face softened. Her agitation turning to concern tinged with a hint of sadness.
‘He’s in the garden. Where else would he be? Are you sure you’re okay? If you want, I can call the doctor.’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘Just give me a minute.’
She quickly got dressed and then went out to the garden. There was nobody there. All she could see were the graves of her parents and her grandmother. Except that something was not right. There were only two gravestones instead of three. When she got closer, she understood why.
Power is fleeting. After defeating her grandfather, Emmy had gained and lost more than any other being in existence. Her rise and fall had taken just fractions of a second. In that moment she had succumbed to the same twisted desire that drove Jackson Fox. She had believed she was a God. It was Charlie who had saved her from herself.
When the power surge sent the sun into supernova, she had been given only one chance to escape. She used the vast energy released from the exploding star to teleport to an alternate place in space and time. At that moment her thoughts had been split between two opposing forces. She wanted to push away the negative energy of her grandfather and at the same time seek out the positive love she had possessed with Lucy. Where she ended up was the choice of fate. Fate had brought her here. To Jackson’s Hill.
A different Jackson’s Hill.
Her grandfather was buried next to his wife, Emmy’s maternal grandmother, Priscilla Fox. He had died six months before she was born. Before he destroyed everything he had spent his entire life working towards. In this alternate universe, she had never even known him.
‘He’d be proud of you,’ said Toni, joining Emmy at the graveside.
‘What did he die of?’ the scientist asked.
This time Toni did not bother to question the relative absurdity of her partner’s line of intrigue.
‘It was the big C. You were always so angry about it. You said he smoked himself to an early grave. You could never understand how a man with such a towering intellect could fall victim to such a worthless habit.’ Toni smiled. ‘At least some good came of it all. If it wasn’t for your grandfather you would never have thrown yourself so passionately into your work.’
‘My work?’
‘Oh come on, what do you take me for? I can believe you may have temporarily lost your sanity, but everyone knows your ego is bulletproof. One day you’re going to cure cancer and when you do, you’ll make sure the whole world knows your name.’
‘Cure cancer?’
Toni rolled her eyes.
‘No, wait, hear me out,’ added Emmy. ‘Just answer me one more question and I’ll stop, I promise.’
Toni crossed her arms.
‘Come on then.’
Emmy faltered before she spoke. She had only just noticed the t-shirt that Toni was wearing. The logo was for the band, Guns n’ Roses.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘That’s your question?’
‘No, but it’s important. My dad, my real dad, he loved that band.’
‘Well, duh! He’s the one that gave this to me. Is there anything you can remember today?’
Emmy shook her head, absentmindedly.
‘Where’s my dad now?’
Toni shrugged.
‘I dunno. Don’t he and your mum usually go to Europe at this time of year?’
Every nerve ending in Emmy’s body was set on fire.
Her mother was alive.
This version of reality was shaping up to be better than anything she could have imagined. There was just one important factor remaining. One more detail she needed to confirm. She left a perplexed Toni stand
ing in the garden and ran to the main laboratory. When she got there, it was barely recognisable. Gone was the astral projection chamber and in its place was a bank of refrigeration units and tabletops littered with test tubes and Petri dishes. She saw a computer set up in a corner of the room.
There is not a password that Emmy cannot crack so figuring out one of her own was not difficult. She brought up the data from the experiments. At first it was meaningless, but as she cycled through page after page, previously repressed memories - memories from this other version of Emmy - started to take shape in her mind. Before long, she knew precisely what stage this research was at. A comment added after the most recent test results read simply; Eureka!
She had done it.
Emmy, or the other Emmy rather; Emmy Armareth – if that was still her name, had cured cancer.
Knowing full well what this meant, she moved the cursor into the bottom right corner of the screen. The result cemented all of her hopes.
There was still time.
Before logging off, she took a flash drive from the worktop and downloaded all of the files she needed. She then grabbed a handful of specimens and stashed them in a secure case before going to find her ex.
‘I have to go,’ she said.
‘When will you be back?’ replied Toni.
Emmy shook her head.
‘I’m not coming back. There’s somebody I have to find. I’m sorry.’
Toni sighed.
‘Is this somebody named Lucy, by any chance?’
‘Yes. And I love her.’
Toni was not disappointed, just surprised. Their relationship had been in a rut for some time. Emmy had been much too engrossed in her work. Everything else had simply been going through the motions.
‘Does this Lucy feel the same way?’ she asked.
Emmy shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I mean, she’s never even met me.’
‘So what’re you saying – did you guys meet on the internet or something?’
‘Not even that. She doesn’t even know I exist.’
Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 91