Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm

by Alex Albrinck

  “You’re thinking about them, aren’t you?” Adam’s voice reached him from a respectful distance.

  “I only think about them when I’m awake,” he replied.

  The sleep deprivation had lessened in recent years. Once the numbness had worn off, once his mind had processed what happened, he’d been unable to sleep for weeks, awakened after every attempt at sleeping because his mind replayed images of Abaddon and knives and blood. When the blades plunged, he’d wake instantly, screaming.

  Angel’s empathy skills had saved his sanity. She’d spent two hours a day for over a year, helping him push the memories to the background, until he’d been able to sleep. She’d helped him recall the happy memories, and he’d been able to fall asleep thinking of his wedding, of Anna’s birth, of the trips they’d taken and experiences shared.

  The lifeless eyes only stared back at him while awake now. The four eyes he knew well, and thousands of others of those known and unknown who’d perished that day.

  He pulled the sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. They weren’t the sunglasses he’d wear to hide his eyes from his father. They served a similar purpose, hiding the tortured soul from those who knew nothing of his role in the Great Cataclysm.

  He moved out of the water and sat on the dry sand, letting a small trickle of Energy escape to dry his feet. He brushed the sand aside, listening to the seabirds sing overhead, hearing the conversations of the humans gathered for the recovery effort. He pulled on his socks and shoes.

  “We’re ready to get started when you are, Fil.” Adam’s voice carried no sense of impatience, but he could sense the excitement in the crew nearby. They were ready, and were tired of waiting for people wasting time splashing in the ocean waves.

  Fil smiled as he fastened both shoes to his feet. “I’m ready, Grandpa.”

  Adam rolled his eyes, but before he turned away, Fil could see the faint smile that reached the man’s eyes as the two men walked toward the group of workers.

  Since the Cataclysm, members of the Alliance rarely traveled Outside, except to help survivors dig through wreckage, to locate what might be valuable, and to clear away the remaining rubble. The Alliance had created a private charity, funded by “anonymous donations” and staffed by members of the Alliance, men and women with above average strength and stamina. They were able to bring in heavy equipment and portable disposal equipment that processed debris into a type of plastic they could reform into new buildings. The charity received far more requests than it could handle.

  Fil glanced at Adam. “Think he’ll ever give up on the idea that it was Dad?”

  Adam sighed. “In the mind of the Leader, the only explanation for everything is Will Stark. Would he accept an explanation noting that Will’s not likely to work to destroy human society? No. He’ll decide Will’s going to end the Leader’s enslavement of humanity by destroying humanity, or some similar nonsense. He won’t listen to other opinions anyway; other opinions represent a challenge to his self-ascribed omniscience. And ask Eva about how much he likes being challenged.”

  Fil’s face turned grim. “I don’t think he’s planning to stick a sword in Dad’s back. That didn’t work too well the last time.”

  Adam snickered. “I wish I’d seen the look on the man’s face when he realized the sword hadn’t killed Will.” A pause. “But I’d prefer to just have Will back with us.”

  Fil said nothing.

  Over the past twenty years, he’d reached a deeper level of understanding about his father’s actions. Death was permanent, a gaping void that could never be filled. Separation, even if it lasted decades or centuries, wasn’t permanent. His father understood that, had understood that since long before Fil’s birth. Fil had never understood why his father would willingly avoid his own wife, son, and daughter. It had to be him, had to mean he was defective and repugnant in some way. That was why Will had stayed away. He didn’t want the constant reminder of his son’s imperfection. He wouldn’t accept that his father’s decision had prevented the Assassin from taking more aggressive steps to kill both mother and son, that the Hunters would understand that the son would have the power to fight with Energy and would have left Will behind for later to aid in doling out Oath Four violation punishments. He couldn’t understand that in staying away even now, in letting Arthur’s obsession about finding Will become paramount, that his father had assured that the Hunters had never bothered to try to find out if the story Young Will told about having a son were true. Fil was an unknown to them, able to grow and mature and develop his skill until he was able to fight back against any Energy-based attack hurled his way.

  Fil hadn’t understood those lessons until it was too late. Instead, he’d rebelled.

  He hadn’t suppressed his daughter’s Energy in a secondary Shield outside the home, ensuring no human saw his daughter do things they thought impossible. No, his daughter was taught to restrain herself, but never forced, never rendered mute and silent to the world in the arcane torture his parents had enforced on him. Wasn’t that supposed to be the way of the Alliance? His child would be free to be herself, learn the modest bit of self-control necessary to remain out of the view of the Hunters, and grow up learning to appreciate her powers.

  She’d know her father, see him all the time, not wonder why he hid away from her.

  He kicked his foot into the soft sand. How had that worked out for him? Today, he’d rather be the absentee father of a live child than a man who’d watched that child die at the hands of a maniacal killer.

  He wanted to find Will now to apologize for the thoughts he’d had. The anger he’d felt, the sense of abandonment, the lack of trust in his father’s motivations for his decisions and actions. Now, at a time when he most needed his father, he didn’t know where to find the man. He only had Angel’s proclamations that Will and Hope Stark were very much alive.

  He walked up to the massive pile of rubble, the remains of a building leveled in an earthquake triggered in the aftermath, well away from the teleportation blast zones. The large chunks of rubble were far too heavy to lift by hand. Heavy machinery was in short supply as the world rebuilt, and factories couldn’t make new equipment fast enough to meet demand.

  They had factories to rebuild. They needed to train new people to operate the machinery to build the equipment. In many cases, they needed to train the trainers and building the production line equipment from scratch. Progress was slow, the result of the thorough destruction the Cataclysm had unleashed.

  The humans were already there, wearing surly facial expressions and attitudes common since the Cataclysm. He knew in an instant their names, their histories, their motivations for being here. Some sought potential treasure; he chose not to begrudge them that. Some came to look to confirm what they knew, that a loved one had perished in a pile of rubble in the aftermath of the Cataclysm. Some came simply because they wanted the memories of the terrible day erased and thought the cleanup work therapeutic.

  He could help them with the last part. He’d never let himself forget, though.

  The Mechanic was already there, part of a common crew Fil worked with Outside on efforts of this nature. The machines and technologies the man conceived and created were incredible, though they didn’t always work in the first field trials. The Alliance members could typically simulate the effects with Energy, and the Mechanic would fix the error in time for the next trip.

  The man pulled out one of his kits. “We’ve been working on these, and they seem effective for cases like this. It’s designed to break down the chemical bonds of concrete, which reduces large slabs to dust and can enable entry to areas previously blocked.”

  One of the human men there frowned. “Huh? What does that mean? It sounds stupid.”

  “It pulverizes concrete into dust so we don’t have to move it by hand,” Adam explained.

  The man glared at the Mechanic. “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  Fil grinned. “He likes to use big words.”
r />   The man scowled, folded his arms, and said no more.

  The Mechanic smirked, his ruddy face, middle-aged face wrinkling in the bright sunlight. Fil didn’t know if the man had taken ambrosia or not, and had never bothered to ask. His hair had turned gray, but his eyes remained bright and sharp. Fil spied the telltale sparkle indicative of the Energy coursing inside the man.

  It was the man’s mind, however, that truly impressed.

  The Mechanic pulled the lid off the kit and poured the dark, oil-like substance over the surface of the concrete. The humans frowned, and the man who’d spoken earlier held up a hand. “Oil? Your fancy talk solution is pouring oil on this slab? Won’t that just make it slippery and cause all of us to fall and get hurt?” The man’s eyes flashed. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Injure all of us?”

  “Patience,” the Mechanic said. “We bear you no ill will. The substance looks like oil, but works differently. You’re in no danger.” Angel projected soothing Energy; she’d needed to do that on far more occasions now than she’d ever needed to before. She had a theory about why; Fil didn’t like the theory because… well, because he believed it.

  Adam, standing beside the Mechanic, smiled. “Deja vu,” he muttered. The Mechanic’s upper lip twitched up in a brief smile.

  Fil felt the invasion into his mind; the Mechanic had let him know the substance—in reality, a specialized form of nanos—wasn’t working as expected, possibly due to a unique mixture of concrete in the region. Fil opened a crack in his Shield and let loose a small trickle of Energy. The Energy ate away at the slab, and the humans watched as it gradually turned to dust before falling down inside the pile of debris.

  “Wow!” the human man said, impressed. Angel’s calming Energy had taken effect. “It worked!” He paused. “Got any more of that oil stuff?”

  “I’ll need to retrieve as much of the sample as possible,” the Mechanic replied. “It’s not something we’ve produced in bulk yet. We will once we’ve had the chance to run many more tests to confirm it works. We need to conserve and reuse as much as possible to get maximum usage from what’s available.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a high-powered flashlight. “Once I retrieve the material, we can move to the next block and gradually expose the interior to see what secrets might be revealed inside.”

  They located an expanse of rope and lowered the “elderly” man down to the ground level inside. They followed his movements from above, watching as the light from the flashlight moved about below. Fil tracked the thoughts of those on the debris pile with him. There were nascent thoughts of dropping the rope, of leaving the “old codger” behind, just for fun. But those thoughts were pushed away by Angel’s powerful empathic Energy push. She was countering the anger and rage he’d unleashed upon the psyches of the world at the time of the Cataclysm.

  In other words, the bad attitudes were his fault, his mess, and she was cleaning up after him.

  “How goes it?” Adam shouted.

  “I’ve got as much as I’m going to get.” The Mechanic’s voice sounded distant and tinny. The rope pulled tight. “Give me a lift up if you don’t mind.”

  After they pulled the Mechanic back to the surface, the human men consulted photographs of the original tower, trying to match debris piles with sections of the building most likely hiding items of value. They repeated the concrete melting exercise a dozen times before darkness invaded. The team climbed aboard a fleet of ground cars and set off down the dirt roads marking where mighty interstate highways once existed.

  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the brightly lit camp. The smell of kerosene, used to power the generators bringing light and safety to the camp, filled the air. In human terms, they were safe. They were safe from the Aliomenti as well. The Aliomenti wouldn’t concern themselves with a ragtag group of humans treasure hunting in piles of rock. They were too busy chasing a phantom named Will Stark across the globe. Fil admired his father’s persistence. He suspected that, if the roles were reversed, he’d lose patience and move on to something else.

  They downed plates of cold unidentified meat and soggy vegetables in the mess hall. Fil listened to the clanking of metal utensils against the plates, ate without feeling a sense of nourishment or refreshment. He found the conversation more interesting.

  “Ever wonder what caused it all?” One of the men next to him, whose name Fil couldn’t remember and didn’t want to know, speared a cooked carrot and used it as pointing device, aiming it toward the side of the tent. “Why so many cities collapsed, so many died?”

  I could tell you, he thought. But you’d never believe me. And if you did, you’d probably try to kill me.

  Another man grunted. “Earthquakes, wasn’t it?”

  The woman next to him snorted. “No way that many earthquakes occur that fast, that large, all synched up like that.”

  He glared at her. “Then what was it?”

  Her eyes brightened. “Aliens. They’re softening us up for the main invasion. It’s like a book I read years ago, but in that one they sent a virus to kill us first. But now? They’re using weapons to level our cities before they arrive and engage the few remaining survivors in combat.”

  General laughter, derisive and cruel, met her pronouncement, and her excited look turned sour.

  “I’ll give you the weapons idea,” another said. “But it wasn’t some green-skinned alien. Nah. Some kind of secret weapon the government was building. They tested a bunch of ‘em out. Some general got overzealous, set it to full power, and boom. Instead of one going off, all of ‘em go off at once. Instant Armageddon.”

  Fil winced.

  One of the people noticed and nodded at him. “You got any theories?”

  Fil shrugged. “I doubt it was something natural, like earthquakes or tornadoes. Probably something went wrong, very wrong, some kind of accident. Most of us lost people we cared about that day and we’re trying to rebuild. At this point, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “Mmm.” The woman nodded. “I still think it was aliens.”

  Fil finished putting the last bit of carrot into his mouth and stood up, took his tray to the designated drop off location, and headed outside.

  The humans had no idea what had happened. The Aliomenti—specifically, Arthur Lowell—thought his father responsible. Will had managed to go eleven centuries without laying waste to even a single city, while Fil had taken out thirty of the world’s largest metropolises in a single fury-filled day. Some son he’d turned out to be. He wondered what Will thought of him now. He moved out of the primary camp into a grove of nearby trees, wanting to be alone.

  The Mechanic sat on the grass just outside the main clearing, leaning against one of the trees, making marks on a computer tablet. He looked up as Fil approached, showing no sign of surprise at the encounter. “Food gotten any better since I finished an hour ago?”

  “No. Just colder.” Fil motioned to the spot next to him. “Mind if I join you?”

  The Mechanic shook his head. “Not at all. Adam should be here shortly. Something was said in conversation over dinner that got us both excited. We’re going to talk it through.” He gave Fil an appraising look. “He went looking for you and Angel.”

  Adam appeared just then, nodding as he “found” Fil. “Good, you’re already here.” He glanced at the Mechanic. “Are we ready?”

  Fil waved his hand to gain their attention. “What’s the topic of conversation?”

  “We’ve been working with your sister over the past few decades trying to solve a problem that’s going to become a huge deal in about another hundred and thirty years,” the Mechanic replied.

  Fil nodded. “Time travel.”

  “Exactly. We’ve hit a bit of a standstill. If we can’t work through the problem, you and Angel and Adam won’t be able to make a very important trip.”

  He glanced around. “You said Angel’s going to join us for this conversation?”

  Adam nodded. “Eventually. She’s working
in another section of the city, targeting monuments that haven’t fallen. She said she’d join us when they finish for the day.”

  As if on cue, Angel walked up, brushing dust off her clothing, and beamed as she saw Fil. She sat next to her brother. Adam sat as well, completing a circle with the four present.

  Adam glanced at the siblings. “The Mechanic and I overheard a comment while eating dinner in the mess hall about an hour ago. It might not solve our larger problem directly, but we suspect it will push us toward that ultimate solution.” He paused. “It would also be a technological advancement that’s worthy of research on its own.”

  Angel motioned for Adam to continue.

  The Mechanic spoke instead. “Two of the men eating dinner were moaning about the fact that it took them a long time to get here, and how they wished they could walk through a door here and be back at home in an instant.”

  Angel looked intrigued. Fil shrugged. “Okay. And?”

  “Physics deals with a number of dimensions. We’re all pretty conscious of the first three, because we have control over them. Those three dimensions represent the physical plane. You walk in two dimensions and fly in three. What that man described—walking through a door and arriving at a three dimensional point not directly connected to his present location—is teleportation.”

  “Which all of us can do.”

  “Right,” Adam said. “The comment triggered a memory of a description of the dimensions. Essentially, you could theoretically bend lower dimensions and move through a higher dimension. Put two dots on opposite sides of a piece of paper. Fold the paper in half—bending a different dimension—and the ends of the paper come together, putting the two dots in direct contact with each other.”

  Angel’s eyes caught fire. Fil scowled. Perhaps he ought to have spent more time discussing time travel. Then he wouldn’t feel left out of the understanding the others had achieved. “What does folding paper have to do with time travel?”

  The Mechanic shrugged. “We don’t know. Not yet. But what if we fold the paper along the first three dimensions and bring two fourth dimension points together?”