by Brandt Legg
“I wasn’t conscious when I cut that deal,” I said quietly.
“That’s why Spencer’s here. You need to trust him. Stop fighting him. Do you really believe he would have let your dad die if he could have stopped it?”
“No.”
“Then stop misplacing your anger and realize Spencer’s the best surrogate father you’ll ever have... or friend, or whatever. Trust him. His whole purpose in life is to save you.”
“So I can save the world?”
“So you can help wake it up. No one is going to build monuments to you or worship you, and you don’t have to worry—they’ll never make your birthday a holiday. But you have a job to do. It’s not a mission, it’s just a job, okay? You work at the front desk of a big hotel, and you need to make wake-up calls.”
“Okay, I like that. Maybe you should call Luther Storch at Lightyear and tell him I’m no big deal so he can let me go.”
“I oversimplified?” He laughed.
“Yeah. Someone needs to keep me in line. You’re a good friend.”
“Then it’s safe to go talk to Spencer?”
“I’ll play nice.”
We walked back across the beach, the sand scorching my feet.
“Spencer, I’m sorry I’ve been a little difficult... ”
“A little?” He winked. Before I could respond, he added. “Your youthful enthusiasm keeps this interesting, reminds me to focus on the human realm. You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”
He had been watching my life unfold since before it all began, and if I was better at controlling my powers, the answers to my questions could be found in his ancient eyes. “Good, then we should get to work. Give me a straight answer, okay?”
Spencer nodded.
“Is it possible to save Amber and Linh and stop the mall attack?”
“Yes.”
“But we’re fighting time?” I asked.
“No. Fighting time is a fool’s battle. Playing with time is the way, and someone with youthful enthusiasm is the perfect person to do it.”
“How?”
“Time is just another place to visit, and even though you’ve been there before doesn’t mean you saw it,” Spencer said.
“I kind of see why Nate keeps getting frustrated with you, Spencer. I mean with all due respect, get to the point,” Dustin said.
“Some are better than others at doing that... ” Spencer began.
“Okay, but at Outin, Nate from the future showed up and told us all this horrible stuff about what’s going to happen but that we could change it. And you say we can too,” Dustin said. “But no one is telling us how... we’re wasting time.”
“Don’t worry about wasting time, there’s plenty of it... it’s unlimited really. It’s all in how you relate to it,” Spencer said.
“How come Lightyear is suddenly able to find me with remote viewing?” I asked.
“While Fitts was alive they were convinced they had you cornered and there was no need to divert valuable resources to track you psychically,” Spencer said. “Storch was trying to keep you on a short leash, using informants, tracking devices, monitoring, and agents, hoping you’d lead them to me.”
“You?” Dustin asked.
“Yes. Lightyear doesn’t like me too much. For many years, I’ve been the only person who knew what they were up to. And the only one who might know how to stop them.”
“Fitts told me before he died that they’d been after you. But a few weeks ago, you didn’t even know who was in charge at Lightyear,” I said.
“I didn’t,” answered Spencer. “But turmoil is increasing, and there have been many parallel occurrences merging in the multiverse. So information has been simultaneously in flux and becoming more readily available. For a while they believed there was a good chance they could recruit you.”
“Did they ever think that was really a possibility?” I half laughed. Something in the way Spencer looked at me made me shudder. “You don’t mean it was possible?”
“Worse. In some parallel dimensions you did join them.”
“Oh my God!” Dustin wailed.
“I’m surprised you didn’t see it in Rainbow Lake,” Spencer continued. “You were undoubtedly distracted by the mall attack or Amber and Linh. But in one case you joined to try to break them from the inside. Not a bad idea in some ways. Then in another you actually decided that with so many alternative realities it wouldn’t really matter if you went with them. At least the girls and you would be safe. And Nate, you may find that a tempting solution if we can’t stop the mall attack and the girls are about to get killed.”
“Join Lightyear? They killed my dad and Rose!” I protested.
“I’m not saying it’s a good idea. But I’ve seen a future where you justify joining by deciding that saving your friends in the present is more important than what Fitts did in the past.”
“Here’s a question I’d like a straight answer to,” Dustin began. “It’s bothered me since I first saw Outin. Which reality is the real one? Which universe or dimension are we really in? I mean, if you saw a future where Nate joins Lightyear, how do we know that’s not the real one?”
“You’re not going to be happy with this answer.” Spencer answered meeting Dustin’s eyes and then mine. “They’re all real.”
Trevor, who’d been standing off to the side, spoke. “So Spencer, is there a universe where Hitler won the war?”
Spencer nodded.
“What happened in that world to the Jews?”
“Like anything else, there are multiple outcomes.”
Trevor leaned forward, slightly trying to pull the answer out of a reluctant Spencer.
“In one, a small number of Jews survive in the world and eventually they work to build and lead a coalition to successfully overthrow the Nazis.”
“And is there one where Hitler succeeds completely?”
“Yes.”
Trevor walked away.
“I should go,” I said.
“Let him be alone with his demons. He needs to overcome them on his own,” Spencer said quietly.
“We’re all wired differently,” Spencer continued. “Trevor has spent much of his recent years focused on Dachau, while you’ve been focused on your dad, Dustin, and friends. One day you may want to search every last universe, and alternate future, for surviving Nazis.”
“That’s possible?”
“Anything is possible.”
There was a small pile of fantastic seashells in the corner. I wondered who had collected them.
“Right now, in this time in this universe, we need a plan to change the outcome of our world,” Dustin said.
“How do we change time?”
“Ah, that is the great question, isn’t it? Our first problem is Lightyear’s remote viewers. That’s, of course, one of the reasons we’re on Booker’s little island. They really can’t see you here even when you aren’t Kellaring.”
“Are they looking for me all the time?”
“Yes. They now fully realize you’re a far more substantial threat to their plans than I could ever be.” He gave his words extra punch, and I felt them. Lightyear was the most powerful group on earth, and I was their greatest enemy. My palms sweated and throat tightened, imagining the real possibility of dying before this was all over.
“Leaving Outin when you did and some of your steps getting here have already changed the future but not enough to alter the major events we care about. You need to stay on Cervantes longer than you’ll like.”
“How long?” Dustin asked.
“Hard to say. It’ll change constantly, but months.”
“Months?” I whined.
“There are worse places,” Dustin said.
“That’s for sure, I could show you if you’d like... ”
“No thanks. But when does the mall attack happen?”
“A few days before Christmas. But that can obviously change too.”
“I feel like we’re always waiting. What are we
supposed to do all that time?”
“We need to get Kyle, Linh, and Amber down here for their Thanksgiving break.”
“Really?” I was excited about that idea.
“Yes. Originally, you two were only here about a week before you went back on the road with a plan to expose Lightyear. The chain reaction led directly to the mall attack and the girls’ deaths. But the longer we keep you here in a controlled and somewhat eventless environment, the easier it will be to see what the future is becoming.”
“Then what?”
“We still need a plan to expose Lightyear, and I have some ideas.”
10
Breakfast, like dinner the previous night, was a gourmet vegan affair. Trevor had set sail mid-evening with a promise to return in a few weeks. Spencer, Dustin, and I continued our conversation until very late, as we walked the beach under a starry sky, shimmering more silver than black. It made me feel insignificant, yet part of something great. Spencer retired to the main house, but Dustin and I weren’t sure he ever slept. After breakfast the three of us borrowed one of the golf carts and drove to the far end of the island where Booker’s plane was due.
Booker Lipton was famous, I knew a lot of his story from media accounts, but Spencer filled in more details. Booker, an only child, was born to an African-American father, a successful car salesman, and a Caucasian mother. His father died when he was only nine. Devastated, the family lost their home in an affluent Philadelphia suburb and for several years bounced around low-end rental units until his mother passed her real estate exam. At ten, he began buying collectibles at garage sales and resold them to antique shops, through classified ads, or to a growing list of clients. If he found a Tiffany lamp, he learned all there was to know about them. If he stumbled across a first-edition Scarlet Letter, he researched Nathaniel Hawthorne. He dropped out of school a couple of years later, saying he didn’t have time “for fill-in-the-blank busy work and soda-pop history.” By thirteen, he was submitting materials to auction houses and soon paying half the rent on a four-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood. One room was his office, another, his showroom. He bought and sold almost anything except drugs and guns. He told a friend once, “they may be profitable but the downside is so steep you can’t see up.” He bought a crate of microcalculators and paid high school kids in four districts a commission to peddle them to students.
Before he turned eighteen, he had three full-time employees, paid under the table of course, and an army of part-time workers. He got into art as the market was getting hot, and his cash began to pile up. Then he started buying real estate, using his mother as the exclusive broker. It wasn’t long before Booker’s companies filled an old ten-story downtown building. He played the stock options market, and by twenty-one was worth nineteen million officially—and twice that if the IRS wasn’t looking. The press loved him, and he was a folk hero in the African-American community.
It was then that he got serious about money and began buying and selling companies. He was tough, made millions—tens of millions—and the press turned on him, as he closed factories and sliced up businesses. The deals kept getting bigger, and, at thirty-five, his estimated net worth was $2.8 billion and Booker was hated. Then the tech boom hit, and he put his cash hoard into venture capital for dot-coms, made it out before the bubble burst, and by the time the second wave hit, he was sitting on more than $30 billion in assets, but many suspected his worth was much higher. He retreated from public view but his legend, like his power and wealth, continued to balloon. Although the public saw a ruthless tycoon, an air of mystery grew around him; there was another side to this complex individual. This was the side that Spencer knew.
“Why Booker Lipton’s island and not some other secluded island paradise?” I asked, as Spencer navigated the narrow jungle roads with familiar ease, ferns and palms sweeping the sides of the cart as we passed.
“There’s far more to Booker than what you’ve read,” Spencer began. “He’s the leading financier of the Movement.”
“What Movement?”
“There’s an awakening going on. I know you’ve been concerned with the attacks on your family, and now you’re all caught up in the possibility that your friends and many other people will be killed but... how do I say this without you screaming at me—”
“Those are just distractions,” Dustin interrupted from the backseat. “In the grand scheme of humanity’s awakening, hundreds or even thousands of lives ultimately don’t matter.”
“Well said,” Spencer agreed.
“Where did you get that, Dustin?” I was astounded. “Are you saying it doesn’t matter if Amber and Linh die, the kids in the mall, even Dad?”
“That’s not what he means. But Nate... ” Spencer stopped the vehicle and looked straight at me. “No one really dies. Do you believe that?”
I thought of Dad giving me the matches across time, all the past lives I’d seen, the soul-powers I possessed, Rainbow Lake and the Windows of Outin. Of course, I knew no one really dies.
“Spencer, you know what I’m talking about. Just because their souls reincarnate or they continue to exist in another dimension doesn’t negate the pain and the fact that they’re gone from the here and now!”
“You don’t know what their destinies hold,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Life needs to be lived—the good and the bad. Human existence always ends in death.”
Dustin put his hands on my shoulder from behind, calming me as I was about to erupt again.
“We will try to save them,” Spencer began softly. “But you must prepare yourself Nate. The complexities of one life in one universe are astounding, multiply that by trillions of lives within infinite universes floating in a multiverse, and the repercussions of one seemingly trivial decision are astronomical. We are nothing, yet we are everything.”
In the ensuing silence he started driving again, and a couple of minutes later we arrived at a surprisingly modern runway located on the southern end of the island. The Gulfstream jet approached.
I had never met anyone famous before, and Booker was way beyond your average celebrity. Once the plane came to a stop, Spencer pulled up next to it. Booker came down the steps, dressed in a cream-colored linen suit, followed by an assistant. A handshake with Spencer turned into a hug before he extended an arm to Dustin and me.
“The notorious Ryder brothers, how wonderful to meet you both.”
“Thanks for putting us up,” I said.
“More than that,” Dustin said. “Thanks for aiding and abetting.”
Booker laughed deeply. “I’m not a big fan of governmental laws, too easily manipulated. Don’t worry; I don’t think they’ll find you here... ” He glanced at Spencer. “And hell, if they do, I’ve got a handful of other islands we can move you to.”
“Why are you helping us?” I asked.
He looked at Spencer again.
“I started to tell them, but our conversation digressed,” Spencer said, as he and Booker got in the front seats and I joined Dustin in the back.
“Let’s talk about it at the lagoon.”
Ten minutes later we stepped onto a pier, which led to an elaborate, floating gazebo in the middle of a stunning lagoon, a small waterfall cascading on one end. There was a lush spread of fresh fruit.
“You boys lost your father at a young age. We have that in common. Although mine wasn’t murdered, it was no less tragic to me. As a kid, I asked my mother and anyone else who might know, what happened to him after he died. You know the answers I got... ‘heaven,’ ‘a better place,’ ‘with Jesus,’ but none of it was believable. Then one day while I was in a bookstore, looking for something about an odd antique I’d acquired, I noticed a book on life after death. From that day on, the topic fascinated me. And as my fortune grew, I discovered a great many things about the human world and those who control it.”
11
Inside the gazebo, I listened to an impassioned speech on the darkness of Lightyear.
“It’s beyond what you’ve seen, beyond the worst you dare to imagine.”
“You’re like the richest guy in the world. Why can’t you stop them?”
“My billions are no match for the trillions they manipulate. Their corruption knows no limits. Their reach is everywhere.”
“So how can they be exposed?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Me?”
Booker glanced at Spencer then back to me. “You’re going to wake everyone up.”
“So I’ve heard, but no one has bothered to tell me how.”
“Lightyear and its backers aren’t just seeking power and riches. There’s a conspiracy in place to prevent the shift. They know an enlightened population means an end to their plans,” Booker said.
“Many will see you as a fraud; some, the messiah; and others, the devil,” Spencer said.
“That sounds like high school,” I said sarcastically.
“Lightyear has already begun the campaign to discredit you. But people are working to get your message out,” Booker said.
“What message? I don’t have a message,” I said.
“You are your message,” Spencer said.
“Just concentrate on staying alive, and it’ll all come out.”
“Yeah, one, don’t get killed; two, save Amber and Linh; three, prevent the mall attack. Find out what’s in the mausoleum, the gold box, locate Calyndra portal... ” My dad had carefully hidden several things for me behind a false panel in his desk. But I still didn’t know what they meant: a list of nine names; pages of code, a key that led to an ornate mausoleum outside Washington, DC, and an antique, jade-encrusted gold box. I needed to know what he’d stashed in the mausoleum and why these things were so important to him.
“You’ll be able to do all those things more easily if you stay here and study,” Spencer said.
I scoffed.
“Your list depends on destroying Lightyear,” Booker said. “And if they get you first, it’ll all be lost. Think of your time here as training and strategizing.”
“Okay.” For some reason it was easier to agree with Booker than Spencer. He was commanding and had nothing to prove.