by Brandt Legg
I told everything to Linh. “Why didn’t he tell us he was going back for Amber? We could have helped. I never should have left her.”
“He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want your help. We’re all trying to keep you alive. You must know that.”
“Well, yeah, I guess I do, but we need to keep all of us alive.”
She took my hands, her eyes inches from mine. “No, Nate. That’s not the plan. You just never seem to get it. You’re the one who has to survive, and you need to stop worrying about the rest of us. There’s too much at stake and too many destinies involved. Stop trying to control everything.”
“I won’t let you guys die.”
“You’re not God.” I looked away until she touched my chin to return my gaze. “We all believe in reincarnation and... that death isn’t what people think. We’ve talked; we want the Movement to win. That’s why we’re alive, to be part of that.”
“One doesn’t preclude the other. We can help IM and keep us all alive.”
“Maybe that’s true. We’re just not willing to let you march through fire to find out.”
“Am I interrupting something?” Gibi’s voice came through the darkness.
My night vision quickly found her. “How did you know we were here?”
“Whenever someone comes through a nearby portal it can be heard. You should be able to hear it too.”
“That rushing sound?”
She nodded. “Quite wonderful to see you again.” She hugged me. “Linh, my you’re lovely, aren’t you? Come, let’s get out of this snow, shall we?”
Gibi led us through the forest for a few minutes until we reached a small sloping meadow surrounded by towering trees. It was close to dawn. She knelt and looked from the earth to the sky several times.
“Look Nate, it’s incredible.” Linh laughed.
Gibi created a dome of warm air, not much bigger than a two-car garage. It’s part of Vising,” she said. “Want me to show you how?”
“Yes,” Linh and I uttered in unison.
During the sunrise, and for the next few hours, Gibi showed us how to manipulate weather, light, shadow, darkness, water, and temperature. Linh didn’t get it all, but by the time we were ready to leave, I was able to surpass Gibi’s abilities in many aspects.
“These powers are the difference,” I said.
“To what?” Linh asked.
“To defeating Lightyear, without using violence.”
“It will take many forms of the five great powers to do that, my friend. And you must remember all that your soul has ever known, if you’re to have that chance,” Gibi said. “Such a serious business is this.”
“Yes. But we came for another reason,” I said.
“Many reasons, indeed.”
“I need to know how to use Vising to show the world a meeting I had with the head of Lightyear.”
“Ah, I see. The meeting does not portray them well, I take it?”
I shook my head.
“Yes, that would be an effective and nonviolent strike at them. Hmm. It is not easy, and you will need someone else to show you parts of Solteer. I’m unpracticed in that power.”
“Dustin?”
“Yes, this is a kind circle, too. He needs to be needed, poor boy.”
“How does he know something you don’t?” Linh asked.
“Mystics do not remember everything.” She smiled. “We’re mystics because after a certain amount of knowledge returns to us, there is enlightenment, but that is not to say we’re enlightened.” She giggled. “Anyhow, Dustin is a wise old soul, and thus he chose an incredibly difficult life for himself this time. Painful to watch without understanding the beauty of what his soul really is, who he really is.”
“Sometimes his craziness scares me.”
“Your love has to be even greater than your fear... in all things.”
“In the future,” Linh began, “Nate, Amber, and I meet here in the redwoods and Dustin comes, but you don’t. Why?”
“Remember, the future is not another place far away. Time is not like that. The future is stacked up right here, right now. It gets sorted and shuffled a zillion different ways, every day. Say, do you play cards? Next time bring cards, and we’ll play hearts.”
“Okay,” Linh nodded hesitantly.
“Gibi, you were saying,” I said.
“Yes, yes. The future you saw or experienced, or maybe just heard about, may not be, but then again, it may be, over and over again... Don’t worry so much about the future. It may never come.”
Gibi showed us all the ways we could use Solteer and Vising to record and show events in our lives and how to retrieve past ones. Dustin’s piece of the puzzle was the method used to project it in the three-dimensional world, so it could be filmed digitally as if it were happening right then.
“You must begin your journey back to Outin now.”
“How will we find him?”
“You’re not going only for Dustin. There is so much looking to do there.” She smiled then with a dreamy look and continued. “You’ll find many things in Outin. I suspect Dustin might be one of them.”
“What else is waiting for us?” Linh asked.
“Outin holds so much. Sad and happy play together. Don’t you love the colored birds and bubbles?”
“It’s a pretty place,” I said.
“It is everywhere and all time at once, laid open for all to see,” Gibi said. “But you must look with different eyes to see the whole party. And when you witness life and death at Outin, remember, like this dimension, the deeper in nature, the farther from the hand of man, and therefore the more power you will have. That is... ”
“Damn it! A helicopter!” I yelled.
55
“Wait!” Gibi called, as Linh and I were running away. “Friends are flying in.”
We stopped. I felt no heat warning and looked at Gibi.
“Spencer and Amber.”
Our meadow wasn’t large enough so they set down closer to the Smith River. Although the snow had let up, we waited in the warm dome for them.
I ran to Amber and only ended our embrace because I was self-conscious about Linh. “I thought it was over, wasn’t sure we’d see each other again,” she whispered.
“We were quickly overwhelmed,” Spencer explained. “I fought back, but once the police shot down four IMers, I grabbed Amber and wrapped us both into a Timefold.”
“Nice, nonviolent tactic,” Gibi said.
“What’s a Timefold?” I asked.
“The only thing trickier than doing one is explaining it,” Spencer said.
“It is a simple manipulation of time,” Gibi began. “By adjusting time, relative to the dimension you’re in, you can become invisible for short periods.”
“How?”
“It takes remarkable concentration.” She nodded at Spencer with a smile. “And you cannot move more than eight or nine feet or it will collapse, but with practice, one can manipulate the time-to-dimension ratio so that you’re there but those not in the fold may see the same area as it appeared ten minutes earlier or five minutes later, or some combination of before and after.”
“I want to learn that.”
“You already know it.”
“We need to go,” Spencer said.
“We need to wait for Kyle.”
“There isn’t time,” Gibi said. “I’ll help him find you.”
“Kyle isn’t even to Wizard Island yet. He can catch up to us from there,” Spencer said.
“At Outin?”
“They’re all over Shasta right now, so we can’t get to Outin yet. But we’ll stay close. Booker has a place not far from here.”
I reviewed the list in my head and remembered the name Marble Mountain. “Gibi, will you come?”
“No.” She hugged me fully. “Take care, my precious friend.” In her embrace she imparted so much information that I pulled back and gasped. She smiled softly.
We raced back to the helicopter and
were quickly airborne. I was asleep while still over the redwoods. When I awoke, the girls were still sleeping; Spencer was staring out the window.
“The Jadeo is safe,” he said silently.
“Is that a question?” I asked with my mind, patting the artifact inside my pocket.
“No. It’s safe. Nate, I know you’re torn about whether using force is the right course but—”
“I’m not torn.”
“It’s one thing to let Lightyear be victorious in these times, or to sacrifice the Movement, friends, family, even your own life, but the Jadeo is something different.”
“The Jadeo has survived a long time without me.”
“No, don’t you see. It has only survived all this time because of you. You and a band of the truest souls who have spent lifetimes doing nothing but protecting it.”
“One of those protectors was not true, and yet it survives.”
“The universe is strong.”
“That person is part of the universe... who is it?”
“I do not know.”
“Don’t you?”
He stared intently. The helicopter banked and the girls woke, startled.
“Where are we?” Amber asked.
Spencer turned back to the window. “We’re about to land at Marble Mountain, one of Booker’s wilderness cabins,” he answered.
A golf cart was waiting as we left the copter. I recognized the driver from Booker’s roster of employees. We wound through woods, up and down hills, until a massive log mansion appeared through the trees. Flanked by two fortress-like stone chimneys, perched on the edge of a canyon with a view of limestone and black metamorphic rock peaks, Booker’s spread bordered the Marble Mountain Wilderness Area, a rugged landscape of canyons, lakes, and rivers.
“Nate,” Booker boomed, as we climbed the steps to the four-thousand-square-foot front porch.
I was surprised and happy to see him. “Spencer didn’t say you’d be here,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Hell, I don’t even know where I’ll be from day to day. Once I heard about the Moab raid, I thought we should talk.” Booker pulled me into a hug. As we went inside, a grand room greeted us with a rugged loft on one end, a wall of windows, and a glorious stone fireplace with a mantel carved from a tree. The huge ceiling beams and chandelier dwarfed the giant leather sofas. The other fireplace anchored a master suite, complete with sauna, skylights, and automated everything.
The five of us gathered around the fire. Booker filled us in on how desperate Lightyear was to get us but admitted he was baffled as to how they found the secret limestone cave in Moab. “That doesn’t matter,” Linh said impatiently. “What about our families?”
“Our lawyers have seen them, but the administration has limited the amount of time we get. Your mother and father seem to be holding up. And Bridgette is fine. Nate, your mother also seems okay.”
“But nothing has changed. The only way we can get them out is to expose Lightyear.”
“We’ve committed crimes,” I said. “Maybe they framed us, maybe they forced us to defend ourselves, but at the end of the day we’re not going to be pardoned just because bad people were after us.”
“Kyle, Amber, and possibly Linh might avoid prosecution if they were to vanish right now,” Booker said.
“But Nate, you know, your life is something different. Already there are ordinary people who want to follow you as a leader, and others who will hunt you as a threat. From now on it will be a great challenge to convince people that you’re the same as them.” Spencer’s face looked worn.
“But—” I began.
“Nate, you’ve walked on water on national TV,” Amber said.
“But they can explain that.” I looked at Spencer.
“I’ve never walked on water... but it’s just energy. Water can be vaporous or hard as ice.”
“No, I mean that thing about the Chinese military suit.”
“People will believe what they want. You’re a cross between a superhero and a villain... no one knows,” Booker said. “Half the people are going to want you to succeed, half will love to see you fail, and some would like both!” Amber picked up an old leather-bound book from a shelf and admired it for a moment before replacing it. If there were time, I would use Vising to read his entire library.
“How can all of the government be involved?” Linh asked. “There must be someone who can help.”
“The whole government isn’t corrupt by any means.” Booker smiled then caught himself. “Lightyear just plants suggestions, such as Nate killing federal Agent Fitts, and then gives that info to the FBI. Once the FBI is after you, everyone assumes you’re guilty, and most people will run, fight, or lie to save themselves. And once the media has something to entertain and scare the public with... it just gets out of control.”
“The same principle holds true for wars,” I said. “Remember The Maine, Archduke Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, weapons of mass destruction—it’s an old concept that always works.”
“Nate’s right,” Booker said. “There weren’t witches in Salem, nor were there dangerous Communists in McCarthy’s 1950s America. Looking for terrorists is the latest witch hunt. It’s all an excuse to gain control, give the people something to fear... something to hate.” A server brought in fresh carrot/apple juice and incredible veggie wraps.
“Enough history. This time it isn’t about just millions of people or even entire countries. This is the big one for all the marbles,” Spencer said. “We have to win... by any means.”
“But Spencer, history is a great teacher, and across thousands of years we have seen that nonviolence is the way to win,” Amber said.
“It’s not what defeated the Nazis.”
“I’m not sure we really defeated them,” I said. “We beat them back but their ideas still survive.”
“We’ve had this discussion. It’s a matter of trade-offs, how many die.”
“How many die, when?” Amber asked. “Everyone dies. True change, enlightenment comes at a price.”
“These kids have gotten wise,” Booker said to Spencer. “Their souls are coming through. Spencer, you need to remember they’re not a bunch of teenagers; they’re as old and experienced as you. They just haven’t spent as much time thinking about it as you have.”
“I do remember. My frustration only comes from them not always remembering that fact.”
We were all silent for a minute, until Linh asked, “Why isn’t Kyle here yet?”
56
“He’s making his way here,” Spencer said.
“He should have been here by now,” Linh exclaimed.
“Where is he?” I asked, giving Spencer a hard look.
“Kyle is fine. Contrary to what you may think, I don’t control time and space. Go on the astral and see for yourself.” Spencer walked over to the windows.
And I did. The astral was warm like a Southern summer night. Kyle was in a holding cell in a facility outside Washington, DC. The Wizard Island portal had taken him there and was still holding his legs. His uncle, Linh’s father, was whispering to Kyle. I interrupted. Kyle had already been to see his aunt and was on edge about being discovered. There wasn’t much risk because he was standing in a portal, but my distraction wasn’t welcome. He hadn’t been able to contact them on the astral, so he went to them. Kyle waved me off.
Previously I’d tried my mother several times with no luck, but now, knowing where they were being held, I made another attempt. It was successful. She came in and out, and cried, hearing my voice. Her cell seemed a little nicer than the sterile space Kyle’s uncle was in.
“We’re working on a plan to get you out,” I said.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t. Don’t do anything more.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine but you—” she was gone.
“What?” I repeated.
“Turn yourself in, Nate. Surrender before anyone else gets hurt.”
“Mom, if I turn myself in th
ey’ll execute me.”
“No one is going to execute a child. Once you’re safe in custody every—”
“Mom, can you hear me? I keep losing you.”
“I’m here. Please think about it. You’ll be able to use your abilities for good, instead of all this trouble.”
“You don’t understand what’s really going on.”
I couldn’t hear anything for almost thirty seconds.
“How’s Dustin?”
“He’s okay. Mom, I have to go. We’ll get you out of there.”
“Please surrender. Walk into the New York Times and tell them your story, then ask them to call the police. This is too big for them to just make you disappear, but if you keep running they will kill you for sure.”
Next, I checked in on Bridgette. Amber was still mad at her, but they were sisters. She was distraught and was trying to tell me something, but, probably because of her high emotions, nothing was coherent.
Coming off the astral sometimes left me weak and dizzy for a few minutes, but just as often it could leave me feeling energized and strengthened. This time I collapsed. It took almost an hour to recover and required a healing from Spencer. He couldn’t explain what caused such an adverse reaction, but he theorized it might have to do with encountering the person I was using (my mom) for the advanced Kellaring, along with crossing a portal’s energy with astral energy.
Once I felt better, the girls had more questions about their relatives than I could answer. Linh was relieved to know Kyle was with her parents. We assumed he’d be back with us any moment. I repeated my mother’s urging to turn myself in.
“Don’t worry about it, Nate,” Booker said, walking back to where we were. “The feds have people whose only job is to brainwash and scare people. They’ve convinced her that if you don’t surrender you’ll be killed, probably told her that they’ll go easy on you if she can get you to come in. Routine stuff.”
I looked at Spencer for confirmation, but he was staring toward the mountains. “One thing is for sure,” I said, “if the mall attack happens, not only will hundreds of innocent people die, but my chance at proving my innocence will evaporate.”