by M. Modak
All the cars and trucks were driving themselves; no one had been paying attention to the top of the semi-truck where he had landed. In the distance, looking like a disturbed anthill, he saw hundreds of small black uniforms swarming the small truck he had come in. He smiled as he saw the two soldiers he had incapacitated awake and free from their confinement. No one was looking up.
He laid back and took a few deep breaths then removed all his clothes. After searching them, he found a bottle of water in one of the pockets, and he emptied it in one gulp. He thanked the soldier again, and took another deep breath realizing how close he had just come to failing his mission. He folded the uniform neatly for later use and placed it under his head as he lay down. Then he put his body back into hibernation.
The sun never felt so good.
That night he learned from the truck’s radio what he already knew from the position of the moon and planets. They had kept him for weeks before he had awakened inside the back of that truck. He would have to remember never to underestimate that dark haired woman again.
He heard the truck driver comment several times, into another amazing device that allowed him to communicate to people somewhere far away, that the trip to Atlanta would take another day. That would give him only one more day before the assassination of Dr. Whitman; the man he had crossed universes to save.
And where was Sapen?
10 Prince Drake
Into Fael’s Universe
Joshua waited as John regained his senses. John was sitting on a wet booth at the Crystal Ball Room, surrounded by broken glass and curious strangers. Michael, Anna and Rana all hovered over him with worried looks on their faces.
How can I fix this mistake? John thought.
Joshua was asking himself the same question, and as if in answer, his attention shifted from his former life, which had just ended on the Ball Room floor, to a person very far away. With that new thought, almost against his will, his ethereal body began to rise slowly up thru the building and in a flash, he shot up into the sky.
At the speed of thought, he was flying away from Earth, into the multi-universe and inside another realm. He did not know where he was going; only the vision he had just seen and his feelings told him that this was the right way.
The universe he found himself in was several rows over from where he had originated. As he traveled deep into it his sight began to focus on a single galaxy and he sped up, moving toward the edge of one of its spiraling arms. He flew thru stars and nebulas and finally into a solar system. He passed the well-known outer planets and then slowed to light speed as he approached a single blue world circling a yellow star. It was another Earth!
As he descended into the dark side of this Earth, he could tell immediately that this world was much different from his own, though it had the same over all structure. He saw that the continents were the same, mountains, rivers, etc… However, this Earth was strikingly different from all the other Earths he had ever seen. There was a grid of glowing red, blue, yellow and green streets. The grid lines were held up by beams of white light that originated from points on the ground far below.
Great causeways encircled the entire planet in huge rings making it look like an old model of the atom. Millions of cars and trucks were making their way across these colossal roadways.
There were many places where these roads came together in great junctions around several of the main cities.
The glowing streets connected the west coast to Chicago and New York, stopping at several places along the route as it made its way down the east coast to Florida. The network spread in many different directions over every major city it passed. One road stretched to New Orleans as another went down into the keys, Mexico then South America, and beyond. In several places, whole streets would fade into darkness and then reemerge shining in another direction. After seeing the length and breadth of the universe, he was hardly amazed by the sight, but he was surprised.
He was heading down to where the greatest concentration of the largest highways converged. It was a city he knew very well, Atlanta. This Atlanta was much different from his world’s version. It looked subdued by the night and other than the lights from the glowing streets, it felt darker.
His descent slowed to walking speed as he passed thru the roof of an old loading dock where another version of him was operating a forklift. He looked to be a good ten years younger than John and himself.
Joshua heard a crack of thunder and he waited for the light to come. He began to feel disoriented and then shocked as the same process of the exchange of memories he had just experienced with John, started again with this young man.
Drake was his name. They were nearly identical in appearance except for the age and some scars, but as the process cut deeper into his memories, he discovered that the similarities did not end there. Drake was a very different person than himself or John, though they shared the same heart.
A bolt of light appeared from nowhere, struck Joshua and then leapt into Drake, completing the link.
As it ripped into Drake’s consciousness, his ghostly form floated out of his limp body like a greasy stain that had come to life. The light still connected them, pulling Joshua towards Drake’s now empty body.
Unmanned, the forklift began to spin out of control. The steel forks hit the inside of the transport container’s wall and tore through the thin sheet metal! Drake’s body fell to the ground. For an instant, a moment that felt like a thousand years, Joshua and Drake saw each other. They knew each other completely. Every thought, every feeling, every mistake each had made in their lives was opening to each other. It was both a relief and terrifying. Joshua wanted to say something, to explain what was happening, but he knew Drake already understood. Words were unnecessary. Then the light fizzled out in a crackling snap. Faster than the eye could follow Drake’s spiritual form was sucked back down into his body!
Joshua saw a glow, dim at first, but slowly it grew brighter as Drake became conscious again. For an instant Drake’s whole body was a radiant white light. Something in his cells had just unlocked. Joshua did not remember this happening to John or himself. The light in Drakes body grew in intensity until it shone brighter than a star. The light was emanating from his heart and mind, every living cell was pulsing with his thoughts and feeling as the intersecting of their memories continued. Then the light dimmed and went out.
Joshua knew, but could not see why this version of him was so wildly different; there is something alien about him. He recalled all Drake’s life again skipping long parts, examining key moments, but he could not find the answer to why he was so different. Drake had grown up in the mountains in a strange home built right into the cliffs next to a small lake. His childhood memories were like a fairytale that he clearly had to have embellished as he had grown up. His mother had showed him how to talk to animals. As a little boy, he had climbed impossibly tall trees and mountains by himself and he had a pet robot. His mother and father were anything but average. The whole family considered her a princess and his childhood home was a pyramid palace with a blue sphere resting as a capstone!
However, tragedy had struck. His mother had died when he was very young. His father had also passed, away only a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, this did not explain his gut instinct, which was telling him that Drake felt alien.
Then by intuition, Joshua had a thought to look deep into the tissues, cells and chemical makeup of Drakes body. Through the knowledge he had gained from John’s many years of scientific study he knew the signatures of most chemical elements. Immediately he noticed there was an additional trace of nonhuman organic matter fused within every cell of Drakes body. His body was made of the usual six common elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphors. The exception was that S-matter had completely fused with all the carbon in his body!
He had missed something else too but now their true form had revealed itself. Camouflaged within their surroundings, tiny things started to move like bugs crawl
ing inside him!
Looking deeper, he saw that each one looked like a virus in their molecular construction, but these things were talking to each other. They had attached to his brain and spread throughout his body. Only Joshua could hear their strange ticking and popping communications. He watched them respond as a group. They were searching for an answer to what had just happened to Drake.
Still linked, the two were sharing each other’s thoughts and emotions, though the exchange process ended. Drake was aware of everything Joshua had just discovered. Now they both had questions about his origins; there is something alien about him!
Oddly, Drake was not surprised by this. Now he was aware, for the first time, that some of the strange things he had experienced as a child and throughout his life might have been an effect from the S-matter in his body. Moreover, he had these…things in his body, concentrated in his brain at the cellular level, watching him from the inside. Thru Joshua, he could see millions of Nano machines, all acting as one in their movements.
They watched the tiny machines suddenly stop. The AI had become aware that Drake saw them. Then, all the machines began to move away from his extremities, up into his spinal cord and into his brain.
They quickly concentrated on the branches of his short and long-term memories and found the knowledge of Joshua and John there. Those memories were expanding in his mind. The AI was confused at that. The machines retraced their steps and then repeated the search process again but came to the same conclusions, confusion.
Drake’s brain hurt as it rewrote itself. It was compensating for all the newly acquired information. It was reconnecting, rearranging and in some places, doubling in size as all the new memories from Joshua and John grew in his neurons.
With horrifying thoroughness, the AI began a deeper search into every brain cell they could reach. Drake’s body shook as the AI activated his full nervous system.
Joshua began losing the vivid connection to Drake. He could feel how scared Drake was and in his mind, he could hear him calling for help! He wanted to help. He feared what might happen to him if this went on longer. However, before he could do anything about it an image flashed in his vision and his attention shifted away.
As hard as he tried to concentrate on Drake the thought of the vision he had just seen began to pull him up out of the warehouse, even Drake had paused in his horror as he realized what Joshua had seen.
In the blink of an eye, he found himself in-between universes again. He was being drawn back across several rows within the multi-universe and toward a place at the end of his own universe’s string.
If all the other universes were the size of letters in a sentence then this universe was the size of the dot at the end of that sentence٠
The next few places in the pattern of that string were nothing but voids of total darkness. Looking further down the line, he saw a ghost like image flickering faintly where the next universe should be. It seemed as if the possibility of the next space and the following, ever lengthening, line of universes were starting to disappear. Whole sections of string universes, all around him, began to blink in the same way.
He returned his attention to what was before him. To him, this universe looked like it was in the final stage of implosion, on the verge of totally collapsing. He wondered if the people who live there would soon see beyond the multi-universe...
11 Lavar
Into TOL
Joshua realized that the feeling that drew and guided him did not actually speak to him. Perhaps I just don’t understand the language, he considered. Nonetheless, he knew this was the right way to go.
The tension around him grew as he passed into the small universe. It felt like going down a tall mountain in a fast car. There was a lot of pressure, and from time to time, he felt like he was skipping thru tight folds within the fabric of space. He tried swallowing to pop the building pressure in his head and to his surprise, it worked. He guessed it was mental. He found that doing things as if he had a normal body sometimes worked the same. Feeling better now, he saw that he was still too far away from any solar system or planet to know where he was going. He wondered if this was another Earth he was about to visit.
Although this was a small universe, when looking at it from the outside, from where he was now, inside it, it seemed huge. It was a reminder that everything was relative.
On the other hand, could it just be a trick of the eye, he wondered.
After he was use to the change of energy, he noticed that he was moving a lot faster. He felt as if he was gliding thru a pool of thick, invisible gel that propelled him, rather, than slowed him.
He swiftly reached the first collection of galaxies, they were much greater than those he remembered in the other universes, but it was hard to tell when everything else in here was also enormous. He only had his memories and a sense of proportion to compare this with, but that felt unreliable. What he did know was that throughout all universes there was one cosmological constant, beauty is everywhere.
Within seconds, he passed into a round, shining galaxy that looked like a star burst on a galactic scale. He passed into it and shot toward its center where a huge world that reminded him of Earth circled a giant star, but as he got closer, it was easy to see this planet was not another copy of his home world.
This planet was much larger than Earth and he could not recognize any of the continents. Yet, it was full of warm light and lots of green and blue. There were tall mountains, and rivers that stretched half way around the globe. Even from the height he was at, he saw that the trees of the forest were larger than any he had seen in all the multi-universe and they were all arranged in beautiful patterns.
Directly below was a massive plateau. It looked like the upper half of a mountain range had been sliced off. The color of its rocks reminded him of the red clay native to his home in Georgia. There was something odd about that color red though, it seemed to be calling to him. He wasn’t sure from where he was, so high up, but he thought that what looked like red clay may actually be old blood stained rocks.
In the center of the plateau was a huge hole, big enough to fit a jumbo jet inside. On the edge of its plane, and down the cliff side, were black marks that glittered like broken glass. Shattered boulders lay broken across its surface as if some monster had taken a giant blowtorch and tried to melt that part of the cliff off, then after failing it angrily smashed rocks into it.
He looked into in the bottomless hole below. A sad energy filled the darkness and he wondered what could have caused it. There were many tunnels and caverns that extended deep in the ground in every direction as far as his sight would allow. It looked like a giant tree had once rooted here then some unimaginable force had pulled it up, leaving behind the tunnels its roots had dug.
He turned to see the rest of the landscape. In shock he came to a complete stop; miles above the ground. In the distance, just over the horizon, was the largest tree he had ever seen. It stood above the two mountains on either side of it!
He could barely see its huge silvery trunk reflecting the sunlight as it gently swayed in the wind. Its canopy held a mass of green leaves on long branches that reached high into the sky, near the edge of space. Throughout the lower canopy were more patches of brilliantly colored leaves and fruit. In other places, its limbs drooped down and touched the ground.
From this height, he could see how the land had been pushed out in every direction, even the mountains seemed to have been moved by the force of this great tree. At its base, he saw massive roots disappearing into the soil only to reappear as they reached up and dove back into the hillsides and nearby mountain, rippling in and out of the lake and surrounding landscape.
Water flowed down from far away tributaries, creeks and streams, thru the mountains and across the planes merging into a wide delta. That delta formed a large river, which moved through the valley and into a lake where the tree stood. The river reappeared at the lowest side of the valley, next to the mountain, close to the tree. Then
it ran for hundreds of miles more, emptying into the sea.
A deep reverence for this place came over him.
He looked for any sign of man, but he could not see a single office building, street or city anywhere. The sky was clear and all the sounds were natural. There wasn’t a hint that civilized man had ever taken a bulldozer to this place. Through the patterns within the forest were artificial it felt natural, as if the planet itself had chosen to grow this way. It was a kind of wildlife preserve on a global scale. It must have taken thousands of years to shape all this, he thought to himself.
Yet, as the shock from seeing the enormous tree, and the highly organized forest, began to wear off and he focused. He felt a strange sense of coldness settled just beneath the surface.