STARWEB 1-5

by M. Modak

  “I wondered if it would happen to me,” The former pilot said to no one.

  “You were expecting this?” Anna asked.

  The man who was the general a moment ago said, “I was thinking the same thing when I woke up here. In my world, this has happened to over a million people so far. I take it that you’re not Jesus in the captain’s chair and this is not heaven.”

  Another voice chimed in from the back, “What if this is hell...”

  “This,” Anna waved her hand indicating the whole world, “is just another part of the universe we didn’t know existed a moment ago…” She looked at the man who was the General moments ago, “Who is the President where you’re from?”

  “President Alveraz,” he said quickly.

  “I think we may all be from the same place,” Anna said as she nodded to herself.

  “I don’t know about that Anna.” Joshua said, “There could have been some anomalies, some from worlds other than our two universes. But I agree, most of the minds are probably coming from the same place.”

  Then one man started making a lot of noise in the back. Two of the soldiers had to move quickly to strap him down in his seat, as Joshua made his final descent. They were gentle with him though, even kind and understanding as they held him down. Calmly, they explained all that they knew to him, which was far less than the truth of the situation but it was enough to keep the man silent and listening.

  Anna felt a strange sense of pride in mankind. Here was a group of random men thrown together in an emergency, dressed all in black, ready for battle and with little knowledge of what was going on. But they still showed kindness to someone in the same situation, even though he was frightened.

  “There is hope,” Anna said just loud enough for Joshua to hear. Joshua glanced back at the seine behind him but said nothing. He saw it too.

  Chapter 5 Mind Games

  Fael’s universe

  Drake opened his eyes and he groaned. His whole body hurt like it had just been flash frozen and struck with a giant hammer. His head was clearer but it still throbbed. The glass dome above the huge metal table he laid on, ascended automatically and he sat up. “Hello,” he said to the chill air.

  He dropped off the now warm, steal table then paused as he looked into the dark control room, “Hello,” he said again but there was no reply, “Rose, I'm done. Is anybody there?”

  There was something wrong with his vision; everything looked a little blue and hazy. He felt dizzy as he wondered; are the Nano drugs still active in my body? He stretched his toes and noticed a strange tingling sensation tickling them. His muscles felt sluggish but he could walk. He dropped to the floor; pins and needles stung the skin on his feet and shot up his legs with electric jolts. As the shock and numbness began to wear off, he felt the cold concrete against his bare feet.

  Somewhere outside in the hall, he heard a bloodcurdling scream and a chill ran through his body. Quickly, he moved to the door, opened it, and peeked into the hallway. Everything looked normal. He glanced slowly to the left and then to the right wondering where the scream had come from.

  “Rose,” he spoke into the long curving hallway. He heard the click of a latch on his left followed by the creak of a door opening. The sound of papers gently folding as they fell came from one of the rooms. On the balls of his bare feet, he soundlessly walked down the hallway and watched each door cautiously as it curved to his left. A wave of nausea passed over him. The lines of the checkered, patterned floor wavered slightly and he blinked his eyes to clear them.

  Another sound came from the last door on the right marked Copy Room. Slowly, he creeped into the open doorway and placed his ear carefully against the crack near the hinge. A fan was on…and it was blowing something into the air.

  With a burst of energy, he kicked the door with the flat of his foot. The door swung open and crashed into the wall. There was an old Shell computer sitting on the floor next to a metal desk. A monitor sat on the desk with a scrambled signal on its screen, and next to it was a fan blowing across the room. In the corner, was a large copier angrily spitting out papers and flinging them into the air. The wind from the fan caught them and blew them toward him. There was something wrong about this room.

  Drake snatched a paper from the air, and read it: “Drake, your time has come! I will have you now! You will fill the VOID. You will feel the VOID. You will fill the VOID. You will feel the VOID.”

  His heart began racing. A terrifying voice filled his awareness and he started to slide into the dark places of his mind. Joshua’s often used mantra rushed into his thoughts. It was one he had learned from the Bible mixed with a paraphrase from one of his favorite Dune novels.

  As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. The lord my God is with me. Fear is the mind killer. I will face my fear and it will pass through me yet I will still be.

  The memory of Joshua repeating it, again and again in his mind as he trained in his martial arts, just before he sparred, came to mind. In that instant, a thousand lives came to mind. Joshua had the heart of a lion, he could fight, but there were several other lives within him that had devoted every waken hour to the study of combat. He let those memories come to the front of his mind. Their energy, passion and strength enhanced his awareness. To them, this was just another contest; life and death hung in the balance. All the while, Joshua’s mantra continued going through his mind.

  He decided to act. In a strong, determined voice he repeated the mantra aloud, “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. The lord my God is with me. Fear is the mind killer. I will face my fear and it will pass through me yet I will still be.” His vision returned to the copy room.

  He crumbled the paper into a ball and threw it into the fan. The impact rocked the fan back and forth on its base until it tipped forward and fell, crashing onto the center of the floor. The metal grill, which protected the fan’s blades, began to melt into the checkered pattern of the floor. The floor liquefied into a thick soup that began to swirl with the fan’s spinning blades. Drake jumped back just as the floor turned into sludge beneath him becoming a whirlpool. He stayed in the doorway watching as papers ripped into shreds by the fans increasing wind. The strips of paper curled as they fell, spiraling into the growing abyss below. Then light began to bend, stretching from the hallway, curving through the spaces between him and the doorframe.

  A voice whispered, “You will fear me.”

  The whirlpool before him disappeared into a roaring blackness. Light from the hallway bent around him and highlighted the scattered debris caught in the event horizon. Lightning came down from the ceiling and struck the edges of the vortex. The table, chair and computer broke into pieces and disintegrated into the revolving nothing below. He thought, this must be what Aughra looked like just after she turned on.

  Drake felt his body straining to the breaking point. His mind lusted for the experience of being one with the Void. He ignored his emotions, clung to the doorframe’s molding and screamed to God for help! How can all these lives help him now? The mantras repeated again and again in his mind as he prayed that another version of himself, had survived something like this before. As he searched his memory, looking for a battle against a foe like this Void, he found nothing. The only advice the others had, he summed up in five words, pay attention and fear not. He repeated Joshua’s mantra. “Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil. The lord my God is with me… Fear is the mind killer. I will face my fears, they will pass through me but I will remain.”

  From the center of the black hole rose a shadow that he could only see when lightning struck it. Electricity ignited the shadow, showing the details of a voluptuous, feminine silhouette. A silhouette he remembered from his nightmares. Then electricity arched through the air and struck his body.

  A soft voice cut thru the wind, “Drake, do you know why you’re here?”

  Drake shook his head.


  “Your usefulness to Sapen is over. It’s time for your frontal cortex…to expire.”

  Like spears, dark images flew into the deepest parts of his mind. It was the Laytech hallucinations all over again. New thoughts appeared in his mind as if from old memories. He could see himself as a child. There was a single thought repeating in his ear, “kill, kill, kill!”

  The wind and lightening vanished. He stood outside another doorway, in another building, watching a little boy sitting in the corner of a dark room rocking back and forth. Blood was everywhere. The fear of the image pulled him into the room. He didn’t know why he felt so guilty. He tried to close his eyes, to turn and run but his senses became immersed in the illusion. The cold made the hairs on his arms and neck stand up. He could smell the stench of decaying flesh mixed with feces and urine. The closer he moved to the silent little boy the stronger the odor of decaying flesh grew. His stomach turned as the taste of vomit entered his mouth.

  Drake stopped his mind right there. He spoke to the shadows, “I will no longer allow this sight before my eyes!” The tortured body of a dead little girl, still twitching, lay at his feet. The horrified look on the face of the little boy was of a lost soul in a sea of guilt and shame.

  The screams, the flickering visions of murder suddenly vanished. He shouted, “Who are you?”

  She replied through broken spats of laughter, “I have no name, but you know me. I told you my name, I am Void, the cold blackness within!”

  He staggered back into the hallway as another powerful wave of memories, not his own, assaulted his mind. His heart was pounding, sweat was pouring into his eyes. Visions of him killing women and cutting their bodies into pieces rippled through him. Children were crying, calling for their mommies. He convulsed from the violations even as he resisted. Desires he never owned became his reality. A sense of joy promised to follow the act of savage murder.

  He cried out, “Oh God of all the universes, save me!”

  With a blast of wind and pain, he was back in the copier room. The building was shaking. The smell of burnt rubber stung is nose as the wind roared against his eardrums. He swallowed and his ears popped with the pressure. A tornado reached up for the abyss in the center of the room, and the dark image of Void flashed before him with each bolt of electricity.

  His limbs began to crack and rip off. He cried out, as he watched his legs split from the knee down. Blood sprayed in all directions. Before each drop fell to the floor, they were caught in the torrent of negative pressure and sucked into Void.

  Drake hung from the doorframe as blood poured from his breaking body. Desperately, he screamed for help to anyone inside who had overcome this evil. Many had great wisdom, others courage. He reached down into the depths of his soul, to the very foundation of hope and one name above any name called back to him. His whole self was in agreement. There was one-person, among all those inside him, who knew suffering and who had lived through such pain. One name flashed into his mind. There was one inside him, one soul he let in long ago, who had faced his adversaries, allowed them to do their worst to him yet was still victorious in the end. Drake shouted the name, “Jesus!”

  A white door appeared in the space between him and the vortex. Lightning crashed one last time as he walked thru the open door. Then, like cool rain falling on a hot summer night, the fear was no more. All his tumultuous thoughts ceased, his mood brightened and there was… silence.

  The office he was just in had disappeared into a blur of discarded memories. A bright, white within white, expanse surrounded him. There was no definition, no shades, and no horizon. He imagined that truth was holding steadily below his feet, and a large rock appeared beneath him. In that instant, he knew he was free. He wanted to dance and shout for joy. The lies about him had no truth; they held no power over him.

  Then from a distance, he saw someone walking toward him. He began to move toward the person, and as he did, the large rock that was under his feet began to spread out before him, making a path. A beautiful garden, like what Joshua had seen on TOL, appeared around them. Tall trees rose up into a blue sky. Flowers, as large as a house, bloomed before him. He could hear the water trickling over rocks, somewhere just out of view. The vision matched the peace he felt inside him.

  The person he saw came into view. He held the long Elvin features of Lavar. Drake picked up his pace and as he got closer, he could feel compassion radiating from him, and from everything around him, like heat from a furnace.

  Within seconds, they were feet from each other. Lavar was a huge elf. The memory from Joshua’s trip to TOL did no justice to the person who stood before him. He was at least eight feet tall. His shoulders were as wide as three men standing close together were.

  The smell, a little like a cedar tree, came to Drake’s awareness as Lavar lowered himself, resting at eye level with Drake. At first, there were no words exchanged, no communication at all. They shared a sense of knowing; somehow, this would all work out.

  Lavar knew what had happened at the doctor’s office, at Laytech and the loading dock; he knew everything about Drake.

  “How did you get me here?” Drake asked.

  “It was you who call to me here.”

  “You’re not Christ!”

  “I didn’t say I was. Christ is a title; a savior from God. Is it your wish that there be no more Christ?

  “I don’t want an anti-Christ. I called to Jesus. I called to the Lord!”

  “I assume Jesus heard you. Here I am. Are we not all one through Christ?”

  “I’m tired of the tricks,” Drake said, “Void could have created all this,” he gestured to the garden around him, “from the images in my head.”

  Void is not interested in beauty; it’s not in her programing. Beauty is found everywhere within God’s creation because it is pleasing. Void uses fear, lies and imitation to blind and steal from you. I assure you that if you look deeper into this place you have created, if you move past your fears, you will find reason and love here.

  Drake looked Lavar in the eyes, “Your right, this place could not have come from her.”

  Lavar stood up, took a step closer and placed his hands on Drakes shoulders. He said, “Drake, great grandson of the Grand Master, I need your help.”

  “What can I do? I need help.”

  “Your help has been sent, in fact, Blazer is already there. Despite all our efforts, Sapen has found a way to bridge the realms. Someone, I haven’t anticipated, is helping him, or will help him.”

  “Who is it. Who is this… enemy?”

  “It’s one of us. I don’t know which one, it hasn’t happened yet in your timeline. It may be that they are conflicted and haven’t made up their mind.”

  “What do you mean, haven’t made up their mind?”

  “Every choice changes the whole universe. I am from the future so I see only what has happened, but you are not limited by what is going to happen. You have free will. Everyone has free will. One of us, Joshua, you, or John is thinking about betraying all of life. That choice will become reality and that reality can change everything. If that happens all may be lost.”

  “Well it’s not me. I know who I am and what I want.”

  “I believe that Drake, but never stop questioning yourself about that. Things are about to happen that will stretch your definition of self beyond your imagination. Remember the answer.”

  “To what question?”

  “The only true question has one answer.”

  “Oh, Joshua always says that, What would love do now?”

  “You will always find your answer in that question. You will always find yourself there too.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “You and Sapen share common origins due to your Grandfather. Whitman took a malfunctioning Robot, from your parent’s house, a robot named Jack and created the Sapen program. It was at your old home in the mountains where your mother first came to Earth.”

  “I thought Jack the Robot was just a sculpture
in my parent’s foyer, a bedtime story my dad made up? I’m going there right now!”

  No, you cannot go there. I can return you to Laytech if you will help up but you cannot go home. What you have to do now is important. What I’m about to ask you to do will cause many, nearly all the people of your world to hate you. Sapen is about to release chaos upon your world. Then he will use that crisis to restore his order. They will curse you and call you the anti-Christ. Remember this; before this day is finished, you must gather a remnant of mankind from your world.”

  “What! Who is going to follow me anywhere?”

  “Anyone that will willingly go. It’s too late to stop what is coming for the rest of your planet. With help you can stop Sapen from gaining total control of many Earths in multiple universes before he returns home to dominate all of your world and galaxy. If you succeed, you will save many lives. Will you do this…my… younger self?”