The Eternity Machine

by Vaughn Heppner

  What had begun some time ago as a low hum had become louder and steadier. It was a throb, a giant, mechanical heartbeat. It didn’t soothe him in the slightest. It was the sound of approaching death, the heavy tick-tocks of a doomsday clock he didn’t understand.

  Samson’s dying note spurred him on. The man had given his life to bring him to the stone object. The possibility the note was true…

  Jack’s eyes burned intensely. He marched with the same finality as the day the speed freak had slain his mom and dad. This was his task. This was why he lived right now. Nothing else mattered.

  He kept seeing in his mind’s eye the Victorian-dressed woman on the screen. He recalled the shimmering mask hiding her features. It had been highly advanced tech, greater than anything in human possession. This place—he couldn’t fathom anyone having built it. The deepness of the shafts, the corridors, it had taken technology no one had ever possessed in the present age.

  Logically, that meant no one in previous centuries had constructed these steel corridors either.

  Samson had said Atlanteans might have made it or the Antediluvian people. The Assyrian had even suggested ancient astronauts.

  Does it matter right now who built this place?

  Jack staggered, coughing explosively. He breathed a pocket of bad air. Increasing speed, he staggered through the area, soon able to taste the air without gagging.

  He shivered from exhaustion. The stone object had healed his concussion. Sheer tiredness was doing him in now. The D’erlon soldier had killed Samson. It made sense that the man had taken Selene. Why did the others want her?

  “Focus on your mission,” Jack whispered.

  The flashlight’s beam weakened, growing dimmer over time. The throb surrounded him now. The steel walls sweated. He put his hand on a section of metal, jerking it off a moment later, shaking his hand. The walls were hot. They also vibrated.

  Jack did not like it down here. “Just a little farther, Elliot,” he told himself.

  After a span of time—he didn’t know how long—he came to a hatch. This one looked old. It had a round device on it. Jack shined the light on the glass. A needle was in the dark area. A little more to the left and the needle would be in the red.

  This was the place all right. The note had led him here. Samson’s last plan might actually work. He couldn’t believe it.

  “Enough,” Jack said, sounding angry. He didn’t like this excessive thinking. It was time to act, to do. If he failed—

  “Screw that,” he said.

  He pressed the buttons on a panel in an exact sequence. After pressing the last one, he waited. Had he done it wrong? Had—

  A loud clack sounded from the door. It cracked open, and wisps of frost trickled from it.

  This is going to be cold.

  Jack grabbed the handle and pulled. The hatch was heavy. He continued to pull, opening a thick door, allowing freezing cold to billow out.

  Jack shined the beam into a frost-covered chamber. Cyclers pumped loudly. He walked into the freezing cubicle, immediately beginning to shiver.

  He didn’t have a shirt, only pants and boots. His body was slick with sweat. He shivered uncontrollably and his teeth chattered.

  Jack shined his light on frosty, ice-coated machines. There was a long central tube in the center of the room. Staggering there, he tried to figure out the controls on the cryogenic cycler.

  Jack shined the light around until he spied a panel. His teeth chattered nonstop. He went to the panel, using his fingernails to scrape off frost. Finally, he recognized a control pad, each button with a weird hieroglyphic on it. He began to push stiff buttons in a special sequence. He had to stop, pulling out the paper to look at it. His hand shook too much for him to read the note.

  Jack retraced his steps, exiting the freezing cubicle. He shined the beam on the paper in the hot area, reading the hieroglyphic sequence. Once he was sure that he could remember it thirty seconds from now, Jack steeled himself and hurried back into the cold to finish typing the sequence.

  A cycler speeded up. Steam and frost billowed from various machines. A hammering sound grew deafening. Finally, that dwindled to a pumping sound.

  Jack just stood there, shivering like a fool, waiting. He rubbed his body and arms. This wasn’t going to work, was it?

  “What else should I have done?” he asked aloud.

  A loud creak caused him to spin around and face the metal casket. The top made a snapping sound. Slowly, with rusty hinges creaking, the cover began to rise like the dead coming to life.

  Jack stopped breathing. Had he done it?

  The lid halted as steam billowed. After enough steam poured out, Jack could see a body down there. It began to tremble as the fingers and toes twitched. The person in the cryogenic tube had apparently survived the ordeal of time and its disease. Now, could it survive revival? And if it did, was he an imbecile because the machines hadn’t worked right or would he remember enough to help Jack take the next step?

  -75-

  LEARJET 85

  CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN

  Selene stared at Marcus, her brother in some fashion. Her mind still spun at high speed. “You’re a genetic experiment just as Samson said he was.”

  The big man nodded encouragingly. “Mother called him Samson Mark Three.”

  “The third model of the Samson series?” Selene asked.

  Marcus shrugged.

  “What happened to the other Samsons?”

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  “Are there other ‘models’ in your series, men exactly like you?”

  The soldier’s eyes narrowed. It appeared he didn’t like the idea.

  “If there are more like you,” Selene said, “it doesn’t sound like you’ve met them.”

  “No. There are none like me, although there are more of us.”

  Selene thought about that. She’d been an orphan. Had Mother put her in the orphanage, or had someone escaped Mother’s shadowy service and put her in an orphanage for safekeeping?

  Marcus made an impatient gesture. “Let’s stick to the issue. We’re going to be in Libya soon enough. I have to know…”

  “Know what?” Selene asked.

  Marcus watched her. It seemed to Selene that he gauged what he could tell her. He was gambling with his life, with his status in Mother’s organization. What would cause him to gamble? What did he fear?

  She felt it would be unwise asking him that last question. Marcus exuded confidence, power—ambition. Maybe that was the key. Marcus didn’t like second place, or whatever place he did have. This man wanted to rule. He was born to rule. Mother must realize that. Surely, she wouldn’t have survived the ages without understanding human behavior. Mother must have safeguards in place.

  “If you’re quiet,” Marcus said, “it means you’re thinking. If you’re thinking without talking, I take it to mean you’re plotting against me. That is unwise. It’s time to talk. Tell me about Mother.”

  “The shoe should be on the other foot,” Selene said. “I hardly know anything.”

  “Which is why I gave you a double-dose of the Brainiac solution,” Marcus rumbled. “You have no idea how difficult that was to achieve.”

  “I know this much. Mother will have safeguards against you.”

  “Now you’re stalling,” Marcus said. “That implies you know something you’re trying to hide. That’s what I want to hear.”

  Selene smiled bleakly. Thoughts roared in her head. She was making one intuitive leap after another. It bewildered her. It was frightening. The things she understood in this moment—

  “I should be recording my thoughts,” Selene said. “I don’t want to forget any of this.”

  “What do you surmise about Mother from the video?” Marcus asked, leaning toward her.

  Selene made a vague gesture. “Back then Mother was surprised by the stations. She spoke of centuries of wasted effort. That implies several things. First, that she hadn’t known about the stations unti
l quite recently. I mean back then in 1908.”

  “How can you know the precise date?”

  Selene told Marcus about the Tunguska Event.

  “Got it,” he said. “What else did the video imply?”

  “That Mother was old even then. Do you have any idea how old she might be?”

  “I’ve guessed centuries,” Marcus said, “three or four hundred years, at least.”

  “Could she be four thousand years old?”

  Marcus turned away, staring out a window. “I can’t accept that. Such vast age would have made her inhuman, made her vastly different in outlook from the rest of us. She’s never struck me as fundamentally different, just diabolically clever.”

  “That’s an interesting point,” Selene conceded. “Let’s go with that for now. Mother is…less than nine hundred years old.”

  “Why did you pick that number?”

  “Methuselah is supposed to have been the oldest person in legend. He apparently lived 969 years.”

  “Fine, fine,” Marcus said.

  “If that’s the case—that Mother isn’t older than 900 years—it would imply one Mother after another taught her understudy. What did the older Mothers teach the younger ones? Have they been searching for the stations all this time? If so, why didn’t they find them until around 1908? From what I watched, it seemed the present Mother didn’t know everything there was to know about Station Eight.”

  “Ah,” Marcus said, rubbing his hands. “This is interesting. Keep going, little sister. You’re doing fine.”

  Selene exhaled raggedly. Her mind whirled but her body felt as if she’d run a long race. The drug speeded thought process was taking a physical toll.

  Could it be killing me? The idea was chilling. Selene had no doubt Marcus could do that to her. It’s possible he didn’t know of the aftereffects. Surely, there were some.

  “Let me ask you something,” Selene said.

  Marcus made to object.

  “I need data if I’m going to give you the answers you seek.”

  He thought about that, finally nodding. “Ask away,” he said.

  “What have you been doing for Mother? What’s your job?”

  “I run various departments,” he said, “killing now and again when it needs doing.”

  Selene rubbed her forehead. “It seems odd to me you’d be running department stores.”

  “Plants,” he said. “I’ve run various plants that came under different departmental headings.”

  “Oh. Do you mean manufacturing plants?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “They’ve produced antimatter, magnetic seals, magnetic containers, high-energy stabilizers, gravitational coils and other…unique components.”

  “These plants made things beyond modern science as the rest of the world conceives of it?”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said. “That’s right. Is that significant?”

  Selene laughed, which made him scowl.

  “None of that. I’ve had a lifetime of… Never mind,” he finished.

  Selene ingested that as more data. It would seem Marcus suffered from an inferiority complex. Yes, Hela and Frederick, he envied those two. Mother treated them better than she treated him. Is that what this was all about or was her first estimate correct: that of soaring ambition?

  “When you get that faraway look in your eyes,” Marcus said, “it means you’re plotting about me. I know. I’ve seen it all my life. So, stop it or I’ll stop it for you.”

  “I’m going to make a guess,” Selene said. “I’m combining your information and Mother’s hints in the video. She broke Station Eight in 1908. In some fashion, she harmed the other stations as well. For the last one hundred years, Mother has been repairing the damage to the other stations. She wants to turn them on again and do whatever they were built to do.”

  “Yes, obviously,” Marcus said. “What is it they’re going to do? That’s what I want to know.”

  Selene rubbed her chin. It felt like she was missing something. The something hovered just beyond her consciousness. “Give me a second. I mean, don’t get angry because I’m quiet. You have to let me sort this out and make intuitive leaps. If you’re going to get paranoid each time, I don’t think I can do this.”

  Marcus grumbled under his breath, but after a moment, he nodded. “Go ahead, brainstorm.”

  Selene rested the back of her head against her seat. She closed her eyes. It felt as if she could see her inner eyelids. Flashes of light popped here, there—

  “Oh,” she said. Selene regarded the anxious soldier. “We’re missing the easiest point.”

  “Yeah?” he asked in an excited voice.

  She cataloged the thought that everyone wanted to understand what Mother’s grand purpose was. The need to know what she was trying to do was like an intoxicant.

  “Someone built the stations,” Selene said. “The fact of their existence obviously proves the builders. The historical records don’t tell of them. Well, that’s not exactly right, is it? Maybe history does record them, but it only does so through myths and legends. What does that tell us? A lot, I’d say.”

  “Yeah?” Marcus asked.

  “You might think this is mere conjecture, but I think it’s very clear given the facts. It means a catastrophe or cataclysm took out the original builders. This catastrophe clearly destroyed the knowledge of their technology. I mean, no one knew about these stations for countless centuries. That’s a critical point. The present Mother only found out about them a little over one hundred years ago.”

  “Right, right,” Marcus said. “That makes sense.”

  “There are legends of a worldwide cataclysm in nearly every culture,” Selene said. “The legend of Atlantis tells of devastating destruction. There are universal Flood myths from almost every ancient society. Might those stories have a basis in fact? Let us suggest yes—” Selene stopped abruptly.

  “What is it?” Marcus asked.

  She felt hot all over, although her face felt numb. She blinked repeatedly. The full impact of the possibility of her idea frightened Selene. She regarded the soldier.

  “Don’t you see?” she asked.

  “No! Tell me. I want to understand.”

  “It’s so straightforward…” Selene said. She took a deep breath. “Whoever built the stations used them. The action brought a mighty catastrophe to the planet. That’s what destroyed the advanced civilization. I mean, it wiped it out—gone. There were a few survivors. Samson told me the ancient Egyptians believed their knowledge of mathematics and medicine came from Thoth, who was said to have come from an advanced civilization. The ancient Egyptians held him in such awe they thought of him as a god.

  “Mother tested the stations in 1908. What happened then? Well, she created a mini-catastrophe, the Tunguska Event in Siberia. Before more disasters happened, override systems took over, shutting down the other stations. Unfortunately for her, the Tunguska Event caused the effective end of Station Eight.”

  “So you’re saying…what exactly?” Marcus asked.

  “What happens when The Day arrives?” Selene asked. “Maybe it’s already happening. Look outside. I bet the stations working in unison is causing the temperature to rise so dramatically. In other words, it could be more than possible that Mother is unleashing another worldwide cataclysm. She hopes to do something amazing, but she’s making the same or similar mistakes as the original builders did. Mother could be bringing about the end of human civilization.”

  Marcus’s mouth opened. “If that’s true…we’d have to stop her.”

  “Yes,” Selene whispered.

  There was a commotion from the front of the aisle as the cockpit door swung open. A lean man wearing a pilot’s uniform and badly needing a shave stepped out. He strode toward them with an intense look on his face.

  After several strides, a gun went off in rapid succession. Three bullet holes appeared in the pilot’s chest, each spaced in the area around his heart. The unshaven pilot staggered backward as
shock transformed his features. Bumping up against a seat, he stopped and slowly examined his chest. Blood began to trickle from the wounds. He frowned, coughed and sank to his knees.

  Another shot rang out. He fell onto the aisle.

  Selene turned. Marcus remained in his seat, shocked. She looked back another row. Ney leaned out into the aisle with a gun in his hand. Smoke trickled from the end of the barrel.

  Ney stood with wide staring eyes. It seemed that he was finding it difficult to speak. Finally, he managed in a husky voice, “I am sorry to inform you, monsieur, mademoiselle, but you are badly in need of a pilot to fly the plane.”

  -76-

  CRYOGENIC CHAMBER

  STATION EIGHT

  Jack helped an ailing, bald, skeletal man out of the cryogenic tube. The man coughed every time he sucked air. His breath smelled horrible and his eyes were bloodshot, leaking a yellow fluid.

  “Wrap this around your shoulders,” Jack said, throwing a dusty quilt around the man’s neck. He’d found it in a chest in the corner.

  The man nodded as he raised skeletal arms. He looked wasted, which made sense. According to Samson’s note, the man had an incurable disease. It’s why they’d put him in a cryogenic tube.

  “Let me help you up,” Jack said.

  The man must have understood English. He allowed Jack to help him. The man was cold and shivering. Together, they moved into the hot corridor.

  “Maybe you should lie down,” Jack suggested.

  “Let… me lean…against a wall,” the man said, coughing afterward.

  “Can’t do that,” Jack said. “The walls are too hot here.”

  The man turned his bloodshot eyes on Jack.

  “The station’s running after a fashion,” Jack told him.

  The tall, stooped man kept staring at him. It was an uncomfortable sensation. “You’re not one of hers,” the man finally said.

  “If you mean Mother, no, I’m not. I belong to D17.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” the man whispered.

  “We’re a ghostly American Intelligence organization. We haven’t known it, but I think we’ve been battling Mother for the last few years.”