by Brandt Legg
“In my dimension you also stayed. We might run into you anytime.”
“Is that possible? Does that mean I can’t stay?” His voice trembled like a four-year-old worried about not getting dessert.
“It doesn’t matter at all. Stay as long as you want.” I showed him the lodge, and whispered an apology to Kyle. Then we visited each lake; I carefully explained what they did. “There’s a fifth lake called Clarity. You’ll like it there.”
“I’ve seen all this in my dreams. I know Clarity Lake, it’s small and deep, surrounded by rocks, in the middle of a forest of white trees.”
“I think you’ve been traveling in your dreams.”
“You have no idea.”
“Actually . . .,” but I let it go.
Dustin was consumed by Outin, so much so that I wondered if my whole reason for being was to cross into his dimension just to show him how to get to Outin. But the circles were infinite and I knew he might have needed to be there in order to help me once again in the future. Fate is explosively intricate.
On the far shore of Rainbow Lake we caught up with Linh, Spencer and Dad. Spencer was eager to get back. Dad was happy that Dustin was staying. He had lost me as a kid but watched as his first-born struggled as a wounded bird, trying impossibly to overcome something that was not his fault.
“Change is good,” Dad said.
“I belong here,” Dustin said, hugging him. No one doubted it.
Spencer told us that in this dimension Yangchen was a famous professor at Berkeley. I’d find out later that Amber was one of her best students. Spencer himself was well-known and traveled the world lecturing on numerous topics. We left Spencer and Dad back at his office while Linh and I went off in search of Amber, Kyle and the other Linh.
“Are you excited about seeing Amber?” Linh asked.
“I’m mostly looking forward to seeing Kyle but it won’t be like Dustin. None of them are going to know us.”
We arrived at Amber’s house, which was the same as in our dimension. She answered the door. It took her longer than it should have to take her eyes off of me. There was a definite recognition but she couldn’t place it. Linh broke the awkwardness.
“Amber, you don’t know us but –”
“Sure I do, aren’t you Kyle’s older sister, um, Linda?”
“No, I’m actually his cousin, Linh.”
“Oh right, sorry. You were a couple of years ahead of us.”
“Yeah. But Amber, we’re from another dimension.” I waited to see how “New Age Mayes” was going to handle that whacky little statement. She didn’t even flinch but then things were different in her dimension.
“Which one?”
“You mean you believe us?” Linh asked.
“You’re not making it up, are you?”
“No.” Linh laughed. “But I have no idea which dimension.”
Amber looked at me.
“The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Japan in 1945. We landed on the moon in 1969 and we’re dependent on fossil fuels.”
“Oh, that’s 92426. Scary place. It’s the closest dimension to Pasius, ours. Your society is defined by television, the Internet and fast food. No wonder you left.”
“We’re actually going back,” Linh said.
“Why?” Amber asked, as if we’d told her we were willingly returning to hell.
“Trying to save it,” I said.
“How can I help?” She was so relaxed and confident. In this dimension, Amber had grown up studying how to reach her soul. Her life was safe and happy here.
“What’s your mother do?” Linh asked. In our dimension Amber’s mother was a TV star.
“Mom’s a singer, semi-famous.” Amber kept looking at me. Linh kept looking at Amber. We all felt the familiarity and a pull to each other, but there was a funhouse-mirror element to it. “Do you all want to come in?”
For the next few hours Amber taught us all the big stuff she new about alternate realities, dimensions and soul powers. We did the same. She had never been through a portal or into another dimension and like most people in her world believed, soul powers were mostly theory, other than the most basic bits of mind reading. Her sister Bridgette had never dated Dustin so she didn’t know him, but I promised her if we came back again we’d take her to Outin.
Linh and Kyle also lived in the same restored Victorian house. As soon as they saw the Linh with me they invited us up to Kyle’s loft. The two Linhs, about two years apart in age, couldn’t stop looking at each other. Kyle pummeled me with questions. They, like Amber, had no trouble accepting that we were from another dimension. Being with Kyle and Linh back in the loft, safe from Lightyear and Omnia, made me feel young and free. We joked and giggled for the first time since discovering my dad had been murdered, years earlier. Eventually, we returned to the serious topic of what was going on in our dimension.
“What can we do?” Kyle asked. They were so open and giving, I mean the Linh and Kyle from my dimension were great too but everyone we’d encountered here was lighter and clearly more evolved spiritually.
“Like I said, if we can catch the guy who stole the artifact, we’ll be okay. We’re going to try to make our dimension more like this one.”
“Let me come with you, Nate. I’ve got to see it,” Kyle said.
“It’s not a good idea. You’ve died back there once, I don’t want it to happen again.” But Kyle couldn’t understand the kind of violence, hate and greed that existed in our world. All he saw was excitement and adventure.
“It’s a dark, dangerous place,” my Linh said.
“Then you two should stay here,” the other Linh suggested.
I took a deep breath. “It’s calm and peaceful here, like it should be, and I wish we could stay but there’s too much at stake.”
Spencer reached me on the astral. He wanted to get to Crater Lake. Linh and Kyle walked us to our car. Kyle made another plea.
“I promise when all this is over, I’ll come back here and take you for a visit. Please stay here where it’s safe. I can’t see you die twice.”
He leaned in to hug me goodbye and collapsed in my arms. We were both soaked in blood. “Get down!” I yelled, as Kyle and I sank to the ground.
15
The car shielded us from the shooter. The large caliber bullets pierced the cheap steel. Blap, blap, blap.
I knew Kyle was dead even before I got him on his back and checked his pulse.
“Come on, Nate!” My Linh pulled me up while the other Linh screamed. “We can’t die, too.”
Blap, blap.
I don’t remember doing it but somehow we Skyclimbed behind the house and were soon in the trees of Lithia Park.
“We have to go back and check on the other Linh,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “We never should have visited them.”
“It’s too late. We’ve gotta get to Crater Lake. If Omnia finds us –”
“Where the hell was my heat warning?”
“Nate, warn Spencer. It won’t take them long to find your dad.”
Spencer didn’t respond. I kept trying as we continued to Skyclimb into the steep hills above Ashland. Exhausted, we landed and found a car; Gogen “hot-wired” it. Linh drove. Spencer finally answered. Both he and my dad had been shot. They were heading to the hospital in Medford. Spencer had killed the attackers but didn’t know how many more were in the dimension. Then I lost contact.
The entire hospital was under Spencer’s influence, but I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. He could have been protecting the building from Omnia’s forces or trying to prevent the staff from calling authorities or interfering with his own healing efforts.
Dad had taken two shots, one in his left arm, the other just above the abdomen on the same side. But the bullets passed through. Spencer’s wounds were something from a combat zone. No one stopped me from approaching his gurney as they wheeled him into surgery. I placed several Lusans on him and opened a healing channel through me.
&
nbsp; His voice was weak inside my head.
“Nate, I came here for your father; he needed medical attention. But don’t let these people operate on me.” I quickly used my powers to clear the room. “If I die, find the me from this dimension and take me back to ours. Take him to Yangchen. She’ll know what to do.”
“How will I find her?”
“Go to Outin, to Dustin, the one from our dimension. He’ll be able to find her.”
“We can heal you.”
“Yes. I think we can unless Omnia gets here first.”
I talked to Linh over the astral. She was still out in the ER. “Linh, you’ve got to keep an eye out for Omnia and do whatever it takes to stop them.”
“Violence?”
“Let’s hope not.”
“Does it count since we’re not in our dimension?”
“I have no idea, but let’s hope we don’t need to find out.”
“Nate,” Spencer broke in, “you cannot go to that meeting with Dunaway.”
“It’s the Jadeo, nothing is more important.”
“Being one of the seven is more important than being one of the nine entrusted,” he said. His voice was strengthening.
“How can that be? Every generation has seven but there has only ever been one group of nine entrusted.”
“Numbers are not everything. Nothing is that simple. The times we are in dictate the importance.”
“But aren’t they intertwined?” His bleeding had stopped.
“Yes, of course, everything is, even separate dimensions.”
“Aren’t we messing things up here?”
“It doesn’t matter because this dimension is not real unless we are in it. The only reality that is true is the one we are in. So our `whole’ world is the dimension we just left.”
“So if we fix that, we fix this?”
“Yes. And the ultimate victory is far more complex than you can imagine.”
“I understand that every dimension must be lined up, they all must become identical, but won’t that take forever?” I could feel the healing surging through me.
“Forever is a definition of time . . . and time’s a funny thing.” He was sounding better. “For the purposes of our understanding, it’s already happened, we just have to find it.”
“I think I understand.”
“Omnia is here,” he said out loud. I smelled smoke just as the alarms began to whine.
16
Spencer winced in pain as I used Gogen to fling him on my back. Thick, black smoke was filling the corridor, as I raced toward the ER. “No,” Spencer said hoarsely.
“I won’t leave Dad and Linh.”
“Nate. Hurry, turn around. You know you won’t survive if you go there.”
Choking on the noxious fumes, I closed my eyes, and found myself running away from the ER. My soul made the decision over my personality. I knew it was the right thing to do even as my heart broke.
“You are not abandoning them. We must each follow our own path and not be swayed by suffering. The only way is to let go,” Spencer said in my head. “It is what had to happen.” I let go with an exhale and thought only of surviving.
We crashed into a wall. There was no visibility and the impossible choice I’d had to make distracted me. Spencer stood up and with strength found somewhere deep within, and a combination of powers I still didn’t understand, blasted a large hole through the wall. We crawled through to the outside and rolled onto the sidewalk, coughing and gulping fresh air. I pulled him up onto my back and Skyclimbed away from the building. At the edge of a parking lot, I turned to see the hospital engulfed in flames. Fire trucks started to arrive, sirens wailed and too few survivors trailed out of the building.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Spencer said.
“That’s not true,” I said, through gritted teeth.
I dumped him into a car, took one last look, did another Gogen hotwire and then sped out into traffic.
We reached Crater Lake near sunset. I’d hoped to see the Old Man but if he existed in this dimension he wasn’t showing himself. Spencer was well enough to get across the water on his own. At the top of the Wizard Island caldron Linh and the Old Man sat in deep discussion.
“Linh, you’re alive!”
She ran to me. “I was sure you made it but I was worried you were hurt. And look how much better you are,” she said, turning to Spencer.
“Everything is so confused within these two dimensions, I couldn’t tell. I mean I couldn’t feel the change. What about Dad?”
“No.” She took my hands. “It happened quickly. I was looking for you. A huge explosion destroyed the ER. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus, Spencer. We show up in this Shangri-La dimension and turned it into our screwed-up world. Dad and Kyle are dead, men are running around with guns, a hospital full of innocent people is bombed! We’re cursed.”
“It’s true, our reality is where we are.”
“Oh my God, what about Amber? They will have gone for her, too.”
“If they did, it’s way too late,” Linh said.
Her answer shocked me.
“Don’t look at me like that, don’t you dare,” Linh cried. “I lost Kyle again and left myself to die back there.”
“We’re a disaster, all we do is spread misery. Is this what non-violence is about?” I looked at Spencer.
“We can contemplate all of this later. It won’t take Omnia long to find us. Let’s go,” Spencer said, motioning toward the portal.
“Linh, I’m sorry. What can I say? I’m fighting for my sanity and you’re the best reflection of reality I could imagine. Mostly, I get it wrong and don’t act like I know, but I do.”
“What, Nate, what do you know?”
I looked at Spencer and then the Old Man, suddenly shy.
Linh wiped her face. “Let me know when you figure it out.” She dove into the portal.
“Next time, don’t blow it, boy,” the Old Man said, pushing me in after her.
We were in the portal for what seemed like hours, but there would be no way to know how long it actually was. The exit was terrifying as we emerged from the portal deep below the surface of churning white water. I caught only a glimpse of Linh and tried to reach her hand before the water separated us. Everything else was about struggling to find air. Which way was up? The force of the water pushing me down was the only way I could tell but it took every bit of strength and several soul powers to get me through the crushing pressure. With no breath remaining, I broke through and was pushed to the edge of a dark pool. Dizzy and weak, I desperately clung to wet leaves and vines to avoid being sucked back out into the eddy. Linh bobbed up, but not close enough to reach. She got to a thin tree trunk. There was hardly enough light to see and the water was thundering. No sign of Spencer. Linh worked her way over to me as I pushed toward her. We finally met and worked our hands into some slippery green rocks. Dawn’s light revealed a rushing razor-thread of a waterfall plunging hundreds of feet into our pool from above.
“Lousy place for a portal,” I said, but she didn’t hear.
“Where. Is. Spencer?” Linh shouted above the water.
I shook my head and scanned the pool.
“Maybe he got lost in the portal. I thought it would never end.” But Linh still didn’t hear.
She started pointing wildly and nearly got sucked in again. Spencer was floating face down. I took a deep breath and ran across the top of the water. He was heavier than I expected and I fell in. It was impossible to get back into a Skyclimb with him on my back and us bobbing in the water. I looked back toward Linh who was already on the way to help. She Skyclimbed up the lowest bank, opposite the falls, and I was able to follow. We collapsed on a steep slope gripping a protruding branch. Spencer didn’t appear to be breathing. Linh and I nodded at each other and together leaped up to a crudely paved observation area for tourists to photograph the falls. I channeled healing through my hands, but Linh pushed me out of the way and did mouth-to-mouth. So
on Spencer coughed water and I resumed my healing while Linh made a Lusan. As he improved, I used Lusans to dry the three of us. Even though the air was humid and warm, we were all shivering.
After twenty minutes Spencer was able to talk.
“How are you feeling?” Linh asked.
“Been a rough day,” Spencer said, coughing.
“Linh saved you with CPR,” I said.
He smiled at her. “Thanks. Some things work better than soul powers.”
“Any idea where we are?”
“Hopefully, Akaka Falls.”
“Where’s that?” Linh asked.
“Hawaii, the Big Island.”
“Did you know the portal is under water?”
“No, never been.”
“Uh-oh,” Linh said, pointing to a heavyset man walking toward us in khaki shorts and a bright green tank top.
“I hope that’s just an early tourist,” I said.
“I hope it’s Butterscotch,” Spencer strained to get up. Linh and I helped.
“Who?” Linh asked.
“Spencer, my old friend,” the man called out. “Are you okay?”
“Been better,” Spencer answered. “Nate, Linh, Butterscotch.”
“Pleasure,” the native Hawaiian smiled and held out his hand. “Nathan Ryder, kind of amazing you’re still alive. Good things, good things.”
Butterscotch was not a mystic as I first thought, but a longtime student of Spencer’s and an early member of the Movement. The cracked vinyl seats in his old station wagon smelled of pineapples. It wasn’t long before we arrived at a delicate cottage constructed of bamboo and teak somewhere outside the little village of Homomu. The dense vegetation around his home in the trees was the kind that comes only with one hundred and forty inches of annual rainfall. It was so deeply green, it mesmerized me. It gave the home a protective feeling similar to Kyle’s loft in the other dimension. I was hoping this one would turn out differently.
17
Spencer’s recovery was surprisingly slow, but his health had been fragile for a long time. He and Linh were not convinced I should meet Dunaway at the volcano but neither had a convincing solution on how to stop Dunaway from undermining the Movement or getting him to surrender the Jadeo. Between our problems and the heaviness of our dimension, nobody was in an amicable mood; only Butterscotch’s jovial attitude kept us from sinking. In the end, I won the debate. Linh and Spencer would stay at the cottage while I went to meet Dunaway.