Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  We descended into a space that darkened to a pitch-black. Then we saw a field of stars blaze into view.

  Ed thought to me: Each star is a door.

  The two sets of intertwined cords extended toward one of the stars, and we flew toward it. The star grew into the gigantic proportions of a sun, and we plummeted to the surface of this sun and pierced through a brilliant white plain crossed by more grid lines. Down through the grid, now like a wire fence, we plummeted, on past its squares to a glowing surface, and then through the surface to the interior.

  Again we were in darkness, a purple darkness that had no borders or definition. Then far below I saw a stream of something moving, an undulating gray stream, like a snake perhaps. We descended further, and the stream resolved into points of moving light. We kept going down toward those points of light.

  It was only when we descended further did I realize how far up we had been. Those little points of light was an endless procession of single two-legged beings, marching in row upon row that led back to a perspective vanishing point in the far, black distance. We descended toward these beings, and suddenly came upon a translucent wall. We had been viewing these marching beings from above through some kind of membrane. We flew along this gauzy surface following the two sets of intertwined cords which extended in front of us until we saw an opening far ahead lit by what looked like a blazing white flame. We approached the opening and the flame and saw that the flame was formed in the shape of a gigantic man wielding a sword. The being of flame was moving back and forth over the opening, and it thought to us in a loud voice:

  Why do you come here?

  And Ed thought to the being of flame: This man has been injured. The ones who did it march below.

  The ones below are damned, the being of flame said.

  They have confused this man’s body, Ed thought in reply. See how the cords enter the opening?

  We know of the cords, the being of flame thought.

  Let us go down and reckon with them,

  You may enter, the being of flame said, and he lowered his blazing sword and moved aside from the opening.

  Ed flew down through the opening in the gauze, and I followed him.

  Now the scene below brightened somewhat, and we could receive the thoughts of the marching beings, and we could smell things, and hear sounds. The smells were putrescent stenches horrible and indescribable, and the sounds were like machinery tearing up at a high speed of operation, dissonant, loud, and discordant. The thoughts of these beings were the thoughts of wild beasts, frenzied, insane, but all of a unity. It was the chanting of madness and they marched forward into nothingness with perfect precision, arrogance, and rage. These were the amphibians, the fish-gods from long ago, the NYMZA, the slaughtered ones whose names had been shorn from their souls. Without names, they could not return to the Universes of Time, without names they were trapped here for all eternity.

  These fish-gods looked like men at first glance, but as we approached them, we could see that there was little that was human in their appearance, save for the fact that they each walked upright on two legs, had two arms, and a head. But beyond this, they were nothing like humans. Their bodies were covered from head to foot with fish-scales. Their large black eyes glared out into nothingness with a cold, wild hatred. Their small mouths held no expression, and all their gills moved in unison. Each of the fish-gods wore a kind of short tunic, its fabric colored dull gray and streaked with stains of brown and green.

  Amidst the crowd of fish-men marched other creatures wearing tattered gray robes. These beasts seemed to be under the control of the fish-gods. They were hybrids, part human, part animal; they walked with bodies of humans, but they had the heads of crocodiles, dogs, goats, and other beasts that I could only call monsters. Some of these beasts hobbled forward on legs with cloven hoofs. Some of the creatures seemed almost entirely human, but these always had a peculiar deformity such as possessing abnormally large heads or atrophied arms. As horrible as the fish-gods were to look upon, the hybrid monstrosities were unbearable to see, for their proximity to humanity in appearance only increased my revulsion. The fish-gods were constantly prodding these monstrosities forward, forcing them to keep step with the rhythm of the march. I could hear the footfalls of all these monsters mixed up with the discordant noises that seemed to come from all directions.

  What are these monstrosities? I asked.

  They are the creations of the Elder Damned, came the reply from the being of flame. These are the abominations that were formed from the spirit and flesh of humans and animals in transgression of the laws of God.

  How many? I asked. How many of them march below?

  And the being of flame on the threshold behind us thought to me: No man can know or understand the number.

  Billions? I asked. Trillions? I asked.

  Their numbers would be meaningless to your mind, the being of flame thought back to me.

  Ed and I flew down to the head of the procession. There we saw something being carried on a bier. It seemed to be an object of worship to these fish-gods. We descended closer, and then we saw it.

  It was a bell-shaped object, just like what I had encountered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, except this object was made of a crystalline substance which revealed its interior containing two spinning reddish rings, one atop the other. I had the distinct impression that this object was being created by the pure, organized thought of the marching fish-gods, and that they were feeding off the vital energies of the monstrosities that marched with them to help manifest this crystalline bell-shaped object. I somehow knew that this object was generating an energy that substituted for their missing names, the missing frequencies that defined each of their souls, and that the whole marching assembly was linked and dependent upon the bell-shaped object for their quasi-existence in this astral prison. Seated upon a crystalline throne behind the bell-shaped object was one of the fish-gods, twice the size of all his fellow creatures. I knew that this was the creature who had spoken to me when I was on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

  Then I noticed that the two sets of intertwined cords which stretched in front of us trailed downwards and entered the bell-shaped object, and I suddenly understood what was happening. My astral cord had been intertwined with the astral cord of my parallel self in another universe, and both astral cords had been captured inside the bell shaped object so that I was caught in a gigantic loop of cords. The intertwined cords extended from my body and entered the interior of the bell shaped object before emerging again to loop back to my physical body in the San Quentin dungeon. I was trapped by this astral bell-shaped object— and my parallel self was trapped along with me.

  The moment we saw the bell-shaped object and recognized it, there arose a great chortling laughter from the marching procession; the multitude of those beings were laughing at us, and they shouted this chant as they marched to its rhythm:

  We, the masters of the nations of men,

  Welcome you to our high and mighty den!

  For does the wind fear the dust it scatters,

  Or mankind, whose life so little matters?

  After chanting this doggerel, they all screamed with a deafening roar, and bolts of electric rays shot out at Ed and me from the bell-shaped object, shocking our astral bodies. We tumbled in the air, falling downward toward the long upraised hands of the NYMZA.

  Then suddenly, before we reached those monsters’ hands, two great white doves flew out in front of Ed and me and we each climbed on to the top of one of the bird’s wings. As soon as I climbed on to a wing, I recognized who these birds were— they were the astral bodies of my pigeons Nip and Tuck who were sleeping peacefully in their loads back in my coat in the San Quentin dungeon. My astral projection had induced their own projection, and sensing our danger, they had come to rescue us. Somehow in their astral bodies, the birds were gigantic, and the bolts of electricity seemed to have no effect upon them. Perhaps purer of heart than Ed Morrell or me, my pigeons had a p
ower over the NYMZA; Ed Morrell and I certainly had no power.

  On the wings of Nip and Tuck Ed Morrell and I flew up above the marching procession of NYMZA, through the gauzy portal and past the flaming giant wielding the sword. And then we were all speeding through a tunnel composed of a wall of grids at an incredible speed— and then—

  Then I sat bolt upright inside the dungeon at San Quentin. I stared up at Jack.

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked me.

  “He’s all right,” Ed said, lying on the ground next to me. “All right for now. I’m sorry, Houdini. I can’t help you. I don’t have the power. I don’t know who does, except God. I’m going to pray for you.”

  “Thanks, Ed,” I said.

  “You called him Ed,” Jack said.

  “That’s his name,” I said.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “That’s his name.”

  I stood up, and felt inside the lapels of my coat. Nip and Tuck were warm and comfortably asleep.

  Ed Morrell stood up, and Jack opened the door. Gray, diffused light poured into the cell from the hall. I turned to Ed Morrell, and said:

  “You have proved to me that you are the Star Rover.”

  “Houdini,” Ed said, “we are all star rovers.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Time Measured

  “It is good that I am not a tall man. Why?

  Because I must be quick! quick! and a tall

  man is slow.”

  Houdini

  While the events I have just recounted in the preceding narrative were transpiring on the Pacific Coast, other events, like a counterpoint, unfolded on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. As soon as I had departed the U.S.S. Cypher in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 27th, 1915, the electronic readings I had gathered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean were transmitted back east to New York City by Tesla Wireless. Nikola Tesla had received this data as soon as it arrived at his secret New York City laboratory. He had then worked through the rest of the night and into the next day interpreting all the readings. By the time he had finished this task, he had reached some definite conclusions. In this following narrative, I will portray the events of this next day as they were later described to me in detail by Nikola Tesla himself.

  In the course of his career Mr. Tesla has established a number of laboratories in New York City as well as in other parts of the United States and Canada. At this time, however, Mr. Tesla was working secretly in a laboratory located under New York City. This laboratory had been established and funded by Majestic Seven for Mr. Tesla’s exclusive use. It was here in this underground laboratory where Mr. Tesla sat for several hours studying graphs and maps. At intervals he would type a series of numbers on the keyboard of a machine, turn a switch, and then sit back and watch three-dimensional shapes form inside a black box. These shapes were composed of glowing colored lines which would form a globe representing the earth. Red lines formed the continents and blue lines formed the oceans. Green lines would move across the matrix of red and blue and would represent the energy waves which Mr. Tesla was studying— waves of time. The time waves would flow from Egypt to the Pacific Ocean. This was time as it is ordinarily experienced and measured. But what riveted Mr. Tesla’s attention were the time-reversed waves flowing from a spot off the coast of San Francisco and across the face of the earth back to Egypt, to the Great Pyramid. That source spot for the time-reversed waves was the site of the bell-shaped object I had photographed. Mr. Tesla kept studying these waves, trying to determine how they were manipulating the ordinary time waves of the earth. The data I had collected on the floor of the ocean was now helping Mr. Tesla to predict how the time-reversed waves would effect our ordinary time. After hours of study, Mr. Tesla had devised a rough model predicting the development of the time-reversed waves over the next ninety-six hours. He sat at his desk running the five-dimensional model through its transformations over and over again, his eyes fixed on the interior of the black box where the red, blue, and green lines undulated. Finally he turned the machine off, and sat back and closed his eyes. He could still see the images with his eyes closed; they had been burned into his mind.

  Mr. Tesla then sat up, opened his eyes, picked up the telephone on his desk, and called his old assistant, Kolman Czito.

  “Mr. Czito,” Mr. Tesla said curtly. “Meet me on the front steps of the library in fifteen minutes.”

  “Fifteen minutes?” Mr. Czito asked. “That will be difficult. Can I send Julius?” (Julius is Kolman Czito’s son.)

  “No,” Mr. Tesla said sharply. “You must come, only you, and come alone. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Czito said, suddenly understanding the meaning of Mr. Tesla’s tone.

  Mr. Tesla, hung up the phone, and then put in a call to President Woodrow Wilson at the White House. The call went through a secret line and was answered by Secret Service agent Edmund Starling.

  “He’s not up yet,” Starling said to Tesla’s request to speak to the President. “He was out all night with his fiancée. He walked back here from her house last night— danced and whistled all the way up N Street.”

  “You must wake him,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “I must not wake him,” Starling snapped back. “I’m never to wake him. Those are my direct orders from him.”

  “This is dire,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “I don’t care,” Starling said. “If this old house were burning down, I’d think twice before I’d knock on his door.”

  “If you do not wake him—“ Mr. Tesla growled.

  “I’ll stand by his door,” Starling said. “As soon as I hear him stir inside, I’ll knock— not before.”

  “I am going out to meet with Mr. Czito now,” Mr. Tesla said. “I will return here shortly and expect a call from the President in thirty minutes. If I do not receive a call in an hour, I will call you again. And if I have to call again in an hour, it will be too bad for everyone, Mr. Starling.”

  Mr. Tesla hung up the receiver. He stood, went to the elevator, stepped inside it, and ascended to street level. He came out into a small room inside an office building on 40th Street, across from the New York City Public Library. He went out into the main hall, through the door to the street, and from there across 40th Street to the front steps of the Library. Here he stopped, pulled a packet of bird seed from his pocket, and began feeding the pigeons. In a few minutes Kolman Czito arrived in a cab.

  “Let us stroll through the park,” Mr. Tesla remarked to Mr. Czito.

  The two of them proceeded around to the back of the Library and made a promenade through Bryant Park. Along the way Mr. Tesla would stop at intervals and cast bird seed to the pigeons.

  “He went down there and saw the thing,” Mr. Tesla said, referring to my encounter with the bell-shaped object. Mr. Czito knew exactly to what Mr. Tesla was referring because the two of them had already been discussing the matter for the last several days.

  “I have been studying all the photographs and readings,” Mr. Tesla went on.

  “It’s the Bell,” Mr. Czito said.

  “That is correct,” Mr. Tesla said. “And it is ringing very loudly.”

  Tesla stopped and looked about. No one was near them in the park. He cast out some bird seed and he and Mr. Czito resumed their stroll.

  “What do you want me to do?” Mr. Czito asked.

  Tesla cast his eyes all around and along the windows of the surrounding buildings beyond the park.

  “I need you to drop everything you’re doing and help me construct a control switch for the object,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “How much time do we have?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “None,” Mr. Tesla said. “I fear it is already too late for all of us. But we will try to fabricate the switch in a day.”

  “You have all the specifications?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “From the photographs I have the physical dimensions of the ports in the object. I was able to determine the precise scale of the ports by the object’s distance
from the camera lens as measured by the beam readings made from Houdini’s etheric density detectors. I also have the frequencies of the etheric waves which the object is generating all the way into the electromagnetic and acoustical spectrums. We have all the information we need to engineer a switch. The problem we face is achieving sufficient precision in our tolerances of measure in the short amount of time we are giving ourselves. You and I will have to do all the fabricating, cutting, and fitting.”

  “I’ll try,” Mr. Czito said. “But you know my eyesight isn’t very good anymore. What about bringing Julius in on this?”

  “No,” Mr. Tesla said. “I don’t want him to know what we’re doing. You haven’t discussed it with him, have you?”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Czito said. “Never without your permission.”

  “We must work alone,” Mr. Tesla said, brushing off the front of Mr. Czito’s lapel and using the gesture to cover the motion of his other hand as it deposited a slip of paper in the outside pocket of Mr. Czito’s coat.

  “There in your left pocket you will find a note with the address of a jeweler and the list of jewels we need,” Mr. Tesla said. “Go over there and give it to the manager. He will supply you. Then come back here to the park and wait for me until I return.”

  Mr. Czito turned and walked back to Fifth Avenue and Mr. Tesla turned and crossed 40th Street and went back into the building out of which he came. He returned to the elevator and descended to his laboratory. Once inside, he proceeded to gather the materials he and Mr. Czito would be using in the construction of the control switch for the bell-shaped object. Already he had made templates for cutting the metal and now he laid these out upon the metal-working table in his laboratory. In a few minutes the telephone rang. Mr. Tesla swiftly crossed the room and picked up the receiver before it could ring a second time.