by Brandt Legg
Although the Sphere seemed to match the description, even exceed it, Rip needed a more scientific explanation. Gale had argued that it didn’t matter what you called it—the Sphere fit the story. The Akashic Records had long been considered part legend, part myth, and a matter of faith for many, but perhaps the story had originated from someone who had seen a Sphere hundreds or thousands of years earlier. They knew there had been at least two others, but what if there had been hundreds? What if a carpenter in Nazareth found one, two thousand years earlier? What if Leonardo da Vinci, Nostradamus, or Einstein got a glimpse into one? What about Hitler?
They had asked every question, but even while holding this object Rip called “an instrument to view eternity,”they were not able to find the answers they needed most, those they labeled the Five Cosega Mysteries.
1. What is the Sphere
2. Who were the Cosegans?
3. Where did they come from?
4. Why did they leave the Sphere?
5. What happened to them?
They were constantly frustrated because, while possessing the most powerful object in the universe, they were mostly navigating blind, like an infant with an INU. Yet inside the Sphere, Gale knew there were the answers, not just to the Five Cosega Mysteries, but also how to save Cira, and the future.
Chapter 19
Savina flipped her dark, luxurious mane behind her lean, muscled shoulders, flexing them as she took the call from the Judge in her private office. Although he was considerably older, he’d made his feelings clear. He was in love with her, would leave his wife, do anything for her, but she viewed him as a father figure.
“Infatuation,” she’d told him, many times. “You love my mind because you love power, and what is more powerful than a brilliant mind?”
He agreed to not pursue a romantic relationship, but only reluctantly. In either case, an affair with her would have complicated the mission, and the Phoenix Initiative was already complicated enough.
“So you think you can find him?” the Judge asked as he sketched a lingering detail into his latest mechanical drawing. A frustrated engineer whose pursuit of perfect artificial limbs had somehow landed him in the pharmaceutical industry. He now controlled one-third of the world’s prescription drug market. His father had become a quadriplegic after an accident when the Judge was still a teen. Seeing his father suffer, the Judge was determined to create artificial limbs and sleeves for amputees and paralyzed patients. Many advancements had been made, but he still worked constantly, always seeking the elusive miracle solution.
“I’m almost certain of it,” Savina responded.
The Judge was delighted with her answer because he wanted the other Eysen-Sphere. He had no doubt that Savina was smarter than Gaines, and therefore had progressed farther into the Sphere than the archaeologist, but only a Sphere could stop the Phoenix Initiative. With a second Sphere, the Foundation would discover more of the Cosegan secrets, secrets they could use to ensure the successful launch of Phoenix. Perhaps even more important would be taking away the greatest power from the Foundation’s greatest threat—Booker Lipton would be much easier to defeat.
Savina wanted to know what Gaines had found, wanted to see if his Sphere was different, if the two Spheres together would be more powerful. She knew there was more than just eleven million years of information to traverse. The Sphere actually held what was equivalent to the size and age of the entire universe. How could the exploration ever be completed?
“We may find Gaines before you do,” the Judge said as mini robots walked across his desk. “But when it comes to slipping away, his track record is perfect.”
“The Sphere can lead us to Gaines,” she said, her voice filled with excitement. The Eysen-Sphere had become her life. Beyond all the extraordinary discoveries already made lay the real addiction, the infinite possibilities.
The Judge had shown her how the flaws of the future could be corrected, how the world could be saved from itself. She believed in the power of that, and even more. Savina was certain that her reason for existing, the purpose of her life, and the most important job on Earth, was to use the secrets of the Cosega Sequence to ensure the future of humanity. In that, she and Gaines were very similar, but their methods, motives, and vision made them diametrically opposed to one another.
“Let me know when we get there. If we get there,” the Judge said.
“When we get there,” she corrected.
“Savina!” one of her assistants yelled. “Come quick!”
She ended the call and ran back into the main lab in time to see the Eysen-Sphere spinning so fast it’d became a blur.
“How long has it been doing this?” she whispered.
“It started just before we called you.”
“What was happening before it began?”
“It showed another Sphere!” one of them said. “Another Eysen-Sphere appeared inside this one.”
Savina walked around the spinning Eysen, worried that at any second it might fly across the room, that it would somehow destroy itself by rising up to the ceiling and crashing back down to the floor.
In order for Spheres to levitate and project elaborately, they required a second ancient artifact known as an Odeon Chip. The Foundation’s Sphere, formerly belonging to the Vatican, no longer had its original Chip. The Vatican hadn’t even known they needed one until Savina figured it out. The Judge discovered an obscure mention of it while reviewing NSA files on Gaines’ time in Mexico before his “death.” As it turned out, the Vatican also had a Chip in their secret archives, but had not known what it did, or if it was even connected to the Eysen-Sphere. The Judge acquired the Chip and the Sphere after the Church fell, but it was not the original Chip for that Sphere. According to Archive records, the Church had come into possession of the Chip in the year 321, and they didn’t capture the Sphere until the mid-1800s. Savina had long been concerned that the mismatch might cause problems or limit her access.
“Do you think it’s the Chip’s compatibility issue, or because the two Spheres are connecting?” an assistant asked.
“Maybe there can’t be two Spheres on the same spectrum,” she said, thinking out loud.
“I think the Eysen is way beyond the spectrum,” one of the assistants replied.
“Not the spectrum of frequencies or the energy spectrum. Not as we know it in physics. I’m talking about a dimensional spectrum,” she explained, moving closer to the Sphere. “Look, the spinning is causing friction with the surrounding particles. It’s going so fast that it’s distorting the space around it. Do you see?”
The assistants crouched next to her and stared at the Sphere. “Yes,” they both agreed. The air around the Sphere appeared wavy, like heat coming off a hot road in the summer.
“So it’s getting ready to move,” one of them asked, hesitantly, “into another dimension?”
“I don’t know what it’s doing,” she answered. “Look. It’s incredible.” She involuntarily moved her hand in front of her mouth, as if to silence anything that might disturb the moment.
The distortion moved out in ripples, micro-thin circles, similar to a pebble dropped into a pond. The ripples were difficult to see, but they were there. The assistants backed up a couple of feet, apparently not wanting to get hit by the waves.
Savina dipped her hand in between the ripples, gasping as her hand disappeared.
“Pull it out!” one of the assistants shouted.
Savina held it steady for a moment and contemplated how she could get her entire body into the distortion waves. “Do you realize what this is?” she asked in a mesmerized tone.
“Where is your hand?” one asked, still alarmed.
“Another dimension,” the other answered. “Savina, how does it feel?”
“My hand . . . it . . . it’s as if I could fly. All the sensations from my hand are gone, but there’s no pain . . . Instead of what it was, now I . . . anything I think I feel, heat, cold, pain, pleasure, it’s instantaneous.
It fills my body, but it comes from the place or dimension where my hand is.”
“Are we getting this?” one of them asked, looking for the indicator light on the recording master control.
The sound of wind came from the Sphere and Savina’s hand began to emerge; however, it remained translucent.
“It’s winding down,” one of them said.
As the Sphere slowed, its color turned a deep shade of purple. Images of galaxies radiated outward, transforming the room into a giant planetarium.
Savina looked down at her hand, already knowing it was back because the infinite sensations, as she would later describe, were gone.
The Eysen-Sphere stopped, and then suddenly went black. Savina and her assistants looked at each other. Before any of them could speak, the entire lab went dark. Battery backups began beeping and emergency lights popped on.
“The generator will kick in any second,” one of the assistants assured them. He’d barely finished his sentence when the room dropped back into silent darkness.
“We’re totally down,” someone said.
“What’s going on?” the first voice asked.
“It’s the Sphere,” Savina said.
They turned to where they thought it should be, but the darkness allowed nothing. One of them reached for the penlight he kept in his pocket. He tried it several times, but it also failed.
“I’m telling you, it’s the Eysen,” Savina repeated. “Just wait.”
“For what?”
“I think we found the other one,” Savina whispered reverently. “We found Gaines’ Eysen.”
“How?” he asked, suddenly aware of the sensation of floating.
“Just before I took that call, I had inputted all we know of Gaines’ Eysen.”
“You can’t input anything into the Eysen-Sphere. It’s read-only.”
“Oh yeah? Look.”
The Eysen they’d all been staring at, without being able to see it, had, at its center, a pinpoint of light. Within the absolute blackness of the room, the tiny glow appeared as a spotlight.
“What’s it doing now?” an assistant asked.
The room instantly filled with colors, swirling in a vortex of exaggerated hues.
“We’re not getting this recorded,” an assistant reminded them.
“It doesn’t matter,” Savina shouted above a gathering roar of white noise, sounding as if an enormous waterfall was pouring in on them. “I’m not sure the equipment is in the room anymore anyway!”
The assistants looked around, finding that there was nothing left of the lab. No tables, no equipment, not even any walls.
“I don’t think we’re in the lab anymore!” one of them yelled.
“I-It’s as if,” Savina stuttered, but they couldn’t hear her above the roar. “It’s as if we’re inside the Eysen.”
“Savina, the Eysen has engulfed the lab . . . It’s consumed us!” one of them yelled.
“And it feels glorious!” she shouted back.
“Where is it taking us?”
“To Ripley Gaines!”
Chapter 20
Rip wasn’t really sure if he had dreamed the episode with Crying Man or not. He did remember being asleep, but he also recalled being awake through much of the night. It seemed so astonishing that it didn’t feel real. The Sphere only showed the present day Earth. Before Rip had a chance to delve back into the Cosegan world, his INU lit up. It was Huang.
“I have a connection to Booker.”
“A thousand thank yous, Huang. Once again, you’ve proved yourself amazing.”
“Anytime, Rip. Here you go,” Huang said, switching the connection.
“Rip,” Booker began, “now before you go all ballistic on me—”
“Booker, you get me off this goddamned island and take me to Gale and Cira, or so help me I’ll destroy the Sphere.”
“Damn it, Rip. Calm down. They’re both safe.”
“But you lied. You knew the breach was caused by Cira going to the hospital. Her eye… her eyes!” Rip shouted. “How dare you? This is my family.”
“How dare I?” Booker shot back “How dare you. Do you think this is only about you? What about the millions of other families? Billions are in jeopardy.”
“My family is the only one I can save.”
“That’s not true. You may care only about yours, but you know the world will not be fit for even your precious family if we lose the Eysen-Sphere . . . It’s the Sphere, Rip. The Sphere is more important than your family, you, or me, because without the Sphere we can’t save anything. NOTHING! And you know it.”
“Screw that, Booker, and screw you!”
Rip stormed over to the window and, for the first time, viewed El Perdido like Gale did. As a prison. He knew Booker was right, he just couldn’t allow that thought in. The possibility of losing his family.
Rip began to shake. A terrible wail overtook him, building, consuming his insides, bursting to explode, desperate to be released, frantically needing to relieve the pressure of all that his life had become. He turned to the Sphere, still floating where he left it. The miraculous object could be more accurately described as a curse.
“Let. Me. GOOOOOO!” he screamed with all the surging, pent-up emotion.
Booker, of course, assumed Rip was yelling at him, but Rip was actually raging at the Sphere. The thing that had stolen his life. The object of his obsession had trapped him. Beyond that, his anger flew in a thousand directions.
He was furious because Booker was right. How could his family survive in the world that was coming? How could Cira grow up and live a life in a world that was no longer real? It would be impossible to grow in a society where the scars from karmic crimes could never be healed, but he saved his greatest disdain for himself.
How had he not been able to get deep enough into the infinite pool that was the Eysen-Sphere to save them all, to solve all the problems, to stop the evil pursuing them? That evil, dressed and masquerading as real people? Billionaires, politicians, terrorists, extremists, everyday average folks in comfort and complacency, not bothering to notice the danger? He’d learned that from Gale. “We’re not here to eat fast food, watch television, and accumulate stuff.” She’d said it a hundred times since they’d met.
The Sphere had shown him she was right. Something more was out there.
Booker, as if reading his mind, launched a tirade.
“Haven’t you seen enough? The Eysen has taken you across the universe, shown you the meaning of time, taught you we’re not a random accident, adrift and alone. We have purpose. We have done this, and yet you still act as if this is just an artifact. Stop being a damned archaeologist! The Eysen-Sphere is our hope, Rip. It’s the dream of us. The Sphere is everything!”
“But we still don’t understand it.”
“Can we? Are we capable of understanding something like this? Something that is more than all of everything we’ve ever imagined? You named it correctly all those years ago. ‘Eysen, to hold all the stars in your hand.’ The entire universe is in there. How can we grasp all of that? You have to trust that Cira and Gale will survive . . . but if they don’t, that is how it was meant to be. I can assure you they will still exist somewhere, and you, Rip, you’re the fortunate one who possesses the keys to find them.”
“That is not fair. You can’t write people off like that.”
He thought of Crying Man. Was he already protecting them? Would he? Could he? Did it really happen?
“I’m not writing them off, but this is about more than attachment.”
“Attachment? Booker, you’re talking about the same thing. You’re attached to the world, this world, the way it is, the way you think it should be. You want to be a hero and save the world—”
“Change it,” Booker corrected.
“Change the world, save it, orbit it, blow it up, I don’t give a damn. Why don’t you try letting go of that?”
“And what will that do? Will that save Gale and Cira?”
&
nbsp; “Maybe.”
“For how long?” Booker asked.
“Long enough for me to find a way. ”
“Contrary to what you see in the movies, the end of the world doesn’t come all at once. It slips away from us, bit by bit. One bad decision, one compromise, one fear filled second at a time.”
“And?” Rip asked.
“There isn’t much time left . . . There is a history of the future, and some things are irreversible.”
Chapter 21
The police officers hurrying down the corridor toward Cira’s hidden hospital room were high-ranking deputy commissioners. The nurse and orderly watched the image in the INU, then turned to Harmer with panicked looks.
“We’re done now,” the orderly whispered too loudly.
“No,” Harmer said, waving her arm in a silencing motion. “Their weapons are still holstered.”
The orderly checked the live view again, seeing that the men were twenty feet away from the door to the bogus supply room.
Booker watched the same video feed, ready to give airborne AX agents the go-ahead as soon as Harmer signaled. Booker’s assistant filled his glass for the third time, a concoction of Amazonian herbs. As he drank, Booker never took his eyes away from the images coming from Fiji.
Harmer remained calm. Only when the police were about five feet from the door did she move to a forward position next to the false panel. She held her weapon steady, an unlit cigarette pursed tightly between her dry lips. Her free hand pointed at the orderly, as if willing him to remain calm. Harmer could hear the click of the officer’s boots as they approached. She mentally measured the remaining distance—three feet, two, one . . . Harmer kept her eyes fixed on the back of the panel even as the footsteps passed. Then, as she heard them enter the next room, she went back to the INU.
For six more tense minutes they waited. Finally, all four officers came noisily back into the corridor. Harmer returned to the panel and listened as they walked by. She clearly heard them saying that the patient had seen Gale, her daughter, and a bodyguard leave the hospital hours earlier. The police seemed to believe it.