Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4)

by Brandt Legg

  Hope.

  Two hours later, she woke up. “Mommy?”

  “Oh, Cira, I’m right here. Mommy is right here.”

  “Mommy, it’s dark. I can’t see.”

  “Your eyes were hurt, sweetie. Do you remember?”

  “The playground.”

  “Yes, yes. That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, no, sweetie. It’s not your fault.”

  “When can I see again?”

  “Soon, sweetie. You’ll see again soon. The doctor did some tests, and he needs to look at your eyes now that you’re awake. I need you to be a brave girl and do what the doctor says, okay?”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  Gale’s elation turned to overwhelming gratitude and sorrow for Harmer and Kruse for sacrificing so much to save her and Cira. This moment wouldn’t be possible if not for their heroic efforts, she thought. Booker somehow managed the impossible.

  She said a silent thank you to each one of them, including Booker, but it was the thought of Kruse that made her cry. You lost everything, so that I wouldn’t have to. Please forgive me, Kruse.

  Rip came in while the doctor was taking the bandages off. He didn’t want to excite Cira until the doctor was through, so he remained quiet.

  A few minutes later, the doctor finished and asked to speak to Gale and Rip out in the hall.

  Gale looked at the doctor, alarmed, and then to Rip. “I don’t want to leave her yet,” she said. Rip walked out with the doctor.

  “She’s going to see,” the doctor said in hushed tones, “but there will be significant vision loss in her left eye.”

  “How much?” Rip asked sadly, looking back into the room.

  “Hard to say, but I don’t think she’ll regain much use of that eye. It’s the one which sustained the most trauma. There’ll be visible scarring, and once she’s older you might consider cosmetic surgery.”

  Rip nodded.

  “Mommy, when will Daddy be home?” Rip heard Cira ask from inside the room.

  “I’m right here, baby,” Rip said, nodding to the doctor and rushing into the room. He took her hand. “How’s my little girl?”

  “I got hurt, Daddy.”

  “You sure did.”

  “Did the doctor say I’m going to be all better?”

  Rip glanced back at Gale as she went out to talk to the doctor.

  “You’re going to be more than that, Cira,” Rip said, squeezing her hand. She’s alive, he thought. We saved her. My daughter is going to grow up!

  —O—

  Rathmore suddenly began receiving data from an unnamed source about the Foundation. Huang had many channels and aliases at his disposal. At the same time, the NSA director and King were locked in a power struggle. The director somehow came out on top and took him off the Gaines case. “Too many failures” was the reason given, but Rathmore suspected something else. In either case, the Foundation was a meatier assignment, and one that he thought might lead him back to Gaines, or at least to Booker.

  Stellard was arrested in Thailand after an email tip appeared in Barbeau’s inbox. The sender showed as anonymous. It had been difficult for Huang to trace Stellard, but simple for him to make his email to Barbeau untraceable. Some of what Huang did for Booker looked easy, but years of work often came down to precisely timed, complex moves that might involve dozens of operatives, EAMI, and help from the Inner Movement.

  Dozens of the dirtiest Foundation agents whom DIRT had been watching for years were brought in. For the first time in his life, the Judge was suddenly on the defensive. Ultimately, his wealth and power would protect him, but his grand plan would be slowed, at least enough to give his opponents time to stop Phoenix, especially for Gale and Rip. If they were able to try the time-shifting theories, every moment counted.

  Later, the scientists arrived on El Perdido. An unexpected guest, arriving on the same plane, staggered in and walked quietly to Cira’s bed. With tears in her eyes, Harmer, aged at least ten years it seemed, bent down and softly kissed the little girl. “I’m so sorry about everything.”

  Gale immediately jumped up and hugged Harmer. “Rip told me everything you went through to save our daughter. Thank you. Thank you for protecting Cira. I’ll never forget it. Cira will be so happy to see you when she wakes up.”

  “See me?” Harmer asked.

  Gale nodded, smiling widely.

  Harmer let out a joyful laugh. “We did it.” She turned back to look at Cira. “I hope she’ll forgive me. In the confusion of the raid on the hospital, I wasn’t able to save her little cat. As they dragged me out of the room, the last thing I saw was the cat laying on the floor.”

  Gale pulled the blanket back and revealed the cat, resting next to Cira’s hand.

  “How did that get here?”

  “Crying Man.”

  Chapter 67

  The meeting, less awkward than expected, stirred much excitement amongst Gale, Rip, and Savina for the possibilities of the Spheres. Savina might have been working for the other side, but she was a brilliant physicist, who seemingly knew as much about the Sphere as they did.

  After the initial introductions, Rip pointed to the silver case. “Is that it? The other Sphere?”

  She nodded, smiling, as if she’d brought a present.

  Gale and Rip had already decided not to go to the El Perdido lab, but instead to view both Spheres in the skyroom. They drove there in a single golf cart, but Gale had stopped off in Cira’s room.

  As Savina stepped into the skyroom, she set down the silver case and went straight for Rip’s Sphere. “It’s the same,” she said.

  “May I see yours?” Rip asked, motioning toward the case.

  “Yes, yes. I can’t wait to see what they do next to each other.”

  Rip carried the case to the table that already held his Sphere. He carefully opened it and stared disbelievingly for a moment. Then he lifted it out and held it, absorbed in awe. The reality of a second Sphere seemed to confirm that the Cosegans were more than just an ancient civilization.

  “They did this,” he whispered to himself. “They had to know we would find them, but why?”

  “They made nine of them,” Savina said.

  “Nine?” Rip asked, brought out of his spell. “Nine! My God, I thought there were only three. Are they . . . did they survive?”

  “I don’t know. During what I call a ‘swallowing’, the information was put into my head. Imagine if we had all nine.”

  “Why nine?” Terrified and elated at the same time, Rip could not slow his racing mind. Why would they have made nine? How hard had they been to construct? Who else had found them? Where were they? Did they all need to be used together to ultimately unlock their secrets? Nine! Why nine?

  “Why any?” Savina replied.

  Rip nodded. The burning question had consumed so much of his life, but he repeated quietly, “Why nine?”

  “Shall we?” Savina asked when she saw Gale enter the room.

  “Do you have a chip?”

  She nodded and pulled it from her pocket.

  They set the Spheres next to each other and Savina and Rip touched the sides of their respective Spheres to illuminate them. They were amazed from the moment the orbs lit up and ran identical sequences. Once they completed the run, the Spheres remained in a standard state.

  “What, no fireworks? Gale asked, joining them.

  “I did think there might be a cumulative amplification,” Savina agreed.

  Rip was also disappointed. He explained to Savina the Five Cosega Mysteries and asked if she could answer any of them:

  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?

  “Although I didn’t call them that, I’ve been looking for answers to those same questions, but most of my time has been spent trying to understand the physics of this thing. How cou
ld they do this? Contain all this energy in this small object?”

  “Any-sized object,” Gale said.

  “Exactly,” Savina agreed.

  They spent the rest of the day comparing the experiences they’d had, and what each had learned over the years. During their deliberations, Gale and Rip continuously took turns visiting Cira, but she mostly slept. Harmer had also stationed herself in a comfortable chair next to Cira’s bed.

  Savina shared the detailed information about the “swallowings” and Rip told her of floating in the blackness. However, it was the Crying Man who fascinated Savina most. She believed he was the man she had seen the day before.

  “It was the first time I’d ever seen a person within the Sphere,” Savina explained.

  Gale and Rip were quite surprised to learn that. “How did you manage to find your way around without a guide?”

  “Simple,” Savina replied. “I followed the laws of physics. Not that the Cosegans are subject to the same laws we are, but they seem to have known all of ours and more. Between that and my knowledge of the universe, I could figure out a lot.” She looked at them and shrugged. “Saying that would be like someone coming from another planet and claiming to have explored Earth after they’d only spent a few minutes in a child’s sandbox.”

  “Yeah,” Gale said. “After seven years, we’re still in the sandbox too.”

  “Oh, we might be on the beach,” Rip said, “but we’re not even close to where we should be.” He went on to explain the Divinations, and that they had spent most of their time with the Sphere trying to use it to find a way to change the future.

  “That’s kind of what we’ve been doing at the Foundation,” Savina admitted.

  “But part of what we’ve been trying to stop is the Foundation’s idiotic Phoenix Initiative.”

  “The Phoenix Initiative may sound crazy to you, but it is designed to save the human race.”

  “By killing half of them?” Gale asked.

  “Better than losing all of them,” Savina snapped.

  “But haven’t you seen the results in your Sphere?” Rip asked. “It’s disastrous. It’s the end.”

  “That’s not what we’ve seen.”

  “Well, maybe you haven’t been deep enough,” Gale said. “How far out have you looked?”

  “Phoenix replaces the coming uncontrollable plague with ours, one designed to be controllable. The aftermath is a utopian world instead of a brutal end of humanity,” Savina said. “Haven’t you seen the gasping end?”

  “Your so-called utopian world is short-lived, and leads to a horrific war,” Rip said. “Let me show you what’s really going to happen.” He manipulated the light and forms projecting from his Sphere.

  Fifteen minutes later, Savina shook her head and stammered. “I… I don’t understand how they can be so different.” Before Rip or Gale could comment, she continued. “Unless . . . unless it’s the Copenhagen Interpretation.”

  “That nothing is real until we observe it?” Rip asked.

  Savina was impressed. “Yes. How do you know of it?”

  “It’s one of the basics of Booker’s Universal Quantum Physics.”

  “Of course, UQP has borrowed so much from Quantum Mechanics,” Savina said.

  “And the rest from metaphysics,” Gale added. “Booker is the major backer behind the Inner Movement.”

  “I know,” Savina said. “A lot of people think he’s crazy. But then a lot of people thought Niels Bohr was crazy, even Einstein.”

  “Bohr?” Gale asked.

  “He first proposed that nothing is real until we observe it,” Savina explained. “And although he and Einstein actually got along well, they famously opposed each other on this epic point.”

  “Who was right?”

  “Most say Bohr, but even after all these decades, we still don’t know for sure. But if Bohr was right, it would seem to invalidate Booker’s idea that Einstein might have had a Sphere, or at least looked into one.”

  “Maybe not, as we were saying earlier,” Rip began. “The Sphere is incomprehensibly vast. He couldn’t have seen everything, solved all the equations, so anything is possible.”

  “That also makes my point,” Savina said. “Quantum Physics tells us that there is no such thing as reality, only the potential of reality.”

  “Meaning?” Gale asked.

  “Reality depends on the observer. So what your Sphere showed you about the future is not what mine showed me.”

  Rip regarded her carefully. “More than one possible future,” he murmured. “That has certainly been a central theme to the work of Clastier, and specifically the Cosegans.”

  “So which is right?” Gale asked.

  “The one that we see,” Savina said. “So let’s make sure we’re seeing the same thing from now on.”

  Suddenly, the two Spheres glowed as if on fire, and from within the flames jumbles of mathematical equations appeared in an endless stream. The brightness of the scene, nearly blinding in its intensity, left them gasping for a few moments until their senses adjusted, or the frequency of the display changed, or time slowed down, they had no idea. Then the Spheres merged, or rather, became part of a sea of nine glowing orbs, which fractured into millions of smaller Spheres. Inside each of those millions, even more were visible. Rip tried to focus on just one, but it only enlarged and even more spheres appeared from within that one until he became lost in the flood.

  It’s infinite, he thought. They swirled and blurred as if all the stars in the universe had merged into one single spot, the Sphere. Then he realized what it was showing him . . . the multiverse. Somehow the Sphere was able to display what was almost impossible even to conceive. Somehow, he thought, the Cosegans found a way to capture the multiverse.

  “They mapped it,” he said out loud. “How did they know?”

  “Because,” Savina answered, already ahead of his thoughts, “the Cosegans have traveled the multiverse. They know the secrets.”

  Chapter 68

  Soon the two Spheres returned to their pre-merging state. However, each seemed faster, brighter, more powerful. For the next forty-eight hours, unaware if it was night or day, Gale, Rip, and Savina worked constantly on the two Spheres, showing each other where they’d been and the progress that had been made. Theories were discussed and experiments undertaken. With the possibility that more Spheres existed, the chance that the Foundation would react aggressively due to the loss of Savina and her Sphere, coupled with the optimism of being able to pool their resources, they felt a jointly renewed sense of urgency to find answers to the five mysteries and to try to bend the future into something survivable, maybe even something good.

  Savina explained the multiverse findings and what she’d discovered about time-shifts. Rip showed her the papers the five scientists, all of whom she knew by reputation, had written on the time-shifts.

  “So it is possible. I knew it!” she exclaimed after reading their work. “What if the Cosegans mastered all of this?”

  “What?” Rip asked.

  “The multiverse,” Savina said, as if nothing could be more obvious. “What if they found a way to travel between universes?”

  “How could they do that?” Gale asked. “Is that even theoretically possible?”

  The question of the physics was an issue Savina had studied at MIT. It came down to the possibilities of which laws would govern —the ones from the universe that contained the Milky Way galaxy and current human existence on Earth, or the neighboring universe.

  “Of course it’s possible.”

  “But how do you know that?” Rip asked, wanting to hear her explanation in scientific terms.

  “Because anything is possible. Even traveling across millions of light years. There is always a way. They could be talking to us from there now.”

  “So are you suggesting that eleven million Earth years, ” Gale began, “isn’t that long in another universe?”

  “Anything is possible given enough time,” Rip said
, grasping her concept. “And time is a funny thing.”

  “Eternal inflation,” Savina said. “Dark energy pushing away everything at an ever-accelerating rate. The entire world of physics is ever demonstrating the infinite. What are smaller than neutrons and protons? Quarks. And smaller than quarks? Strings, and they form everything, depending on how they vibrate, including extra dimensions.”

  “The Spheres are somehow produced in that way?” Gale asked, not sure she understood her own question. She still didn’t know how her plane had been made to vanish.

  “Each Sphere shows the observer what they see. Mine shows the multiverse, time-shifts and physics. Rip’s showed him Clastier, ancient cultures, and brought those Divinations to life. Clastier and Malachy’s Spheres showed the flaws and fraud of the Church. When the UQP scientists viewed it, they found time-shift and an understanding of our universe.”

  “But they’ve all shown prophetic visions of the future,” Gale insisted.

  “Because time is the common denominator to all of us,” Rip said. “Everyone wants to know what’s coming, and a Sphere easily shows us the meaninglessness of time.”

  Ironically, it was then that the five authors of the time-shift theory, along with the sniffling professor, knocked on the skyroom’s door. For the next twenty-four hours they argued, envisioned, and debated the possibilities of actually conducting a time-shift experiment and whether or not the multiverse existed.

  “Eternal inflation, Dark Energy, string theory, they all point to the existence of the multiverse,” Savina said, “but the Spheres prove it.”

  “Then where are the Cosegans?” Dabnowski asked. “What happened to them?”

  Before Rip could address the topic, his INU lit up with a call from Booker. Afterwards, Rip whispered to Gale and Savina, “The Foundation is moving up the launch of Phoenix. We may have only weeks to stop it.”

  “You know more about it than any of us,” Gale said to Savina. “You must know a way to get to them in time.”