My Friend, The Gifted: A Sci-Fantasy (The Universe of Infinite Wonder Book 1)

by E. L. Aldryc

  “Did you cause this?” Elodie asked Soraya, who walked a few steps ahead of her. They just couldn’t seem to adjust to the same pace of walking.

  “No,” she said with the same tone with which she denied everything else. This was useless.

  Turquoise fire came out from a hole on the left of the Particle Lab. The new annexe grew faster, even faster in the seconds that followed it. Elodie had no desire to see the fire up close, but luckily, they went the other way.

  She was entering a potentially dangerous area with a potentially dangerous person. The deeper she got lured into this situation with Soraya, the harder it would be to take control or get help.

  A small light guided her, one that she wanted to attribute to the golden thread, one that might explain why everything she did was so well-aligned with the circumstances. No one was running after her. That meant it was good.

  But it wasn’t. Not only was she close to the object of her fears, she was also alone with her.

  Soraya accessed the Particle Lab annexe construction site with little more than a blink, and as they entered, a scent of ozone lingered in the air. The structure in the middle of it was fresh, too fresh to be open to the public. The site was now surrounded by a protective blockade that would hold off the energy of crumbling building blocks if the tower, which would soon become the newest addition to the complex, were to fall.

  “Do you know the AIs have no fear of death?” Soraya said.

  Elodie did not believe that. The tower in front of them was a testament to someone or something’s desire to show off, and to leave something sadly beautiful behind.

  “You can permanently delete them, and even tell them about it beforehand, and they won’t really do anything. Because they understand the universe in ways that people have trouble grasping.”

  “They won’t fight for their life, and you think that’s good?” Elodie replied.

  “No, I don’t. But people are so bent on fearing the AI because they’re afraid that they’ll get into a mentality of ‘us or them’, while in reality, they are incapable of caring about these sorts of urges. To them, everything is energy, and energy is indestructible, so it doesn’t matter in what form they exist. I thought you’d be happy to know that. The danger is unfounded. That’s what I’m saying.”

  Soraya slowed down her pace as they entered the enclosure of the tower.

  “The less I know about them, or your logic for that matter, the better I think I’ll be off.” Elodie was scanning the area for a quick exit.

  “This is probably the most hard-to-monitor part of the Institute right now. Places in active growth. Look for them whenever you need privacy. I can assure you, you’ll soon need to hold private conversations if you intend to operate on this level.” Soraya stopped in the middle of the grass, genetically tame and perfect for this kind of surface.

  Here we go again. Elodie was more than tired of convincing Soraya that she knew how things worked in life.

  “More advice? That’s so nice of you,” she said. “The advice you gave so far worked great. You told me to be afraid of the very people I needed to trust the most. I’ve suffered for months and all you said was that ‘the gifted’ were making all these mistakes with me. That they were lying. But at the same time, here you were. Pushing your own goals. Over me. Keeping me afraid. And when that didn’t work, you literally incapacitated Rising Dawn.”

  “What happened to you? Why are you so bent on pushing this?” Soraya said, confused.

  “Every time I caught you in a lie. When you were pushed into a corner. You never said you lied. You either denied it, or, if there was evidence, you just brushed it off for the sake of ‘misinterpreting the policy on the matter’. You have one trick, Soraya. And it’s not gonna work again. Not with me. I saw what you did.”

  “I didn’t touch Seravina,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how else to convince you.”

  “You can’t. That’s the beauty of it. You can have your life. No one might ever believe me. But I won’t be your friend anymore.”

  “Don’t do that,” Soraya said. Her anger turned into sadness, and right back again. “What do you really want, Elodie? Do you want me to publicly say that the destruction of the object was your idea, really? That I never even touched it—is that what bothers you? That I had anything to do with this great triumph of yours? Because I’m fine with that. I don’t want to be associated with news to do with the gifted, the Hopefuls, or overtime. Happy?”

  “It hurts you though, doesn’t it? That you’ve finally been found? You really don’t want to admit it,” Elodie shook her head.

  “That was a different one,” Soraya said, tensely. “When you described the event where I apparently built the actuor that caused the blackout. There were no rocks in the Particle Lab. I built the actuor you saw. I didn’t build the one in the Particle Lab. That was bad craftsmanship. Easy to crush.”

  When she said it, she moved away and made a small circle in the grass with her foot, trying to make it appear nonchalant.

  “And what, that makes a difference?” Elodie said angrily. She knew it was going to be hard to get her to confess, but she had no intention of revealing more disputable facts about the vision. The more she brought it up and talked about it, the more details could be disputed. Soraya knew it. She was trying every trick in the book. But what if? What if she was telling the truth?

  “How do you know how to make these, what did you call them? Actuor?”

  The word disturbed with Soraya even more.

  “I don’t. I mean…”

  “So you do know how to create them. And you know what they are. And you said you made others,” Elodie explained slowly. She was sick and tired of this chase. Why wouldn’t she just tell the truth already?

  There was another tremor underneath them, which reminded Elodie of the fact that Soraya had probably caused the accident too, in the same way she caused everything else to happen. She was alone with a person who would hurt others and put their research at risk to have a private conversation. Nothing to worry about.

  “I know how to make them. The one I made, the one you saw, I made to keep myself alive. I was given the means and knowledge. And even though I left those people, I’ll have to spend the rest of my life explaining myself. Thank you, Elodie. You’re a great friend.”

  She was not getting away with this.

  “What was that thing you said?” Elodie pushed, “Hope is the horror—”

  “That must be made fresh,” Soraya finished. “It’s one of the perfect phonetic sequences to occupy the rational mind so that the sublime can take over. I’d say well done for spotting, but if you hear it in the context of a vision, I’d suggest you get out. It’s a bad sign.”

  “And you said it both times. When you assembled the thing, and then when you pulled it apart.”

  “I didn’t assemble it. That was a different actuor. I told you this,” Soraya repeated.

  “So who did?” Elodie was getting impatient. They were just going in circles.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. These things are super rare, Elodie. Very few people even know they exist. And I couldn’t just tell you about it. Knowledge has consequences, and the more it's disseminated, the more likely it is to be found by the gifted. And this knowledge, it can follow you, it can nest inside you, and if you’re gifted, it can devour you. I’ve seen it happen. I don’t want you to find it. I don’t want it to take you. I want it forgotten forever. It’s that simple.”

  The Particle Lab began shifting its weight around the damaged part of its structure. The complex was not a living thing, and it was run by one semi-divine entity, but when it started to fix itself, you could have easily mistaken it for an awakening monster. The explosions continued to resonate below them.

  Soraya looked at the top of the structure, which had begun to slump over them like a large tsunami, but paid it no more attention than she would to a flock of birds.

  “This doesn’t fix anything,”
Elodie said. “Even if we started over, it would take a lot of time for me to trust you again. You’d have to work with Tammy. Share everything you know. Not just crumbs like this, and no excuses for what you’ve done.”

  Elodie felt the pain weigh her down. She knew she had to say it, but that didn’t make it any easier.

  Soraya crossed her arms and moved away. Something she said. It made her angry again.

  “Rising Dawn already shut me out of my work with the AI. If they’re not looked after properly, then you’ll see the nightmare you’re afraid of. They don’t understand. The gifted think they see the Universe of Infinite Wonder, but they don’t see the risks if they get it wrong. They don’t see the other side.”

  “What other side? What are you talking about?”

  “What if I said you don’t get to know?” Soraya shouted. “Because you push, and you push, and you push me to share things with you, and every time I give you what you want, you turn it against me. You want to talk about trust? Let me give you something private, and if it doesn’t come back to slap me in the face in a month, then we can talk!”

  “The stuff you’re telling me to trust you on are crimes, Soraya.”

  “If that’s what you think, then you really don’t understand the Universe of Infinite Wonder,” she replied.

  Rude. And false.

  “I’m the one who can see it on the event horizon. I’m pretty sure that means I understand it better than you.”

  “Don’t try to provoke me into giving you more valuable knowledge that you’ll just squander,” Soraya said.

  The tremors now occurred in a frequency higher than just a few per minute, and while Soraya had already decided that this was of no consequence to her, Elodie tuned into her senses to find out what in the world was going on there. She sensed a lot of empty space below. Someone had recently wiped out the inactive labs. A hard reset.

  “Did you just delete the place where the object was found?”

  “No, I was just cleaning up a part of the circuit that was causing heat to escape into the areas above it. A few things overloaded. A shame really,” Soraya replied, smiling, with the same cluelessness that she’d use when asked about it later. Elodie wondered how many of these it would really take before someone started taking her warnings seriously.

  “I think I’ve never seen you more clearly,” Elodie started. “You’re delusional. You hate the gifted so much that you want to believe you’re better than us. That you’re the one who knows where the ‘real’ Universe of Infinite Wonder is.”

  Elodie’s senses were still active, and something began to ask for attention on the future front.

  She’d hit a nerve.

  “See, I keep thinking that you must have more to say,” Elodie continued. “That this can’t just be it. You must have some super-secret knowledge that you just can’t say. But if you did, you’d say it. I know you, Soraya, you can’t keep things secret if you can make yourself look good. That’s why you worked on the AI. That’s why you gave me the knowledge of the Hopefuls when the gifted declared me their new big thing. You just want to be needed. And what now? You’ve exhausted it all, and what? You’re hoping I won’t put you into jail for sabotaging the Institute? That you’ll still be needed, because you have more to give?”

  “Stop talking,” Soraya said quietly. Elodie was just getting started.

  “Here I was, thinking that you’re conflicted, and that you have this deep connection with me, that we’re fighting through something together. No. You’re just afraid of people not wanting you. And I’m caught in the middle.”

  “Stop,” Soraya repeated.

  The current pricked her at the back of her head. Elodie dipped into the vision, hoping that it wasn’t obvious, and saw that something was likely to happen with the tower in the background. Elodie decided to keep vigilant. She should have probably said something about this to Soraya, who was leaning on it, shaking. Dramatic as always. Elodie was so sick and tired of this.

  “I’ll stop when you admit it,” Elodie said. “You. You cause conflict. You stir things in people. You make them believe that there’s a greater truth out there, and that you have a monopoly over it. But you don’t. So you cause a greater mess. Something no one can handle but you.”

  In the corner of her eye, the vision showed itself clearly. The walls of the tower were about to become unstable while the tower shifted its gravity centre and adjusted its position. Elodie moved away from it a few steps.

  She needed to pull Soraya away from it.

  When external walls were unstable, their surface burned your skin off, and if you accidentally found yourself too close to one, it wouldn’t even know you were there. It would re-materialize right through your body, butchering everything it found in its way.

  The event was eleven seconds away.

  She inhaled and said, “Soraya—"

  “Fine. If I need to risk everything to show you once and for all, then I will.”

  What was this? What was she doing? Soraya raised her hand, and Elodie felt a known fear creep in. The high-pitched noise returned. The current went crazy.

  “You need to—” she moved towards her, but she couldn’t get too close.

  “I’ll draw it out for you. You’ll see what the other gifted don’t.” In the palm of her hand, a small, growing distortion of air gained spherical form. No.

  Elodie wanted to shout again, she did, but as the distortion gained mass, the darkness that chased her, the darkness that wanted to drown her in the current, came closer. It was coming for her. Bigger than ever, alive, and racing towards her from all sides.

  There was only one way to stop it.

  Elodie took a step back. The darkness edged closer until she saw it staring at her from Soraya’s eyes, right into hers.

  Two seconds now.

  “Let me show you the Universe of Infinite P—”

  The tower dematerialised and swallowed half a body in less than a second. The other half glided off the side of the newly composed wall.

  And Elodie did nothing.

  My Other Friend

  Monday, 8 July 2363

  “It’s over. You’re safe now.”

  Another glass of water was placed next to Elodie. A third. Tammy sat next to her. Hours passed. Or minutes. Elodie’s eyes were open, or closed. It didn’t matter. She watched half of the body repeatedly slide down the smooth off-white surface. And it fell. The thud was soft. And again. The blood marks had disappeared almost instantly. The ozone smell lingered. It started again.

  “You were right. Autopsy revealed there were several crystals in her body, a type of mutabilis that we’ve never seen before. We’re going to find out what she did.”

  Tammy stared into the distance. Someone brought tea. Hours passed. Maybe minutes. Elodie was in shock. They told her that. When she blinked, the body slid down the outer wall in full colour. And again. The smell of ozone lingered. The smell of blood never reached her.

  “I’m so sorry this happened. But it’s over now. I understand we were under attack. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. You were right.”

  Elodie could almost hear her scanning the futures. Pasts. She wouldn't find anything. That was the skill. She was rubbing her back, but Elodie felt no warmth.

  “You did it. You saved us more times than I can thank you, Elodie. I can only promise I’ll do better.”

  Hours passed. Maybe minutes. Elodie reached for the tea. Then she put it back. She couldn't look at Tammy. That would make it real. She couldn't look into the current. That would also make it real. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. Soraya always had a trick up her sleeve.

  “Take your time. I’m just going to sit with you. Is that okay?”

  Elodie might have nodded. She understood that they’d found the mutabilis. She understood what it meant. The body was snapped in half, and Elodie did nothing. She was stuck in a future where she did nothing. The gifted couldn’t turn back time.

  “I do need to tell you somethin
g. And I’ve calculated it. The best outcome is telling you now. So here goes.” Tammy stopped talking to check the futures again. Elodie knew that she was in shock. Tammy could say anything and it wouldn't make much of a difference. Double shock didn't exist.

  “Physically, the body is alive. But with half a brain missing, she’s gone. There’s no way to restore the memories. We’re hoping that perhaps, if we try to regrow as much of the nervous system as we can, we’ll get lucky, and telepaths working with paragnosts will be able to divine some things. But it’s such a slim hope. At least, maybe, we’ll learn more about the Hopefuls and why they're after us. All routes to the Universe of Infinite Wonder have disappeared. Your help will be needed. But only when you’re ready. I want you to take more time than you think you need.”

  Alive. She said alive.

  The word echoed and ricocheted around Elodie’s mind. It woke something up. Alive. The current, the mind, they all felt a jolt. The pain didn’t leave her. It cut deeper, but there was now an impetus.

  “She's alive,” Elodie repeated. She did nothing. She let the wall swallow her. The past happened. But the future hadn’t happened yet.

  “No, honey, she's not alive. Some of her memories might be.” Tammy tried, but Elodie couldn't hear anything but the word. Alive. The pulse returned. It called to her.

  “I need to go,” she said to Tammy.

  Elodie was the only one who knew Soraya. She was the only one who could see futures and pasts where she was active. No one else could fix this but Elodie. No one else could see the little light on the horizon. Only Elodie Marchand.