Unholy Trinity

by Martin Jones

  I thought long and hard about what it said. The sun scorched down upon us and bizarrely birds were twittering in the trees, and the hum of bees gave the distinct impression of an English country garden, on a strange planet in another multiverse reality.

  “The problem with your argument is that it is purely objective. As a programme, you cannot understand what is possible or impossible for me to achieve as the godhead instigating this rebirth, whereas I am ideally placed to tell you. I can tell you as the only arbiter in this that the rebirth will not exist and never will happen with the mother. God may have created her, but he has given me choice to accept or reject her as my choice of rebirth partner. I tell you now, that the rebirth will never happen with her. I intrinsically know as the godhead that the Mother is destined to die, and the lower frequency material that she is made of, although destined to add contrast to my existence, was never meant to have a single identity or personality, and if it joins with me as it is, it will completely dominate, and balance will not be achieved.

  You may sit there, test me, and even pronounce judgment upon me, but what you cannot do is tell me what the rebirth will be. That is only my job to inform you, and if you ignore my wishes, then by default, you ignore the wishes of god, as he has made this my power, ergo, your actions, or in this case inaction will be tantamount to unfairly restricting the progress of the rebirth. You know that you have no power in discerning or influencing this process, you have no option but to listen to me and acquiesce to my request, and I request that this multiverse be reset to its default position at this time zone, so that the souls that were trapped by the Darknet have a chance for the rebirth.”

  It looked at me with dislike emanating out of every pore. I knew the logic I had used inescapably robbed it of any further argument.

  “I will agree to this when the mother and the Darknet hub have escaped. I intrinsically believe their context must be given fair chance, but I will acquiesce to your wishes in this multiverse. You are the godhead and in this case, I will not impede your progress, but remember this, everything happens for a reason, and if we continually get our own way, the more we limit our opportunities, and the more we rob fate of its benevolence in creating vivid contexts for us, the more the rebirth is likely to fail. Do not fall at the considerable hurdle of ego godhead. Let the beating heart of fate be your drum, and not your limited experiences of life so far! Hear my warning godhead! We will not speak again.” it said, and we both found ourselves alone in the garden. Susan looked at me in wonder.

  “That was bloody brilliant! It never occurred to me that good and evil were context-specific, and designed to achieve a balance of contrast. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say when it suggested that you join with the mother. The thought appalled me, but there was a keen logic to its argument. I’m so relieved father! Thank you!” she said, and they hugged.

  “I’ll be honest Susan, for a second there I was absolutely floored! I couldn’t think of a thing to say, and then I got angry! Who the hell did it think it was? Talk about delusions of grandeur! It’s only the multiverse programme, where I am the actual godhead! I just thought it was time to put it in its place!”

  She looked at me in disbelief, and then I couldn’t keep it up, and we both laughed. I hadn’t forgotten about Emily, and I never would, but simply could not afford negativity or self-recriminations and doubt. I would always love her, and in my mind I had enshrined her memory inside me forever, but I realised one thing. Each relationship has its shelf life, and once that’s gone, no matter how much we don’t want to face reality and avoid change, in the end, during the journey it is about our own development, and if it’s reached the time, the only thing to do is remember, keep loving, be grateful for the time you’ve shared the journey, but then move on. That is simply the way of things. The relief I felt in outwitting the programme and the sheer joy of being with Susan was a cathartic release for me, and I relaxed.

  There then occurred something that I could never have anticipated. Time stopped, and for a second, nothing existed! Absolutely nothing in this multiverse existed, as if the concept was weird that anything could exist! We were nothing. We weren’t there. It wasn’t even blankness. It was a feeling of loss which was heartbreaking, immediately followed by nothing, which was like an empty echo of the heartbreak like a diminishing ripple in a lake, diminishing to nothing.

  It seemed like the restart took forever, and for the first time in my long existence I knew what it was like to be truly dead, but then we were both alive, and we were still sat in the same position, looking at each other.

  “Oh my god! What was that?!!” Susan shouted, and I told her that the entire multiverse had been reset. We now had the job of collecting up the pieces. We materialised back to the command ship to the shock of everyone on board.

  ∆∆∆

  The retreat from their multiverse had been orderly and completely successful. It caught in Grovolk’s craw though. Many of their commanders were from this multiverse. This had been their base for thousands of years. They knew where every multiverse was from this location, and they had mapped every wormhole to every multiverse possible. Now, his mother told him they were minutes away from the entire multiverse resetting. Melville had won this war, but he would die in the next. So much for the rebirth! This would take them hundreds of years to recover from. He couldn’t believe that Melville and that stupid girl had achieved such a victory over them!

  He felt his mother calling, and then he was travelling through the wormhole to start again, and he vowed to himself that he would watch them both die in agony before he could rest!

  ∆∆∆

  We celebrated on board the flagship with all members of the Hand, of course without Emily now, and the leading generals. Everyone had experienced the reset, and many were unsettled by it. The next task was to map out our new multiverse domain, and there was extreme interest in where Earth and Gipluk were just to start with, and there was intense speculation about whether people would meet their doppelgängers, and what would happen. What would the differences be between them?! Could they rely on them to develop a fleet and defend their multiverse? Would it be like Earth when a significant amount of the population resented being changed back, and we had had to form a world police force?

  I ordered fleets to investigate all corners of the multiverse to establish not only existing civilisations which had been tainted by the Darknet, but also if there were any examples of peoples untouched yet by the Darknet.

  It was a huge undertaking, and involved the entire fleet and army, with the new technology civilisations looking after the security of our multiverse.

  Before that though, we held a ceremony to mourn the loss of Emily and the other alliance casualties of the assault.

  We were gathered at the new multiverse Outpost, named Trinity Base, in a large room filled with candles, and for the first time I did didn’t lead the ceremony. Susan took it, and talked about Emily’s tireless efforts working for the Hand, and her bravery in coping for so long without anyone knowing how she really felt. I sat there with tears streaming down my face. My thoughts of our life together when I worked for Sugarman and Hartnell’s, our joy at having Susan, our wonderful holidays in Torquay in England, even our time away in America. I remembered the whispered words of love as I said by goodbyes during the war, before going away on missions. It was too much. My body was a church of horror and self-disgust. It was cathartic I supposed, and for certain it would have to do! I didn’t have time to mourn any longer, and I certainly didn’t have time did the guilt.

  I missed the names being read out of those others who had lost their lives in defending the outpost. At the end, my legs seemed to be working on their own as we walked out of the ceremony and Susan embraced me, and our tears joined trails as we sobbed together.

  That night we talked and talked about the old days, and then made a pact that we had to put our old lives away into bed, and leave them forever. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, but
I did it. The guilt was the worst thing to put to bed, bug I did they as well. We had to be strong. We would be strong!

  Chapter Nineteen - Too many Dodds!

  The solar system was exactly the same, and as Dodds’ fleet moved behind Mars, they were faced with the blue-green world of Earth. Yvonne was aghast at the prospect of meeting herself, but they both knew the importance of recruiting all the planets into the alliance; albeit it in an alternate reality. They monitored radio broadcasts which were asking for calm, and they could see there was looting in the streets in all the major inhabited areas. They decided they needed troops on the ground, so fifteen heavy troop transports, with sixteen thousand troops in each were deployed in all the capital cities which were still broadcasting.

  Dodds and Yvonne materialised down to the site which corresponded to where they knew New York was, and the landscape was barren. The Earth had been reset, and it was a gloriously sunny day, and the birds were twittering, but on the ground, the signs of the Darknet were everywhere, and people were just walking, some lay dead in the streets. It was like they had turned into zombies.

  Dodds guessed that they had been under the yolk of the Darknet so long, they had forgotten to be human; they didn’t know how. People were starving, and they realised they had a huge job on their hands.

  A day had passed, and similar stories had been communicated across the multiverse. The indigenous people had to be trained to be who they had been before the Great Change. It was during this process of organisation in terms of providing food, facilities and training when admiral Hjop came to Dodds and whispered in his ear;

  “Sir, you better come and see this for yourself.” he said, looking at me with a haunted look which worried Dodds considerably.

  He followed the admiral, until they were in the main transitory holding tent, and stood in the corner were, Dodds, Yvonne, Emily, Mad Dog, and Mr Neme! He looked at them with his mouth open in utter disbelief, although when he thought about it, he supposed this had always been possible.

  His legs somehow worked, and he walked up to them and literally didn’t know what to do. They also looked at him in disbelief. Dodds couldn’t believe that Mr Neme and Emily were alive here, but where was Melville?

  “I suppose this was always likely when finding yourself in an alternate multiverse, but tell me, where is Mr Chu and Melville?” I asked them, and waited to see who would answer. Emily did in the end;

  “George died sixty eight years ago. He resisted the change and they killed him. Mr Chu died shortly after. It’s funny, because the Darknet overseer couldn’t imagine how he had done it, I guess he just gave up. Please tell me, is my George alive in your multiverse?” she asked me, quite emotionally, and I just looked at her.

  “Er, well, yes, he is alive. He isn’t quite how you remember him though I fear. There’s a lot to say, and we will need your help in running the Earth and ensuring humanity can take an integral part in the alliance.”

  “What alliance, what has happened, how have you achieved this?” my doppelganger said, and I could tell he really didn’t like not being the only Dodds in the room.

  “This will take an awful lot of explaining. I will arrange Melville to come and see you as soon as I can, I think he should explain to you what’s happened. It then occurred to me;

  “Where is Susan?” and Emily looked at me and said;

  “Susan, you can’t mean our daughter? She died at the hand of enemy agents back in 1938!”

  “I’m sorry to hear that!” I said, and I could see what was going to happen next.

  “Surely, she isn’t alive as well?!” she sobbed, and I could tell this was not going to be easy to explain.

  ∆∆∆

  I entered orbit with my fleet the next day, and Gipluk was in a state. The meditation caves had been abandoned for hundreds of years, and the inhabitants had forgotten who they were and what their culture was. It began to dawn on me what the multiverse programme had said. What had I done? This was now a huge job to reclaim what had been lost! It kept running around my head what the programme had said about ego. Was I being egotistical?

  The Giplukian council didn’t exist anymore of course, and the inhabitants had forgotten their rich history as storytellers. Oie arranger for a group of teachers to travel from Gripluk in our multiverse to retrace the Gipluk history and change its culture back on track.

  As I sat in the Chief Councilor’s Palace, which had been used by the Darknet overseer, Susan came to see me and expressed her concerns regarding how we were dealing with the mass apathy of the peoples released from the Darknet yolk.

  “We can’t come in and programme the peoples of this multiverse to be the same as ours. They may have had a different path, and if we come in and teach them the history from our multiverse, then all multiverses will be the same, and reality will grind to a halt!” she told me, and I began to see the problem. The causality net which relied on all the multiverses to truly explore every outcome, including many unexpected diversions needed to achieve the diversity for the rebirth to exist, relies on us not replicating each multiverse with the same model. As annoying as it is, we have to find people from each multiverse to engage with their new reality sufficiently for us to arrange for their tutelage of the rest of their people. It also occurred to me that this would need thousands of people to achieve this.

  Just as much as it was easy to ship in people from our multiverse to verse them in our multiverse’s history, it was also sowing the seeds of our destruction. I left it with the newly formed council of Gipluk, admittedly formed by Giplukians from our multiverse, with the job of finding such people which would allow their story to be the one told, and not the one from our multiverse.

  Susan and I were not looking forward to the wholly unwelcome experience of meeting our doppelgängers from this Multiverse on Earth. Although initially I was relieved that both Susan and I had not made it in this reality, the really tricky fact was that Emily had, and was alive! In addition, it would be very awkward, and we couldn’t imagine what was going to be said, but it would be great to see Mr Neme again.

  It became time to travel instantaneously there, as we could connect with other members of the Hand, so Susan and I joined hands, and after five seconds, we were in a campsite in some mountains, and we were sat around a campsite with the smell of coffee in my nostrils and sizzling steak on a skillet.

  I could see them all, and I was literally robbed of words. Immediately Emily was in my arms, and it was so good to feel her close up me again, smelling her hair, feeling her heart beating against my own. It felt so wrong, and I knew it wasn’t my Emily, but tears fell down our faces. She then looked at Susan and stopped, frozen in her tracks. She went utterly white in her face, and then tremulously held out a hand towards Susan.

  “Hello Mother.” Susan spoke, and immediately they were in each other’s arms, stroking and touching to see if each other were real. It felt so right, and yet at the same time so wrong!

  Strangely I could tell which were our Hand members from those from this new multiverse. There was a subtle difference in their resonance signature, and I looked on the scene without the foggiest idea of what to say. Eventually our Dodds started with the introductions;

  “Obviously you’ve met Emily and Emily, you have met Melville and Susan. Er, I’ve told them who you are and our story. Obviously this is Dodds and Yvonne, Mad Dog and Mr Neme.” he said, introducing each one as if I wouldn’t recognise them.

  “It appears they followed our exact paths earlier on, and destroyed Mr B and ended up immortal. Without the anomaly of you being the godhead in our reality, SeeMore didn’t exist, and as much as they tried to intervene, they could not stop the inevitable development of the great change and the Darknet occurring here, so that’s when our paths went their separate ways. Thankfully the resonance stone survived thanks to Mr Chu and Mr Neme burying it deep enough to be protected, and their power of the Thousand comes direct from that, but isn’t as strong as ours, for obvious reasons.” he s
aid, and then left the rest for me, which I was sort of expecting.

  “Even though you’re different, you are still members of the hand. I have invested in you the same powers the rest of the hand has, and I am anxious that you join us in our battle against the Darknet and our journey towards the rebirth. It is of course, your choice, but if you are agreeable, than you will play a key role in developing all worlds so they are at least able to defend themselves in the future, and also we need you initially to restore Earth to order, give it military rule until it can stand on its own two feet, and ensure the culture of this Earth is not lost. Do you accept my offer?” I said, desperately hoping they would.

  There was a series of ‘yes’ and nodding heads, and then the dreaded, but predictable question occurred;

  “What about us my darling?” Emily said, with tears running down her face.

  I looked at her and my heart broke. I couldn’t speak. This was IMPOSSIBLE!

  Susan spoke for me;

  “It can’t be allowed to happen. I’m really sorry Emily, but you are from a different reality, and I can tell you I’m getting messages from the reality construct now, and even though both Melville and I are alive, we are not meant to exist together, and the more time that happens, the more a significant and fatal lack of cohesion will take place on the causality net, and reality will cease to function. As much as we are making you like us, we should only communicate telepathically. From a certain perspective, we shall all be together as one in the rebirth, but for now, you must have your reality, and we shall have ours. With all the multiverses we shall be encountering, laws must be put in place to stop any interaction between connected beings within the reality, but from alternate realities. This is the biggest challenge we face in making this work, and whatever happens, this law must be obeyed, otherwise all will be lost.”