Class Fives: Origins

by Jon H. Thompson

  “Oh dear,” he said, “I hadn’t factored this in. Pity. Might have been an interesting distraction. Oh well.”

  He suddenly straightened.

  “I’m afraid I’m rather busy at the moment,” he said, pleasantly, “So if you will excuse me…”

  He turned back to the computer sitting on the desk before him and reached to press a key.

  “Don’t!” John barked, pushing the gun out an inch further, as if to emphasize his determination.

  Montgomery continued tapping the keys, casting a sidelong glance up at where John stood.

  “I must say,” he responded, almost absently, his main attention fixed on the computer, “I hadn’t expected a variable like you. I pictured this transpiring quietly, naturally. Throwing in the last moment arrival of… What are you, are you some sort of hero?”

  John couldn’t think how to respond so he simply shifted his feet and gripped the gun tighter.

  “Well,” Montgomery continued, dismissively, “Whatever you are, your timely intervention is almost cliché, don’t you think? Like some archetypal myth.”

  He stopped and looked fully at John, genuinely curious.

  “Is that what you are?” he inquired. “The fulfillment of prophecy? Are you the returning Christ?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” John muttered, his exasperation growing.

  Montgomery seemed momentarily startled, but then smiled, turning his attention back to his computer.

  “Well, clearly not the Christ, with a vocabulary like that. Never mind,” he said pleasantly. “I would very much enjoy a nice, leisurely discussion about all sorts of topics… religion, philosophy. But as you aren’t real and I am rather engaged in something at the moment…”

  “Oh, I’m real, all right,” John replied, hoping he didn’t sound as perplexed as he felt.

  “No, you’re not,” Montgomery interrupted lightly. “You’re just more of this ridiculous fantasy, this so-called universe. Just another distraction attempting to keep me wrapped up in this illusion. A reflection of a system that is rather embarrassing in its obviousness.”

  He raised a finger and stabbed it into the keyboard with a dramatic finality. The computer beeped, and Montgomery straightened, a satisfied smile on his sagging face.

  “There,” he said, pleased, “Now we just let the charge build up in the coil and nature will take its course.”

  “What did you just do?” John growled, alarm starting to tug at him.

  Montgomery fixed on him, his expression tickling the edge of puzzlement before nestling into warm civility.

  “Locked out the sequence, of course,” he responded. “It’s all automatic now. More a matter of… well, physics, than anything else.”

  “Shut it down,” John ordered, once again giving the gun a snap in Montgomery’s direction.

  Montgomery regarded him curiously.

  “You are rather strange, though. Nothing I would have expected. I would have expected some Hercules, all muscles and will power. Not some scrawny nonentity.”

  “I said,” John growled, now starting to feel the annoyance bubble within him, “Shut it down.”

  Montgomery regarded him a moment.

  “But I can’t, I thought you understood that. This terminal has been disconnected. The proverbial train has left the station. It’s on its way to criticality. You’re welcome to shoot a hole in this thing,” he said, pleasantly, indicating the computer, “But that wouldn’t have any effect on the event. That’s in the hands of nature now.”

  “We’ll stop it,” John said firmly, hoping the words were somewhere close to the truth.

  “Will you?” Montgomery asked, smiling. “How?”

  “We know where you put it, this thing that’s going to go off. We’ll get to it.”

  “Ah,” Montgomery said, giving a small, understanding nod. “And you think you can… what… blow it up or something?”

  “If we have to.”

  Montgomery pondered this a moment, then seemed to dismiss it.

  “Well, go right ahead, if it makes you feel better. But that will have very little effect, I’m afraid. The event will occur in a very few minutes now, no matter what anyone does to try and prevent it.”

  “We’ll see. Meanwhile, you and I will wait right here until my backup arrives.”

  “Backup?” Montgomery responded, curious once again. “You have others coming? How interesting. A cataclysmic battle. Now that would add a nice touch. As for me, I intend to go up and watch it happen. You can join me, if you wish. We can cross over together.”

  “Cross over where?” John almost whined, his annoyance building. “What are you talking about?”

  Montgomery regarded him probingly for a long moment before responding.

  “To the real world, of course,” he said. “To reality.”

  “What reality?”

  “The reality,” Montgomery said gently. “The only one that matters. The one outside all this. Surely you don’t actually believe that any of this is real, do you? Even if you are only a phantasm, stirred up by the infinite cause-effect of this idiotic system, surely you must have the capacity to see it. When you look at yourself in the mirror, don’t you get that disturbing, sinking feeling at that… creature beyond the glass? Does it make any sort of sense to you? Those billions of atoms, that meaningless ripple in space-time that you’re looking at? That collection of matter, dancing like a puppet through this… endless dream? Doesn’t it break your heart to look at that… thing that is supposed to be you? Don’t you just want it to end? To wake up? To get out of this nightmare?”

  John felt suddenly empty, as if his soul had been scooped out, leaving a meaningless shell.

  “You do know,” he said gently, almost tenderly, “That you’re crazy, right? I mean, you get that, don’t you?”

  Montgomery regarded him thoughtfully.

  “The insanity of a dream,” he replied. “But it’s time we woke up. It’s time we went back to where we belong. Time we went home.”

  The smile he offered was that of a benevolent deity toward the least of his creatons.

  “It’s a pity, really,” he said, almost sadly, “That this is all they’ll ever get. All they’ll ever be, all those artificial people out there. Just a flicker of energy dancing across the face of some infinite ocean. Just to wink out. Utterly meaningless. I do feel sorry for them.”

  “You really are nuts,” John said quietly, feeling a strange calm begin to settle over him. “You’re as nutty as that other guy was, what’s his name, that Russian guy, Korin.”

  Montgomery smiled, his head dipping slightly, and slowly shook.

  “Karillan,” he said, almost gently. “Alexander Karillan.”

  “Yeah, that guy,” John snapped. “I heard about him. Tried to blow up the world, managed just to flash-fry himself.”

  Montgomery stood, head bowed a long moment, then spoke quietly.

  “Not himself,” he said, almost wearily, “But a considerable number of others.”

  Slowly he raised his head and John was startled to see the cold intelligence etched across the glistening eyes.

  “I was in Moscow when it happened,” Montgomery said. He gave a sour smile. “Some government bureaucrat decided to question me about our budget. Well, it was a government project. A government that very much wanted yet another ridiculously destructive weapon.”

  “What the fuck are you babbling about?” John almost whispered.

  Montgomery’s brows rose a moment in confusion before settling.

  “I thought you knew,” he said mildly. “I thought that’s why you were here. I am Alexander Karillan.”

  John simply stared back, his face blank. Montgomery sighed, giving his head another weary shake.

  “He can’t believe it. Ah well.”

  He fixed on John once more, his attitude becoming a bit more stern, like a teacher about to impart a very basic lesson.

  “It was my work,” he said, briskly. “My wh
ole life. They spent millions on my project because I told them I would deliver them a death ray.”

  He barked a brittle chuckle.

  “Can you believe that? A death ray, of all things. But then I couldn’t tell them what I was really going to do. That would have made it impossible. A true dilemma.”

  “And what are you really trying to do?” John said sharply.

  Montgomery again fixed on him, and after a moment his eyes rolled.

  “My God,” he sighed, “It’s like communicating with an amoeba.”

  He centered his attention on John once more, like a man determined to make a too-tight nut move.

  “Pay attention,” he said sharply. “My work will allow me to rip a hole in this so-called universe and allow the true universe, the only real universe, to flood in. We’ll not only kick open the doors of Heaven, we’ll drown in the deluge of its light. And I’ll finally be able to wake up from this place.”

  He glared at John, then began to relax a bit.

  “And frankly, if that stupid Moscow functionary hadn’t demanded I come make a report on how I was supposedly wasting all that money, and if that asinine military idiot hadn’t insisted my team conduct the experiment while I was away, then I would not be here. I would be dead, as everyone believes.”

  He sighed once more and seemed to quiet.

  “When I heard what had happened, I knew it was pointless to try and continue in such a ludicrous system. So I took my blueprints and my notes…”

  He gave an almost boyish grin.

  “And some other scientific notes and plans I happened to get my hands on, and decided to let Dr. Alexander Karillan stay dead in the blast. It’s another mark of how dysfunctional that place was that my death was accepted by everyone, even the idiot I’d been talking to in Moscow when the accident occurred. Yes, even him, because some report told him I had died in the explosion. Can you imagine?”

  He sighed once more and shifted his weight slightly, as if the mere act of standing still was wearing on him.

  “When I sold those other people’s work, the plans I’d brought with me, I needed an identity of some kind for all that money to nestle in. I thought Walter Montgomery sounded appropriately Protestant. Don’t you think? So Caucasian. And why not. I was born in the Caucuses, after all.”

  He favored John with a warm smile before rising to his full height, straightening his shoulders and regarding John seriously.

  “Now, I really must get upstairs so I don’t miss the show. So if you don’t wish to join me, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to delete you.”

  Montgomery’s eyes flicked to a point over John’s shoulder and he gave a slight nod.

  “If you would be so kind?” he said to what John instantly realized was the bald man who had been standing behind him for some moments now.

  John heard the click of something, a metal on metal kind of sound, a gun-hammer-being-cocked kind of sound, and didn’t even try to form an image to match it.

  He jumped.

  Forward.

  As far as he could.

  He landed, already whirling, his finger already jerking the trigger of the gun, only to find that it wouldn’t move. The safety had indeed been on.

  But as he jerked to a halt, his body tense, he realized he was alone.

  He felt himself begin to relax and then the dizziness hit him. He had jumped too soon since the last time, and he steadied himself, riding out the worst of the vertigo. He looked around the room.

  On the desk was the computer. He moved quickly around until the screen came into view, and jerked to a halt. It contained a complex division of smaller boxes, each displaying a fluctuating graph or whirling sequence of numbers. But what caught his eye was the graph occupying the center of the screen. The one that showed a long, almost angry-looking red bar, and beneath it the dimly flashing words "terminal event: 00:09:33:XX” The last digits were whirling by, but the seconds were ticking down. Nine minutes, he realized. Oh shit, he thought.

  “Okay,” John said aloud, attempting to calm himself.

  What to do? What had they told him? He wouldn’t be able to stop it from here. Whatever button could influence the event from here had already been pushed, and now it was just watching from afar. But it contained data, and part of that data was the event’s specific location. But he had to find it.

  John slid into the rickety chair and pulled it up close to the desk, leaning into the computer.

  He grabbed the mouse and maneuvered it up to the menu, rolling it slowly along the many selections, his eyes scanning each long drop-down list.

  Come on, he urged, come on, there had to be some simple directory somewhere.

  He steeled himself to carefully absorb each choice and dismiss it. He didn’t have time to backtrack if he missed something.

  For an instant he had the insane thought that this was rather ridiculous, that at this point, so close to the end, one way or another, the turn of fate all came down to him reading a list as fast as possible.

  Then he spotted it. A menu choice for a directory.

  He clicked it, and instantly the screen of graphs was replaced by a long list of names and what looked like coordinates.

  He saw listings for tracking facilities of some kind, and even the location of this very bunker, but nothing that seemed to indicate where the nexus of the event might be.

  Then, at the very bottom, he saw it. Coordinates beneath a single large “X”.

  He quickly memorized them, running them through his mind again and again, then bolted from behind the desk, skidding for a moment on a sheaf of discarded papers littering the floor, and rushed from the room.

  He was back at the elevator in moments, stabbing at the button, willing the descending box to him desperately.

  Keeping a finger jammed on the button, he dug the radio out from behind his belt, fumbled it around and switched it on.

  “Hello! Hello, can you read me? Hello?”

  But there was only a low static. Too far underground, he realized sourly.

  At last the doors opened and he threw himself into the elevator. He stabbed the button for the upper landing as the doors slid silently closed.

  Why don’t they put gears in these things, he thought bitterly.

  He tried the radio again but got no response.

  They’d better at least be listening, he told himself. And even if they are, what can they reasonably do? Was there even enough time?

  A sudden calm flooded over him.

  Yes, he realized. Or there could be. Maybe more than enough.

  But it would require something new. Something he’d never attempted. Something that might kill him.

  He was yanked from his thoughts as the doors slid open, and then he was running across the elevator lobby and out the open door of the small building.

  He slowed to a jog a dozen paces from the structure, then pulled to a stop. His eyes began to adjust to the moonlight and let his mind reach out, probing, seeking.

  The night was dead still, cool and pleasant. The sky was a deep well of flickering stars in all their sweeping majesty. It was the perfect night.

  He raised the radio and punched the talk button.

  Dr. Montgomery stood in the open wilderness of this desolate place a hundred yards further away, the bald man close by.

  “I must say,” he said to his companion, “It is quite intricately constructed, this reality. I must have a talk with the designer. I wonder what sort of being it will be.”

  He smiled.

  “I wonder what sort of being I’ll be. So much to discover.”

  He tossed a glance at the other man, taking him in. So nondescript. So ordinary. Just a male, average height, average build. Not even distinguished enough to rate a proper history. Oh, he was sure that if he went looking for one he’d find it, fully constructed and forming a logical sequence of events running back to his birth and beyond. But none of that mattered. And so it simply didn’t exist. The man was furniture, an appliance
, to be used and then discarded. Everything in this fantasy was, he thought. This remarkable prison for his consciousness.

  He thought back to the day he’d finally realized how this construction really worked. The motion of sub-atomic particles and quantum foam. All of it just the empty bumping of bits and piece in a cold, mindless, meaningless mechanism, with nothing of true substance. It was a distraction from the pure truth that lay beyond it. It was a cage with invisible bars and infinite expanse. It was only here for him to get himself the hell out of. Well, he thought with a wry smile, as prison breaks go, this one would be a doozie.

  He turned back to scan the low horizon, seeing clearly the separation line where the stars ended in the utter blackness of the ground.

  He raised his arm and glanced down at his watch.

  Here we go, he thought, and lifted his gaze to the horizon.

  John sensed rather than saw it, and it jerked his attention up from the radio on which he had finally managed to get a connection. The voice on the other end had at last replied with that single word.

  “Copy.”

  Then it happened.

  A wave of something, some indistinct urgent thing of some kind, yanked his attention toward the horizon, as if it had bypassed his eyes and ears and skin and impacted something directly in his brain.

  Then the light arrived, like an explosion of fire, welling up across the whole horizon, ascending, growing, approaching. It wasn’t flame, or what his mind told him was light. It was something new. Some white, all-pervasive something, like milk exploding into a glass.

  The ground beneath him lurched sharply, a single deep jolt upward. But it did not drop. Around him the ground grunted deeply, squealing and tearing, splitting open and vomiting up great fountains of rock and dirt as it began tearing itself to pieces. And it kept going up, rising, expanding, splitting, as the planet itself began to blow apart.

  He had one stunning moment to realize what was happening, then slammed his eyes shut and jumped. No, not jumped. Dove. Ran screaming. Escaped.

  And instant later he was falling, tumbling, floating in cold silence.

  He hit the ground hard, bouncing slightly, feeling things inside him break. But he didn’t allow himself to come to rest. Despite the pain he struggled to pull himself upward, at least to his knees, or he would pass out and the ending he had just witnessed would come.