Echoes of Worlds Past

by Nicholas Read

  For example, they had been shown that recorded history extended back only fifty centuries6. Go beyond that and all science offered was crude conjecture dressed as fact.

  The earliest Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian and pre-dynastic Egyptian settlements first appear around 3,200BC with writing, language, medicine and basic technology in full bloom. Instead of there being any evidence of progress from the basic to the advanced, from the stone age to the space age, these ancient races and their contemporaries across the globe had begun advanced. It was their later descendants who fell into primitivism. This is the great secret of history. The first people weren’t so much a beginning of civilization as they were a legacy of an older, more advanced origin.

  With this knowledge, the Longcoats also learned of the Four Ages of Man7 that began when the Builders walked the earth and taught science to those they transplanted from other worlds. It was a science that bordered on the magical, based on the manipulation of photons and bosons, a fusion of light and dark matter through which anything that could be thought or spoken could be made real.

  A spacefaring economy had boomed under a pantheon of kings who lived incredibly long and pushed the race to the heavens. There, glorying in itself and demanding self-rule away from the Builders’ gentle yoke, the human race had distanced itself from the intended path, and failed to achieve the measure of its creation.

  Yes, in the annals of the Longcoats was the true history of Earth, written by those who had observed it firsthand. The Cassandra Foundation was that old.

  And as one Age of Man rose and fell short of the Builders’ exacting standards, the end of each Age had been marked by cataclysms that wiped clean the face of the planet, melting all trace of civilization into the magma or sinking it under the sea.

  Handfuls of survivors were plucked offworld by the Builders and kept in store to reseed the race. They looked down from above at their homeworld to see skies darken, oceans boil, and once familiar mountains and valleys turn upside-down as the planet rebooted itself in a process that took hundreds of years to complete. Then the last humans of one Age became the first humans of the next. And the experiment continued.

  For the Builders were looking for something specific: the appropriate balance of hubris and humility, originality and obedience, before a race could be entrusted with all that the Builders had, and be schooled as worthy equals. For this was the manner by which the Builders procreated: by ascending whole worlds at a time, both those living at the end of a planet’s cycle, and all who had spawned them from the first day.

  But first, those worlds needed to pass this test, so specific and complex that it could only be run across millennia. In fact, it had already run for four rounds on this Earth, four Ages, each spanning some 6,500 years.

  The current and final round would end at the Northern Hemisphere’s winter solstice of 2012.8

  This was called by some, the Line of Judgment.

  Were the human race to awaken to its true purpose and prove it could live as the Builders had taught in the beginning—in harmony with nature and each other—humanity as a whole would take its place in a much larger galactic family. In the first Age, a Scepter of immense power had been handed down from the Builders, a tuning fork designed to keep the conduit between heaven and earth open, and grant stability to the several dimensions that called Earth home. Were it to be found still in one piece, still active, and still held by one of suitable qualities in the end as in the beginning, the experiment would be deemed a success and humanity would be entrusted to rise from childhood on a single world to adolescence across many, all part of the pattern Builders had followed for eternities past.

  But already three Ages had fallen on this Earth, and the current, last generation looked set to fare no better, despite attempts by the Cassandrans to nudge the Prime world.

  The French girl Jax pondered this often. What must it be like to face the end of the world? Did those left on the surface look upon the blue sky of the Prime dimension on their final day, mortals in the mortal plane, then suddenly find themselves in darkness? Or were they immediately shifted to a new heaven and earth, built in situ with the same lands, the same cities and artifacts, yet Elsewhere, no longer Prime, no longer joined to the cosmos at large. This is what the neohistories told her had happened to the Fae’er, and that holding the remnant peoples of past Ages is what the other dimensions were built for.

  These archives claimed those who were shunted to a parallel Earth were not ghosts, but experienced their world as physical, made of the same materials and vibrating at the same harmonic frequency as every other particle of matter in that place. Even if two people were to stand in exactly the same footprints in two different dimensions, neither would be aware of the other, except perhaps as a chill up the spine, or a fleeting glimpse of a misty shadow here, a flash of strange light there.

  Across dimensions that served as different domains, kingdoms, holding tanks, cells (call them what you will), Earth housed several races at the same time: those who were born, lived and died in the corporeal world of Earth Prime, and those who had been present at the end of the three former Ages, no longer aging, no longer dying, no longer creating new life; separate purgatories made palatable by the fact that existence continued, flora still grew, fauna still roamed, technology still evolved, and the sun still rose and dipped each day. It was life, though a life with limitations.

  Those trapped in that twilight of existence may well have felt they’d found their private heaven when the change occurred. The books didn’t say, but Jax pondered in her quiet moments what it must be like to wake in a paradise, think you might be in whatever heaven you had hoped for, and then realize you were still bound to the Earth, neither alive or dead. She wondered how quickly realization would dawn that the river of life had dammed up, the mighty roar of mortality become a muted trickle.

  Dammed. Damned. Was it the same thing? How does a person deal with that knowledge?

  She wondered also why it was that the membranes that kept these dimensions apart seemed to be breaking down with increasing speed. Some voices in the hallways of the Chimney blamed the physics labs of the world9 as the likely culprits, engaged as they were in energy experiments that chipped away at the dimensional seals. Other voices blamed Earth passing through a cluster of dark matter objects in space10, where an increase in gravitic torque was drawing new eruptions and tsunamis on the ground and solar flares and sunspots11 in the heavens. With so many signs of change in these physically observable systems, who could say how interdimensional barriers were being affected?

  It was these lapses in dimensional integrity that had kept her and her compatriots so busy of late. During the past 20,000 years or so, Earth had been home to creatures and people both familiar and downright bizarre. It seemed the Builders sometimes tried new stock, new combinations each time the Prime matrix was rebooted, and when any of these non-corporeal beings—human or otherwise—bled through from these holding worlds, the Longcoats were there to help them home again before pathogens, biology, or technology that didn’t belong had a chance to leak through.

  More than one pandemic scare had started in recent years as a result of a Longcoat team failing to contain a breach in time. These had all been given exotic names like SARS, bird flu, the H1N1 swine flu and so forth by governments and media unable to account for their sudden outbreaks and alien genetics.

  Jax had helped hundreds of animals back where they belonged. Often they were docile, disoriented. Some looked identical to forest creatures of the present Age. Others looked like they’d stepped out of Hell’s Bestiary. Looping them with nets and herding them back through a seam was simple enough.

  But at other times a predator came through, like those lumbering aquatic beasts that fit a category they called Krakens, or the many varieties of agile Runners that were most lethal, or the Bats, Moles, Screamers and a dozen other designations they tracked, tried to return home and reluctantly destroyed if they couldn’t.

  Occasional
ly the visitor was a human, someone who had lived on Earth thousands of years ago in the flesh, now continuing in a facsimile of Earth. The languages never matched up, word roots being completely alien, and so Jax gleaned nothing from them about conditions on their version of Earth. These people were often bemused to be surrounded by what to them seemed to be spirits, unaware that it was they who were non-corporeal. She wondered if, when they returned to their own plane, they remembered their visit as a dream.

  Naturally occurring vortices had always existed around the globe12, where the membranes that divided the several dimensions stretched thinner than tracing paper. Most of the time it was not possible to step between worlds.

  But these vortices had other uses.

  With the right tools, people could step in one vortice and out another, skating thousands of miles across the planet’s surface through what were known as Landhatches, like wormholes embedded in the crust of the planet.

  Such tunnels could also be opened away from the naturally occurring leylines using artificial devices called Holepunches that latched onto the nearest conduit and served to slingshot the bearer onto it. Holepunches were the Longcoats’ preferred means of patrolling the planet, and all of the planet’s sixty-two Landhatches were patrolled to stop people stumbling through the seams by accident in either direction. But those occurrences were rare. It was the random incursions at coordinates that should be thick enough to keep everything in its place that were perplexing. And these events were happening with increasing regularity.

  Standing beside Jax and opposite Lion as she shuffled around a steaming food trolley, the blonde Tucker looked across at the younger boy.

  “You know, if he’s lost and this memory thing is a lasting condition, then he’s a perfect addition. Especially with that talent for shredding the Kraken. Not a bad looking little hottie, either.” She smiled. “Have you considered keeping him here in Neverland and teaching this Lost Boy the ropes? I could show him around.”

  Demonstrating that in addition to his other qualities he also had excellent hearing, young Eastwood rose from his meal and joined their table.

  “What’s more important to you? My being lost, being a Kraken killer, or being a hottie?”

  Tucker blushed and turned back to serving herself.

  “We’re all lost.” Lion waved expansively at the people milling around. “Some of us are hotter than others,” gesturing to himself, “But all of us are outcasts. Orphans, runaways, kids from the projects—the Foundation prefers us that way. We’re easier to train, we come with no preconceived notions about our place in the world, we’re not worried about how our families might react to what we’re doing—any of this sounding familiar?”

  Helping himself to a sandwich from Eastwood’s plate, the group leader began eating. If the newcomer resented the theft he did not show it. Lion was almost disappointed in the lack of reaction.

  “There are other groups like us charged with defending our borders. Not just in Britain. We have groups in every country.”

  Eastwood nodded, sat quietly, and swallowed his food before speaking again. “Are you always so open telling strangers your secrets?”

  For the first time, Lion smiled broadly. “I’m pretty sure you’re not much of a threat, kid, your trick last night notwithstanding. And you display a certain ignorance that makes me think you wouldn’t know what to do with what you’ve seen here even if you could find someone to listen to you topside.”

  Taking no umbrage, the younger boy considered this. “Maybe I am ignorant, but I have a feeling I’m a fast learner.” He stared icily at the older boy, cold enough (much to Lion’s surprise) to make him feel uncomfortable. “What if I decide to sing you a song with my magic mouth?” He drew a deep breath and opened wide.

  Jax and Lion exchanged a look, and she leered menacingly at the newcomer. “Just to err on the safe side, écrous engourdie,” she smiled, casually raising a small metal device to his ear, “we’d have to bore a hole through your brain with this.”

  Eastwood paused, straining to see what she was holding. Unable to, he went along with what he hoped was a ruse, nodding until he could bring his face into a three-quarter turn to face her better. “Makes sense,” he muttered. Now from the corner of his eye he could read a sequence of letters etched across the top of the device that Jax was pointing at his skull. Without hesitation he asked, “N-O-K-I-A. What does that mean then? No Outside Kid Is Allowed?”

  Jax did a double take and Lion found himself impressed. The new boy might suffer from blanket amnesia—but it was an indisputably cool amnesia. He pressed Jax’s arm gently downwards and kept his eyes on hers even as he spoke to the newcomer.

  “No, mate. Nokia means No One Knows It All, kid. Right, Jax? No one knows it all.”

  The French girl just scowled at him as she pocketed her ‘weapon’. “I know enough to be cautious when someone doesn’t add up.” With this, she plucked another sandwich from Eastwood’s plate and sat back, chewing furiously under a dark frown, her eyes never leaving Eastwood for a second.

  By now Tucker had piled her tray with a teetering stack of cheese sandwiches and a deep bowl of orange tomato soup. It was plain to see how she had acquired her Long-coat name as she sat down.

  “See,” she told Lion as she slid onto the bench, “I told you he’d work out.”

  “Too soon to be sure,” Lion muttered non-committally, and the group fell into a contemplative silence broken only by the kind of slurps and snaps that are unique to teens at feeding time.

  Glancing up from his tray while the others ate, Eastwood whispered next to him at Castle, “You really drill people who find out about you?”

  Castle smirked. “No, not even the monsters where we can help it. For people who see us in action, short-term memory gets wiped. We have gloves that carry a compound for that. Don’t worry about Jax. She just has a nasty streak.” He traced his finger from his eye to his heart, mimicking Jax’s scar. “Either that or she likes you.”

  Now mopping the stew from his plate, Eastwood noticed that the murmurs of conversation and sounds of digestion were faded altogether. Looking up from his food he saw that his companions, even Lion at the other table, were sitting up straighter.

  A newcomer was approaching.

  The first thing that struck Eastwood was that the Eurasian man was just that: a man in his late twenties, and not a teenager. Though not especially big, he carried himself with an easy physical grace that suggested he could take care of himself in any setting. When he stopped in front of Lion and Jax, both of them stiffened without actually snapping to formal attention. He was not looking at them, however.

  “Who’s this?” he asked.

  Eastwood swallowed as he lowered his fork. Lion replied for him.

  “Potential recruit, sir. Apparent amnesiac. Has demonstrated some—unusual abilities. Might make a good team member—with proper training.”

  The man nodded, and tapped a finger to the tip of his cap. “I heard about Rosen. Shame. Jax, relieve Hummer in the Toymaster role, and stay on as Sniffer.”

  He gazed down at the silent Eastwood. “Heard about what you did too. Interesting trick without using tech to pull it off. We’ll talk more about that at length.”

  Then to the others: “You did right bringing this one off the street. Keep him close. Real close. I’ll come back to you with a more permanent protocol.” Moving past, he disappeared around a row of compact shelving.

  It took Eastwood a moment to find his voice. “Who,” he asked evenly, “was that?”

  “Monarch,” Tucker explained between mouthfuls, “is head of the UK cell.”

  “His name . . . is he your king?”

  Laughing. “No, nothing like that. It’s what they called him. You notice his cap? Never takes it off. When he was a young Longcoat he fell near a seam his group was fighting to close, and his head went through. When they yanked him back his skull had a ring straight around it, with all the hair burned off. Never grew back. It looks ki
nd of like a crown.”

  Eastwood considered. “So you call him Monarch. Right. But if he was already one of you—didn’t he already have a name?”

  Her reply was forestalled by Hummer’s arrival. Foot-high sandwich in hand, the Russian lumbered into the conversation, brandishing what looked like a glass phone with a diamond faceplate. He spoke apologetically.

  “Sorry for intrude, guys, but we is just assigned another gig. They send me down to tell you.”

  Lion and Tucker studied the readout on what was decidedly a more advanced piece of technology than a mobile telephone.

  “Crap,” she growled. “Another incursion.” She glanced over at Lion. “Also nowhere near a normal vortice point.”

  Lion glanced up from tapping at a metal buckle on his coat sleeve, his eyes sharing her concern. “If this keeps happening we’re in danger of the dimensions collapsing onto each other. Drill too many holes into anything and it gets real unstable.”

  Then the right forearm panel on his coatsleeve went transparent and lit from within. Words and images flashed on it, briefing Lion on his team’s new mission.

  “All right everybody! It’s still before dawn, so we’ll head out and see how fast we can wrap this. Bolt the rest of what you’re eating and check your toys with Jax. We don’t have much time before sunrise and you all know the admonishments: no activity in daylight.”

  “What happens in daylight?” Eastwood spoke as he rose from where he had been sitting.

  Castle had come up beside him. “Most beings from the other dimensions stay invisible even in direct sunlight. As they lock into phase here they can still wreak havoc, bump into things, get in the way of traffic and the like. At night, we pull out all stops to send them home. But the Foundation absolutely forbids us to pursue them where our actions might be observed. We wait, we track, and we target them the next night. It’s not ideal, but we follow the Cassandran’s rules.” He pointed a finger at Eastwood’s face. “Always remember that.”

  Around him the others were handing Jax their heavier devices. She dropped each into its own quantum pocket within her coat, and tapped descriptions of the inventory on each folder that blinked on a wrist device. Out in the field they would draw gear from her like she was a mobile warehouse. In turn she connected her own coat to the central quartermaster store inside the Chimney. If they encountered a situation her communal pool of equipment couldn’t handle, her coat could reach back and draw out other toys. This system of centralized supply made sure everything coming out of a Toymaster’s supply went back in. They couldn’t afford to leave anything for civvies to find. Not with the rigs they sometimes found themselves packing.