But the images were there enough for me to get the gist of what had happened. I saw Fanny and Jake go to Dublin. And then my dad with them but no longer the Zombie Man.
It was hard to watch without feeling a ripping tide of emotion within me. I thought I was as good as dead to him. I had convinced myself that he didn’t care enough to look for me.
I had been so wrong. I could see in the replay of a life that had happened without me that he did care. All he could think of was saving me. And he was helping out Jake and Fanny to boot. Go figure!
As the scenes played out, it felt like they were moving faster and faster until at last I saw my dad and Fanny and Jake holed up in a little building at CERN. Then Dughall’s smirky face running into the portal he created. Then the images became downright frightening. The more I watched the more it felt like I was watching it all unfold in real time.
Mere seconds after Dughall ran through the portal, the portal exploded, ripping apart the magnificent giant magnet that had created it. The whole collider was in danger of a cascade of explosions as those particles that were accelerating through it and colliding with each other were backed up in a large packet, much larger than was ever anticipated by the designers of the machine or its experiments.
The anomaly – the portal – created by Dughall rapidly dissipated itself and became a nonfactor. The only thing to contend with there was the fire that raged due to the explosion. But up the stream from super magnet number two it was a different story.
As an observer of a story that had already unfolded, I watched in horror as the particle beams, now with many times more particles than expected, collided in collector number one. Conspiracy theorists had warned of the possibility of black holes being formed by the LHC, but the scientists had quickly dismissed any concerns. The scientists had said that because they were colliding extremely small bits of particles, black holes that would form, if any, would be extremely small and would basically burn themselves out before they became larger than a subatomic particle.
No worries.
Apparently not one of those scientists had anticipated the possibility that some idiot like Dughall would not only be able to successfully infiltrate their security, but also use their machine to create a portal to another dimension and create the conditions ripe for the formation of a black hole worth worrying about. Time to worry.
I watched in horror as the hole became larger and larger, sucking in the matter of the machine that had created it. Up top, I saw my dad working feverishly with the other scientists to come up with a solution to stop it while Fanny and Jake sat in the corner of the main control room looking on worriedly.
“Come on guys, it’s now or never. There has to be a way,” he said. “This thing is getting away from us.”
“We know Liam, but there just isn’t enough energy left in this thing to pulse it again,” offered one of the scientists.
“What else can we use, goddammit?”
They were all silent for a moment. Even through the vacuum of space and time I swear I could hear their brain cells vibrating with thought.
“What about anti-matter?” offered a tentative voice.
“What? Who said that?” said Liam.
“Me Sir.” It was none other than Mr. Ted Schaeffer.
“Anti-matter. Okay, thoughts. Could it work?”
“Well, theoretically it could work,” said a scientist. “But the problem is, if we put together all the anti-matter ever produced on the whole planet and were able somehow to get it down there – which we couldn’t do without dying because the temperatures down there are still -200° – well, it wouldn’t be enough to do diddly.”
That was the last anyone heard from Mr. Ted Schaeffer. He melded back into his computer station.
I watched in horror as my dad along with the other scientists worked feverishly for a solution. Soon, the building started to shake. The electricity was going out. Alarms of every kind went off – sirens and bells and ascending alarms.
I could do nothing but stare and cry as I watched the entirety of CERN collapse into a hole – a black hole the size of a large town and growing exponentially by the minute. My dad was lost. Fanny and Jake. . . lost.
No kid should see both their parents die.
My tears flowed in a torrent down my face. Lost. All was lost to me. I was too late.
“Why the tears, child?”
“I’ve lost them all,” I hiccupped.
“Oh goodness dear one! Lost? You’ve lost nothing. Do you not remember anything that I’ve shown you? Anything that you’ve learned here?”
“You mean. . . I can stop this from happening?”
“Of course you can. Why else would I show this to you?”
“But hasn’t it already happened? I mean, how can I change the future?”
“By changing the past, isn’t that obvious?
“Goddess, I’m so tired and confused. I don’t know anymore what to do.”
“You simply step into the stream dear, like you did before. Only this time, you’ll step in at the place where you can stop it.”
“But how? Even if somehow I am able to choose the right moment to step into the stream, how do I stop a runaway black hole?”
“You know the answers to these questions young one. You know. Allow the stream to move through you. Become one with the web of all things. You are, after all, Akasha. Become one with Akasha.
"But before you go, remember well these words I now give you. The torc on your arm and the knowledge you have gained here, these items are not to be used for folly. A Priestess of the Order of Brighid uses her skills and powers for the best interests of all sentient beings, not her own self-purpose. Do you understand?"
"Yes Goddess. It's like what Hindergog told me about the dagger that he gave me," I said as I pulled it from its sheath and held it in front of me.
"Yes, the same as the dagger. And know this too young one, that if you ever use the torc or your powers for your own selfish purpose, there will be consequences for you dear Emily."
I nodded my understanding. "Good, now Miss Emily, it is time for you to fulfill your purpose."
As if she had reached into my brain itself, I saw flash before my mind’s eye a vision – a memory really – of the time I was with Madame Wong and first saw the Web of All Things, Akasha. It was like I was there again and the Netherworld and the human world, all that I had known or would know melted away.
Once again I was in the loving bosom of the Web. All around me the vibrating harmonies of countless strings of the Great Web, all their own distinct note yet all in harmony with the others.
My senses gone, yet still able to see and hear and smell. My brain history yet still knowing.
But this was no memory. It was happening again.
I felt myself inexorably drawn a certain way. I don’t know even now what guided me or why I went the direction I did in the infinite web.
But direction and guidance drew me to one particular shining orb. One particular note. One particular voice in an endless sea of voices.
It was like touching without touch. Melding together of two entities. In that moment, at that time, I knew once and for all where my mother was.
She wasn’t in the kitchen making pancakes. She wasn’t in her studio painting. She wasn’t in the garden planting geraniums. She wasn’t even in a coffin underground.
She was there – in the web. She had been there all along.
I can’t describe in words the feeling that I felt in that moment. Joy. Jubilation. Neither one comes close. To know – really know – without any doubt of mind, body or soul. To have, in that moment, not one doubt or fear about anything. To know that I am eternal and that she is eternal and that we are connected always and forever. I wanted nothing more than to stay there feeling that way.
Suddenly the utter bliss of knowingness was interrupted by what felt like a terrible ripping. I heard a large whooshing sound and my innards felt like they would be ripped apart.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I fell with a thud onto the floor of command central at CERN. It was as if the cosmos upchucked me right where – and when – I was supposed to be.
“Emily!” said a familiar voice.
“Dad?”
My eyes were still adjusting to the harsh light of the fluorescent modern world. I had become accustomed to the misty fog of the Netherworld – the place of no place. But my skin still had all its senses about it, and I could feel all about me the warm embrace of my dad’s big arms. They were real. Solid and real. This was no hologram or ghost image of the past.
“Dad,” I said as my eyes let loose a flood of tears.
“Em,” he said as I felt drops from his eyes rain down on top of my head. After a few minutes, he took me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes and said, “Don’t ever leave me again!”
“I won’t, Dad. At least not until I go to college.”
He wasn’t a zombie anymore. I had my dad back, at least for now.
I hadn’t realized that Jake and Fanny were there too until I felt a tight squeeze around my middle.
“Fanny!”
“It is so good to see you, Em. Oh my gosh, look at your arms girl,” Fanny said as she felt my arm muscles. “What were you doing in that place, working out?”
“Something like that,” I chuckled.
Jake stood behind Fanny, smiling wide, but there was a tear in his eye. I looked at him, and he looked at me and somehow it felt good but awkward. I’d never felt that way around Jake before. I wondered if he felt it too.
“I’m so glad you’re back," he said as he came toward me. Fanny stepped aside and Jake hugged me. The hug felt awkward too.
“Glad you guys made it back from the Netherworld okay too,” I said. Jake and I ended our strange embrace. They looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head.
“What are you talking about? We never went there,” said Fanny.
“So when I was rescuing you guys from the Ninjas, you weren’t really there,” I said more to myself than anyone else. Seeing their look of puzzlement I just said, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later.”
If Jake wasn’t really there, then he didn’t know about the electrical feeling that happened when we’d touched hands. If he doesn’t remember us touching hands, then why is he acting all weird?
That was a puzzle for another day.
61. Emily Meets a Black Hole
“Look kiddo, we all want to catch up with each other and Emily I’m dying to hear about all you’ve seen and been through, but we’ve got a bit of a situation going on here.”
“I know Dad,” I said. “I know all about it. That’s why I’m here – now.”
“Look Em, I don’t want you anywhere near here. This thing – it’s growing more unstable by the minute. Sensors and cameras, the ones left anyway, show that it’s growing untold powers of ten by the second. We don’t have much time, and I want you out of here before this thing, well. . .”
“Dad, I know exactly what’s going on – and what will happen. That’s why I’m here now. I can fix this.”
“I know that you’ve been to another dimension – man, I still can’t get my head around that! But this – this is a job for scientists, not mystics.”
“It’s a job for a High Priestess of the Order of Brighid,” I said as I unsheathed and pulled out the bejeweled dagger from Hindergog.
“Em, all due respect dear, but I don’t think that little dagger’s going to stop a runaway anomaly!”
“This isn’t just a dagger Dad. I don’t have time to explain now. But this dagger – it can be anything I want it to be. It can become whatever I ask it to become.”
“I’m not even going to argue with you right now about how that’s impossible wishful thinking.”
“Okay, so don’t argue. Just tell me this. That guy – over there – Ted Schaeffer. He had an idea – about anti-matter.”
My dad looked over and found Mr. Ted Schaeffer with his head buried in his computer monitor, his fingers once again feverishly entering code like his life depended on it. For a second time, it did.
“Yes, he offered that.”
“Well, would it work? I mean if you had enough of the stuff and if someone could get down there and plant the anti-matter in the right way – would it work?”
“Well, theoretically it could work.”
“I don’t want could, Dad. I gotta know for sure. Will it work?”
He looked me deep in the eyes as his human computer ran calculations. After about a minute he said, “Yes. If we had enough anti-matter, and it was delivered in the right way, it would destroy the anomaly.”
“Okay then. All I need to know is how much and how to deliver it, and we’re good to go.”
“Wait, you’re not thinking of going down there, are you?”
“Of course. You’re not thinking I’m just going to stand here with my thumb up my butt and watch as the whole world gets sucked into a black hole, do you?”
“I’m going to ignore your smart tone and use of profanity due to the black hole underneath our feet threatening our planet, but are you crazy? I can’t let you go down there! It’s instant death!”
“Look, Dad, I know that you find all this hard to believe. Right now you may think that you’re in bed having a terrible dream and that you’ll wake up tomorrow, and your neat world full of numbers and equations will be the same as it was before any of this started. But you have to trust me on this one. I have the ability to do this. I’ll be fine, Dad.”
The look on his face told me that he didn’t want to believe me. He wanted to order me to stay. But the look of defeat in his eyes showed that he wouldn’t stand in my way.
“Okay then, all I need now from you and your number cruncher geek squad there is an amount – tell me how much anti-matter I need and how to deliver it. And let’s get that pronto.”
My dad mustered one more look of ‘please don’t do this’ only to be met with my look of ‘yeah, right’! Then he was off to huddle with the other Coca Cola-swilling Wile-Coyote-Genius types while they put their brains together to find the answer.
While they ran equations, I watched the video from the remote camera playing the Dughall entering the portal scene over and over again. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something. . . it looked like someone flying. I rubbed my eyes and looked behind me, but all I saw then was nerds running around like blind rats trying to find a way to stop what Dughall had created.
Within minutes, Dad and the Geek Club gathered around me and delivered the information.
“How are you going to do it?” asked the head scientist dude, no longer looking strong and in charge but defeated and tired.
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. Okay, stand back boys,” I said as I tried my best to tune them out and create a sphere of positive energy around me.
I closed my eyes and got myself into a deep, standing meditation. The training with Madame Wong – the sitting, breathing, focusing – all culminating in this moment. The alarms, the buzz of the people, the smell of their bodies (long overdue for a bath!), the hum of the human world, all of it left behind.
Through the power of only my own breath and the strength of the focus of my mind, I created the resonant frequency with Akasha that Dughall used the LHC to create. Only my resonance didn’t create a path of destruction in its wake.
I created a phase shift through space-time the old school way – the way it has been done for millennia and before the creation of particle accelerators. In the control room, they saw my body there, solid and real. Then, right before their eyes, I started to fade in and out then poof! I was gone. That’s what they experienced.
For me, it was all silence and the beautiful background hum of the universal resonant frequency of Akasha. I was able to tune my receiver to that station and let it take me wherever and whenever I wanted to be.
I felt an intensely cold draft about me and opened my eyes
. There it was. The black hole.
Immediately I envisioned a force field around me – a protective cushion of space between myself and the frigid air of the collider.
You may think that you’ve seen darkness before. The inky blackness of a moonless night sky. Let me tell you, you know nothing of darkness until you’ve seen a black hole.
It was strangely beautiful. A part of me wanted to linger and watch it. At the very center, complete and utter dark. No flicker or spark of light in any way. A black so complete that you could almost feel a cold breath coming from it.
All around the center, a swirling vortex of matter being sucked in. There colors whirled as object after object pulled apart by the intense gravity of the center, leaving only remnants we perceive as color. The swirling vortex was hypnotic, and for a moment, I felt like I wanted to join it.
But I swear I heard a voice from somewhere outside of me whisper, “The anti-matter.” That whisper jerked me back to reality.
The swirling vortex grew by leaps and bounds each second. I didn’t have much time before it swallowed me too.
I unsheathed my dagger and commanded it to become the exact quantity of anti-matter the good gentlemen scientists had instructed. Before my eyes, the dagger transformed from a beautiful jeweled dagger to a large round container pulsing with electromagnetic energy – a Penning trap full of anti-matter.
Doing exactly as Dad had told me to do, I commanded the trap of anti-matter to enter the black hole. I hoisted it with all my strength down the corridor. I don’t have much of an arm, but I guess having the forces of nature on your side helps. The canister flew a straight and true trajectory, end over end, with impressive velocity right into the heart of the black hole.
I watched the black hold suck in the Penning trap – what used to be my gift from Hindergog – lost in the bottomless blackness. Nothing happened. I watched and waited. I don’t think I breathed at all. Seconds ticked by as the blackness grew larger and larger, now threatening to take me with it.
It didn’t work! For Christ’s sake, it didn’t work!
Emily's House (The Akasha Chronicles) Page 26
