by Mark Lingane
There was an explosion and flames erupted from the crushed truck. Battered and bleeding, Will jumped onto the roof. Taking advantage of the distraction, Sebastian powered the bike through the sullivans, slipping in between the legs of one. The creatures howled in anger, and ran after the accelerating bike, their large loping strides keeping up with the vehicle. He swooped and ducked through their lunges and grabs, scraping along curbs and leaping over debris.
Within moments, they were at the crumbling edge of Salt Lake City, with the eastern woodlands ahead. The engine boiler reached another level of heat transfer, and the bike surged away just as a large fist smashed down where they had just been. Memphis pulled out an explosive, turned, and threw it over her shoulder. It landed and detonated instantly, stopping the sullivan in its tracks. The other creatures pushed on around it, manic in their pursuit.
The vegetation rose up thicker around them, and Sebastian weaved the bike through the trees, leaping over bushes and fallen logs. The sullivans smashed through the trees behind them, but the thick foliage slowed them down.
Without warning, a pack of wolves leaped out of the trees at them. Sebastian slammed on the brakes, and the wolves overshot, crashing into each other. They twisted around, trying to get at the bike. Sebastian accelerated directly into the wolves, then powered away. The wolves leaped after them in pursuit. A clear stretch of land opened up in front of them. The bodies of the wolves elongated as they raced to keep up.
“Take the accelerator,” Sebastian shouted at Memphis over his shoulder.
A wolf snapped at Memphis’s feet, and she kicked out violently, smashing her boot into the animal’s muzzle. It yelped before recovering and charging at her again. She leaned forward and grabbed the accelerator, maintaining their momentum and trying to keep them on track.
Sebastian stood up on the foot pegs and pulled out his sword. He slashed into one of the leaping animals, spearing it in its chest. It fell by the wayside and the other wolves stopped to feast on it. Sebastian sheathed the sword and took back the accelerator.
The sullivans had caught up. They careened through the clear space, scattering the wolves and crushing the fallen.
Sebastian and Memphis roared through the woods, heading deeper into the forest. They could hear the sullivans behind them. Trees cartwheeled to left and right as the creatures pounded their way through the dense undergrowth. Sebastian spotted a gully sweeping off to the left. He turned and rode the bike down into it. A ravine branched off the gully, and he rode into it, then killed the engine and let the bike bounce along silently. They dismounted and pushed the bike into a small depression, hidden from view. The sounds of destruction were coming from the opposite direction. Eventually, the forest was quiet.
“Are we safe?” Memphis said.
“No.”
Sebastian climbed up the shallow ravine and peered through the trees. He couldn’t see anything, but the air was too still. Something was wrong. He signaled for Memphis to stay back. He reached the top of the hollow and moved around a large tree trunk.
Below, Memphis bumped into a tree, which growled. She turned slowly and looked up into the mouth of a sullivan. She screamed and tried to run, but the creature swung in and knocked her sideways. It breathed out and green gas floated over her.
Sebastian raced down the slope, screaming at the creature. “Don’t breathe the gas,” he shouted, but it was too late. Thick gas covered her and she gasped helplessly.
Sebastian swung his sword, but before he could connect, another sullivan appeared, hitting him heavily. He flew forward, knocking his head against a branch. His mind spun as he fought to keep standing. He stumbled over to Memphis and picked her up. A third sullivan brought a tree trunk crashing down onto them. Memphis cried out in pain and slumped to the ground. Sebastian felt his ribs crack under the blow before falling next to her.
Sebastian looked up. Several wolves were running into the hollow, heading straight for them. He raised his sword and pain speared down one side of his body. He looked down at Memphis. She was unconscious, and blood flowed from the corner of her mouth. Her arms and legs lay in unnatural positions.
The sullivan raised the tree trunk and brought it down on top of them, and again. The pain was intense, and Sebastian’s world was filled with white light. He pointed the sword in the direction of the light, just as the tree trunk came down again, knocking any remaining air from his lungs.
The collected sullivans breathed out, and thick gas swirled through the air. Sebastian’s lungs burned as they fought for air. He struggled to cover his mouth, but every movement burned his chest. He fought to stay awake, but darkness closed in on his vision and his mind drifted. The sullivans gathered for a final attack, and the wolves snarled and snapped, waiting for their turn.
The light exploded, and the sullivans dissolved, turning into nothing more than thin lines in the blinding whiteness. The wolves howled, then whimpered, their cries fading into the distance. A figure appeared, wrapped in ribbons of white.
The darkness returned. Sebastian succumbed to sleep.
59
HE AWOKE RESTING on a soft mattress. Memphis was next to him, snoring quietly with shallow breaths. He looked up. The roof above them was made up of thousands of wires all running in from the edges of the room and meeting in the center.
A figure appeared, wearing a long dark robe.
“What happened to the sullivans and the wolves?” Sebastian said.
“I chased them away.”
“Huh?” He rubbed his head.
“They don’t like high-intensity magnetic fields.”
“But there was light,” Sebastian murmured. He closed his eyes and didn’t hear the response; the voice died into an echo.
When he woke again, his head was spinning, forcing him to wait until the vertigo subsided. He turned his head and stared at the curved wall next to him. He frowned. There were hundreds of magnets stacked, no, floating. Memories of his old physics teacher came flooding back.
“Albert?” he whispered.
He struggled to sit up, and looked around the room. Wires ran everywhere in between magnets. Abstract diagrams and writing were scrawled on the walls.
“We were looking for a genius,” Sebastian said.
“Maybe the genius was looking for you,” the voice replied. “You seem to have a higher tolerance to the gas. I wonder why that is.”
Sebastian shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He could hear the voice, but he couldn’t see anyone.
He gave Memphis a nudge. She slowly crawled her way back to consciousness, although she remained lying down.
“Are we safe?” she said. Her throat felt lined with razors. Her ribs were burning.
“We’re not dead. I’d take that as a good sign.”
Her eyes crawled around the parts of the room she could see. “What is this place?”
“It looks like … a science lab.”
“Aha!” came the voice.
Out of the tangle of wires jumped an elderly man with a slightly chubby face and dark, slicked-back hair. The sudden appearance startled them, causing Memphis to flinch, then cry out in pain and clutch at her chest.
The man slipped a large pair of goggles down over his eyes, magnifying them disconcertingly. He sprayed a gas into Memphis’s face, and she relaxed as the pain faded. Sleep claimed her once again.
“And how would you know this is a science lab?” the man said to Sebastian. “Drink.” He thrust a glass of yellow liquid into Sebastian’s hand.
“What did you do to her?” Sebastian said. “I had a similar science lab back home, but it was probably a bit less crazy. And, until now, I would’ve thought that was impossible.”
“She’s badly injured. I’ve eased her pain. She needs rest. You speak with a strange accent.”
“It’s not strange where I come from.”
The strange man with the enlarged eyes poked and prodded at Sebastian’s head. “You’re injured as well.” He quickly puffed gas into Sebastian’s
face, and he drifted off into a gentle sleep.
He was aware of movement around him. There was always noise, a gentle hum that rose and fell, like the breath of a giant robot. The world swirled around him, accompanied by a loud clicking that steadily increased in volume and speed. Dark dreams of soldiers that wouldn’t die haunted his sleep. He dreamed of light and dark, and the draw of both.
He woke, unaware of the time, or even the date. Memphis lay on her side, breathing lightly. Her face was still pale, and twitched with every breath. He swung his knees around and sat on the edge of the bench, taking in the odd surroundings. A gentle breeze floated in, scented with lemon. It didn’t feel like a prison. He slipped off the bench onto his feet. His body ached with every slight movement.
He traced his hands over the intense collection of wires and piping on the walls. It reminded him of home. He felt a pang of sadness as the long-ago place and people flicked through his memory. He made his way around the curved wall until he found an opening, although heavily disguised by wires hanging down to form a crude curtain.
He pushed through cautiously and stepped into a small, dark corridor. He followed it, and came into a high-ceilinged room with several low beams running across it. On his right was a bench full of familiar-looking chemical equipment. He stepped toward it. A shadow moved above him.
“Joshua Richards!” Sebastian cried, then ducked as the shadow swung past him, narrowly missing him.
He held his breath and stared up into the space above the beams. He came face to face with a man hanging upside down. He leaped back in shock. The man wore a brown robe that was tied around the waist with a thin belt. His hair hung down from his head, long and dark. The madman dropped from the beam and rolled upward, landing lightly on his feet.
“Why did you use that name?” The man dropped a large magnifying glass over one eye and stared at Sebastian.
“It’s something we say back home when we’re angry or worried or surprised.” Sebastian shied away from the oversized image in the glass.
“Do you know who Joshua Richards is?”
“Yes. He founded the Steam Academy.”
“No, no, no. He’s a mystic. A god,” the madman exclaimed.
“No, he isn’t. We have a statue of him. There are even old pictures of him.”
“Blasphemer!”
“I’m not. It’s probably the smell from being on the road. And all these vegetables we have to eat.”
“You don’t know what blasphemy is.”
“I do so.” Sebastian looked at him defiantly.
“You don’t believe in Joshua Richards.”
“I don’t need to. I know he existed. I think we even had his shoe size. And he wore a hat.”
The man’s eyes flicked over to a large book open on the bench top. He lunged over, slammed it shut, and clutched it to his chest.
“What’s with the book?”
“It’s not a book. It’s a bible,” the man hissed.
“No, it isn’t. I can see the title on the spine. Quantum Physics Explai—”
“It’s a lie,” the man squeaked. “A ruse to conceal its true meaning. It’s a disguise.”
“Are you all right?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. No, there isn’t.”
“It’s just that your eyes … they’re … opposite.” Sebastian shook his head. “Don’t worry.”
The man leaped nimbly over to a large shelving unit and, glancing over his shoulder at Sebastian, tried to ram the tome into various spots within the great collection of books. After several attempts, he slipped it under a small cloth that barely concealed the cover. He hobbled in a small circle, wringing his hands.
“The outsider,” he muttered, over and over.
Every few steps, he closed in on Sebastian to examine some part of his body before continuing his circle, muttering constantly. Eventually, he appeared to come to a decision. He stood still, staring at the ground and rocking back and forth, occasionally glancing up at Sebastian.
“There’s a prophecy that a stranger will come from a faraway land to save us all. He will have”—the man glanced quickly at Sebastian—“sort of sandy colored hair, be about six foot tall, and—”
“You’re making this up.”
“No, no, it’s the truth. Yes. The prophecy says that you—the stranger, I mean—will fight against the great armies, overthrow the evil warlords, and set us all free. And bring food. Do you have any food?”
“Who are you?”
“Ah, is that the question? Or is a better question who are you, outsider?”
The man offered him a glass of liquid. It was sweet and smelled of lemons. Sebastian sniffed suspiciously. Lemons were fruit and they were nearly healthy. The man was clearly mad, but he didn’t look like a killer.
He tasted the drink. “Sebastian. Nice drink,” he said, finishing the glass.
The walls of the room suddenly roared in toward him. The ceiling spun and he fought for balance. He had an overwhelming compulsion to tell the truth, which was a first.
“What are you, Sebastian?”
Sebastian found himself unable to resist the questions. “I’m a mega-tesla.”
Niels gasped. “Mega-teslas don’t exist … but they do exist. Happy days. I knew it. They laughed, but I knew.”
“Finally, someone who knows.”
“To answer your question, I am Niels. Now, show me something tesla-like.”
“Ah. I’m slightly broken at the moment. A nuclear bomb has affected my abilities.”
“Shame. What kind of things could you do before?”
“I could transfer the electrical spin from one object, usually metal, to the molecules in the air. I could reverse the polarity of the air molecules and generate a wind. I could also attract metal and generally affect magnetic fields.”
“That first one, the electrical spin, you do realize that’s pulling objects apart at the molecular level and reforming them out of nothing.”
“Yes, but it always hurts. Most of the time the pain was bearable, except for once when I was near a nuclear reactor. I seem to bleed easily here when I’m using tesla powers.”
“What’s it like where you come from?”
“In summer, it’s hot and humid. In winter, it’s just hot.”
“It’s probably the cold. Batteries can easily fail in subzero temperatures. My suggestion is to wear a coat. Or thick underwear.”
“You sound like my mother,” Sebastian said. “Can you tell me why it hurts real bad every time I use my tesla powers here?”
Niels threw his hands wide. “This land is still radioactive. It weakens people. It’s kept all of us weak. If you find that kind of power harmful, well, you’re swimming in it out here.”
“You mean this place is killing me?”
Niels nodded. “You kill it, or it kills you. So, with all this pain, why are you here, Sebastian?”
“I come to heal the Omega in New York.”
“Really. That’ll be interesting. What do you think the Omega is?”
Sebastian raised a finger in the air. “A rip in the space-time continuum.”
Niels laughed. “My, we have a lot to talk about.” He indicated several chairs surrounding a large table. They sat down and stared at each other from opposite sides. “Do you have something for me, from my quarters?”
“Eh?”
Niels looked at him. “You said the code phrase before—‘looking for a genius.’”
“I’m glad to see you’re modest, but yes, I have this small stick.” Sebastian handed him the red object from the quarters underneath the citadel. “Where I come from, we had something pretty bad with the same name, the same four letters. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“We’ll talk about that later. Now you must tell me about New York. What do you know?”
“There was a physics experiment that went wrong, and generated a rip in time.”
“Well, you’re not completely wrong. On second thought, you are
completely wrong. It’s a huge explosion of power seeping into the world. Do you understand that this power needs to come from somewhere?”
“I was told it was the time displacement.”
Niels nodded and tilted his head sideways. “Maybe. But that would be crazy.”
“Crazy? What do you have?”
“You know what a solar flare is? I take it by the bored expression on your face you don’t know,” Niels said.
“Uh-oh,” Sebastian said. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to be a science lecture.”
60
“THE SUN IS a ball of plasma,” Niels began, clasping his hands together, “that is held together by its own gravity. This is the consequence of the curvature of space time, caused by an uneven distribution of mass and energy. The sun shines because at its core thermonuclear fusion is converting hydrogen into helium. This releases energy that radiates out from the star’s interior and into outer space.”5
Sebastian scribbled on the paper in front of him.
Niels separated his hands and let them drift apart. “Magnetic reconnection accelerates particles by flipping the charge topography. When these particles, which are mainly electrons, bombard the plasma you get a flare. Actually that is only a partial explanation. Dense lines of magnetic fields generate loops which fuse to produce an independent helix field. The sudden release of energy in this fusion results in rapid particle acceleration. The violent outward expansion of the helix fields and the plasma form a coronal mass ejection.”6
Sebastian threw his hands in the air. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“That’s because you didn’t listen. I saw you doodling.”
“I was taking notes.”
Niels pointed to the paper. “Why do your notes look suspiciously like me? My hair looks nothing like that. Give it to me. Okay, I’ll make this simple. The sun is big and heavy, right? Around it are other things that are not big and heavy, like space, which is empty. Electrons, and by that I mean electromagnetic things, crash into the sun, making great big magnetic flares whoosh out into space. The sun is heavy; space is not heavy. Keep that in mind.”
