The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults)

by Robert Scanlon

  The itch disappeared.

  When Sarina was painting, she was in a completely different world. Listen to himself! ‘In a completely different world’! That’s the clue. To access the super-creative state at will. Phew. This would rock his scholarship project, he was sure.

  One thing remained. Why now? Why were young people like he and Sarina able to do this now? Surely super-creative people had existed in the past? Something still nagged at him. The same thing that had bugged him when they were in Paolo’s world. Dark energy on the rise. But massively so. Was it enough to cause these chaotic events? Perhaps it was what the Prof had said: The rise in dark energy had brought some turbulence and a local dark energy storm. Didn’t the Prof mention some type of chain reaction? He needed to talk to him.

  Nathan stood and stretched. So many different things to consider. Dark energy increasing; rem-particle loss; dream-portals; a new machine to generate rem—or even super-rem.

  He grinned. One thing was for certain. He was on the cusp of something big—something so big it would blow his scholarship out of the water. He’d get his name on some new theory before he was out of his teens; maybe even a Nobel Prize.

  He looked down at his watch. Holy quantum particle! It was nine-thirty! He’d been so lost in his thoughts, the time had whipped by and now, instead of being early, he was late for his meeting with the Professor. He raced out of the room and down to the corridor that led to the Prof’s office. He thought of Sarina again. Such an amazing power. He wanted for the two of them to work together again, and maybe he could persuade her to help with his scholarship project. But the last time he had seem her, she looked drawn, uncertain and stressed.

  He hoped her holiday and some serious immersion in her art would change all that. He wondered what she was doing and where she was, when his thoughts were interrupted by his arrival at the Professor’s office.

  The door was still closed. No Professor.

  But Agent Blanchard was standing grim-faced by the door, a key ready in his hand. He nodded to Nathan. “Master Goldberg. We have a situation. Professor Harrison is missing. Along with his step-daughter, Lena. We suspect they have been abducted.”

  The blood drained from Nathan’s face.

  ~~~

  Sarina was in her element; happily immersed in a myriad of sketches, paintings and colour testing, and by mid-morning, the holiday cottage’s conservatory already looked like a well-used artist’s studio.

  Since her blackout yesterday, she’d had no more odd feelings, or ‘funny turns’ as her grandmother would have called them.

  Just hours of blissful painting.

  She sighed and looked around the purpose-built room. The place was every bit as good as the brochure had promised, if not more so. What the brochure could never do full justice to was the relaxed atmosphere.

  The morning sun shone through the sparkling conservatory windows; the fresh smell of the farm fields beyond drifted in; and the birds—who had been oh so noisy at first light—sang a lilting tune as a welcome replacement for the dull hum of traffic back at home. The art studio in the conservatory lived up to its name: It was situated so the light could be arranged in many different fashions, according to the time of day and the feeling the artist wished to evoke. The windows were thoughtfully fitted with blinds which could be raised and lowered to act as shutters, changing the amount of light; and the room had a selection of easels and stools, as well as a huge cane sofa.

  She’d already spent some time in the morning sitting on the sofa and looking out at the countryside, mesmerised by the changing hues on the trees and hills, and pondering where she would begin, eventually deciding it didn’t matter and that she would start with what she picked up first.

  Which of course was the tin of Rona’s pastels.

  She had them in her hand again now, having finished sketching a spray of wild-flowers by a river’s edge. The pastels had something extremely satisfying about them, and she rolled the yellow she had just used in her palm, enjoying the cool feel of the organic chalky clay against her skin.

  Was this what it would be like at the art school? Would there be time to savour being in her art, not just doing it?

  She’d heard the school was famous for this approach—being one with your art—and it felt like the most magical and perfect thing.

  But she had to be invited to join.

  Her mother walked into the conservatory and set down some sparkling water, some fruit and a muffin.

  “Mum! Thanks. Where did you get those?”

  Her mother looked at her strangely. “In Marlborough. You were with me, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember now.” But she didn’t and she saw her mother wasn’t fooled either. She decided to change the subject. “Look, Mum. Rona’s pastels are gorgeous! What do you think?” She stepped back from the drawing.

  Her mother moved closer to admire the colourful flower setting. “Beautiful, Sarina. But then I think everything you do is beautiful. How are you feeling? You look better.”

  Sarina smiled. “Much better, Mum. I think getting away from school, no more maths pressure, no distractions, and having time for me to immerse myself and do what I love the most, was a great idea. Mum, I’ve been thinking—”

  “Yes?”

  “I have to win a place at the school in Paris. It’s everything I want to do!”

  Her mother frowned. “Yes, dear, I know. Why, do you think I don’t think the same way?”

  Sarina pouted. “I don’t know, I just ... well ...” She looked at her mother. “Maybe I’ve lost some confidence and I need to feel like I’m talented enough to deserve a place.”

  Her mother spluttered. “Sarina! Turn around and look at the things you’ve created only this morning. If you win the competition and don’t get invited, I don’t know who will. Anyway, they say the winners in the breakthrough competition are virtually assured a place. You’ve no reason to doubt yourself, do you now?” She walked over and pulled her daughter into an embrace, and nuzzled her head with her chin.

  She did have good reason to doubt herself, but how could she broach the subject with her mother? She couldn’t exactly come out and say that she thought she might be going insane. After all, her mother’s track record wasn’t pretty—she’d let her be sent to Stratfords Mental Health Institute. And she had only been stressed! Well, okay, she’d had the unique experience of dreaming herself into a parallel world that turned out to be real. But that wasn’t madness.

  No. Talking to her mother about this might only make both of them more stressed.

  Sarina pulled away and looked up into her mother’s eyes. “You’re right. It will be fine. And this place is wonderful, it really is. The perfect medicine. And the competition will be good for me. I’m looking forward to it, which I suppose is a good sign.”

  Her mother nodded. “Then let me leave you to it—oh, while I’m here, there’s some mail for you and, speaking of Rona, I picked up her brochure. She has written some of her ideas in there that I thought might inspire you. Lunch at one?”

  Sarina smiled. “Thanks, Mum. One o’clock is great.”

  She turned back to her work, removed the pastel sketch from the easel, put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. Where to next? Ah. Her gaze settled on her acrylics. Some practice with impressionism. She laughed at her choice of style. Maybe going mad wasn’t so bad after all. Van Gogh, Gaugin. Both post-impressionists with more than their fair share of mental issues. Perhaps it came with the territory.

  She chose her brushes, placed a fresh canvas on the easel, arranged the acrylic paints on a tray and picked up a soft pencil and began to sketch. It felt good to work.

  ~~~

  Nathan looked at Agent Blanchard and sensed his jaw drop but couldn’t do anything about it.

  He recovered sufficiently to speak. “What? How do you know?”

  Blanchard opened the door and Nathan followed him into the office. “We have a watch on Professor Harrison’s house. Any activity r
eported to local authorities is automatically forwarded to us. A neighbour called police this morning after noticing his front door was open, but the curtains were drawn and the lights were still on. Whatever happened, it happened suddenly.”

  “Did the police say if ... if anyone might have been injured? A violent robbery perhaps?” Nathan dreaded the answer.

  Blanchard shook his head and rummaged through the drawers in the Professor’s desk. “No sign of any scuffle, no clues about what happened. And nothing missing. That’s why we believe it was an abduction. Probably by someone he knows.” He turned to Nathan. “We need to talk. I believe you and the Professor were working on something. I need to know more about it. Now.” He held his hand out and indicated for Nathan to sit on the other side of the desk. The agent walked around, closed the door, then sat on the side of the desk and fixed a grim expression at Nathan. “Please tell me you have not spoken to anyone about your project.”

  Nathan reddened. Surely he was not under suspicion? “Er, no. Of course not. Why? Do you think his abduction was related to the project?”

  Agent Blanchard said nothing. He stared at Nathan for a while, then appeared to come to a decision. “I’m paid to sum people up quickly. I believe you are telling the truth. I am also aware Professor Harrison placed a great deal of trust in you. I will do the same, but you must keep this between you and me. Agreed?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “It has come to our attention that certain rival authorities—I am not at liberty to tell you who or where—may have learned of the existence of the collider. As far as our intelligence understands, they are not aware of its power and its connection to the rem-particle. They are possibly not even aware of the rem-particle, but they know the areas of Professor Harrison’s research and may put two and two together.” He paused, looked down and pinched his lip, then looked back up at Nathan. “What we do know is they have learned that the collider has power that may be useful to them. We believe they could be responsible for the abduction.”

  Nathan rubbed his head. “But you said it would be someone he knew? And why would they take Lena? She doesn’t know anything about the collider. And if it was someone he knew, who on earth would that be? Who would put us all at risk like that?”

  The Agent nodded. “Good questions, Master Goldberg. I see now why the Professor has such a high opinion of you. At this early stage, we are only assuming it was someone he knew. There were no witnesses; no reports of noises; nothing to indicate any problems. Not even a report of a strange vehicle.”

  “Couldn’t someone have knocked on the door and held a gun at them? And walked them out of there?”

  “That is certainly one option, however”—he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device that looked like a remote control for an automatic garage door—“Professor Harrison has a panic-tracking device for precisely such an occasion, which was not used. This is why we are leaning towards the suspicion it was someone extremely familiar to him.”

  “Won’t he use the panic device now though?” Nathan felt his hope rising.

  Agent Blanchard looked at the remote before putting it back in his pocket. “This is his device. We found it on his desk.”

  His hope drained away again.

  Blanchard continued. “We suspect the girl was taken along as ... insurance.”

  Nathan slumped. What would they do? Where would they start?

  “Master Goldberg. Do not be concerned. We have our best men working on this—and in any case, whoever it is does not have the machine and will most likely make contact at some point to negotiate. It’s only a matter of time. I have not provided any detail about the collider, or any of the projects here, to those beyond my own select group of people. All they know is we have a secret research project that could be of high value to our ... enemies.”

  Time. His mind whirled. A matter of time. Did Agent Blanchard not know? Nathan smacked himself on the head. Of course, he was no scientist, why would he realise. “Ah, Agent Blanchard. Um, there might not be as much time as you think. Actually probably quite a bit less than you think.”

  Blanchard raised his eyes. “Why?”

  “The Prof and I were working on decommissioning the machine. We were supposed to complete the sequence today and download the rest of the data. There had been a couple of ... incidents. He thought the machine was in danger of becoming unstable and it would be safer to stop the project. But right now, because of our work, the machine is in a higher energetic state than it has been in recent days. The Prof had also loaded some settings back into it, something to do with Professor Malden’s accident. We were about to use those settings to run some scans today. In my opinion, and I’m no expert, the collider could be the most unstable it’s ever been. We don’t have any time. We need the Prof to complete the boot-down sequence. If we don’t do that in the next 24 hours ...” He hoped Agent Blanchard understood the risks.

  “We might have another accident?”

  Nathan nodded. “Only worse. The Prof was starting to uncover strange irregularities in the rem-universe. That’s why we had the incidents here—or so he thought—and why he was concerned about the danger, not just to the kids here, but that it would be more widespread. He didn’t tell me how.” He’d never seen anything shake the Agent’s confidence before, but by the worried look on his face, Nathan knew Blanchard was privy to more information than he had let on.

  “You may not think you are an expert, Master Goldberg, but you are the only expert we have here right now. I need you to show me the machine and brief me on the most recent activities in your project. Let’s go.”

  Nathan picked up two headshields on the way to the collider-room and was just about to punch the numbers in to the security pad when Blanchard stopped him.

  “Who else has these codes?”

  Nathan thought hard. “Here? Only the Prof and I. But he said there is a master code that you have stored off-site, if needed.”

  The Agent nodded. “Good. Let’s keep it that way. Lead on.”

  They entered and closed the door. Nathan was relieved to see the stable state of the machine. He walked over to the needle traces and peered at the last few hours, and breathed a sigh of relief. “Everything is stable right now. Over there”—he pointed out a rack of memory drives—“is where we are transferring and downloading the machine’s controls. And here”—he pointed to the keypad on top of the machine—“is the main access to the collider. That orange light normally blinks more slowly than it is now, but because of the increased energetic state of the machine, it’s flashing at a faster frequency.”

  Agent Blanchard nodded. “And if we do not return the machine to its more stable state?”

  Nathan shook his head. “That’s what I don’t know. Only the Prof had any idea—and he also was concerned about the irregularities. From the way he acted, and this is not based on anything he said, you understand, so I’m hardly being very scientific, I’d say he thought it was pretty urgent. As in: ‘We need to get this done in 24 hours urgent’.”

  “But you say, so far, there’s been no change in its state?”

  Nathan pointed to the tracer printout. “If that red line keeps static, we are fine. So far, it’s only increasing by small amounts, representing the increased energy level of the machine. So yes, for now.” He turned back to the machine and peered at the orange LED. “But if this thing ever turns red ...”

  “Then what?” Agent Blanchard said.

  Nathan held out his hands, helpless. “I have no idea, except that it’s bad. Very bad.”

  They looked at each other in silence.

  Blanchard was the first to speak. “We have no choice. We must use every avenue we can to find Professor Harrison—” He stopped abruptly and furrowed his brow. “Lena is a strong dreamer isn’t she?

  Nathan nodded.

  “Do you think we might be able to reach her by ... other methods? And discover where they are held?”

  Blanchard was smart, no doubt. And cl
early not averse to using any resource he had on hand, no matter how far-fetched they sounded. It was a brilliant idea. But they’d need their most powerful dreamer kids on the case, and someone with a good connection with Lena. He paled. Sarina. He hated to drag her into this mess, but she might be their best chance. She’d be pulled out of the competition again, and she’d hate that. But if they were quick, maybe it would all work out. Anyway, Agent Blanchard was right. They had no choice. He scratched his head. He had no idea where Sarina was—and hadn’t she said the place they were staying had no phones, no internet?

  “Your head is busy I see. But you have thought of someone?”

  “Yes. Yes, I have.” He felt awful, but he had to do this. “Sarina. But she’s away on some kind of retreat, there no phone, no internet and I have no idea how we will find—”

  He stared at Agent Blanchard. He was looking at the very person who would know exactly how to find her.

  ~~~

  Later that day, the collider room was empty, and locked. The needles hovered over the slowly moving graph, leaving their trails of multi-colour, incontrovertible proof.

  A dull clunk emitted from the inside the depths of the cube.

  The red trace quivered, spiked dramatically, then moved to a new, higher level.

  ~~~

  Sarina finished lunch with her mother and returned to the studio.

  She looked around the conservatory, stacked with canvases, both oil and watercolour; and several easels begging to be used. If she was stuck in some kind of time-loop and this was the only thing she could do for the rest of her life, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?

  She tapped the end of the pencil against her mouth and thought about her next creative inspiration. The bright midday light had inspired her, so she would start a new painting. One full of happiness, colour, and vibrant life. Definitely depicting people, she decided. Maybe animals. Life and living; optimistic and joyful. She needed to exorcise the last of her doubts. Maybe she really had just been stressed?

  She placed the biggest canvas they had ordered on the easel. Something wasn’t quite right, so she dragged the easel around, carefully holding the canvas, until she was looking across the conservatory, and off to the side of the hills.