This would be slow. She realised she’d have to do something a little ... creepy. She inhaled deeply, at the same time drawing in the energy from Lucio. “More energy, Lucio?” She heard his small voice.
“Tired. Hard.”
The energy flared more strongly and infused her with life. A hand rested on her shoulder. Eva.
Sarina took another breath and continued. “Lena, may I use you to speak?”
Will it hurt?
“No.”
Okay then. I’m ready. She felt the girl beaming. Amazing.
She took over Lena’s voice. “Professor, it’s Sarina speaking. I have no time. Nathan and I think we can fix the rem-loss. He says he needs to know if you can still make a portal with the collider unshielded and give us access to the machine at the same time. He wants to use it as something called a conduit.”
The large image of the Professor showed he was thinking. “I can. It will be exceedingly dangerous. You didn’t realise the threshold of dark rem was exceeded. We are on a rapid countdown to a terror-filled world, I’m afraid, and yes, before you ask, Lena already knows. If any more dark rem is sent through the portal and into the collider, or if the machine is triggered to make more ... it would be the end of us.” He rubbed his cheek. “You would also have to seal any connection to our world after use. From your side.” He looked directly at her. “That would be permanent. No coming back. You both need to understand that.”
She nodded Lena’s head. “We already guessed that.”
The image wavered. “What do you plan?” the Professor said, with a warbled voice.
“We’ll try to blow out the rem-loss. Do you know how we can do that safely without accidentally flooding you with dark rem?”
His eyes flicked around rapidly. “ ... big risk ...” The image rippled in and out. “... to filter out ...”
“Professor, you’re fading out!”
Headache.
“Yes, Lena. A few more seconds, I promise.” She tried again.
“Professor, what do you mean? Who has to do that? You? Us? Please help!”
Can’t.
The image vanished.
Sarina opened her eyes. The three of them were staring at her. Lucio looked exhausted and Eva had pulled him back into a cuddle.
“It worked. For a short while anyway, thank you.” She looked at Nathan. “But you’re not going to like it.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me; if we attempt this, then we’ll be stuck here for good.”
She stared at him. “How did you know that?”
“Story of my last few days. But can he open a portal?”
“I think so. When I asked him about stopping it flooding them with dark rem, he said something about having to filter—then he was gone. Does that make any sense?”
He smiled. “Yup. He means we will have to strip out the dark rem from any energy we send into the collider.”
“Huh? What does that mean, and how do we do that?”
His smiled faded. “You want the honest answer?”
“Nathan!”
He nodded. “You asked for it. The Prof never told me why, but now you’ve told me about dark rem, I understand what the problem must have been, and why we needed headshields. It means doing something we were already experimenting with before all this happened—and failed at many times. As for your second question ... no idea.”
“Great.” She felt her energy fade and slumped.
Nathan shrugged. “We have to try though, don’t we?”
The blood rushed to her head. “Try what? More meddling with nature? Is that all you scientists can think of: ‘Well it didn’t work before, so how about we press this button instead?’ Then we all just put up with the horrible results of your mistakes? What happens if we just try something, and we accidentally flood them with dark rem and they end up living in a permanent nightmare?”
“Hey! Don’t look at me like that! The reason we have inventions like electricity is because somebody decided to keep going, no matter what mistakes they made. They believed in science helping us have a better future!” He crossed his arms and tightened his mouth.
“I see. So by a better future, you mean one with nuclear accidents, because somebody thought it would be a good idea to make electricity that way. Or making invisible chemicals to kill thousands of people. Or poking around in the DNA of our food to make it more profitable. Or making us take pills so we don’t get fat.” She glared at him.
“And people who are creative and artistic never do any harm, is that it? Is that what you are getting at? That this is somehow all my fault and not yours?”
She stood up and shouted. “YOU IDIOT! OF COURSE THIS IS MY FAULT! I MEDDLED WITH MY OWN DREAMS, MADE PORTALS, TRANSMUTED SOME SUBSTANCE WITH POWER I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND, TORE A RIFT INTO OUR OWN WORLD AND STARTED A CHAIN REACTION, AND SENT A MONSTER INTO IT AND NOW LOOK WHERE IT’S GOT US!”
She sat down and put her head in her hand. The throbbing pain from her damaged wrist was pleasant compared to the nausea in her stomach.
“Sarina, that is not true, and you know it.” It was Eva’s gentle voice. “We all do the best we can, and we all experience life as a result of the consequences of our previous actions. The very art you make lives and breathes because of the journey you have had up until now. But abandoning hope for the future of humankind? Now that would be a crime indeed.”
She lifted her head. “But I don’t even know how to help.”
“You didn’t last time either. You used something we all have, but few are prepared to use.”
Sarina looked at the woman’s gentle face. “What?”
“Courage. It was your courage that saved our world from misery; your courage that rescued Lucio and me. Was there not a time when you did not believe that was possible, yet your courage won?”
She nodded.
“Then you must seek that same strength inside you today. Your physical pain and emotional distress are evidence of how deeply you care, but they are clouding your judgement. I believe in you, and I sense you and Nathan have a combined power that multiplies many times your individual strengths. Perhaps more importantly, by working together, you will gain something you currently lack.”
“What is that?”
“Hope.”
Eva looked at Nathan and Sarina. “I had run out of hope that Lucio and I and the rest of us would be spared the malicious rule of Makthryg. But then the two of you appeared—mere children—and restored my faith.” She looked at Sarina. “You must not paint this boy’s passion with your brush of despair with humanity’s poor decisions in your world. Remember: He wants to save his world too.” She stood and patted Lucio’s head. “Now I must leave you and prepare our own defence. After that, Lucio and I will do anything we can to help.” She looked at Sarina. “Even if all we can do is soothe your pain.”
When Eva and Lucio left, Nathan gave Sarina a weak smile. “She knows how to make a speech, doesn’t she?”
Sarina nodded. “Sorry, Nathan. I blamed you for the fate of our world, when I should have blamed myself.”
“You shouldn’t be blaming anyone. What we need to do now is think about what we can do to help. You came back to this world full of spirit and determination you would rescue me and find a way to fix the problem. You are the Orange Witch, after all.” He grinned.
She smiled and took a deep breath. The Orange Witch. She’d fought the creature and defeated him. She’d fought Makthryg and defeated him too. She’d found a strength deep inside herself she never knew existed. Now she would ‘dig deep’, and find it again. She closed her eyes and gathered up those strong memories: Of Eva, so clear about hope; of Rona, persevering though extreme adversity and coming out the other side much stronger; of Paolo, resolute in his vow to protect his family and maintain peace; of Lena, facing a terror-filled world and still beaming at every opportunity. She breathed it all in deeply and touched her core strength again. The courage Eva spoke of, and that Rona saw in her art.
The feeling was faint at first, but the more she drew on the memories, the better she felt. The more powerful she felt. She thought of Nathan, and his daring bravado combined with a keen intuitive understanding of science, and his insatiable curiosity. She remembered smelling his sock and laughed. She opened her eyes.
Nathan was staring at her with wide eyes. “Are you alright? Do you want me to get Eva?”
She laughed again. “I’m back, Nathan. I’m the Orange Witch, and together, you and I will do our best to save the world!” She leaned forward. “Tell me about filtering out the dark rem.”
He nodded. “The Prof and I thought if we smashed enough rem together in the collider, we would be able to create this super-rem particle. You gave me the missing link. I believe his idea was that the super-particle would combine with dark rem, and make two rem particles. You know how the sun creates light and heat by fusing particles together?”
“I’m still no scientist! No, I don’t know how the sun works—and why is it relevant?”
“Sorry. The sun makes its energy by smashing particles together, and the energy it makes from that smashes more particles together, and hey presto, a continuous source of energy.”
“But what does this have to do with stopping the rem loss?”
He looked down. “Every time the Prof and I tried to smash the rem together, we hoped we’d end up with a new continuous source of rem. But two things happened, and I’ve only just realised what the second problem must have been. We hypothesised”—he looked back up at her—“that we never had a plentiful enough supply of rem to get to a critical mass. But that wasn’t the bad part. The Prof thought eventually we could get around that by using Intensifiers and the kids’ skills at rem manipulation. The thing is, each time we tried, it fizzled out. Nothing. I’m guessing the problem he never solved was that every rem particle is held in balance by dark rem.”
He shrugged. “I bet every time we smashed rem together, we also got more dark rem. The Prof never worked out a way to filter it out so we could smash rem together and create a self-sustaining super-rem reaction. It wouldn’t even surprise me if this was what Professor Malden had somehow managed to do however briefly, but it went horribly wrong.”
She sat up, wide-eyed, and looked at Nathan. “Wait. What did you say again? About a self-sustaining reaction?”
“Well, if we managed to get enough rem colliding, with no dark rem involved, then, just like the sun, they would multiply and collide with each other some more, and multiply again, and we’d have a source of rem and fix the rem loss. Like a never-ending set of dominoes stood on end. Push the first one over, and the rest fall. Over and over, for all time. Or for a few billion years at least. But we never had enough rem-power to push the first one over, and even if we did, I now believe it would just tip over a set of dark rem dominoes at the same time.” His gaze drifted away. “Even if we had enough power, from what the Prof says, we can’t risk sending any more dark rem into their world.” He looked her in the eye. “It’s just not possible, Sarina.”
“Bah! I don’t believe it. Have you forgotten your great-great-grandpa? ‘Not possible’? How would you like to hear my hypothesis?”
He gave her a blank stare.
“I’ll take that as a yes then. So—we need a source of powerful rem, yes?”
He nodded.
“Who did the Prof say were the two most powerful rem-manipulators he’d ever come across?”
“You ... and me. But you way more than me.”
“Right. Now ... what did we do last time we were in this world that scientists had been trying to do for centuries?”
His face slowly lit up. “We used cold plasma energy to transmute one substance to another?”
“Exactly! In this world, we have a source of powerful energy that isn’t normally available to us. You’re the one who just called me a numpty for forgetting how powerful we are. And since you and I are already strong rem manipulators, we should be able to amplify it in a way not possible back in our own world. Maybe even smash them together like you said. Then we send a blast of hyper-concentrated rem into the collider, through the portal, blow out the leak just like that oil guy and—”
“Start a chain reaction of rem production. Brilliant.” He rubbed his lip. “But we still have to remove the dark rem. A cold plasma blast could cause the dark rem to explode everywhere. The Prof has already said the threshold’s been exceeded. It would be very dangerous. And you’re the one who’s powerful. Not me.”
“I might be the Orange Witch, but you’re the Brain, Nathan. Tell me. What does dark rem look like?”
He twisted his mouth. “I can only guess. The Prof never told me about it. I imagine it doesn’t really look like anything. By the sound of it, it just has negative characteristics compared to normal rem.”
She jumped up. “Right! So if we made the cold plasma do something negative, that stopped the dark rem, but still left the plasma strong enough to blow out the fire, would that work?”
He grinned. “Quantum Physics, dark energy and plasma manipulation in one sentence! And I thought I was the scientist! Yes, it would work. I think. Or could work.” His face fell and he shrugged. “If we knew how to do that.”
She smiled. “Scientists. No idea how to bring artistic expression into their work. I think you’ve just helped me figure out what on earth made me think I could fix this. Have you heard of a painting technique called negative painting?”
He shook his head.
“It’s beautiful actually.” She sighed, remembering what she had left behind, then pulled herself together. That was the very thing she was determined to save. Beauty. Creativity. She shook herself and looked back at Nathan. “Sorry. Got lost in my thoughts. Negative painting is where the subject of your painting is only revealed by painting everything else. I think I might be able to do that in the plasma, and only reveal the rem. I’m not entirely sure how yet ...”
She held up her splinted wrist. “But I’ll need your help. This artist is temporarily crippled.”
He pulled a face. “So we’re going to open a portal from both ends, then you and I will send a specially painted plasma, packed with rem, into the collider where it will wreak havoc, start a new—positive—chain reaction, and reverse the damage done?”
She nodded.
“Sounds very ambitious.”
She looked him in the eye. “Boldness has genius—”
“—power and magic in it. I know.”
~ 28 ~
The Last Portal
They walked by themselves to the township square. Since the square was the place where they had entered—and left from—the most, Nathan had suggested it was the most logical place to open a portal.
“It will give us the best chance to make it work from both sides!” He had that excited look on his face again.
But Sarina was adamant: “Not the treehouse. Something went badly wrong there for me, and we don’t need to risk any contamination.”
Nathan nodded, and a more serious expression crossed his face. “I was thinking. When it comes to sealing off the portal from our end—er that’s if, you know, we’re successful—we should have some kind of image in mind to help us focus on making a super-strong barrier.”
“Why?” She gave him a puzzled look as they walked.
“I think I mentioned this before. This connection should never have happened without some huge localisation of dark-energy. Something has caused some kind of concentration; much more so than the general increase scientists have been predicting as a normal part of the universe.”
“This might be a normal part of your universe, but can you speak plain English please?”
“In plain English, I think the portals may resist being closed. We’ll be fighting the natural entropy of dark-energy across the connection. It wants to keep that connection.”
“It wants to keep the connection? Now it has a personality?”
“Not strictly speaking. More like water flowing up or downh
ill. It never flows up. Think of it this way: We’re probably pushing dark-energy uphill.”
She frowned at him. “The two of us. Two kids. Pushing some crazy energy of the universe uphill.”
“Yup. Boldness—”
“Okay, I got it. So what’s the thing we should focus on? To seal the portal.” She thought of the bucket. “A giant bathplug? What do they do when they seal those oil wells?”
“I dunno exactly, but I seem to remember they swing some type of heavy valve onto them when they cap them. It’s a good idea though. Maybe we can make a kind of locked vault door. What do you think?”
She drew her brow together. “A vault door sounds good. How about once it’s in place, we spray it with molten lava and bury it.”
He smiled. “Cool. Or hot. Either way, works for me.”
They walked on to the park in the town square. Nathan stopped them in the middle of the grassy area. “Here will be fine. Best we don’t have trees or buildings too close.” He fixed his gaze on her and his mouth tightened. “It could get messy.”
“What about the Professor? How will he and the kids know when to begin?”
“He’ll have a scanner working, for sure. Don’t worry about that; there are going to be enough kids wearing Intensifiers that they’ll pick up a caterpillar metamorphosing from a 100 metres, let alone some massive cold plasma portal. By the way, how did they prevent nightmares from taking over?”
“They didn’t. They just ignored them.”
He screwed his face up. “How?”
“By giving them something real to hang on to. It was the Professor’s idea, but I enhanced it.”
“Huh?”
“They hold something in their hands to smell. Something that reminds them about the reality they are in and that the nightmare is exactly that—just a nightmare.”
His jaw dropped. “No. Tell me that’s not why you had my sock.”
She shrugged. “All in the name of science. But are we going to stand here having some delightful conversation about your socks, or will we open a portal and try to save the world?”
He shut up. For a moment. “But what about you? How will you paint?” He pointed to her wrist.
The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults) Page 60
