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

  Malden cleared his throat. “Fair question, I’d say. You want to know the probability factor, of course.” He looked into the air. “I’d say with all those things in place, we should have a better than fifty-percent chance of success.” He looked around at them all with a pleased expression.

  “Oh, great,” Sarina said, slumping.

  Tomas leaned over to Rona. “What does that mean?”

  She whispered back. “It’s only slightly more likely to work than not.”

  Tomas stared at her, and outside the thunderclaps rolled across the distant valley.

  ~ 50 ~

  No Connection

  “So”—Malden stood and clapped his hands together—“we should get started, yes?” He paused in mid-movement. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Yes, Professor,” Sarina said, “how will we make contact with Professor Harrison?”

  “Do you not have some device? Some communicator? Surely Harrison had thought of that.” His eyes narrowed.

  Sarina shook her head. “We always used portals. Sometimes dreams.” An idea occurred to her. “Wait. When you were ... Makthryg ... you claimed Lena spoke to you. From the other world—our world. Can you make contact with her in your mind?”

  Malden screwed his face up. “I don’t know ...” He scratched his head. “Yes. No. I have some strange memory of it. Perhaps it is worth a try. Then we could ask this Lena—”

  “She’s your daughter, Professor!”

  He stopped, and a fleeting sadness crossed his face. “My daughter. Yes. I could ask her to be the conduit to Harrison. She knows Harrison, doesn’t she?”

  Sarina didn’t have the heart to tell Malden Professor Harrison had been Lena’s ‘daddy’ for the past six years, and they had all thought her references to talking to her Real Daddy to be a child’s flight of fancy. “Yes. She knows him well—she trusts him.”

  Malden brightened. “Then it’s worth a try.”

  Rona butted in. “If so, then we should all use our ... powers. You know, to help.”

  Sarina smacked her head. “Of course! Both you and I know Lena well—and Paolo probably remembers her face from the glimpses he saw.”

  Paolo nodded. “It is a shame Lucio is not here. But we will try anyway.” He held out his hands. “Let us not waste time.”

  Sarina steeled herself. What was happening back on her Earth? Would the Professor even be in a position to help? Focus. Focus on what you can control, she thought, and held out her hands to join with the others. Malden looked at them with a confused expression.

  “Join hands, Professor. It multiplies the rem.”

  He grinned like a child. “Of course it does. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  The four of them sat with hands joined. Malden looked at them and appeared to swap his forced joviality for a more serious look. He nodded, and closed his eyes. Sarina did the same, and conjured an image of a beaming Lena to the front of her mind, but no sooner had she focused on the girl’s face, than it was whipped away by a blinding white light. She squeezed her eyelids momentarily; tried again with another image of Lena, but to no avail: once again the brilliant white light replaced the girl’s features.

  “It’s not working,” Rona’s voice floated in. “My vision keeps being blasted away. There’s something wrong.”

  Sarina opened her eyes and released her hands. “Same here.” She slumped and looked at Professor Malden, who was studying her again.

  “Did you say you had only just arrived back in this world?”

  “Yes. Actually I think we were lucky to arrive in the right place. When we made the portal, it sucked me in and then—oh!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Something went wrong with the portal and it’s damaged the link back to Lena!”

  Malden nodded. “That’s what I sense has happened—at least with my limited ability. But no need to look so despondent. If that’s the case, all we need to do is move. I suspect you arrived not far from here, is that right?” He waited for her to acknowledge with a nod. “Good. Then I suggest it is a local interference with the out of control singularity. All we need is to put some physical distance between it and us. Then our connection will work again.”

  Andreas, who stood closest to the cave’s entrance, poked his head out, then looked back in. “Then we must make haste. The storm has met with a lull, but I would guess it is not for long. Tomas, you take the device again. We must all be scanning for places to take shelter as we make our way back down through the hills, though I fancy none of us would wish to shelter in the trees.”

  Tomas was already moving over to collect the collider, when a black-suited figure leaped through the cave’s entrance and dragged the device away from him.

  “Hey!” Sarina ran towards the figure—then stopped when he reached inside a flap on his chest and brandished a pistol, which he aimed at Tomas.

  “Stop where you are, Miss Metcalfe, or your friend breathes his last.”

  The voice was familiar ... where had she ... ? The image flashed into her mind. “You! The kidnapper!”

  The man chuckled. “Oh, I’m so much more than that. Not that you’ll ever be privy to it.” He bent down and picked up the collider in one easy sweep of a powerful arm, keeping the other trained on Tomas. She saw the man’s pinched-face appearance disguised a lithe and strong frame: the man was a weapon in-and-of himself, and he knew it. “Now I will relieve you of this troublesome little gadget wanted by so many, and leave you to weather the rather nasty storm I see coming our way.”

  He dipped his head at Tomas, and started to back out, but Tomas advanced, speaking in a deep growl.

  “You think I am frightened by the words of a bully and a metal tube? You will place the device on the ground, or I will place it there for you, but I shall not bother to remove your arm before doing so.” He sprang forward, as fast as anything Sarina had seen, but it wasn’t fast enough.

  As if in slow motion, she saw pinch-face’s grin extend as he pulled the trigger.

  She screamed. “No!”

  ~ 51 ~

  Dead Ends And Dead Friends?

  Nathan logged off the S.E.E.K. site with a growing sense of dismay. Even Davo Sawyer’s involvement couldn’t disguise the fact that someone with way more brains than Sawyer had to be stirring them up. Someone with a line into information that no one should have. He spun the chair around. “Hey, Prof? Has Agent Blanchard been able to find out who’s behind the S.E.E.K. guys yet?”

  Professor Harrison shook his head. “Every lead is a dead end—but that’s no reflection on Blanchard or his men’s abilities: those dead ends have been deliberately engineered. We’re no closer to tracing them yet—other than an obvious deduction: they’re being controlled by The Consortium. How about you? Did you find anything?”

  “Sort of. If it’s true, then we’d better get out of the labs as soon as we can organise somewhere else to work from.” They’d been at the labs for a couple of hours, hard at work. Nathan had tried to put aside his fears about Sarina and Rona, but had only succeeded in imagining them strung out between universes in infinite strands of human spaghetti, frozen in time and space. He brushed the thought away as it entered again.

  Professor Harrison was staring at him, waiting.

  “Oh, sorry. Um ... as far as I can see, ‘Smacker’ and his mates seem to be being told to look for this lab building. The Sawyer gang are locals, so whoever is doing the manipulating seems to think they might know the building. I think it’s only a matter of time—and then we’ll be trapped in here.”

  Harrison’s lips were tight. “I’d hoped our aliases and off-limits address would have kept snooping eyes away. Another example of how far into our defences the Consortium have been able to penetrate.”

  “Speaking of which,” Nathan said, “any news about that guy I saw jump into the portal?”

  “Blanchard thinks he could be a known mercenary called The Shadow. Not a pleasant chap by all accounts. Let’s hope the portal was already sufficiently collapsed to mak
e him ... indisposed to continuing the pursuit.”

  Nathan arched his eyebrows. “And if he wasn’t?”

  “Then we’d better pray he doesn’t find Sarina and Rona.”

  If they’re alive. The thought reappeared. He rubbed his eyes and tried to put it out of his mind.

  “They’ll be okay, Nathan.” The Prof gave him a comforting smile. “We have to keep believing it.”

  He nodded. “What will we do now? Don’t we have to get out of here in a hurry?”

  Professor Harrison’s brow creased. “Hmm. What we really need is some kind of mobile lab. If we had more time ...”

  “What about Agent Blanchard? The FBI have mobile comms trucks, maybe he can get us one of those?”

  “I think we have little chance of pulling in a favour like that, with all the mayhem in the streets. Anyway, Nathan, I think your imagination is running away with you. Have you ever seen one of those in any street in England?”

  Nathan slumped. “No.” He pictured a sleek FBI semi-trailer pulling up to the lab building in Chelton, and he had to admit, it did seem unlikely. Then he straightened, remembering the antenna and dishes festooned on the media comms trucks he’d seen in the movies. “Hey, Prof. What about a mobile news truck? Could he get us one of those? It wouldn’t take much effort to plug our computer network into it? And who’d suspect a local news truck would be hiding mind-reading mutants?”

  “Smart thinking, Nathan.” Professor Harrison already had his phone to his ear. He glanced over at Nathan. “If we survive this, there’s a place in the FBI for you, I’m sure.”

  If we survive this.

  ~ 52 ~

  Fireworks

  Time froze in the cave. Sarina’s breath stopped, as did her heart. A look of puzzlement swept across the black-suited man’s face. The gun had not fired explosively, but had begun to shimmer and sparkle from the end of the barrel backwards, like a freshly-lit firework sparkler gathering momentum. Spits of blue flame ignited along the gun’s barrel. The man did not move, but from the way his eyes flickered around in sheer panic, Sarina thought he had to have been trying to drop the pistol, but he was locked in position; immobilised.

  The fizzing ring of sparking fire traced its way back along the gun, and the still-burning remnants separated and floated away from each other in slow motion. Tiny searingly-bright specks; a giant firework rocket exploding in noiseless ultra-slow time. The man’s gaze dropped down to his wrist, his eyes wide as he watched the shimmering circle of fiery destruction pick up speed and sweep up his arm, along the way disassembling the man’s atoms in a dazzling multi-coloured display.

  Sarina caught one last panicked look from the man before he was engulfed in a glittering mass of fiery energy, then drifted apart in the air in silence. Firefly-like flecks passed over their heads in the cave, or wafted outside to be whipped away in the wind, until there was no sign of the man.

  Or the collider he had been holding in the other arm.

  Then the cave was dark again. Tomas picked himself up off the floor and no one spoke for some time.

  ~ 53 ~

  Made Of Sand

  “I suppose the codes don’t matter much now,” Sarina said, staring at the space previously occupied by the man and collider. She looked at Malden. “Now what do we do? Why wouldn’t the collider’s destruction stop the rift anyway?”

  Professor Malden stroked his chin. “Very interesting. Either the laws of combustion function differently in this world, or bringing the firearm through a portal changed its composition in some way.” He shook himself out of his reverie and focused on Sarina. “Whatever rift the collider caused is still there. Think of Rona’s water pouch analogy slightly differently. Imagine the collider is a plug in a sink, and separating whatever is in the sink from that below. Now imagine we accidentally pushed the plug through the drain hole and caused a leak.” A smile flickered across his face and he nodded, as if the analogy amused him. “My plan was to force the plug back into place—which is why we would need precise location and power-setting codes—and then seal the hole completely. But now we don’t have the plug anymore.”

  “Just one big hole.” Sarina slumped.

  “Worse than that, I’m afraid. It’s where the analogy breaks down. You could think of it now as if the sink were made of sand, and it is emptying itself through the drain, while simultaneously self-destructing.”

  Sarina gaped at him. “What are you saying?”

  “I think even I understand this,” Tomas said. “A hole has been punched through our two worlds, and we have nothing to plug it with. If it isn’t sealed, then both our worlds will be sucked away.”

  Malden nodded. “He has it—with one quite important part missing.”

  “Then put words to it!” Andreas looked impatient.

  Malden studied Andreas calmly. “It’s probably not just our worlds being sucked away, as your friend puts it, but our entire universes. And since the hole will be making itself bigger, now the ‘plug’ is not providing any resistance, we can expect the process to accelerate. Rather rapidly.”

  “How rapidly?”

  Malden shook his head. “I have no way of knowing. It’s only a hypothesis. Perhaps as little as seventy-two hours, or as long as three weeks.”

  Sarina gasped.

  “How long is this in our world, Sarina? Do you know?” There was urgency in Paolo’s voice, underlined by another rumble of thunder—closer now, she noted.

  She creased her brow, trying to remember how they referred to time passing in the township. From what she recalled, they called a day a turn of the sun. “Between three and twenty-one turns of the sun.” She saw the shock register on all three faces as they comprehended how little time remained. Or how little life remained, she thought. To have come so far—to have found the collider; to have discovered Professor Malden, whom Lena would never see; to have had the solution within their grasp. A thought occurred to her.

  “Professor Malden—is this rift between our universes anything like a portal?”

  He nodded. “It’s similar. They have some properties in parallel, but I believe the rift to be more structurally permanent, whereas most portals will self-seal, or can be forced to self-seal. They depend on wormholes, which are inherently unstable. What we have here is a structural tear in the fabric separating our universes. I believe it would take extraordinary power to force a rift such as this to close—especially as it grows bigger.”

  “But rem-power can create and seal portals, right?”

  Malden grinned. “You understand the science well.”

  Actually, she thought, the science stuff was infuriating. But if they could do what they had done before, and use her power to open and close portals, surely they could stitch up this rip, or rift, or whatever it was? She thought rip was a much better name for it. One big rip, which she had unwittingly triggered. But maybe she could become some kind of giant seamstress ... She watched Andreas and Tomas gather at the cave’s entrance, joined by Paolo. The three of them spoke in low voices; all with worry written over their faces. She refocused on Professor Malden.

  “Professor. My rem-power is multiplied in this world. My friend Nathan and I made portals, closed them and used some kind of ... cold plasma I think he called it ... to, ah ... fight you with and transmute substances. Can’t we use that somehow?”

  Malden thought for a while. “If we were to plug the rift by replacing the collider with pure rem-energy, it would need to be multiplied by a powerful factor.”

  “Sarina, didn’t you say this rem could be multiplied by our emotions?” Rona said.

  “No, that was Professor Harrison. Actually”—she fixed her gaze on Malden—“Professor Harrison said that’s what you were working on at the time of the accident. Is that true?”

  Malden looked confused. “Possibly. I remember being on the verge of something quite exciting, then calling Maggie”—his face fell as painful memories washed across him, then were wiped away by a sudden glint in his eye and his
face lifted to meet Sarina’s gaze—“Yes. I believe you are correct. Rem-particles can be channelled, multiplied and manipulated by the creative emotional energy in certain individuals. I expect my discovery was also the cause of the accident ...” his voice trailed off and he stared at the cave’s rocky floor.

  “Why do you ask, Rona?” Sarina looked at her mentor.

  “You told me about the kids—remember? How you worked together, using those yellow hats?”

  “What’s this?” Professor Malden had lifted up and was looking at them both with interest. “What kids? What are these hats?”

  Sarina told him about the Dreamer Kids experiments. To save time and avoid over-complicating things, she decided to leave out the kidnapping and the anti-psi-kids groups. For now. But Rona was right. Maybe they did have a way to multiply their rem-power, though how on earth they would make that work to close the rift was beyond her. And a part of her was starting to wonder if her own emotional blockage or whatever it was, had been the cause of the last portal’s flaw. She dismissed the thought. She’d have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

  If they ever did.

  “Professor. If we got all the Dreamer Kids here and working together somehow—would that work, do you think? To undo the damage of the collider and close this rift thing?”

  He cocked his head. “There’s a slim chance. Good thinking, Sarina. How many of these Dreamer Kids do we have?”