Birth of the Alliance

by Alex Albrinck

  Peter was there with a new recruit, one he’d brought to the Cavern direct from the human world based upon her lack of Energy. Peter escorted her through the crowds there to relax on the sand, stopping to greet friends and introduce the newcomer. The pair eventually met up with Will and Adam.

  “Maria, I’d like to introduce you to Will and Adam,” Peter said, nodding at each man in turn. “Gentlemen, meet Maria. She’s a new recruit, and just finished her first voyage here to the Cavern.”

  Adam shook her hand. “Welcome home, Maria.”

  Will shook Maria’s hand in greeting as well, smiling. While he was happy that Peter had found yet another new recruit, he was struck by the emotional force of Adam’s greeting. He’d not said “home” in reference to the Cavern to represent Maria’s new perspective. Adam had long thought of the Cavern as a place to work; Atlantis was his home. But there was a powerful shift in his emotional attachment to the Cavern implicit in his words. To Adam, the Cavern had now become home. It was the place where the people he cared about, the people he loved, all lived. It was the place where he spent his most meaningful time.

  The Cavern was no mere work location for Adam now. It was the place he’d defend above all others.

  And those who lived there, his new family, were people he’d defend at all costs as well.

  XXI

  Memories

  1977 A.D.

  Will wriggled his toes to make certain he wasn’t completely immobilized. The chair felt coffin-like, like a dentist’s chair that wrapped him in a cocoon. Graham had explained that they needed to reduce current sensory stimuli for the machine to work at an optimal level. They’d already checked it for soundproofing, and Will had determined that white noise was piped in that drowned out even the sounds of his own breathing. The chair, when closed up, shut off all light save for the screens positioned in front of his face.

  They hadn’t done anything with his sense of taste, though. He could still taste his lunch. He hung on to that as his last bit of humanity.

  The narrow cocoon provided him only a slight glimpse of the rest of the room at the moment. The others in the room were seated around a large wooden table. Viewscreens were positioned in front of each chair. Will could feel the cool breeze piped into the room to maintain temperature control.

  Graham leaned over the narrow opening, checking the leads taped to Will’s head. “Are you comfortable?”

  “Would it matter if I said no?”

  Graham blanched. “There are limitations to what we can do. I realize it’s not the most… luxurious seating, but—”

  “I’ll be okay, Graham.”

  Graham nodded, nervous. “I’m going to close it up now. We’re monitoring your vitals, of course.”

  Will nodded. Graham swung the panel around and it closed with an audible click, plunging Will into full sensory deprivation. His mind flashed back to his first visit to the Cavern, when he’d teleported into an airless void. He thought about Hope, who as Elizabeth Lowell had suffered through encasement in a true coffin, having nothing with her inside that simple pine box but the trust that Will would keep her alive.

  A slight wisp of air tickled his skin, the pure oxygen that enabled him to breathe. He wiggled his toes, and they felt like they were miles away.

  Seconds later, the lower screen in front of him burst forth with light, and Will was forced to blink to allow his eyes to adjust.

  “Will! Are you okay? Your pulse just shot up.” Graham’s voice was in his ear, and quite loud. Will’s adjusted eyes detected his frantic face in the screen that had lit up.

  “Bright light from the screen in the pitch black startled my eyes. Maybe let it turn on gradually, or just have it on when you close the door on this contraption?”

  “Oh. Sorry, Will.” Graham’s face flushed on the screen. “I’ll make a note about that. I’m hoping we can turn this into a simple helmet in the future, but… that should be an easy temporary fix. How are you feeling?”

  “I think we lost all of my limbs but other than that, I’m OK. Can you drop the volume in here? The speaker is right next to my ear.”

  A pause. “That better?”

  “Very much so.”

  He could hear Hope’s voice in his ear, and her face, sporting her dark-haired appearance, appeared on the lower screen. “Graham, is there a more traditional camera in there? I want a picture of Will with everything sticking out of his hair.”

  There was the sound of laughter. “Ha. Ha,” Will grumped. “I’d stick out my tongue but I’d just end up licking the screen.”

  “That’s gross.”

  “If I lose sensation in my mouth I might be desperate enough to give it a taste.”

  “Will, if you’re truly that uncomfortable we can—”

  Will chuckled. “I’m okay, Graham. It’s just a strange sensation. Are we ready?”

  Graham cleared his throat. “Before we do, I just want to make sure you’re comfortable with what’s going to happen. This is, by its very nature, a very invasive technology. People might see things you’d rather they didn’t.”

  Will tried to shrug, but failed. “I’m living in a community of powerful telepaths who could see what they wanted to see in the right circumstances anyway. And this is important.”

  Graham nodded. “Is everyone else ready?” On the screen, Graham’s head turned side-to-side. He received nods, for he nodded once. “Okay, Will. It’s your show now. We’ll be quiet and turn off the exterior monitor.”

  The lower screen blinked out, and Will was once more plunged into darkness.

  Graham’s invention purported to project the images and sounds from the subject’s memory. The idea was that conscious recollections of events were tainted by beliefs and where one’s conscious focus might exist at a time. Will might be in a room and notice only Hope, but his mind would record the physical details of the room and other people there. It would also accurately remember words spoken and sounds generated. If Graham’s invention worked, Will could direct his thought to the memories of future events, and those images and sounds could be recorded for study by Adam and others involved in the efforts relating to 2030.

  With his body sealed in a cocoon-like structure and all external mental stimuli extinguished, Will did as Graham had directed. He focused on the events of the day he’d been attacked, trying to force his mind to pull up as many sensory images as it could. He kept his eyes on the screen directly in front of him, ignoring the lower screen where the faces of those outside had appeared a moment earlier.

  The screen remained blank. Will considered for a moment, and then closed his eyes. Though he couldn’t see anything in the total darkness, the fact that his eyes remained open provided him a lesser focus on the images in his mind than he’d experienced with his eyes closed.

  He could see the walls surrounding his neighborhood. He could hear the water trickling along in the moat. He could feel the mid-winter chill of the frosty air. The smell of a distant wood fire pleased his olfactory sensibilities. Will was out of his car, walking toward the guard tower, feeling the heavy, polished black shoes on his feet. He could feel himself tighten the overcoat to help lessen the chill in the air.

  He could hear gasps, and realized that those sounds weren’t coming from his memory. They were coming from the microphones of the others in the room, piped into his cocoon and projected by the microphone near his ear. With great caution, he opened his eyes.

  The neighborhood was on the screen, the walls slanting up and out, the moat with the water he’d hinted might be poisoned, the barbed wire on top of the walls, the huge trees they’d left almost entirely undisturbed as they’d built it all. As the image moved, showing a slight bounce as one would see while walking along, he was able to make out the words on a sign ahead.

  De Gray Estates.

  “I remember,” he whispered. He felt a chill inside, not one driven by the cool oxygen pumped into the cocoon. It was the chill of recognition, the anticipation of what he’d seen an
d experienced that day so long ago.

  He saw the guard station on his left, empty, and the forty-foot-tall guard tower to the right. A police car sat on the right hand side of the driveway, lights flashing, siren silenced, parked behind a limousine. An older man with hair of silver stood near the opened rear door of the limousine, fanning an elderly woman inside.

  “Myra,” Will said. “The woman’s name is Myra. She lived in the neighborhood.”

  The images shifted again. Will was walking toward the police officer, noting the heavy overcoat the man wore. The chill in the air added a slightly rosy tint to the man’s deep ebony cheeks.

  “Michael… Cook? I can’t remember his last name. It’s something like Cook, but that’s not it. He’s involved somehow… more with something that would happen after this. I can’t remember that part right now, though.”

  He heard himself engage the officer, inquire about the elderly woman’s condition, and then examine the buildings. He could feel a sense of pride at the security the walls provided. He’d wanted more people on the job, but the laws of the time wouldn’t allow him to purchase the weaponry needed. Instead, he’d made the fortress itself as impregnable as possible, rendering the lack of weaponry and limited number moot. If someone had the resources to scale the walls, destroy the walls, or threaten the guards into allowing them inside? Such people would have the resources to invade anything. The guards provided a human touch, a means of monitoring entry to the community. The technology was likely sufficient, but the residents enjoyed the fact that the “guards” knew them by name and could wave them in. Will winced. Those unarmed men had faced the Hunters and the Assassin.

  He wanted to tell Adam that they needed to protect them, somehow.

  His view panned up, taking in the brick tower up the sides until it stopped on the all-glass walls of the guard’s quarters at the top. The clear walls, constructed of bullet-proof glass, provided a panoramic view of the neighborhood and its surroundings. Will’s onscreen memory showed the huge, gaping hole in the wall nearest the driveway, shattered by an incredible force.

  “The guard… the one in the tower… the Assassin killed him, threw his body through the glass and into the other building… that guard’s name was something with a D.”

  The view panned to shards of glass lying on the ground. The shards looked like pieces of ice at first, but Will remembered now: there had been no precipitation that year, no moisture on the ground that could freeze. His gaze, and the onscreen view, panned to the smaller building to his left, to the massive hole in the roof where the guard’s body had entered from above. Will watched his view switch to the police officer, and the man had moved to the window offering a view into the building. The officer had stepped to the side and vomited after viewing the interior. The officer’s voice came across the speakers for all of them to hear. Two fatalities. Suspect or suspects at large. Will had known then, with no less certainty than he did now, that whoever had committed those murders was after Hope and Josh.

  The vision of the officer viewing the carnage inside the guard station triggered more memories in Will. “The other guard… a name with a G. Wait… no, the woman, his wife or fiancé… hers was the name with the G. Gena? Yes, that's it, Gena. She was very young, too. His was a name with an M. Michael? No, that was officer. Matthew? That’s not right either. I’ll think of it. Definitely an M name, though.”

  The view panned to the concrete gate, to the still-reeling police officer, and back to the gate. They watched from Will’s point of view as he’d tried to scramble up and over the gate, and failed. Will heard himself shout to the police officer, asking the man for help, and heard the officer refuse to help or hinder Will’s efforts. Will looked at the shorter building, to a drainage pipe on the side. They watched as Will used the pipe to scramble up to the roof of that building, and then he dropped to the ground with a brief exclamation of pain. Will winced inside the cocoon, remembering the shooting agony in his ankle and his efforts to stand. He looked toward a fleet of golf carts nearby, but all of them were in flames, and….

  The screen in front of him lifted, and Graham’s ebullient face was there. Will blinked at the greater amount of light, felt the fresher air from the outside flood into the cocoon. Graham pulled the leads off Will’s head, and Will felt the moisture in his hair trickle down his face. He could hear the exterior latches being undone, and the sides of the cocoon were pulled away. Cool air bathed his body, and Will realized that he’d been sweating profusely, muscles tensing. Was it because of nerves from being in the cocoon, or from reliving those memories in such a vivid fashion? He was aware of his limbs once more, and bent his arms and legs to restore feeling and help regain his bearings. Graham offered him a hand, and Will accepted the assistance as Graham hauled Will back to his feet.

  The others sat around the table, their faces ashen. Hope’s eyes were wide in shock. Adam leaned forward, scribbling furiously on a pad of paper, as if afraid that he'd forget some critical detail. Eva’s fingers were steepled in front of her face, her eyes closed as if in deep thought.

  “That. Was. Amazing!” Graham exclaimed. “It worked so much better than I could ever have hoped. It was as if we were all there, living through that experience! What a thrill!”

  Will turned a weary gaze toward the younger man. “Two good men were lying dead after dying in gruesome fashion in the lower building, and the Assassin was probably already in my house, preparing to set the building on fire, and readying himself to kill Hope. Thrill isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe the situation.”

  Graham’s brow furrowed. “Sorry. I hadn’t realized… wait a minute. When did the Assassin try to kill Hope? Who’s Hope?”

  Will opened his mouth to reply, and then stopped. They'd kept the secret of Will's origins to just the four of them thus far.

  Eva opened her eyes and her hands moved to the table. “First of all, the recordings were successful. We will be able to watch the footage at our leisure time and hear your commentary as we do, Will. Secondly, Graham needs to know what he just saw. Or didn’t you notice?”

  Will looked at her, confused. “Notice what?”

  “The man we saw near the car, caring for the older woman. He looked to be an older man, but there is no mistaking the face, the eyes, or mannerisms. I heard the voice as well. That man is an older-looking Graham. Graham will be there, Will. He is part of the team that executes this entire plan.”

  Adam and Hope looked at each other, startled. Will gaped at Eva. He’d never made the connection… until now.

  “Wait.” Graham looked around the table. “What do you mean, the older man we saw was me? How can an old man in a replay of a memory of Will’s be… me?”

  Hope sighed, glanced around the table, and saw the looks of agreement. “The answer to that question is the same as the explanation for why you’ve never heard of an attack on me by the Assassin. You’ve just witnessed Will's memory of an event that won’t happen for another half century. January 7, 2030, to be exact.” She smiled. “With the proper technique, you can visibly age quite a bit in that amount of time. Trust me, I know.”

  “How can Will have a memory of a future event, though?” Graham asked. “Wouldn't that be a vision, a precognition, or something like that?”

  Eva shook her head. “No, it is no prediction, Graham, but a memory. To Will, that event happened centuries ago, on his thirty-fifth birthday. If we’d continued, you would have seen Adam and two others rescue Will from an attack by the Hunters.”

  Graham snorted. “Will wouldn’t need rescuing by the Hunters.” Then he frowned. “How could an event in the year 2030 happen on Will's thirty-fifth birthday? He was centuries old when I met him… and that happened a few centuries ago.”

  “Because I was born in the year 1995,” Will replied. “I won’t be born for another twenty years. When Adam and the others rescued me, they saved a man who had never heard of the Aliomenti, who didn’t know what Energy was, and who was very much at the mercy of
the Hunters that day. The rescue was performed using a time machine that eventually deposited me in the past, outside the old Aliomenti North Village. Before I was sent back in time, Adam and two others taught me Energy and gave me other bits of guidance. I’ve been living my way back to my own birthday ever since, with complete knowledge of the advances, innovations, and key historical events that would unfold before me.”

  Graham looked at all of them, looked for any tell-tale signs that he was the victim of an elaborate hoax, tested the Energy of the room for the revelation of an emotion of humor at his expense. He found none. “Clearly, all of you believe this, but…”

  Will shrugged. “If your machine can only project memories, and not current ideas, then it’s easy enough to check. Look at the police car and the limousine in those images. Look at the dashboard of the car I’m driving and climb out of right at the start, how much more advanced it is than anything else you could find in the human world today. I’m living in the open in the human world in that memory, decades from now. Why? Because I had no idea there was anything else.”

  Graham looked at all of them again. Then he looked at the ground and started pacing. “We’ve long been told that Will Stark, even when he was with the original Aliomenti, always had ideas that were far more advanced than anything others at the time had seen or imagined. That submarine you used to bring the first of us here so long ago… that’s something I’ll bet the Aliomenti still don’t have. And more to the point…” He paused, and looked up at Will. “You’ve never lied to me about anything. That’s got to count for something. So… as difficult as it may be to wrap my mind around it just yet, I'm just going to have to accept that what you’ve told me is true.” He shrugged. “It will take some getting used to, though.”

  Eva gave Will a gentle punch in the shoulder. “See? Why can you not be more like Graham? He never used the word impossible.”