That was the last anyone heard from Mr. Ted Schaeffer. He melded back into his computer station.
I watched in horror as my dad along with the other scientists worked feverishly for a solution. As they worked, the building began to shake. The electricity went out. There were sirens and bells and ascending alarms.
I could do nothing but stare and cry as I watched the entirety of CERN collapse into a black hole the size of a large town. The black void grew exponentially by the minute. My dad was lost. Fanny and Jake were lost.
No kid should see both of their parents die.
My tears flowed in a torrent down my face. Lost. All is lost to me. I’m too late.
“Why the tears, child?”
“I’ve lost them all,” I hiccupped.
“Oh goodness dear one. Lost? You’ve lost nothing. Do you not remember anything that I have shown you? Anything that you have learned here?”
“You mean, I can stop this from happening?”
“Of course you can. Why else would I show this to you?”
“But hasn’t it already happened? I mean, how can I change the future?”
“By changing the past, is that not obvious?
“Goddess, I’m so tired and confused. I don’t know anymore what to do.”
“You simply step into the stream dear, like you did before. Only this time, you will step into the stream at the place where you can stop these events from unfolding as you have seen.”
“But how? Even if somehow I’m able to choose the right moment to step into the stream, how do I stop a runaway black hole?”
“You know the answers to these questions young one. Allow the stream to move through you. Become one with the web of all things. You are, after all, Akasha. Become one with Akasha.
"But before you go, remember well these words I now give you. The torc on your arm and the knowledge you have gained here are not to be used for folly. A Priestess of the Order of Brighid uses her skills and powers for the best interests of all sentient beings, not her own self-purpose. Do you understand?"
“Yes Goddess. It’s like what Hindergog told me about the dagger that he gave me.” I pulled the dagger from its sheath and held it in front of me.
“Yes, the same as the dagger. And know this too young one, that if you ever use the torc or your powers for your own selfish purpose, there will be consequences for you dear Emily.”
I nodded my understanding. “Good, now it is time for you to fulfill your purpose.”
As if she had reached into my brain itself, I saw flash before my mind’s eye a vision from my memory of the time I was with Madame Wong and first saw the Web of All Things. It was like I was in that time and place again. The Netherworld and the human world, all that I had known or would know, melted away.
Once again I was in the loving bosom of the Web. I was enveloped in the vibrating harmonies of countless strings of the Great Web, all with their own distinct note yet all in harmony with the others.
It was no memory. It was happening again.
I felt myself inexorably drawn a certain way. I don’t know even now what guided me or why I went the direction I did in the infinite web.
But direction and guidance drew me to one particular shining orb. One particular note. One particular voice in an endless sea of voices.
It was like touching without touch. Melding together of two entities. In that moment, at that time, I knew once and for all where my mother was.
She wasn’t in the kitchen making pancakes. She wasn’t in her studio painting. She wasn’t in the garden planting geraniums. She wasn’t even in a coffin underground.
She was there, in the web. She had been there all along.
I can’t describe in words the feeling that I felt in that moment. Joy. Jubilation. Neither one comes close. To know, really know, without any doubt of mind, body or soul. To have, in that moment, not one doubt or fear about anything. To know that I am eternal and that she is eternal and that we are connected always and forever. I wanted nothing more than to stay there feeling that way.
Suddenly the utter bliss of knowingness was interrupted by what felt like a terrible ripping. I heard a large whooshing sound and my innards felt like they would be ripped apart.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I fell with a thud onto the floor of command central at CERN. It was as if the cosmos upchucked me right where and when I was supposed to be.
“Emily!” said a familiar voice.
“Dad?”
My eyes were still adjusting to the harsh light of the fluorescent modern world. I had become accustomed to the misty fog of the Netherworld. But my skin still had all its senses about it, and I could feel all about me the warm embrace of my dad’s big arms. They were real. Solid and real. This was no hologram or ghost image of the past.
“Dad,” I said. A river of tears flowed.
“Em,” he said. I felt drops from his eyes rain down on top of my head. After a few minutes, he took me by the shoulders looked me in the eyes and said, “Don’t ever leave me again!”
“I won’t, Dad. At least not until I go to college.”
He wasn’t a zombie anymore. I had my dad back, at least for now.
I hadn’t realized that Jake and Fanny were there too until I felt a tight squeeze around my middle.
“Fanny!”
“It is so good to see you, Em. Oh my gosh, look at your arms girl.” Fanny felt my arm muscles. “What were you doing in that place, working out?”
“Something like that,” I chuckled.
Jake stood behind Fanny, smiling wide, but there was a tear in his eye. I looked at him, and he looked at me and somehow it felt good but awkward. I’d never felt that way around Jake before. I wondered if he felt it too.
“I’m so glad you’re back.” He came toward me and Fanny stepped aside and so Jake could hug me. The hug felt awkward too.
“Glad you guys made it back from the Netherworld okay too,” I said. Jake and I ended our strange embrace. They looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head.
“What are you talking about? We never went there,” said Fanny.
“So when I was rescuing you guys from the Ninjas, you weren’t really there.” I said it more to myself than anyone else. Their look of puzzlement answered my question. I didn’t have time to tell them all about it just then so I said, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later.”
If Jake wasn’t really there, then he didn’t know about the electrical feeling that happened when we’d touched hands. If he doesn’t remember us touching hands, then why is he acting all weird?
That was a puzzle for another day.
61. EMILY MEETS A BLACK HOLE
“Look kiddo, we all want to catch up with each other and Emily I’m dying to hear about all you’ve seen and been through, but we’ve got a bit of a situation going on here.”
“I know all about it, Dad. That’s why I came.”
“I don’t want you anywhere near here. This thing is growing more unstable by the minute. Sensors and cameras, the ones left anyway, show that it’s growing untold powers of ten by the second. We don’t have much time, and I want you out of here before this thing, well … ”
“Dad, I know exactly what’s going on and what will happen. That’s why I’m here now. I can fix this.”
“I know that you’ve been to another dimension – man, I still can’t get my head around that. But this is a job for scientists, not mystics.”
“It’s a job for a Priestess of the Order of Brighid.” I unsheathed and pulled out the bejeweled dagger that Hindergog had given me.
“What’s that?”
“A gift.”
“It’s beautiful kiddo, but I don’t think that little dagger’s going to stop a runaway anomaly.”
“This isn’t just a dagger. I don’t have time to explain now. But this dagger can be anything I want it to be. It can become whatever I ask it to become.”
“I’m not even going to arg
ue with you right now about how that’s impossible wishful thinking.”
“Okay, so don’t argue. Just tell me this. That guy over there. Ted Schaeffer. He had an idea about anti-matter.”
My dad looked over and found Ted Schaeffer with his head buried in his computer monitor, his fingers once again feverishly entering code like his life depended on it. For a second time, it did.
“Yes, he offered that.”
“Well, would it work? I mean if you had enough of the stuff and if someone could get down there and plant the anti-matter in the right way, would it shut the anomaly down?”
“Well, theoretically it could work.”
“I don’t want could, Dad. I gotta know for sure. Will it work?”
He looked me deep in the eyes as his human computer ran calculations. After about a minute he said, “Yes. If we had enough anti-matter, and it was delivered in the right way, it would destroy the anomaly.”
“Okay then. All I need to know is how much and how to deliver it, and we’re good to go.”
“Wait, you’re not thinking of going down there, are you?”
“Of course. You’re not thinking I’m just going to stand here with my thumb up my butt and watch as the whole world gets sucked into a black hole, do you?”
“I’m going to ignore your smart tone due to the black hole underneath our feet threatening our planet, but are you crazy? I can’t let you go down there. It’s instant death.”
“I know that you find all this hard to believe. Right now you may think that you’re in bed having a terrible dream and that you’ll wake up tomorrow, and your neat world full of numbers and equations will be the same as it was before any of this started. But you have to trust me on this one. I have the ability to do this. I’ll be fine, Dad.”
The look on his face told me that he didn’t want to believe me. He wanted to order me to stay. But the look of defeat in his eyes showed that he wouldn’t stand in my way.
“Okay then, all I need now from you and your number cruncher geek squad there is a number. Tell me how much anti-matter I need and how to deliver it. And let’s get that pronto.”
My dad mustered one more look of ‘please don’t do this’ only to be met with my look of ‘yeah, right’! Then he was off to huddle with the other Coca Cola-swilling Wile-Coyote-Genius types while they put their brains together to find the answer.
While they ran equations, I watched the video from the remote camera playing the Dughall entering the portal scene over and over again. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something. It looked like someone flying. I rubbed my eyes and looked behind me, but all I saw then were nerds running around like blind rats trying to find a way to stop what Dughall had created.
Within minutes, Dad and the Geek Club gathered around me and delivered the information.
“How are you going to do it?” asked the head scientist dude. He no longer looking strong and in charge but defeated and tired.
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. Okay, stand back boys,” I said. I tried my best to tune them out and create a sphere of positive energy around me. I closed my eyes and got myself into a deep, standing meditation. The training with Madame Wong was fresh in my mind and helped me get into the state of being that I needed to be in. The alarms, the buzz of the people, the smell of their bodies (long overdue for a bath), the hum of the human world. I left all of it behind.
Through the power of only my breath and the strength of the focus of my mind, I created the resonant frequency with Akasha that Dughall used the LHC to create. Only my resonance didn’t create a path of destruction in its wake.
I created a phase shift through space-time the old school way, the way it had been done for millennia and before the creation of particle accelerators. In the control room, they saw my body solid and real. Then, right before their eyes, I started to fade in and out then poof! I was gone. That’s what they experienced.
For me, it was all silence and the beautiful background hum of the universal resonant frequency of Akasha. I was able to tune my receiver to that station and let it take me wherever and whenever I wanted to be.
I felt an intensely cold draft about me and opened my eyes. There it was. The black hole.
Immediately I envisioned a force field around me. I created a protective cushion of space between myself and the frigid air of the collider.
You may think that you’ve seen darkness before. The inky blackness of a moonless night sky. Let me tell you, you know nothing of darkness until you’ve seen a black hole.
It was strangely beautiful. A part of me wanted to linger and watch it. At the very center it was complete and utter dark. No flicker or spark of light in any way. A black so complete that you could almost feel a cold breath coming from it.
All around the center, there was a swirling vortex of matter being sucked in. There colors whirled as object after object was pulled apart by the intense gravity of the center, leaving only remnants we perceive as color. The swirling vortex was hypnotic, and for a moment, I felt like I wanted to join it.
But I swear I heard a voice from somewhere outside of me whisper, “The anti-matter.” That whisper jerked me back to reality.
The swirling vortex grew by leaps and bounds each second. I didn’t have much time before it swallowed me too.
I unsheathed my dagger and commanded it to become the exact quantity of anti-matter the good gentlemen scientists had instructed. Before my eyes, the knife transformed from a beautiful jeweled dagger to a large round container pulsing with electromagnetic energy. It became a Penning trap full of anti-matter.
Doing exactly as Dad had told me, I commanded the trap of anti-matter to enter the black hole. I hoisted it with all my strength down the corridor. I don’t have much of an arm, but I guess having the forces of nature on your side helps. The canister flew a straight and true trajectory, end over end, with impressive velocity right into the heart of the black hole.
I watched the black hold suck in the Penning trap. What used to be my gift from Hindergog was lost in the bottomless blackness. Nothing happened. I watched and waited. I don’t think I breathed at all. Seconds ticked by as the blackness grew larger and larger and threatened to take me with it.
It didn’t work!
I knew that I had to get out of there before I was pulled apart, molecule-by-molecule, by the intense gravity of the anomaly of darkness. But I stood motionless and racked my brain, trying to think of something else I could try. I searched the recesses of my brain for some kernel of wisdom that Madame Wong or the Goddess had given me that I could use to save my world.
As I stood thinking, there was a huge explosion. It was like all the TNT from every Fourth of July fireworks display there ever was went off at the same time.
Safely inside my protective bubble of positive energy, I saw fire whiz by me followed by flying metal and other shrapnel. And at the very heart of it, what was once a core of utter blackness there was a tremendous sphere of glowing light.
At first it was the size of a football field, but it quickly began to dwindle. Soon it was no smaller than a car. It was a small star, birthed before my eyes. What less than a few minutes before had been a swirling vortex of obsidian had become a ball of intense light, no larger than a softball. Perfect light from perfect dark.
Second by second it grew smaller and smaller until finally, in a blink, it disappeared. My small star was gone forever. Where there had once been a black hole, and then an infant star, there was only rubble, debris and the remnants of the most expensive machine ever built by man.
But there was also a faint glimmer amongst the rubble. Something shiny was in that pile of debris. I hovered myself in my protective bubble closer to see what it was.
I used my telekinesis to free the glinting object from the wreckage and I hovered it to me. I held out my hand and the jeweled dagger that Hindergog had given me flew into my outstretched palm. It was tarnished and covered in black soot, but it was intact. You’d never know it h
ad been a container full of anti-matter that just collided with a black hole. I sheathed the dagger and thanked it for a job well done.
Left in the wake of the explosion was a total disaster. The LHC, the work of so many people and so many billions of Euros was gone. Totally gone.
There was a gigantic hole a mile underground full of rubble and ruin, but up top you would never know. Anyone who wasn’t there to see it would never believe it. In fact, the vast majority of people would probably never know any of it had happened.
CERN would make up a plausible story about overheating or some other mechanical failure explanation for the complete and total destruction of the most expensive and grand machine ever built by humans. But Jake, Fanny, my Dad and I know the truth.
62. CLICK YOUR HEELS THREE TIMES
“You won’t find faith or hope down a telescope,
You won’t find heart and soul in the stars,
You can break everything down to chemicals,
But you can’t explain a love like ours.
It’s the way we feel, yeah, this is real.”
From “Science & Faith,” The Script (Daniel O’Donoghue and Mark Sheehan) ©2010
The sun shone through a few puffy clouds as I walked up the sidewalk to a house I had known my whole life. No, that’s not quite true. I had lived in the place my whole life, but it wasn’t always the same house.
Once it was filled with colorful paintings of flowers and my mom’s voice singing and humming. For a while it was a building overflowing with a dull, grey dread.
It is once again a house filled with color and life. But it’s not the same house as when my mom was alive. That house is gone, but I now know how to find it if I want. Thing is, these days I don’t want to go looking for it anymore.
It would be great to report that after we got back from Europe they stopped calling me ‘Freak Girl’ and that I became popular and adored. That didn’t happen. But I stopped caring about what Greta and her cronies thought. I’d lived through tutelage with Madame Wong and faced down a black hole. Somehow Greta’s nasty comments didn’t seem to matter after that.
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 27
