Mercury Rises

by Robert Kroese

  "Just let him finish," said Eddie.

  Cody glared at Eddie. "You're not buying this shit, are you, Eddie?"

  "I suspect," said Culain, "that Eddie recognizes the weariness of a fellow immortal."

  "Go on," said Eddie impassively.

  "I wasn't Shakespeare, exactly," Culain explained. "Shakespeare was a playwright I ran into in London. He needed some help on a play he was working on about King Henry the Sixth..."

  "Oh, so you were Shakespeare's ghostwriter," Cody said glibly. "That's way more believable."

  Eddie interjected, "Many historians believe Shakespeare didn't actually write his plays. Some suspect that Francis Bacon wrote them."

  "I suppose you're going to tell us that you're Bacon, too," said Cody.

  "It's possible," said Eddie. "We don't know he's not Bacon."

  "Well, I did help him with the whole scientific method thing..." started Culain.

  "OK, that's it," said Cody, getting to her feet. "I'm outta here. Nice to see you again, Dad. Good to see you're as full of shit as always."

  "Cody, wait!" said Eddie.

  "It's all right," Culain said. "Cody and I will catch up later."

  "Whatever," Cody said. She walked out and slammed the door behind her.

  "She always was an impetuous child," Culain mused.

  "OK," said Eddie. "Get on with it."

  "My tenure as Shakespeare garnered me a little more attention than I wanted," Culain went on, "so I went underground and redoubled my efforts to find a 'cure' for my immortality. At first I had hoped that science might provide the answer, but after a century of experimentation and research, I gave up. The answer always seemed to be just outside my grasp. I then dove headlong into the world of the occult. I met Eastern mystics, attended séances, took part in voodoo rituals, et cetera. I concluded, after some two hundred years, that it was all a lot of bunk. These people were desperate to connect to something beyond the material world, but if there was something out there, it had no interest in connecting with them.

  "Unbeknownst to me, my dabbling in the occult had piqued the interest of Lucifer himself. One day, as I was about to pack up and leave town once again, Lucifer showed up and offered me a deal. He said that he had discovered the secret to my immortality, and that he could bring my torment to an end: all I needed to do was to write a series of books for him. He gave me a copy of an ancient manuscript that told the story of an orphaned boy who became a heroic magician, and instructed me to read it and then write a series of seven books featuring the same character. That was it: write seven books about a teenage warlock and I would become mortal. He gave me a generous advance and even promised to see to it that the angels left me alone so that I could focus on writing. Upon the publication of the each book, I'd get a one-million-dollar advance to write the next one.

  "Cody was fifteen years old at this point. I hadn't been around much for her, what with being cursed to wander the Earth and all. Her mother had just died of cancer, so this was a rough time for her. For me, too, of course, but after the first couple of dozen wives, you learn to cope. I promised Cody, though, that things were going to be different soon. The first Charlie Nyx book was due to be published on her sixteenth birthday, and after that, I would finally have some time for her---not to mention a million dollars to buy us a decent house for once.

  "I realized after completing the first Charlie Nyx book, though, that something wasn't right. What I had written was more than a book. I knew that nothing good could come from publishing it. I was pretty good at disappearing without a trace at this point, and I decided to take Cody and run away somewhere where Lucifer couldn't find us. But he anticipated my reluctance to follow through on the deal: he kidnapped me and faked my death in a plane crash. He told me that as long as I kept producing Charlie Nyx books, Cody would be taken care of---but that if I ever tried to contact her, she would be killed. Once I delivered the seventh book, I'd be allowed to see her again. And he would live up to his side of the bargain: upon completion of the seventh book, I would become mortal.

  "Lucifer let me go, giving me enough money to hole up in a flat in Ireland. After an initial period of defiance, I decided my only option was to buckle down and finish the series. At first I churned out a book a year, but it got more and more difficult with each book---and Lucifer's constant threats didn't make it any easier.

  "The Charlie Nyx books, I came to realize, were an abomination. Somehow Lucifer had caused me to tap into something, an arcane power from beyond our own reality, and each successive book was an assault on the very fabric of the Universe. Each time a Charlie Nyx book hit the shelves, the state of the world would deteriorate. Wars, earthquakes, flooding, epidemics, the Clash of the Titans remake...things were getting truly out of hand---and I say this as someone who has been on Earth for a long time.

  "It finally became clear to me how Lucifer was going to deliver my mortality: I was going to die along with everyone else, when the world itself came to an end. This is why you don't bargain with Lucifer, by the way: the devil really is in the details.

  "The end came sooner than I expected. After the sixth book, I hit a wall. I just couldn't figure out how to wrap things up. And then the Anaheim Event happened, and I knew the series couldn't possibly be resolved satisfactorily. Real world events had trumped the story of Charlie Nyx. I tried to explain this to Lucifer, but of course he didn't understand. Or maybe he understood but didn't care. All he knew was that there had to be a seventh book---a book that I knew I couldn't possibly deliver, even if I wanted to.

  "One night I walked into a dingy pub in Cork, and I saw a man hunched over a stack of papers, writing. Except I could tell that he wasn't a man---I had seen enough angels to be able to recognize one. Curious, I came back the next night, and there he was again. And the night after that, and the night after that. I thought, 'Why is an angel sitting in a pub by himself, night after night, writing? Shouldn't he be out doing the work of Heaven?' I laughed to myself and thought, 'Now that would be a funny story: an angel who has been abandoned in Cork, writing desperate and unread pleas to his superiors to please extract him from this miserable place.'

  "And that's when I realized it: the seventh Charlie Nyx book wasn't a Charlie Nyx book at all. Reality had overtaken the story, and now it was time for the story to reassert its supremacy over reality. The seventh book wasn't a Charlie Nyx story; it was a story about the Charlie Nyx story!"

  Eddie stared blankly at Culain.

  "Don't you see, Eddie?" Culain asked excitedly. "There are levels to reality, just like there are levels to the Universe. Above human beings are angels, and above the angels are what you angels call the Eternals. As we near the end of the Universe, all the levels converge. The barriers between the tiers break down and the tiers collapse on each other. That's why so many strange things are happening in the world these days. The earthquakes, the Anaheim Event, the war in the Middle East, the runaway mutant corn in South Africa...the rules are breaking down. The rules of Earth are giving way to the rules of Heaven, and the rules of Heaven are giving way to whatever is above it, and on and on. Everything collapses into a singularity, to borrow a term from physics."

  "You've lost me completely," said Eddie. "What does any of this have to do with the Charlie Nyx books?"

  "Think of it this way," said Culain. "I am to Charlie Nyx what the angels are to human beings: I'm a mysterious being who exists outside Charlie Nyx's universe, but who somehow controls Charlie's destiny. Mostly my hand is unseen, but occasionally I break into the story to keep the plot moving in the right direction. But I don't have carte blanche; I can't simply intervene arbitrarily to mold the story to my will. You're familiar with the term deus ex machina?"

  "God from the machine," Eddie said. "A device that a lazy writers uses to save his ass when he's painted himself into a corner. God basically comes down from heaven and fixes things."

  "Exactly!" Culain said. "The problem with deus ex machina is that it destroys the illusion that the
characters in the story actually affect their own destiny. If I step in and 'fix' the seventh book so that it goes where I want it to, it stops being a story about Charlie Nyx and becomes a story about me. And that's all well and good, but I don't have the proper perspective to write a story about myself. That's where you come in."

  "My head hurts," complained Eddie.

  "You see, Eddie?" Culain went on. "The report I commissioned you to write, that's the final book! The story about the story. The levels are collapsing on each other!"

  "But then," Eddie said, wheels turning in his head, "doesn't that imply that someone somewhere is writing a story about me writing a story about you writing the Charlie Nyx story?"

  "Probably," replied Culain. "And he---or she---is just a character in another Author's story!"

  Eddie cradled his head in his hands and moaned. "So when this book is published, it's going to cause the Universe to collapse on itself?"

  Culain laughed. "Forget the notion of causality, Eddie. Causality belongs to the world of science, and we're well beyond the bailiwick of science here. What's going to happen is going to happen---or, more accurately, has already happened. Think of yourself as a character in a book that's already been written. You can't cause anything."

  "Gaaaahhh!" Eddie suddenly screamed, jumping to his feet. "Get out! Get out!"

  Culain appeared genuinely surprised. "I'm sorry?" he said.

  "I can't think this way!" Eddie exclaimed. "I can't live this way! Get OUT!"

  Culain got to his feet. "Ah," he said. "Denial. I should have seen that coming. It's part of your character. Good luck, Eddie. I know you'll do the right thing in the end."

  "Gaaahhh!" Eddie screamed again.

  Culain smiled, and left Eddie alone in his room.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Jacob was escorted by armed guards to the elevator, which brought them back to ground level. The guards then ushered him to a metal door in the base of the Eden Two dome. One of them tapped a code into a keypad at the door and it slid open. They walked into a small, metal-walled room that seemed to be a sort of airlock. An LED display on the wall lit up with a progress indicator, red bars creeping across the screen from the left until they reached the right side. When it was finished, the words BIOSCAN COMPLETE appeared below. The far door slid open and they were hit by a blast of warm, humid air. It had an earthy smell, like the garden department of a home-improvement store.

  This is one phenomenally well-stocked garden department, thought Jacob. The contrast with the barren landscape outside the dome was jarring. They hadn't gone more than twenty yards before Jacob completely lost the sense of being inside a structure. The dome's ceiling was seamless and seemed to have been painted a pale azure. It was difficult to tell whether the dome was translucent, letting light pass through from outside, or whether it was artificially illuminated. Very little of the "sky" was even visible, as it was obscured by the mammoth and prolific vegetation. The sides of the dome were covered to a height of over a sixty feet by a fiberglass latticework, to which clung a copious array of vines. A few paces from the base of the dome, massive trees sprang from the jungle floor. The floor of the dome, too, was nearly completely obscured by ivy and exotic flowers and bushes. The entire structure was suffused by a constant buzz of insects and the fluttering of wings, occasionally punctuated by a rustle of branches or a high-pitched call of some strange bird.

  A narrow path meandered from the entrance into the thick of the forest. The vegetation blotted out nearly all light, and Jacob wondered that the guards escorting him hadn't thought to bring flashlights. They seemed to have a pretty good idea where they were going, though, and before Jacob had gotten up the courage to complain, he found himself in a small clearing populated by a several bamboo cottages. The guards ushered him to door of one of the cottages.

  "This is where you'll be staying," said one of the guards.

  "For how long?" asked Jacob.

  "For as long as Finch needs you," came the reply. The guards turned and left. Jacob stood for a moment at the door, wondering if he should make a run for it. He was fairly sure he could find his way back to the airlock, but he was less sure that he'd be able to get the doors open. And what would he do if he got outside? The nearest town could be hundreds of miles away.

  Jacob opened the door and walked inside. The cottage was simply but comfortably furnished; the generic hangings and décor suggested it was a sort of guesthouse. Sitting on couches in the main room were two men. One of them he recognized as Alistair Breem, his quantum mechanics professor at MIT. Alistair was a tall, wiry man, whose spine was permanently arched in such a way as to give the impression that he was constantly having to stoop to the level of lesser men. He had less hair than Jacob remembered, and what hair he had left was now a dirty gray. Dark rings framed his eyes. The other man was a stranger, tall and lanky, with silver hair.

  "Who's the new guy?" said the tall man. "I already called the top bunk. You're going to have to take the sofa."

  "Allie?" said Jacob.

  "Hello, Jacob. They told me they were bringing in a replacement. I have to admit, I wasn't expecting you." Alistair spoke with a crisp, but somewhat indeterminate accent---the result of the Queen's English being gradually worn down by prolonged exposure to Americans, Australians, and Canadians.

  "I'm as surprised as anyone," replied Jacob. "How long have you been here?"

  "Like, forever," said the tall man.

  Allie glared at the man. "I've been here for seven years. Mercury got here about twenty minutes ago."

  "Mercury?" asked Jacob, turning toward the stranger.

  "Hi!" the tall man exclaimed, jumping up from the couch. "Name's Mercury. I'm an angel. "What's your deal?"

  Jacob shook Mercury's hand. "Finch seems to think I can get his collider going," he said.

  Mercury chuckled. "A lot of men his age have that problem," he said.

  "Please," said Jacob wearily. "You're about six hours late with the Viagra jokes."

  Mercury sat down, looking a bit put out. He had regained consciousness while being carried over Gamaliel's shoulder down the path to the clearing. Gamaliel had dumped him on the floor of the cottage and left, without explanation. Mercury had spent the next twenty minutes trying to engage Alistair Breem in conversation about something other than quantum physics, which Mercury understood about as well as Allie understood the infield fly rule.

  "So is this chrono-collider device for real?" Jacob asked Allie. "Can it do what Finch says it can do?"

  "Reveal the deepest secrets of the Universe?" Allie asked. "I have no idea. What I do know is that Horace Finch is a dangerous socio-path. This was supposed to be a six-week gig for me, consulting on the creation of a physics program at a new multinational African University. Next thing I know, I'm in the middle of the Kenyan wilderness, working on a secret particle collider. When I told him I wanted to leave, he faked my death and told me that if I didn't keep working, he was going to have my wife killed. So here I am."

  "That's nothing," said Mercury. "You should hear what happened to me. My friend Christine and I went to get the Attaché Case of Pestilence from the Who, but these two cherubim who work for Lucifer showed up and I got struck by lightning!"

  Ignoring Mercury's outburst, Jacob turned back to Allie. "So maybe we should just go along with Finch and get his CCD up and running."

  Mercury opened his mouth to say something, and Jacob turned to face him. "We get it," Jacob said. "Penis joke. Ha, ha."

  This time Mercury looked genuinely hurt.

  Jacob went on, without missing a beat, "I mean, what's the worst that could happen? We tear the Universe in half?"

  "Hmm," replied Allie.

  "That was a joke," said Jacob.

  Allie sighed. "I wish I could be as blasé about it. The fact is, there's a reason Finch kept this a secret. Why he funded this whole thing himself and didn't involve any governments or universities."

  "Yes," said Jacob. "Because he's a couple of strings
short of a unified field theory."

  "Maybe," replied Allie. "Or maybe he's just twenty years ahead of his time. I don't know what he told you exactly, but he's planning on doing more than isolating a handful of chrotons. He wants to capture them and control them, like fireflies in a jar. As you know, part of the reason the existence of chrotons---or gravitons, as they are usually called---is so hard to prove is that they aren't detectable by the methods we use to observe other particles. The best that the Large Hadron Collider in Europe can do is to provide very indirect evidence of their existence. And any gravitons they produce only stick around for the slightest fraction of a second, and then they are gone forever. It's hard to conduct experiments on something like that. So Finch's plan is to do one better than the researchers at the LHC: he wants to capture the gravitons and hold onto them. He doesn't want to just produce gravitons; he wants to control them."

  "Why?" asked Jacob. "Is he trying to create artificial gravity? Some kind of tractor beam?"

  "No, no," said Allie. "He doesn't care a whit about gravity, remember. These aren't gravitons to him; they're chrotons. He wants to control time itself. Which is to say, he wants to control the Universe."

  They were silent for a moment.

  Mercury cleared his throat. "Just so we're on the same page here," he said, "When you say 'chrotons,' you're talking about the little crunchy things you put in soup, yes?"

  Jacob turned to face Mercury. "Who are you anyway? What is your role in this?"

  "I told you," said Mercury. "I'm an angel. My friend Christine and I were assigned to recover the Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse, but my boss double-crossed us, so I had to create a diversion so Christine could get away. And man, what a diversion! You guys ever been struck by lightning? That'll wake you up in the morning."

  Jacob and Allie exchanged meaningful glances. Jacob said, "Great. As if we weren't being punished enough, Finch gave us a lunatic for a housemate."