The light grew bright, and as it came into view, Morris could see that it was a shining ball of flame. It sped from what seemed like the very edge of the horizon right to within their direct line of sight in less than a second. Then something moved around them. There was a flash, and then the bright ball of light was gone, but nothing had changed. On instinct, Morris looked toward the Machine.
He gasped, and heard his friends do the same. Hovering just underneath the lowest set of rungs was Max, just as regal as they remembered him. His coat fluttered gracefully behind him in the breeze. He was staring straight out ahead of him at the horizon, as though scanning the sky. The white-hot ball of fire that had engulfed him was flying out behind toward the opposite side of the horizon as he channeled the energy it contained away from their location. Morris could only imagine that if the energy and heat generated by his approach had spread out in their vicinity, the force of it would have easily obliterated the ships.
“It’s him,” Ciara said, her breath catching in her throat.
Morris smiled and gripped her hand tighter. SAVE JANE! he screamed in his mind as loudly as he could.
He felt the ship lurch, and he let go of Ciara’s hand reflexively. The vessel rocked backward violently. His eyes opened wide in astonishment as on his right, the wake from Max’s arrival approached. The sea had parted well in the distance, and the fallout was only now reaching them. Two giant surges of water washed up toward the ships, rising in height as they grew close. The one that approached on their side grew quickly, towering over the ship. Morris craned his neck as blood pumped through his veins, filling every cell in his body with adrenaline as the shimmering, partially transparent wave rose up until it was a hundred feet above the vessel. As it crested, just as it was about to fall over the ship, it began to slow down.
Morris reached up his hands to shield himself from what he knew would be the thing that would kill him, but nothing happened. The sound of the rising wave was silenced. Opening his eyes, he looked up to see the water completely frozen in its motion. It remained like that for a few seconds, and total silence permeated the area around him.
Slowly, the wave receded, as though he was watching a film in reverse. It began to drop back down toward the ocean, and when it was lower than the side of the vessels, the remainder of it fell, crashing to the surface below.
With the vessel still rocking from the motion of the water below, Morris looked up. He could see that Max had his arms outstretched toward the ships. He had been responsible for causing the waves to recede, and he instinctively knew that this incredible demonstration wasn’t over yet.
He could feel the psychic activity building around them, rising up like the most powerful electricity he had ever felt. Once again, the ship lurched. Morris continued to look up at Max as his arms moved upward, palms facing the sky. His neck craned back so that he was staring directly up toward the vortex above him. Slowly, white light began to pour from his eyes. Morris glanced down toward the surface of the sea, and now he could see that the ocean was moving. He realized his mistake quickly and saw that it was they who were rising out of the water—Max was actually lifting the ship, and within moments, they were floating through the air. Morris looked out toward the other vessels and saw that they too were now rising up out of the water. Slowly, they began to move away from the Machine.
Morris raced for the railings once again, and grasping them, he looked down at the water to see it rushing by below him. He was moving further from the Machine and, worst of all, from Jane. He glared at Max, whose eyes he could see were brimming with light.
Max! Stop this. I want to find Jane, he yelled as loud as he could.
He saw the man turn toward him in the distance, but although his face was gentle and benign, no words were returned to him. Without warning, Max turned his palms downward with a quick, flicking gesture, and then gravity returned as the ships dropped down toward the ocean once again. Although their descent was controlled, the ship still landed with a crash, and Morris was knocked off his feet. Ciara and Mike fell toward him, and for a moment, they were huddled together in a heap. Slowly, they managed to get their bearings as the ship steadied itself.
As Morris looked out, he could see that they had retreated at least a further two hundred feet from the object. On his right, he saw that Marie had already steadied herself, and her hands had a strong grip on the railing. Her face was filled with awe.
“Who the hell is that?” she asked, and after a moment of staring at him in wonder, she turned and walked back into the control room.
This struck Morris as an incredibly futile gesture. Glancing at Max, he found that he had returned his gaze toward the vortex once more.
He looked at his friends. “What do you think?” he asked to both of them.
“I don’t know, Morris,” Ciara said. “It looks like Max is in control of things now.”
“Yeah. He just levitated about two hundred thousand tons straight into the air,” Mike added. “I suddenly feel… about the size of an insect.”
Morris shook his head, then turned and followed Marie back inside. Once in the control room, he saw her facing the main display, which now showed a close-up image of Max. His coat fluttered wildly in the breeze, and that same incredible psychic light still poured from his eyes. Morris stood directly behind her and stared at the monitor, finding himself transfixed by Max’s image. He wondered what it was about him that was different, and the answer came quickly. He’s human now, he thought.
“Ranger?” Marie yelled.
“Massive psionic readings. We have no classification for this. It’s completely outside all known contexts.”
“What?”
“I’d listen to him if I were you,” Morris added, finding that he wasn’t able to stop himself from enjoying the moment.
Marie whipped around to face Morris, and he was surprised to find in the brief psychic flash he received that she was prepared to strike him with misplaced rage. He shook his head abruptly, and she immediately backed down, taking a step back.
“Weapons,” she said flatly.
Ranger began to work his console once more.
“Weapons? Are you people out of your minds?” Morris yelled. “He’s trying to protect you from yourselves. You obviously have absolutely no idea what you’re doing with that Machine. This man does!”
“And I suppose you know him, do you?” she barked back over her shoulder in a hoarse, strained voice.
“Actually, yes. I do.”
She laughed for a second, but then her voice turned venomous. “Well then, what’s his name?” she asked through gritted teeth.
Morris was about to answer when he saw the screen flicker. To his delight—one of the only brief moments of joy he experienced during those crazed moments—Max slowly turned his head until he was looking at the direction of whatever camera was pointed at him. Automatically, its zoom changed. Its settings altered so that he was first displayed in monochromatic light, then with a golden hue, and then finally, a perfect, crystal-clear image showed. Slowly, each of the other screens in the room were replaced with one single name written in capital letters.
“MAX,” it read, answering Marie’s question.
“His name’s Max, and yes, he’s a friend of mine.” He took a step toward her. “He’s a good friend of Jane’s too, so it might not be such a good idea to piss him off.”
She turned around to face him. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath.
Morris smiled.
Ciara had quickly grown tired of the highly emotional back-and-forth in the control room, and so she had returned to the deck, following her instincts. She was now communicating with Max, but not in words, for he had not yet fully absorbed the particulars of the English language into the simple neocortex, which had so recently developed. He communicated with color, light, and emotion, and Ciara understood him word for word, as it were.
She smiled as a transparent bu
bble built below him, and she knew he was readying himself to leave once more, this time, to go after Jane. He raised one arm up toward the center of the vortex, where the window at the top was still open, and then with incredible velocity, flew into it, becoming a blur of flowing black. She saw the shockwave coming toward her from his departure, but did nothing to shield herself from it as it came down over her.
She followed him as he moved upward, craning her neck. Even from this greater distance, the diameter of the Machine was so wide, she could still see straight up inside it. Somewhere in the middle of the column of flowing energy, Max froze. A few seconds later, he began to move again, although much slower. He swirled with the motion of the vortex but appeared to have just as little control over his momentum as Jane, who had so recently disappeared through the transparent window at the top.
***
Jane was not herself. She could feel the light pouring from her eyes, but she was not present enough to take too much notice of it, for the experience was like one which one would experience in a half-dream state. Her body was not within her command, and the thing that was ever present was that on some level, she now had control of the Machine. She could feel each of the vast rungs move about her, and as her focus shifted to each one, she felt the incredible weight of them swing inward and outward in their vast orbits. She could see, in her mind, the complex, ever-changing matrix by which the rings were guided, and she understood, with ever-increasing accuracy, why they moved in these specific patterns.
The energy they released was a direct result of their interaction with each other. Only a minor electric pulse was required to ignite the material that they were constructed of. The particulate matter that built up around the Machine was merely a vapor, and its color was a result of the reaction of the atmosphere to the particles as they were released from the surface of the rings. Although she understood these things on some level, she would never have been able to articulate them if someone were to ask her directly.
The glimmering window was now approaching, and there was no more time to think. She reached out to the rings with her mind, trying in desperation to find a way to deactivate it, but she found nothing; it appeared to be on autopilot, and there was no time left to figure out how to stop it. She was pulled inexorably toward the top of the device, which looked like the calm surface of a lake—heading, she knew, to some other world.
Despite the light, she could still see, either psychically or physically—she wasn’t sure anymore—and she reached out a hand and touched the surface of the window as she approached it. What felt like a mild electric current passed through her hand and then her body. Then she flew across the threshold, and everything—the Machine, her friends and planet earth—was gone.
***
Jane swayed on her feet, and there was only blackness. She opened her eyes to the bright light of another world. Looking around, it took her a full ten seconds to accept what she was seeing. She was standing in the middle of an incredibly advanced alien city. She had no choice but to accept that this was not one of the cities of earth, for the buildings were much larger and taller. They stretched up to the stratosphere, and indeed, some of them stretched beyond it, appearing to reach toward space itself—outside of the light, blue-tinted sky above. All around her, tall, humanoid beings walked. Slowly, they began to take notice of her and stopped. Above her, some kind of transport carriages whirred by—a highly advanced, rapid transit system.
Jane began to gasp as the people of that world gathered around her, staring in astonishment. They were tall—they appeared to be at least two feet higher than a human. She wanted to take in more of their features, but something was wrong. The more air she took in, the more her throat closed up. Her vision began to blur, and it seemed that no matter how much air she inhaled, she couldn’t get enough. Not only that; her lungs were starting to burn. Then she understood: The air on this world was different.
She began to hear their thoughts then—the babbling of a strange language. One of them approached her with its hand outstretched, and she presumed he was male, although the distinctions between male and female appeared minimal in their species. She took a step back, tripped, and hit the ground hard. Knowing she had only thirty seconds left before she lost consciousness, and as the presumably benign alien beings crowded around over her, their telepathic voices entering her mind, she reached out for the one thing that she knew could save her. Closing her eyes, she felt out for the Machine in desperation, and after a horrifying second wherein nothing happened, she saw the rings in her mind, spinning in their wild orbits.
The world flashed with blue light, then the rings were gone from her thoughts, having only been there for a split second, and she found herself lying flat on a hard surface. She took a deep breath, then another in quick succession, deeply grateful for the simple fact that the air was no longer toxic.
Jane opened her eyes as a tremendous sound receded away from her. She immediately recognized it as the sound of a rushing train. She winced as she rose to her feet, ignoring the exhaustion that permeated every cell in her body. Looking around, she found herself in a station. On her left, she saw that the train that she had just heard was seventy feet away, pulling away from the platform that was suspended in the sky. This station appeared to be above ground level. She glanced up to her right at the signpost that hung there, but she couldn’t read the language. Looking left again, on either side of the tracks, just beyond the structure of the station, she saw towering buildings. She was thankful that these at least looked liked the constructs of a modern earth city, but she still had no idea where she was, and had no way of identifying her surroundings. She stepped out toward the edge of the platform, looked right, and saw that several people of Asian descent were standing there.
Oh, thank God. At least I’m on earth again!
There was a security guard on the platform directly across from her, and he was staring directly at her. She turned away from him. In the distance, she heard the sound of another approaching train. The people who had been standing on her right gathered up their belongings—backpacks, digital devices, etc.—and stood up, preparing to embark.
The security guard had glanced away for just a brief second toward the sound of the approaching train, but now he turned back to her, and she could see him paying her extra attention in her peripheral vision. Her pulse raced a little faster, but she was able to retain some degree of calm, for she had at least some idea what had happened. Her initial departure through the Machine had sent her to an alien world. Now, she found herself back on earth, and she didn’t dare act in panic, lest she activate the transportation mechanism again and find herself in an even worse environment.
Jane watched as the train approached and then slowed to a stop. The ground was marked with specific areas where people were to both enter and exit, and the few people on the platform waited patiently at these areas now. Several people departed, and then the waiting passengers boarded. The train doors closed, and it left the station. She turned and watched as it left, transfixed despite her predicament. It sailed up over a slight arch in the tracks as it left the shelter of the platform, and then the blazing light of this country fell across its roof.
On the other side of the tracks, the security guard was still staring at her. Jane looked away, trying to appear as normal as possible, taking steady, shallow breaths of the incredibly warm air. On her right, where one of the people had been sitting on a bench, she spotted what looked like a newspaper. She walked toward that and picked it up.
It was a standard black-and-white paper, and she frowned as she looked it, for such a thing had become almost like a relic to her. Her generation had grown up in a world where physical newspapers had become near novelties and weren’t used much, so they were not too common a sight. The graphics were interesting, but the language was complex and completely alien to her. The only thing that she could understand was universal and, tha
nkfully, was printed in the top right-hand corner alongside its counterpart in the native language. Her eyes opened wide as she read this.
The date stamp on the newspaper was July 19, 2018.
“What?” she said aloud, her voice echoing around the cavernous interior of the station.
Another voice spoke from behind her in a language she couldn’t understand. Jane yelped and turned around, dropping the paper, which was caught in the gentle wind and blew onto the tracks, disappearing into the sunlight beyond the station. The security guard was standing there wearing a blank expression. He had his hands on his hips, his posture indicating a casual stance. She could tell that he did not yet think her appearance was in any way threatening, at least for the moment, and that was a good thing. Apparently, he had not seen her appear out of nowhere just moments before—had not seen her having to stand up, as she had been lying down when she first arrived.
Still, she had no idea what language he was speaking, and she froze completely, managing only a thin, nervous smile.
***
Ciara was staring upward into the vortex. For a moment, a gleaming city had appeared there, and through the window, she could see what looked like skyscrapers that stretched far into the heavens. This vista had quickly been replaced by something quite different and unusual. She was staring at a train as it departed a station, heading out from the shelter there into the beaming sunlight beyond, and it seemed as though she was looking at one of the cities of earth, but she could not recognize it.
She squinted as her attention was distracted by something on the horizon. She looked out there to where the edge of the sea was now a clear line against the fading blue sky. Something was coming, and it wasn’t good. Her stomach lurched, and she automatically reached for Morris, for his strength.
She turned around and found him standing just a few feet from her. She walked over to him and stood close. Reaching down, she locked her hand into his and held it tightly.
Something’s coming, she said.
Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2) Page 23
