Clockwork Universe

by Seanen McGuire

  Vidnas, his brown, almond-shaped turban a match for his expressive eyes, paused near Sean’s side. He smiled, his dark moustache and beard accentuating nearly perfect teeth. “Are you feeling well, sir?”

  No. Sean wasn’t feeling well, not now that he was so near a return to the experiment that had devoured his future. He couldn’t keep the strange feelings of emptiness from his mind, the feelings of utter loss and loneliness.

  “Feeling as well as I ever will,” Sean replied.

  Vidnas patted his shoulder and moved to the set of metal stands nearby. Each stand held an armature with a set of lenses that would, when David gave the signal, be situated in a spherical formation around Sean’s head.

  “Ready?” David said.

  “Give Therese the letter, won’t you? If anything goes wrong?” He might have told her himself, but she would never have allowed him to come here and submit himself to this. She’d kill him first.

  “Of course I will.”

  “And tell her I love her?”

  “Of course.”

  Sean nodded. “Then I’m ready.”

  With that, Vidnas and David began moving the lenses into place. They adjusted the clamps and telescoping rods so that the armatures rested at the proper angles and positions. Each of the armatures held twenty five lenses with watertight jars clamped to their backs. The jars were fed by tubes connected to a series of pipes that would be filled from the glowing vats of quinta integra, an extremely difficult-to-stabilize mixture of the four basic elements: incendia, aeris, terra, and unda.

  As each set of lenses was moved carefully into place, Sean’s heart began beating harder and harder. His breath came rapid as a frightened hare.

  “You’re about to hyperventilate,” David said as he glanced over. “Breathe deeper. From the stomach, remember?”

  Sean did, and slowly the entire chromatic apparatus was maneuvered into place around him. Outside the sphere, Sean saw segmented visions of Vidnas and David moving about, making final preparations.

  And then, at last, David gripped the valve that would begin the process. “Last chance,” he said with a melancholy smile.

  Sean couldn’t help himself. He laughed. It was the exact same thing David had said just before their first experiment.

  “Into the great beyond,” Sean replied, an echo of his own reply from fifteen years before.

  David gave him a nod and strapped a set of thick, leather-wrapped goggles around his head—another incredible advancement, for surely David had developed them to view some crucial aspect of the experiment as it happened. He nodded to Sean—looking to all the world like some alien insect—and then threw the handle of the valve. The tank levels slowly decreased as the viscous amber liquid inched through transparent pipes. Slowly but surely, the quinta integra crept toward the narrow rubber tubes. The liquid split and split again, surrounding Sean like a hydra, each serpent doubling when its head was severed.

  The liquid began filling the glass jars behind the lenses, and as they did, as more and more of the ingenious lenses David and Sean had developed were backed by the quinta integra, Sean’s mind began to expand.

  He felt more than his own body. More than this room.

  He floated free among the aether.

  Became one with quinta essentia.

  How beautiful. How utterly, unexplainably beautiful. A vast, endless world of chromatic shapes. He saw this place, this old abandoned shoe factory. He saw Vidnas and David and his own body. He saw the rundown factory streets and the River Wear that wound its way through Durham. He saw the university, the whole of Durham, the whole of England. He could feel Earth itself, the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy. Faster and faster it went, this expansion, until, just like the last time, he felt as though his mind were trying to encompass all of creation.

  It was too much.

  His mind was drifting from his body, which was exactly what had happened to him the first time they’d tried, exactly how his mind had been irreparably harmed, with its refusal to control his body as it once had.

  David had told Sean about the changes he’d made to the elemental serum and the lenses themselves. In all likelihood, he’d said, the unchecked expansion should be limited, which should allow Sean to exert some amount of control.

  Sean …

  He wasn’t able to, though. He couldn’t. And his mind continued to attenuate as it stretched outward, through and throughout the fabric of the cosmos.

  Sean, can you hear me?

  By all that was good, he couldn’t do it. He would become lost this time. Lost for sure.

  Sean, you must listen. The pods. They should be a sink for quinta essentia. They’re consuming it, Sean. Look for them. Feel for them. They’ll ground you.

  Sean felt, only for a moment, his body tightening, heard a primal scream issuing from his throat. But then those sensations were gone, and he was alone once again. Alone with his thoughts in this endless, universal medium.

  What David had said, though…The pods.

  They were a sink. Consuming quinta essentia.

  No other known beings fed on the fifth element. Not directly. That simply wasn’t the way the universe worked. The very fact that this natural law had once seemed so immutable, and now seemed every bit as implausible as a geocentric universe, grounded Sean. It drew him back toward his physical form and nearer to that very phenomenon.

  And that’s when he felt them.

  The pods. The pooling of intent near him, around him, surrounding, essentially, all life on Earth. Like a subtle adjustment of a lens bringing a landscape into focus, he could sense every part of them, and now that he could, he realized how very familiar they were. He’d felt them before, in that event fifteen years ago when he’d first entered the quintessence.

  How could he have forgotten it?

  They had called to him then, and they were calling to him now. He felt from them a yearning, a primal urge that spanned millennia. It wasn’t malicious, as his memory had somehow made it seem, but benign. He’d been so fearful of it years ago. He was still fearful, but not for his own sake, not any longer. He was fearful the Jovians wouldn’t understand humanity, that in their curiosity they’d trample the minds they’d come to examine, or they’d decimate life on Earth even as they studied it.

  His heart, David. He’s going into tachycardia.

  The pods were reaching in the only way they knew how. They were holding their hands out to him, ready to take him should he wish to come.

  Should we continue?

  A pause, and then, Just a moment longer.

  Unlike the last time, the urge to accept their call was strong and growing stronger. He flung his mind outward, wondering what grand thing would happen.

  Now, Vidnas. Shut it down.

  And suddenly the feelings diminished.

  He grasped for them, but they became dimmer and dimmer until—like a mote of light that had finally burned itself out—they winked from existence.

  * * *

  When Sean woke, it was to the sounds of clinking, like crystal goblets at a party. Had he come home? Was Therese readying for a party?

  And then it all came back in a rush. David. The lab. The pods, and the way they’d called to him.

  He forced his eyes to open and thought he was still in the basement of the warehouse, but when his mind cleared, he realized it wasn’t Vidnas before him, but a nurse in a white hospital gown, and she wasn’t cleaning the bell jars and the lenses that had surrounded him, but the set of vials the University required to refresh the liquid stored within the core of his ligature.

  He felt so very weak. And his muscles, his joints, his skin, felt as though they’d been reforged improperly, leaving him more broken than before. Though he tried to stifle it, the pain brought on a weak groan that nevertheless attracted the nurse’s attention.

  “Are you feeling very well?”

  “I’m—” Sean could barely speak, so slurred were his words. “Where’s David?”

  She
continued about her work. “David who, sir?”

  “David Lock.”

  She shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

  He stared at her. Surely David had brought him here. “How did I arrive?”

  “You were found on Stockton Road, unconscious. Constable Adams found you and brought you in, and a good thing he did. Your fluid had nearly turned. Haven’t you been keeping an eye on it?”

  “Of course he has.” Sean turned his head to find Therese standing in the doorway. She strode in to stand by the bedside. “Each morning. You can set your watch by it.”

  The nurse gave Therese an icy stare. “Then I’m sure I don’t know why his fluid had degraded so.” And with that she topped the vials and left.

  As the heels of her white leather shoes clicked away, more and more of the puzzle fell into place. He’d asked David why he didn’t perform the experiment on himself. I can’t, he’d said. Not yet, in any case. I have to take measurements. I have to refine the process.

  He had to refine the process, which implied there would be another run of the experiment. He had needed Sean. He’d said so himself—Sean was the only one who’d entered quinta essentia so far—but he’d done it so that he could perfect the parameters surrounding the experiment. Which meant that he’d planned all along to do it himself afterward. That was the only explanation for leaving Sean as he had—so that he could remain anonymous in Durham until it was too late.

  Therese stared down at Sean. Her hand lifted, but then she lowered it again. She knew from experience that even holding his hand at a time like this would cause him discomfort, but Sean reached out and took her hand, squeezed it, oblivious to the pain. “We have to talk.”

  * * *

  As Therese sat by his bedside, her eyes stared through him. Her hands were shaking. She glanced toward the cluster of clear vials hanging above Sean, the vials that had allowed him to retain some sense of normalcy in his tortured existence. The tears gathered in her eyes finally fell down along her cheeks. “I can’t do it, Sean.”

  “Therese, I can’t go on like this.” He lifted his arms, the whirring of his ligature emphasized his point much more eloquently than he could with words alone. “It’s worse than before.”

  Therese was crying freely now. “I’ll help more. We’ll hire a man to come to the house a few days a week. It won’t be so bad after a while.”

  Sean took her hands in his. “I’m going to a better place.”

  “I can’t…I can’t just let you go. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

  “You’ll go on. You’ll be free.” Before she could speak again, he squeezed her fingers gently. “Now, Therese. There’s so little time left.”

  She stared into his eyes for a handful of heartbeats, then another handful more. After wiping her tears away, and a short but powerful nod, she went to work. More quickly than any of the nurses could manage, she disconnected each of the feed and return tubes from his ligature. She helped him up in his bed, a veritable angel for how strong she was being, how little of his own power he needed to exert, lest he moan and the two of them were caught. She disrobed him and helped to pull on his clothes. After giving him a familiar look, asking him if he were ready to be on his own, he nodded, and then she leaned in and gave him a deep kiss.

  Bliss, he thought. A more tender thing he had never felt.

  She left the room, leaving the door open a crack. “Who’s been tending to Sean Brannon?” Her voice was so loud the entire ward must have heard her. Some unintelligible reply came, but Therese talked over the woman. “While you’ve been ensuring the levels were correct, he was dry as a bone. Did you even see the color of his urine?” A soft reply came. “No, I’ve given him water. He’s hydrated. What I want to ensure is that he manages to remain that way while I’m gone.” Another mumbled reply, also cut off. “No, I’ll be speaking to the attending physician, thank you very much!”

  “Bless you,” Sean said, as he slipped from the room and limped toward the stairs at the end of the hall.

  * * *

  Sean reached the warehouse at the end of an excruciating walk. He would normally have loosened up by now, but things were worse than ever. His knees kept wanting to lock up, and his hips and ankles burned so badly he collapsed several times. But he got up, fixated on the siren call of the pods—in some ways a distant memory, but in others the entirety of his being.

  The massive, rolling door into the factory was closed but not locked. He pulled it aside and made his way down the stairs to the darkness, staggered to the doorway where the brightness of David’s lab was revealed.

  David was sitting where Sean had sat less than a day before, and Vidnas was putting the last of the armatures into place around his head.

  “Stop!” Sean called.

  “Sean?” David said, his head moving back and forth to get a clear view of him.

  “You can’t do this, Vidnas.”

  Vidnas stared between David within the sphere of chromatic lenses and Sean, clearly startled, but more than this, with a glimmer of embarrassment.

  “You can’t let him go,” Sean went on. “You need him. The world needs him.”

  “Sean, stop it,” David said. “This needs to be done.”

  “And I’m the one to do it.” Sean kept his focus squarely on Vidnas. He spread his arms wide and strode forward. “I’m ruined, Vidnas. I am ruined, and David is whole, in mind as well as in body. Can you even conceive of what the world might lose today were he suddenly gone from it?”

  Vidnas stared deeply into Sean’s eyes, but before he could say anything, David began pushing apart the stands that held the lenses, at least enough that he could extricate himself from them. “Get him out, Vidnas! We have to get him out!”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Sean said, wincing as he took a step forward, his arms still outstretched. “You cannot.”

  It was clear from the expression on Vidnas’ face that he was considering Sean’s words, but he stepped back when David strode to a nearby workbench and picked up a syringe. He filled it with a clear liquid and then began walking toward Sean.

  “Don’t do this, David. Let me go. Please. You owe me this much.”

  David’s face was red, and the expression was more intense than Sean had ever seen. “I was the one that brought them here, Sean. Not you.”

  “I’m as much to blame.”

  “You aren’t!” David’s face was red. Blue veins pulsed on his forehead and along his neck. “I practically forced you into that chair. I ran that experiment and then watched you suffer and tried to pretend it was all your idea! The Jovians are here because of my actions, and I cannot, I will not, allow you to take my place. They’re my responsibility.”

  “Responsible or not, I’m not going to let you do it.”

  “That, my dear friend, is no longer up to you.” He strode forward, holding the syringe high, out of Sean’s grasp, while using his other hand to grab the ligature rods connected along Sean’s collar bones. “I’m deeply sorry for everything that’s happened to you. I was a fool, then—young and worried for my career. I should never have betrayed you.”

  He tried wrestling Sean to the ground, but Sean was not powerless. It caused pain, but his ligature was a beautifully designed machine. He grabbed David’s shirt with one hand, grabbed the arm holding the syringe with the other. He squeezed David’s arm until he cried out from the pain and dropped the syringe.

  David, knowing the tide was turning, grabbed him about the waist and pushed him, knocking him off balance and sending him crashing to the ground. But this was ineffectual, too. It was only a matter of time before Sean got the upper hand. He wrestled David down to the cold floor, began crawling on top of him, all while David scrabbled uselessly at Sean’s back.

  Then, suddenly, he was no longer able to hold David down.

  Sean’s mind raced. He didn’t understand until his time in the hospital came rushing back to him. How could he have been so foolish? David had reached the cluster of
controls—the mind of the ligature, in essence—at the center of Sean’s back. The hospital would have removed the panel that normally protected it. He hadn’t thought to have Therese put it back on before leaving.

  The ligature was losing strength quickly, forcing his own muscles to do more of the work, which was causing more and more pain.

  David tried to rise. Sean grabbed his shirt, to hold him in place, but it was a simple matter for David to wrest his shirt free of Sean’s weakened grip. He stared down at Sean with sympathetic eyes, his gaze full of regret. “I’m truly sorry, Sean.”

  But before he could do anything else, his eyes went wide.

  Then they went cloudy, and his body fell limp.

  Into the waiting arms of Vidnas.

  Sean could only stare as Vidnas laid David gently down and moved to Sean’s side. He rolled Sean over and did something at the open panel, and the strength to Sean’s ligature suddenly returned.

  “Thank you,” Sean said as Vidnas helped him to his feet.

  Vidnas said nothing as he helped Sean hobble his way toward the padded seat David had so recently occupied.

  * * *

  Sean stared up at the lenses, watched the amber liquid flow through the tubes and bifurcate over and over again until all the lenses around him were aglow.

  As before, his mind began to expand, slowly at first, but then in wider and grander increments until it felt as though he’d swallowed the cosmos.

  He’d come to understand quinta essentia in a way he’d never expected. It shouldn’t be so surprising; he was a part of it, after all. All life was, from microbial life all the way up to advanced life forms—mammals, humans, the Jovians—and it made him wonder whether quinta essentia itself weren’t some form of life. A grand, enigmatic system not understandable by him—not yet, at least—but perhaps by the Jovians. He hoped he might one day share in such knowledge. Perhaps add to it.