by Brandt Legg
“Are you ready?” he yelled again.
We stepped inside.
END OF BOOK ONE
Outin
1
Monday, October 6
Once we were inside, with the veil closed behind us, the noise from the special ops helicopters and all traces of the regular world were gone.
“I thought this place was a dream... ” My brother Dustin’s eyes were overflowing with tears.
“Where are we?” Dazed, I wondered if the CIA’s secret Lightyear division of psychics could find us here, and I was stunned by the world before me.
“We’re there. Don’t you see? It’s real, we made it back.” I could see why Dustin had wanted to return to this place and why he never tried to describe it. I would not have believed him. Even with all that had happened—discovering our dad had been murdered by the government, finding out I was one of my generation’s seven souls able to help the world through a great awakening leading to the unlimited power of our souls, and learning many of those supernatural powers myself. Federal Agent Fitts had tried to stop me and almost succeeded, but he died trying, and now, I was wanted for his murder.
We’d been seconds away from being apprehended or killed, when Dustin opened an invisible veil, and instantly we were in this other world beyond imagination. A soft mist cleared from around our feet, illuminating an infinite starry sky in place of the ground. Trees with black, white, or gray trunks streaked with starlight grew out of the darkness. I grabbed Dustin, thinking we were going to fall in, but instead we walked on something soft and completely invisible; the chasm of space beneath our feet left me disoriented. The colorless trunks made up for their plainness by growing small colored globes instead of leaves. It was an explosion of saturated hues—purples, blues, reds, pinks, incredible yellows, and oranges set against a sky of aquamarine that moved like ocean waves, an inverted tidal sea. Bubbles floated through the air, some popped empty, others contained what appeared to be water, while the majority were filled with colored liquids.
“Talk about a drug trip. Is this what dropping acid is like?” I asked.
“Acid’s chewing bubblegum compared to this. After being here, drugs aren’t worth the time.” Dustin’s gaze was lost in distant awe, like he’d come home from a ten-year foreign war.
“So why’d you do them?” I asked, remembering how his drug use destroyed what was left of our family after our dad’s death and helped get him sent to the mental institution.
“Because I couldn’t believe this place was real. How could I?” Dustin had almost died after his first visit here.
We were quiet then, taking it all in. A warm gust disturbed the bubbles and brought what seemed like pastel, coaster-sized snowflakes. A few hit us, soft and powdery, and the rest vanished into the infinite below. The wind sounded faintly like the soft gentle laughter of toddlers; otherwise, the sky created a white noise of churning surf.
“Are there any people here?” I inhaled deeply, the air sweet like citrus and honeysuckle.
“I didn’t see any when Crowd brought me here before.” He meant before Mom sent him to Mountain View Psychiatric Hospital. That was more than two years ago, before Dustin knew Crowd was a mystic and before I knew anything.
“The drugs I did and the meds they gave me at the institution really messed up my memory,” Dustin continued. “I think Crowd thought this place would somehow get my mind straight. He was always trying to help, but it must have been too soon or the drugs altered this altered-reality a little too much... I don’t know.”
We kept walking. It almost felt like being back in another Outview, the episodes that took me into other lifetimes. It was too much to believe. I began to mutter to myself, “I’m Nathan Ryder, I’m sixteen, I’m from Ashland, Oregon, it’s October—”
“I’m Dustin Ryder, I’m eighteen, and you’re killing my buzz.”
“Sorry, man. It’s just... what is this place?”
He shrugged. “It’s going to be intense finding out.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know that either,” Dustin said, “but don’t you feel great?”
I did. The place was magic, but I was worried. “Yeah, but Spencer told me that anyone can get through a portal. What’s to stop those soldiers from showing up and cutting this fairy-tale world in half with their machine guns?”
“Have a little faith, brother. Just because Spencer is like the leader of the mystics, doesn’t mean he knows everything. Maybe he’s never even been here.” Spencer was the mystic who had taught me the most and healed me when Lightyear’s Agent Fitts almost killed me. Spencer must have known about this place. He’d told me there is far more unseen than seen, more unknown than known, that there were places we know nothing about hiding from us in the breeze.
There was something in the air, an energy that pulsated; I felt I could do anything. Giddiness gripped me, like a kid at his first carnival. Four or five lime green and orange birds flew nearby, chirping sweet songs. I realized both of us were smiling at nothing, at everything.
Dustin suddenly stopped, extending his arm to block me. He tapped my chest with the back of his hand and motioned ahead. A person was leaning against a stark black tree that was crowned with a kaleidoscope of blue, green, purple, and yellow globes. Although I recognized him immediately, the sight of anyone else could not have shocked me more.
“Do you think he’s real?” Dustin whispered.
“How could he be?”
He suddenly looked at us. “Hey guys, I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”
Before I could answer, he stared into my eyes. There was no mistake; it was me, Nate! I mean we both were. He looked slightly different, a bit older with shorter hair, but he was me.
“Who are you?” I asked, incredulously.
“Don’t you recognize me?” he smirked.
“Of course I recognize you, but how can you be... ”
“I’m you. I’m just about eleven months older.”
“You’re Nate from the future?” Dustin asked.
“Sort of. I’m from a different dimension, the closest one to where you just came from.”
“If you’re me, and from the future or whatever, then you must know that I don’t have a clue about ‘identical selves’ from different dimensions. Maybe you could try explaining it.”
“I’ll teach you about other dimensions. But first let me tell you what’s happened, rather what’s going to happen in the next eleven months of your life.” His somber tone bothered me.
“You can do that?” Dustin was excited. “Cool.”
He nodded.
“It’s not good, is it?” I asked, recognizing my own expression on him. It was obvious he/I was about to deliver some bad news.
“What?” Dustin asked, catching the mood. “Where am I? Why aren’t I with Nate eleven months from now?”
My “future self” took a deep breath. “You’re missing; no one can find you. Mom’s in federal custody.”
“Christ! How did this happen?” Dustin shouted. “Where am I? How long have I been gone?”
“There’s more, isn’t there?” I asked.
Future Self stared.
“It gets worse?” Dustin asked.
“Amber and Linh are dead.”
2
I found myself lying face down on the bottomless bed of stars that served as the ground, feeling as if I’d fallen out of a tree, gasping for air. The view of space was astonishing. I’d never seen the cosmos so stunning except in the Hubble images that hung on Kyle’s bedroom walls. I wanted to float away. Dustin pulled me to my feet while I tried to breathe. Amber and Linh, two of my best friends, dead? It was my fault. I’d mixed them up into this. I would rather be dead myself.
“How?” was all I could muster.
“Once you two disappeared on Mount Shasta, Lightyear put Mom, Kyle, and the girls under surveillance, hoping they’d lead to you... ”
“What about Kyle?” My head was pounding.
My oldest and most loyal friend was also in danger.
“Alive but devastated since Linh’s death, but Lightyear seems to be leaving Kyle as final bait for you.”
“And where am I?” Dustin asked again.
“Like I said, no one knows, just that you are alive... ”
“When did this happen?” I was down on the ground again, crouching, shaking, unable to support myself.
“A couple of months after you left Ashland and didn’t immediately turn up again, Lightyear’s director leaked a story that you were the terrorist who killed Fitts and announced that you were wanted for a large attack in the Midwest. Then they arrested Mom. The next day, the FBI picked Kyle up for questioning. Finally, Lightyear had an assassin kill Amber and Linh but made it look like you did it in order to silence them.”
“Oh God! This is a nightmare!” I looked around at the floating bubbles, up to the ocean sky then to starlight depths beneath me. “Tell me this is a crazy dream, none of this can be real. Wake me!” I shouted.
But his glance told me I was awake.
“Did they suffer?” I whispered.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?!” I was fighting the urge to vomit.
“But wait,” Dustin began, “we just got here and all this horrible stuff happens like two months from now. Can’t we prevent it somehow?”
“That’s why I’m here. It won’t be easy, but we’re going to try.”
“Really?” I stood up. “Of course, multiple destinies! Where’s Spencer?”
“We don’t need Spencer now. Remember, I’m from eleven months in the future. You wouldn’t believe what I know and... I’m your next mystic.”
“Is that possible? Can I be my own mystic?”
“Apparently,” Dustin said. “But not a good enough mystic to know what happens to me in a few months.”
“Relax Dustin, we’re going to find you. Geez, all I seem to do lately is go looking for you!”
“How is it possible to change the future?” Dustin asked.
“There isn’t just one universe, as should be apparent by this extraordinary dimension we’re wandering in now called ‘Outin.’ You’ll soon learn of Outin’s importance, but that’s not a good idea to discuss right now.” The waves overhead grew louder and more bubbles fell.
“How many universes or dimensions are there?” I asked.
“Impossible to say. Each universe is infinite, and there are an infinite number of them. And mix in the grand illusion... ”
“What’s the grand illusion?” Dustin asked.
“That solid matter exists. It doesn’t. Everything is really just vibrating energy.”
“Doesn’t everyone already know this?”
“That’s why it’s an illusion. People think they know, but they don’t understand what it means,” Future Self said. “I mean scientists have proved that everything in the universe is connected. They split the smallest particle and separated the halves. When they moved one, the other, located thousands of miles away, also moved. It’s all one, everything. Individuality doesn’t really exist. And these other dimensions are all around us, closer to you than the clothes you’re wearing.”
“Wait, do you really understand what you’re telling us?” Dustin asked.
“Barely. Still, just look at Nate and me, we’re both here and yet we are one. We only appear to be separate, but we are not.”
“Okay, all this new age stuff is really cool but... ” Dustin said.
“Most of this comes from the top scientists today, not the mystics,” Future Self said.
“The infinite infinities are part of the multiverse, but trying to grasp it can’t be done using our limited perception.”
“It takes two Nates to figure this out, and I still don’t get how it helps us change the future.” Dustin said.
“You need to understand the rules we’re playing under, and they’re nothing like any rules you’ve ever known. Otherwise there is no hope of saving the girls.” He looked from Dustin to me.
“And?” Dustin was becoming impatient.
“Don’t you get it? Nothing is permanent or separate, so we can change one thing and everything will be different.”
“But how do we know what to do?”
“Well, that’s the thing. We have to alter the right event in the correct sequence. It happens constantly; a tiny shift occurs in any universe, and our lives instantly convert to something new until a nanosecond later when another modification ripples through the multiverse and transforms everything again.”
“Let’s get back to our dimension and change something so I won’t disappear, the girls will live, and Mom won’t get arrested,” Dustin demanded.
“It’s not that easy,” Future Self said. “Cause and effect will continue to push us toward that outcome or variations of it—Mom gets killed or Amber and Linh live a day longer or Kyle gets killed or whatever.”
“So how do we stop it?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Oh, come on!” Dustin shouted.
“I just know we can,” Future Self responded.
“Then tell us more about what’s going to happen, so we can come up with a plan to change it,” I said.
“It all started when terrorists blew up the Mall of America.”
3
We stared at him; a sick feeling filled me.
“Mall of America, outside Minneapolis, is the largest mall in the country,” he continued. “It’s five million square feet, forty million people visit every year, and there are roughly twenty thousand parking spaces. It’s enormous. The FBI claims two men drove tanker trucks loaded with fuel into two separate entrances and detonated them.”
“Jesus!”
“And according to the official story, you and Dustin hid in the parking lot, and as soon as large groups of survivors gathered, you opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles.”
“Are you making this up?” I shouted.
He shook his head. “It was the fire that did the most damage... ”
“Does anyone believe those lies?” Dustin asked.
“Six hundred and ninety-three people died. Over twenty-two hundred were injured. The majority were kids and teenagers. Worst terrorist attack since 9/11. People were hungry to blame someone, anyone... ”
I pictured the hellish scene; screams choking through thick black smoke, cries of agony across trampled teenage bodies burned and ripped open by bullets. The complete horror and inexplicable cruelty strained my comprehension. My body wanted to shut down. Lightyear couldn’t be allowed to breed this kind of destruction and misery.
“The truck drivers were among the dead,” Future Self continued. “That just left the Ryder brothers. They claim the guns and other evidence left behind had your fingerprints all over them. They had Dustin’s prints from the time Fitts took him into custody, before you saved him. They had yours from the murder weapon you used to kill Fitts.”
“Unbelievable. I didn’t kill Fitts!”
“That’s when they grabbed Mom and had ‘you two’ kill the girls... ”
“What was our supposed motive for the attack?”
“They claim you and Dustin are simply schizo-psycho lunatics looking to create anarchy.”
“Nice,” Dustin said, sarcastically.
“They kill all these people just to get to me? Why are they so afraid?” I asked.
“The director of Lightyear, a guy named Luther Storch... ”
“You know his name? How did you find that out?”
“I’ve been busy these past eleven months. It hasn’t all been running and hiding. But I don’t want to tell you too much. No one, least of all me, understands the ramifications of interacting with other versions of the same incarnation and interdimensional time manipulations. So if it’s possible to save Amber and Linh, we should avoid changing things too much, or we won’t know enough about what might happen to be able to prevent it from happening.”
“Nate and Nat
e, I think this conversation is going to make me go crazy for real. That’s probably why I’m missing in the future: you guys had to commit me again,” Dustin wasn’t joking. “Two of you, and the power of the universe in your hands, and still all this death. And I end up disappearing. Whoever decided you should be in charge wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“It was Dad.”
Dustin glared.
“Listen guys, this isn’t all about us. We’re just in the way. Storch wants the world and makes Fitts look like a Boy Scout. You won’t believe what this maniac will do.”
“You mean more than slaughtering a shopping center full of innocent people?” I asked.
“Yeah, much more. And remember, Fitts may have been the triggerman, but Storch ordered Dad and all the other Montgomery Ryders killed. He also decided Rose, Amber, and Linh should die and that the Ryder brothers should become notorious terrorists. But he’s been doing stuff like this for years and not just in the U.S. He’s the one Spencer warned us about when all this began. Spencer said he’d kill a school full of children without a thought... Storch is just getting started.”
We just looked at each other.
“Back to my original question: why is it so important to destroy us?” I asked.
“Storch knows you possess the ability to stop Lightyear, but if you join them then they can’t be stopped. But he’s no idiot and realizes the odds of you signing up with the dark side are minuscule to nothing. So everyone must believe you’re the most despicable terrorist since Bin Laden. That way they’ll be justified when you’re killed.”
“I don’t see why it matters what people think of us,” Dustin said.
“Being the only surviving member of this generation’s seven, Nate can help cause incredible change, Storch knows this and fears he could cause problems for Lightyear. Storch is fond of the way things are, where control is his,” Future Self said.
