Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

Soon I could see that the sphere of red light, which I had taken as the center and source of all the other light phenomena was actually only itself a more intense concentration of electromagnetic energy. The sphere of light was actually a second layer of rapidly rotating light phenomena, perhaps some forty or fifty feet in diameter. At the center of this red sphere of rotating light was a yet brighter object that first appeared a dim red, but brightened to a brilliant red as I approached it further. This glowing red object took on a distinct shape as I continued to descend toward it. It was shaped like a bell.

  The moment I realized its shape, a shudder went through me, and I cried out involuntarily: “George!”

  Only the static that continued to buzz in my helmet answered me back. I kept descending, and the red object kept growing in size.

  I was now only some five feet above the sea floor. I continued swimming forward. It was only then that I realized that the bell-shaped object must’ve been brilliantly lit, for I was viewing it through a red-colored glass, a special light filter. The object before me was not red-colored; it was probably brilliantly white. The red glass in my helmet was giving the object an appearance of having a red color. And the bolts of electricity rotating around it were not purple-red, but bluish-white. I continued to descend. I had almost reached the sea bottom. The bell-shaped object was now only about one hundred feet away.

  My feet touched the sea floor, and a swirling cloud of dissolved mud rose up around me.

  “I’m on the bottom!” I shouted above the static in my helmet.

  I received no response. I stood on the seafloor in my diving suit looking at the bell-shaped object. The bolts of electricity were spinning rapidly around it. I now noticed even smaller fingers of light, closer to the surface of the object, spinning around it at an incredible speed.

  “This thing is creating a terrific rotation of electrical energy!” I shouted. “I’m now walking toward it.”

  I took about a dozen steps and stopped. I studied the object again. It was a cylinder with a round top, about nine or ten feet tall and about five feet wide. It had a number of protrusions or ports encircling its circumference about a third of the way up its side. At its base it was bolted to a metallic platform. I could clearly see the bolts. The metal platform sat upon a larger floor made up of something that looked like ceramic tiles. This flooring extended out in a circle about twenty feet from the metal platform and terminated abruptly at an edge of about six inches in thickness, below which the natural sea floor began.

  I took a few more steps toward the bell-shaped object. Its details were becoming ever more distinct. Suddenly, I felt resistance, like I had walked into a gigantic spider’s web. I took a step back.

  “I’m feeling a field of force in front of the object,” I shouted. “I’m about fifty or sixty feet from it. I don’t think I should go any further. I’m going to begin taking the photographs.”

  I reached up to the cameras, found their little buttons on my chest plate, and pushed each of them in succession with the thick tip of my gloved forefinger.

  I noted a configuration of sea floor in front of the ceramic platform, photographed that configuration in my mind’s eye, and used that mental photograph as my beginning reference point. I took ten steps to the side, kicking up clouds of mud, stopped, and snapped three more photographs.

  The light phenomena continued to whirl rapidly around me as I made the photographs. I felt as if I was walking through a gigantic Coney Island carousel made of purplish light. I felt no adverse effects. I continued walking, stopping at intervals of ten steps, taking the three pictures, and then would resume my walk again. I had done this a number of times when I began to wonder when I would see my reference point again. I was making a circular walk with a radius of about fifty feet. I felt I had already traversed that circle half-way. I continued on. More steps, more stopping, more picture taking.

  I finally stopped and looked back. My long air hose leading nearly a thousand feet back to the Cypher was beginning to slide toward the ceramic platform. I suddenly realized that I would not be able to make a complete circuit of the object, for my air hose would become wrapped around the ceramic platform, perhaps even around the bell-shaped object itself. I realized that I would now have to back-track over the path I had taken, reach my starting-point, and then go in the other direction— to the right— around the object.

  I began to do this. But no sooner had I taken only a step or two and I saw a shape forming in front of me, something like a cloud in the shape of the figure of a man walking. I approached this cloud and it solidified into a man in a diving suit just like mine. At first I thought it was one of the other navy divers and that he had followed after me for some reason. But this was not so.

  I approached the diver and looked directly at him through the glass of his helmet. Even in the flashing light— even through the red glass that sealed both our helmets— I could see the man’s face— and he could see me.

  The man’s face was my face— the diver— was me.

  An instant after I recognized myself, my duplicate disappeared. He just flashed out of existence.

  I stood upon the sea floor in a state of shock. Somehow, I shook myself out of it. I looked about. The purplish light still spun and flashed all about the bell-shaped object. Then I thought: hallucinations. I must be suffering nitrogen narcosis. Then a second thought: or that was a time distortion. That was me, a few seconds earlier— or in a parallel reality.

  The moment I had that thought I heard a massive reverberating voice cut through the static in my helmet. It said:

  “Yes.”

  I looked about. The lights continued to flash.

  I resumed my walk around the bell-shaped object. Again another cloud formed in front of me and solidified.

  It was me again, me walking the other way in some other time or universe. The image of my duplicate self flashed out of sight again. I kept walking.

  That was me, I thought to myself.

  “Yes,” vibrated the voice inside my helmet.

  I stopped and looked about.

  “Who are you?” I shouted.

  I heard nothing but static inside my helmet.

  I resumed my walk. Again I saw the image of my duplicate approach me. This time it did not disappear, but kept walking and went right through me. It was followed by another duplicate of me, walking straight toward me, and behind that one, I spotted another duplicate, and beyond that one, yet another.

  A half-circle of my duplicate selves began forming around the platform of the bell-shaped object, and they were continually walking, like on a loop of motion-picture film. I rapidly snapped three photographs, one from each of my three cameras. Then each of my duplicate selves reached up in unison to their own cameras.

  I turned about and looked at the bell-shaped object. A cloud was forming above it in a swirl of sparkling light. It took form. It became solid. It became a gigantic head— a purplish head that was hairless, wrinkled, and vaguely fish-like. I felt the head watching me, I felt its mind try to force its way into my mind. There was a struggle of wills between us; I could feel my will as a physical thing pushing against the will of the purplish thing. It was as if a door stood between us, and I would not let that thing enter. With great effort, I reached up and took three photographs of the fish-like head.

  Arms of purple and red light twisted forth from the bell-shaped object and enveloped me in a field of force. I could feel a tingling sensation crawling all over my skin inside my diving suit. I tried to turn around, but the force held me locked in position.

  I’ve got to get back to the Cypher, I thought.

  “Yes,” the voice sounded in my helmet.

  I looked off to my left. An object was hurtling toward me at an incredible speed. It was moving so fast I didn’t get a clear look at it. As it approached, it suddenly turned, and flashed in front of me, and then away, disappearing from my sight. In its trail the space behind it seemed to open up, as if the sea water itself had been torn
apart and left with a gaping hole like in a piece of cloth. Beyond this hole I could see into what seemed to be another space filled with stars and glowing objects. The objects, some near, some far, pulsated with life, and they possessed colors I had never seen before. Somehow these colors were able to penetrate the red glass in the viewing window of my helmet. One of the objects sped toward me and rotated as it came. It was a fleshy, living organism of some kind, composed of two symmetrical lobes, and its surface glowed with new, unnamed colors, colors inexpressible in the languages of man. Upon the surface of this living thing lay another dimension of reality that I had never experienced before. It was not a spatial dimension. It was not a time dimension. Mr. Tesla has said that the ancient name for this quality was mufkhit. It is the quality that allows consciousness to attach itself to a particular time in a spatial dimension or to release itself from such a dimension. It is the essential quality of the Philosopher’s Stone, the quality that allows passage through all dimensions of reality. I was having a direct contact with this quality while I was still alive in my body and was experiencing it as a characteristic of this glowing, living thing. The object’s quality of mufkhit both disturbed and fascinated me. I was being drawn toward and into the living organism. A thought rising from deep inside my mind told me that I must escape this thing.

  With the greatest force of will I had ever exerted, I turned away from the object and pushed off from the sea floor. The purple arms of electric light spun about me faster than ever, flashing and sparkling. I kept swimming upward. The arms became bright purple, then red. I kept swimming.

  I raised my arm and looked at my pressure gauge. I had reached the one hundred-ten foot level above the sea floor. I knew I had been swimming upward at the maximum ascent rate of 30 feet a minute. I paddled with my hands, trying to make a lateral swim. I could feel a force twisting around me. I stopped and looked about.

  The electric bolts were striking my breathing tube, and the tube, glowing with electrical energy along its surface, was coiling back up around me like a serpent. I tried to swim forward, but my breathing tube closed in around me, tangling in coils. While the bolts of electricity outside my surrounding force-field could not reach me, I knew that they could have an effect on the electrostatic forces running along the surface of my breathing tube which was wrapped in a netting of metallic threads, and thus the space surrounding the breathing tube could be so electrically polarized that it could pierce the bounding surface of my force-field causing my long, trailing breathing tube to snake its way toward me. This was exactly what began to happen. The tangle of the coiled breathing tube came up in front of my face, and one section of the tube reared before me like a menacing serpent.

  I reached up at the tube and pulled it away. Another section of the tube tightened about my waist— and yet another section of the tube coiled inward and caught my left hand and pressed it against my breastplate where the cameras were mounted.

  I tried spinning about in the water. My breathing tube was forming a coil around my whole body, and, beyond the tube, a red light flashed rapidly. The crackling sound in my helmet rose in volume to a loud buzz. I tried again to push the breathing tube away, but the more I pushed, the more it tightened. The coils now tightened about my chest and legs, wrapping my body in a tight cocoon. I struggled, kicked, and pushed with my hands, all the while fearing that a too vigorous assault upon the tube would break or tear it— and I knew such a tear would be certain death for me.

  All around me I could see that my breathing tube— the very thing that was giving me the breath of life— was tightening into a coil that would soon crush that breath of life out of me.

  Now the coil of the tube covered the window of my diving helmet. I could hardly see any light, except red flashes of it between gaps in the coil of the tube.

  My gloved fingers pushed their way through the coil, groping wildly. My legs and knees kicked frantically. My whole body writhed in a sudden spasm of panic.

  I was being swallowed alive.

  I kicked and pushed and gouged at the air tube. I felt it tighten even more. I gasped for air, exhausted, gasped for air that had suddenly become too thin to breathe. The air tube had closed up somewhere in its coils and twists.

  I was being suffocated to death.

  I fought, fought like a mad beast, fought— fought with every ounce of my strength. My shoulders and elbows and knees and neck strained and twisted in an instinctive death agony. Suffocating, black hell crushed in upon me.

  My body twisted, throbbed, and trembled within the death-crush of the coil. My mouth twisted open, my jaws opened wide, but I had no air for screaming.

  I am Houdini! I am Houdini! I am Houdini! I screamed in my mind…

  …and above the roar in my helmet came the voice, passionless, supreme, and evil: “Yes.”

  INTERLOGUE ONE

  Inside Out

  “Three things are needed for the audience—

  the trick, the man, and the advertisement.

  Fifteen years ago, when I was 21, I was a

  better man than I am to-day. Youth, nerve,

  skill— nothing could defeat me. But I had

  only the trick and the man to sell, and I

  had trouble getting 5 pounds a week. Now I

  am well known I ask 50 pounds a night—

  I sell the advertisement. Of course, behind

  the advertisement there are still the trick

  and the man; the advertisement is no good

  without them. But all three together— that

  is success, fame, money!”

  Houdini

  February 25th, 1943

  A cabin somewhere near Pikes Peak

  “Oh, ho!” the old man laughed, “that Houdini— he sure knows how to give himself the build-up! Do you notice how even when he’s tearing himself down with one hand, he’s still building himself up with the other? This guy’s got ego problems— that’s for sure! But he doesn’t give up. I’ve got to hand that to him. He doesn’t give up. Don’t get the wrong idea. Houdini’s all right. But he’s not what he thinks he is, oh, no. Well, maybe he’ll learn. I mean, maybe he learned before he died. I know he died, I remember reading about it in the papers years ago. He got his appendix bust, and died in Detroit. I always thought that was a mighty fishy business. Somebody punched him in the stomach, some college kid. That’s what they said in the papers. He died a horrible death, but he fought to stay alive, right to the end. You’ve got to admire that. Houdini had grit, if ever a man had it. Now, that part of this story, Houdini’s grit, rings true. The rest of it? What do you think? Do you think what I’ve just finished reading to you is true?”

  The old man looked over to the blank-faced man who lay upon the small narrow bed that had once belonged to the old man. The blank-faced man was encased in plaster casts which nearly covered his whole body from head to foot. An expanse of flesh on each of his arms was exposed to allow intravenous access, and his face was exposed, but that was all. For over a month now, the blank-faced man had convalesced in the bed, never moving a fraction of an inch on his own. All the needs of his bodily functions had been served by the old man who patiently inserted and removed intravenous tubes and catheters to continue the life-flow of the blank-faced man’s nutrients and wastes. The blank faced man was still completely paralyzed and could only open and close his eyelids and move his eyes about. The rest of his body was still unresponsive to his will. But now, and for the last few days, the blank-faced man was noticing a new sensation: a tingling all over the skin of his body. It was like a reawakening of his sense of touch. Also he noticed that his vision was becoming clearer and sharper. He could now see the old man as something more than a hazy shadow. And then there was the blank-faced man’s hearing: the ringing in his ears had ceased. He could hear the sounds outside the cabin, the birds, the wind in the trees, and even once he thought he heard from somewhere far away the movement of an automobile along what must have been a mountain road. The blank-faced man’s
mental concentration was also returning to him, and he was now thinking many thoughts. At this moment, though, the blank-faced man’s single thought that commanded his full attention was: Who are you? Who are you, old man?

  The old man shifted position in his chair; he leaned forward readying himself for the blank-faced man’s answer which would be delivered with a blink of his eyes. One blink meant “yes,” two blinks meant “no.”

  The blank-faced man kept looking at the old man, thinking: Who are you, old man? Several weeks ago, the blank-faced man was certain that he knew the answer to this question. At that time, the blank-faced man thought the old man was a lunatic, and possibly an escapee from an insane asylum. But when he first saw the stone pyramid outside the cabin, his whole perspective on the old man changed. As the old man dragged him on the wooden board to which he was strapped inside the stone pyramid, the blank-faced man realized that this old man was at least someone like Edward Leedskalnin or Balthazar Forestiere, some kind of mysterious craftsman working secretly in the arcane science of alchemy. But how advanced was the old man’s knowledge? Was he a mere dilettante, a dabbler in potions and a hewer of rough stone? And even if he had some real knowledge, was it coherent and complete enough to produce the practical result at which the old man was now aiming: the healing of the blank-faced man’s shattered body? The blank-faced man would have liked to believe that the old man was capable of healing him, but the blank-faced man never allowed himself to believe a thing was so just because he would like to believe it. Could the old man really heal him? Or, wondered the blank-faced man, am I doomed to total paralysis for the rest of my life? Who are you, old man?

  “You don’t want to say just yet,” the old man finally said after studying the blank-faced man for a long time. “I can understand that. This story or account is quite intriguing. Seems like it’s something that really happened, except what it says happened seems like it couldn’t happen— couldn’t happen, that is, from the viewpoint of the average person, the man on the street. But we both know that the average person, the man on the street, doesn’t know beans about anything. The average man on the street doesn’t even know he’s on the street. His mind is turned off the same way a leaking water faucet is turned off. A little thought drips out, and he thinks he’s thinking. But he’s just a robot. I knew a man once who was an absolute sleepwalker. He also happened to be a sociopath. He took great pride in his knowledge, wisdom, and power. He was asleep all the time I knew him, and I discovered he was quite stupid and ignorant. He had made it through school with his family’s money and his father’s pull. His father was famous and successful, and he was also a sociopath. He was an evil man, and he did many evil things for which he was never punished. He did them all wide awake. He was awake and his son was asleep. His son was like most people on the street. His son would think that such a story as this was nonsense, but his father, ha— his father would wonder, he would stop and consider, for that old man was awake and knew many things. He would say about this story, ‘Maybe, maybe there’s something to this.’ He’d say that to himself; he’d never admit it publicly, like he never admitted so many other things publicly. Now me, I’m like that old man: I’m awake and I know many things, and, like him, I would never publicly say ‘Maybe there’s something to it,’ but that is what I’m thinking. My reasons for secrecy are different than the old man’s, though. He’d keep his cards to his vest for the sake of social conformity to maintain his power over others. My secrecy is to protect the innocent. Some things can’t get out, because if they did, a lot of innocent people could get hurt. Sometimes, the truth can only be disguised as a work of fiction. Maybe Houdini wanted to write the truth here to make it sound like fiction so certain kinds of people wouldn’t believe him, and that would protect the innocent. That’s what I think Houdini would do. I know some things about Nikola Tesla, and in view of those things, I’d have to say that this story here just might be true. I’d have to say that maybe even Houdini toned it down a little, because the truth on paper was so big it couldn’t fit on the page. Maybe. I don’t know for certain. If it’s not true, it’s not because it can’t be true. This story might be historical fact. I don’t know, I’ll have to read a little more of this. So what do you think? Have you decided whether or not you’re ready to tell me what you think?”