by Dana Fredsti
“Sensemayá,” DeMetta said urgently, “listen to me. I know you’re still groggy, but you have to come with us, right now. Here, let us help you up.” The girl sat up. Though her face was unreadable, she was neither groggy nor, it appeared, prepared to go anywhere.
“No,” she responded, “this is the moment.”
She closed her eyes. DeMetta frowned in confusion, and reached out with his psyche once more to try to make sense of her intentions. She allowed it.
“Sensemayá? What are you doing?”
The girl wasn’t trying to escape at all. Quite the opposite— her mind was racing out in a psychic wave, coursing through the ruins of the city directly toward all the Medusae triads.
“No! Don’t get close to them—they’ll absorb you!” he warned her.
“No… I will absorb them.”
She wasn’t a PreCog, he realized with a shock. No, she was something else entirely, engaged in some psionic discipline unfamiliar to him. As the Ouroboros sensed her approach, he felt the Hive’s voracious hunger for their surge. Terrified, he could only watch helplessly as they lashed out to seize and assimilate her consciousness.
They failed.
Instead she phased—DeMetta didn’t know what else to call it—somehow translating herself extra-dimensionally out of synch with them, her psychic presence effortlessly slipping through the Medusae’s psionic nets.
“My god,” DeMetta said aloud. “They can’t stop her!”
Immune to their mental snares, the girl bypassed the Medusae completely, tapping into the lines of connection between the triads and their attendant hive-slaves. DeMetta felt her flex her strength and seize control of their mental reins. Their power supply became hers, and she drank it all in.
“She’s some kind of Vorax,” DeMetta said. “Some new form of psychic vampire. She’s not just co-opting their power supply, she’s doing something I’ve never seen before— drawing on another kind of energy…”
The esper watched her psychokinetically warping space again, extending her reach not just through the million-strong Hive forces descending upon Cairo, but to all of the hive mind’s teeming billions—every one on the planet.
DeMetta opened his eyes again and faced the two Transcendentist soldiers.
“This wasn’t some faction of criminal bombmakers, you stupid jackholes. They brought her here to take out the Ouroboros! They found a way to warp space so that the Medusae can’t get their hooks in her!” He pointed to Sensemayá.
“She’s not a bombmaker—she’s the bomb…”
The fourteen-year-old held the entire Ouroboros serpent, with all its billions of once-human hive mind components, in her psionic grasp. She was going to kill the snake.
A smell of ozone filled the air, along with a deep hum that seemed to come from everywhere. Tiny strings of white-hot ball lightning suddenly sparked into life, crackling along the sides of the metal capsule. All around them, the chains holding the mosque’s lanterns began to sway. Cochrane and the Transcendentists looked around nervously.
“She’s doing it,” DeMetta said in amazement. He strained his own clairvoyant ability to keep up with the sheer scope of her global reach as the power she channeled built to near-unimaginable levels. And then it reached a crescendo.
Sensemayá threw her head back and screamed, the piercing sound echoing off the stone floors and walls, shattering the mosque’s remaining stained glass into flying pieces. The soldiers crouched and covered their heads.
“DeMetta!” Cochrane yelled. “What’s happening? She’s tearing the place apart!”
DeMetta could see it happening all around the world, as stolen husks of Ouroboros minds flared out and died, their eye sockets smoking.
“She’s done it,” he answered, voice filled with awe. “She’s really done it—she’s killed them all! Every last one of them!” He crouched down next to her. “Sensemayá, you’ve done it.”
The girl didn’t answer. Her eyes remained closed, body trembling.
“Sensemayá? It’s okay, you did it, girl. You saved us all.”
“It’s not okay, John. Something’s wrong… the power’s still building. I can’t control it, it’s not coming down.” Her fear was palpable. She grabbed his hand. “There’s too much. Something else is here…”
He stared at her, trying to concentrate.
“Let me help you. Show me—”
She did, letting him further into her mind. He could see it now. The nexus of extra-dimensional energy upon which she was drawing was transforming into something bigger. She had opened Pandora’s box, and couldn’t close the lid. Now the girl really was a human bomb. Energy particles streamed off her.
“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”
“Sensemayá!”
The psychic wave hit him first, followed by a blinding torrent of charged particles that ripped through him. He screamed. Her hand gripped his with a desperate strength. There was a rush, a supernova’s brilliance, and then…
Silence.
* * *
When sight and sound returned—a moment later? Hours later?—he found himself draped over the metal coffin, arm outstretched. Sensemayá was gone. Sergeant Cochrane and the soldiers were gone. Cairo was gone.
He couldn’t make out anything but the roughest details. It was far brighter and hotter now, daytime. There were voices close by, and he could discern blurry figures approaching. Then he felt hands trying to help him to his feet. He was too unsteady to resist as they brought him—no, not to his feet. They were gently placing him in the capsule. His head spun.
“No, please—don’t do that,” he murmured. They crossed his arms on his chest.
“Sui-Netherit, wep em wawet. Hru ent kshese neseni, t’a pa maehti,” someone said in a reverent voice. The lid closed. The capsule’s theta-wave generator put him to sleep instantly, and the hibernation sequence began.
4
Place: Unknown
Time: Unknown
She landed on hands and knees, against a hard surface. Wood. Terror-sweat poured in rivulets off her face as the sound of her sobs echoed off the walls. A faint light shimmered off to one side.
Amber sat up slowly, wiping the tears away from her eyes, watching as violet stars began to cascade down one wall, a waterfall of light suddenly illuminating the room… which expanded until there were no walls, just an endless room stretching out for infinity.
Two men in black monk robes, hoods pulled up over their heads and hiding their faces, sat at a small table. She looked closer. They were playing chess. The white chess pieces were on fire, but neither player seemed perturbed by the flames. Further away a funeral was underway. A simple pinewood coffin lay next to an open grave, dug out from the wooden floor.
As Amber approached the casket, the lid slowly opened. Dr. Jonathan Meta lay there in his own black robe, just as when she first met him, looking peaceful with long silver hair, his eyes closed.
“Oh, Merlin…” she said softly. It broke her heart to see him.
“Amber,” he answered.
His voice didn’t come from the coffin. It came from one of the chess players. Both turned to her, drawing back the cowls from their faces. Both were János Mehta.
They frowned at her.
“Who’s Merlin?” the player with the black pieces asked. He sat there, glaring at her while the Mehta with the flaming chess pieces stood up. He looked around the infinite space in dazed wonderment, then turned to Amber.
“You… are Amber, aren’t you?”
She looked from one to the other. With his hood pulled back, she could now see that under his black robe, the seated János Mehta wore a military-style uniform of some kind—a crisp black formfitting outfit that looked as if it came from the Imperial wardrobe rack in Star Wars.
The standing János Mehta pulled his robe off, revealing military wear as well, but drab and worn baggy camo fatigues—more like the twenty-first-century American soldier gear she was used to seeing, even if she didn’t recognize
the flag patch on his shoulder.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Esper Specialist John DeMetta, with the 138th Kinetic Infantry unit of the Gestaltist Faction Army.” He rattled off his name and rank with a well-practiced flow before giving an almost embarrassed smile. “My friends, however, just call me John, or Dee.”
She looked at the two men. Their faces and buzz cuts were identical, dark skin, high cheekbones, silver hair, and those unmistakable violet space-alien eyes with the freaky cascade of tiny stars. Yet there was a subtle difference between them, a natural gentleness inherent to Specialist DeMetta—and to her Merlin—that was lacking in János Mehta. He could only mimic compassion—when it suited him.
She turned to DeMetta. “So… you’re the one who’s been haunting me in my dreams, and making me sleepwalk all over the place?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I think it must have been me. Sorry about that.”
She flashed on the memory of him at the base of the Sphinx. Cam and Kha-Hotep charging him, weapons raised to protect her. Both men crumpling to the ground without warning.
“Hey!” she exclaimed. “What did you do to Cam and Kha-Hotep?”
“Your friends?” he responded. “They’re fine. I just stunned them so they wouldn’t cut my head off.”
Amber felt relieved to hear that, though her mind was still reeling and she wasn’t sure she could trust what anyone told her anymore. She rubbed her head with both hands.
“Is this really happening, or is this just another dream?” She glanced down at her jersey. “Never mind, this has to be a dream. I haven’t worn this shirt in months.”
“Well, this is a dream,” DeMetta said, straddling the chair he’d been sitting in, “but you and I are having a real conversation. You and I have been communicating in our sleep all along, so this seemed the fastest way to catch up. But this is the first time we’ve been awake in our dreams, if that makes sense.”
“Um… sort of,” she replied. “Not so much.”
DeMetta grinned. “It’s okay. We’re lucid dreaming now. When we’re done, you can just wake up. And in the meantime, if you want to change clothes, just think of something, anything you like. I mean, you’re the boss here.”
On a whim, she imagined herself wearing a black leather combat catsuit. The Padres jersey vanished, replaced by something Kate Beckinsale would wear to fight Lycans.
“We really are in The Matrix,” she murmured, pleased with herself.
DeMetta gave a confused smile. “Sorry, I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a twentieth-century thing,” Amber explained. “So where is your shard from?”
“My shard?” He stared at her blankly.
“What year are you from?”
“What year am I from?”
“Yeah, you know, the Event? Where have you been, under a rock or someth—” She stopped as she remembered the Sphinx, and realized her faux pas. “I’m sorry. You’ve been stuck in a big metal box for who knows how long.”
He nodded. “You know what suspended animation is, right? Basically, I’ve missed everything since the Ouroboros marched on Cairo. I don’t know how long I’ve been out, but you must’ve already heard the news through the spindle networks or the Allied PreCogs, about Sensemayá and how she took out all their Medusae.
“Well, I was there with her when it was defeated—at ground zero, in fact,” he continued. “It’s funny, feels like it only just happened a few moments ago…” He paused, looking back up at Amber. Her blank expression said it all.
“I don’t want to come off like a PsiPremicist,” he said carefully, “but are you and this Egyptian group from some rogue a-psyche faction?”
“What?”
“The Contras? NeoLudds? Gypsies?” He suddenly looked at her as if just seeing her for the first time. “Hang on. You’re not any kind of a-psyche radical, are you? You’re a…” His voice trailed off, as though not wanting to say it out loud. “You’re a full-on Ungifted.”
“Look,” she said, “I have to tell you—I really, really don’t have a clue about anything you’re talking about.”
He leaned back and scratched his head.
“I guess that makes two of us.” He sat silent for a moment, then said, “Tell you what. You debrief me, and then I’ll return the favor.”
“Sure, but…” Amber frowned. “Wait, so how did you even find me, if you don’t—” She stopped, nodded to herself. “Right. Suspended animation. Never mind. Okay, first things first. The Event. So… do you know what ‘schizochronolinear’ is?”
DeMetta raised a hand. “Let me make this really easy for you. Don’t tell me, just show me.”
“What do you mean? Draw you a picture? Do an interpretive dance?”
“Smart ass,” he said with a grin. “No, just think about what you’re trying to explain to me.” He sat straight and closed his eyes.
“Oh. Okay.”
She closed her eyes, too, and pictured…
* * *
Merlin, back at the Neolithic cave in Britain, lecturing them by firelight, as she imagines a stained-glass window of time, six hundred million years long, shattering in a mindboggling cosmic cataclysm, then coalescing again into a patchwork new world… a towering curtain of raw energy roaring just inches away from her face…
Pleistocene wilderness, Gavin dead beside her, sliced in half… making her way cross-country past ruins, hiding from dire wolves… Blake rescuing her…
* * *
Cam, charging her with his sword, then falling at her feet… The young Celt laughing with her, cooking them both breakfast… Getting captured by Cromwellian Roundheads and locked up in the bell tower at Lexden… The others. Stearne. Nell. Their escape. Pursuit. Simon. Blake. Fighting soldiers. Cam, dying on the ground…
The Vanuatu… Flying the ship to North Africa… Stranded… Crossing the desert… The temple… Giant crocodiles… The Star of the Dawn… New Memphis.
The Sphinx.
* * *
She opened her eyes again. The return to the dreamscape was disconcerting, but she shook her head and recovered. After a moment, DeMetta opened his eyes, as well. When he finally spoke, he sounded shaken.
“So time has shattered into pieces, and you… you aren’t an Ungifted, you’re just from the past. A completely different past.”
“What do you mean?”
He was silent for a moment, then looked at her with a solemn gaze.
“Let me show you.”
He closed his eyes, and images began to stream into Amber’s head…
* * *
A stark building—a Soviet hospital facility in Czechoslovakia, in 1969. A researcher pulling one card after another from a deck, the young patient unfailingly reciting the symbols off of cards she cannot see.
A shag-carpeted therapist’s office in Berkeley, California, 1972. A teenage boy gazes intently at a fountain pen on the parapsychologist’s oak desk. Slowly the pen begins to rotate, then rises, hovering a few inches in the air.
* * *
Checkpoint Charlie, West Berlin, 1974. From the trunk of the car, an American boy and Czech girl stare at the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle. The two lock eyes with an East German border guard. He stares back, unable to move.
“Alles klar,” he calls out, and waves the car on.
* * *
The Czech girl and the American boy stare up at the Iguazú Falls, cascading down from three hundred and fifty feet above them, creating a one-hundred-foot cloud of spray and the most gorgeous prismatic rainbow display either has ever seen.
They remain in Argentina, hiding from both the CIA and KGB. They and their children begin to search out others like them from all around the world.
The Psionic Underground is born.
* * *
The twenty-first century unfolds: global superpowers and nation-states splinter into smaller and smaller political units, as psionic adepts seize the reins of government… Within a generation, the Ungifted,
those without psychic abilities, dwindle away to a tiny minority.
Spindle technology yields psionic batteries, amplifiers, weapons… and a global utopia.
Then frightening pathologies arise, producing psionic berserkers and vampires, along with ugly brands of psionic supremacism and totalitarian thought. Competing ideologies give rise to psionic factions.
The Psychic Wars begin, endless cycles of combat that rage for more than a century and a half. Factions employing precognitives gain the upper hand. Whole cities are burned to ash, and large swaths of civilization revert almost to medieval conditions, little better than petty kingdoms beset by wandering military units.
* * *
Esper Specialist John DeMetta in a bunker in the Eastern European war zone, 2216… driving in the ruins of Cairo, 2219… the Ouroboros invading… Sensemayá… a psychic explosion.
Cairo gone. Hands lifting him up. The capsule lid closing. Too late, he senses their intentions—he is a god, they believe, sent to them by lordly Osiris—and like Osiris, he must be reverently placed in the sacred sarcophagus, so that Thoth and Anubis may restore him to life again…
Sleeping beneath the Great Sphinx… His dreaming mind reaching out for psionic activity of any kind… A spindle, thousands of miles away in a bunker in Great Britain… a girl named Amber.
“Help me Amber…”
* * *
The visions faded away, and the two of them opened their eyes, still in the dreamscape. Both remained quiet for a moment. Amber blinked a few times, and then shook her head. DeMetta took a deep breath and rubbed his temples.
“That helped,” he said at last. “I’m starting to remember some things, and understand others, but I still have questions.”
Amber snorted, then caught herself and covered her mouth, embarrassed.
“You have questions?”
He laughed. “Alright. Ladies first.”
“How can you not know what’s going on? I mean, that was you at the weird bunker back in England, wasn’t it?
* * *
You sent me the combination. And then that freaky floating dark crystal thing had me dangling in midair while it kept zapping me—what the hell was that all about?”
