Flux

by Jeremy Robinson

  “Hold on to something!” I shout, scooping up Owen and running to the dining area. I climb under the table and note that everything in the room is bolted down. Future Langdon doesn’t want to be thrown against the ceiling, but he also doesn’t want to be decapitated by a loose chair. The whole space, and everything in it is secure…except for us.

  Owen wraps himself around a table leg, clutching it tightly, and I do the same, my arms around him, holding him in place. Cassie and Levi join us at separate table legs, while the younger Langdon and Flores charge into the living room. Flores dives beneath a coffee table. There’s not much to hold onto, but he’ll only be lifted and dropped a few inches. The younger Langdon scrambles back and forth, unsure of where to go.

  “Over here!” I shout at him. He spots the free table leg and sprints toward us just as a loud buzz fills the air. The floor beneath us shakes.

  The flux is coming.

  The younger Langdon dives for the table, slides across the floor, and wraps his hand around the leg.

  Then, someone bangs on the door.

  Hard.

  He’s found us.

  It’s the last thing I think before time and space erupt from below.

  53

  I remember being lifted off the floor, and then a sharp pain on the back of my head. After that is a blur of distorted voices. Screams really. I’m in a black tunnel, racing toward a bright light. The screams grow louder. Closer. And then I emerge, back into the light of full consciousness, where Owen has been wrenched out of my arms.

  He clutches onto the bolted down table leg as time and space bends up through him. “Owen!” he shouts to me, beckoning me from my stupor. I don’t remember hitting my head on the table’s underside, but that’s clearly what happened.

  I grasp his small wrists, locking us together. I don’t think I can pull him back under, but I manage to anchor him.

  Levi, on the other hand, is having a much harder time helping the younger Langdon. The scientist hangs in the air vertically, one hand clutching Levi’s. Both men are straining to resist the flow of time, but it’s a losing battle.

  The elder Langdon watches us with subtle amusement. He catches my eye, grins, and then points to the ceiling before turning his head upward.

  I manage to lean forward a little and glance up. The view is…unbelievable. The nighttime sky slowly shifts as millions of years reverse. I spot what I think is the big dipper, slowly condensing into a different shape, the stars and galaxies making up its familiar form retreating toward their births. Eventually, the position of the stars will be completely unrecognizable.

  And then they’ll be gone.

  If this works the way Future Langdon planned, we’ll end up looking at the endless nothing that existed before time.

  A large fist pounds on the door. Tsul’Kalu is trying to force his way in despite the flux. If he manages to break in, we’ll be at his mercy, which is non-existent. Even if the flux stops, there won’t be much we can do to save ourselves. He’s finally got the rabbit trapped in a den.

  When I look at the elder Langdon, I see fear in his eyes as he redirects his gaze toward the door. This is the one thing he didn’t count on. This is how his plan goes to shit. As much as that pleases me, it does nothing to help me or those I care about. If Tsul’Kalu reaches us, we’re all dead, whether or not we’re bathed in the light of creation…if that alone isn’t enough to melt us into space dust.

  The scene above draws my attention. Despite our looming deaths, I can’t help but watch the retreating universe. The moon separates into a spiraling field of smaller stones, reducing to dust and then, in a flash of white, it’s gone. The sky suddenly gets clearer, the stars brighter, as though we’re floating in space.

  The atmosphere is gone.

  We’re now predating life on Earth, slipping ever further back through the genesis of creation.

  A distant light grows brighter.

  The beginning of all things.

  “I’m slipping,” Owen shouts.

  My attention snaps back to him. Taking a risk, I release his right arm, reach a hand out and catch his belt. Pulling him in snaps sinews in my bicep, but I manage to resist the flux and get him down to the floor, where he wraps his whole body around the table leg.

  “You good?” I shout over the buzz of reversing time.

  “I am, but he’s not.” He looks over my shoulder to the younger Langdon.

  Levi shouts as the scientist is pulled from his fingertips. He’s shoved upward, slammed against the roof and dragged toward the apex, twenty feet above the floor. For a moment, I think he’s dead, but then I see him moving. He turns his head, facing upward, his view straight up and out. Best seat in the house…until the flux stops. Then he’ll fall to the floor and either be killed or severely injured by the impact.

  I check on Cassie, whose grip on the table leg hasn’t faltered. “How you doing?” I shout.

  “Peachy!” Comes her reply.

  “In case we don’t make it...” I start, still shouting.

  She interrupts with, “I know!”

  “You know I broke your Michael Jackson record?”

  Owen nudges me. “Hey! Don’t tell her that!”

  Cassie smiles. “I’ve always known!”

  “Mother Teresa on a pogo stick!” Levi shouts, looking toward the ceiling. “It’s coming apart! It’s all coming apart!”

  Massive chunks of what can only be the Earth itself rises into the air, separating into ever smaller pieces. For a moment, we’re lost in a sea of stone, watching the formation of our planet in reverse, gravity pushing instead of pulling.

  Continents reduce to boulders and then to dust. When it clears, the universe’s stars have gathered in a pocket of the sky, growing brighter as it condenses, and then larger as we race toward it.

  Blinding white light forces my eyes away. It’s impossible to look at, the heat of it warms my skin, but it doesn’t scorch. The light is retreating, pulling back, taking us with it.

  We are inside the first moments of the universe.

  And then, in a sudden moment of absolute stillness and silence, we’re beyond it.

  The flux stops, but the particle collider’s gentle hum continues.

  Gravity ceases to exist. I feel my body lift off the floor. Anything not bolted down rises into the air and floats away, including most of the weapons we dropped when diving for cover. My stomach twists, but it’s nothing compared to the discomfort of a flux.

  “Astounding,” Langdon says, but the voice doesn’t come from the man in the chair, it comes from the younger of the two, as he pushes himself away from the ceiling. He spins through the air, awkwardly flailing about until he hits the floor and manages to catch hold of a chair leg. “You’ve really done it,” he says to his elder self, and I can’t tell if his shock stems from fright or wonder.

  Both, I suppose, because I feel the same way. Despite the circumstances, the staggering beauty of what we’ve just witnessed is beyond comparison.

  So why does the older Langdon not look relieved, or happy? Haven’t we passed through the energies of creation he so desperately sought?

  I shake my head at my inner monologue. The energy was being pulled away from us, not toward us.

  He’s waiting for something else.

  My eyes widen as I realize he’s still strapped in.

  “It’s not over,” I say. “It’s not over!”

  “How can that be?” the younger Langdon asks. “We have arrived. There is no way back. There is no—”

  “Was I really this dull?” Future Langdon asks. “Did I really have so little imagination? Time is flexible. Malleable. But it is also resilient, snapping back into place when tension is released. We are tethered to the present. Your present. And in a moment, we will return to it. All of us. And you will thank me for it.” He grins. “You will worship me for it.”

  “Fat chance,” Flores says, starting to emerge from beneath the coffee table that held him in place.

&
nbsp; I’m about to warn him it’s not over when the younger Langdon screams, gripping his head in pain. It’s just like before, but it’s only happening to him.

  When it stops, his face is placid, almost death-like. But then he pushes off the chair and glides toward the door.

  “What’s he doing?” the elder Langdon asks, his delusions of Godhood diminishing into primal fear.

  “Langdon!” I shout. My instinct is to go tackle him, but I don’t want to leave Owen.

  Luckily, Flores has the same instincts and none of the familial concerns. He launches from the coffee table, on a collision course.

  “Langdon!” I shout again, as Flores misses his mark, passing behind his target.

  The younger scientist thumps against the sealed door, which has gone silent, and lowers himself toward the biometric lock. His face is blank. Emotionless. His mind is gone. Something is controlling him, I think, but Tsul’Kalu never showed any psychic abilities. If he could just control his prey, escape would have been impossible.

  He likes the fight, but what’s happening to the younger Langdon… It’s not passionate, or violent, or even malevolent. He’s moving with the calm grace of whatever intellect is controlling him.

  The door’s lock thunks open. The younger Langdon pushes off, gliding back into the penthouse, blinking in confusion as his mind returns. “What happened?” He looks at the slowly opening door. “What did I do?”

  On the plus side, there is no sucking of air. The rest of the facility or at least the compartments outside the penthouse, have remained sealed against the vacuum of nothing. On the downside, the long white fingers that wrap around the door as it slides open are not human.

  Nor are they Nephilim.

  The digits are slender and tipped with thick, gray nails that could have once been sharp, but appear to have been filed down.

  The white head with black eyes slips into view. I have a feeling of, You! But I don’t speak. I can’t speak. A strange vibration fills my head. I hear sounds, and then feel equal parts confusion, fear, and interest.

  I’m feeling what it feels. Or are these thoughts? With no common language, true communication, spoken or otherwise, is impossible. All that’s left is emotion—something this creature apparently shares with humanity.

  When it steps fully into view, I understand what I’m seeing.

  “What is that?” the elder Langdon says, aghast. In all his observations, he managed to miss the creature’s stealthy advance from the power station to Synergy. It must have slipped inside while Tsul’Kalu waged his war.

  “A pre-human, intelligent species,” I guess, staring into the big black eyes. The face resembles a Cretaceous carnivore. The shape of its skull. The short, but present snout that all but disappears when viewed straight on. Its eyes face forward, making it a strange amalgam of species. Its body is slender, but powerful. Forelimbs stretch toward the ground, but it doesn’t use them for standing, though I suspect it could, if it wanted to move quickly. Then I see something interesting. Its hands have four fingers, one of which is a thumb. The hind legs end in three-toed feet, talons present and sharp. Its pale skin is thick with a patch of almost downy feathers running down its back. The feathers shimmer blue and green when it moves. Whatever this thing is, it evolved from some line of carnivorous dinosaur.

  And I suspect it is responsible for killing the men at the power station. But was it self-defense, or an act of unprovoked violence? Even if it was the latter, the appearance of a modern power facility and strange new creatures in its territory might have been provocation enough. Either way, this creature has the potential for savage violence…which makes it more human than anyone would like to admit.

  It steps fully into the room, revealing a ten-foot-long tail that snaps back and forth, providing balance for its large body.

  “Impossible,” Future Langdon says. “The fossil record—”

  “Is a load’a bull dookie,” Levi says, bravely standing to face the creature. “At least in Appalachia. Most of what was here was chewed up and ground to dust by the Ice Age.”

  He holds his hand out in a peace offering. “We won’t hurt you,” he says, and while I know it can’t understand his words, maybe it can understand his feelings.

  The big black eyes shift from person to person. Its facial expression is hard to read, but relaxing. That is, until it looks at the elder Langdon. A sneer twists its slender lips up, revealing needle-like teeth. I think it senses his fear, and hate, and his unending amounts of hubris.

  And then its black eyes widen with surprise. I’m not sure why, until a geyser of red blood sprays from the creature’s shoulder, floating away in the zero gravity. I shout in pain in time with the creature, sharing its projected anguish. The flailing creature’s tail slaps the floor, pushing it toward the ceiling and revealing the source of its wound.

  Tsul’Kalu stands just inside the room, clinging to the open door with one hand. In the other hand, he holds a large knife that looks small in his grasp. His body is covered in blood, both purple and red. His human-skin garments are riddled with bullet holes to the point they’re nearly non-existent. The saber-toothed cat cloak has been frayed as well, but not as much. And the thick skull still rests on his head, ever protective.

  There’s a moment of ‘oh, shit’ silence as everyone in the penthouse glances from one face to the next.

  Then Tsul’Kalu smiles, looks at me, says, “Tsisdu,” and begins to laugh. The flesh of who-knows-what dangles from his double rows of teeth.

  But his smile fades a moment later when the background hum that’s been so constant since the particle collider went active suddenly stops and we’re plunged into what feels like a vacuum of sound. The pressure of nothing on my eardrums is intense.

  The particle collider has shut down. The God and Devil particles no longer orbit each other. The waves that carried us here, that stretched out time, have been spent.

  And the tether of space-time anchoring us to the distant future begins to snap back, straight toward the spark of creation.

  54

  “This is it!” the elder Langdon shouts, a smile on his face. He’s not gloating. Not rubbing in his success. He’s looking at his wife, ever confident that his actions will spare her from cancer’s grasp.

  But his joy is misplaced. Not only is there a good chance we’re all going to die in the next few seconds, but even if we survive back to the present, we’ll still be in the very deadly company of Tsul’Kalu. Worse, we’ll have unleashed a monster into the modern world.

  How many people will he tear apart before someone figures out how to kill him?

  For now, at least, the giant seems distracted by the view above. The absolute void mesmerizes him.

  Then, for the first time, I see fear in his eyes.

  A deep, resounding rumble, like the roar of a waterfall rushes through us. I can feel it in my body, in my thoughts. My body feels disassembled at a molecular level, but free of pain. For a moment, I cease to exist as anything other than thought. I cannot feel, hear, or see. There is no light, no darkness, just the mighty roar and…a whooshing wind that sounds—or feels—like words sifting through me like a memory. Who touched my garments?

  What?

  Then I’m sewn back together, atoms linking.

  I feel again, a strange tingling with no point of origin.

  My senses return with a clap of thunder. I can feel Owen wrapped in my arms, his body living, but still. The roar comes to an abrupt end, and my eyes snap open.

  We’re engulfed in absolute darkness, both outside and inside. Synergy is without power.

  How long until we run out of air? Until we freeze?

  White light blooms outside the window, filling the penthouse. In the brief moment I can bear to look, I see Tsul’Kalu on his knees, arms raised, head turned up, mouth open in a silent scream. His body appears to be charred, somehow turned to dust. Dark flakes peel away from his body as the light flares brighter and my eyes are forced shut.

 
Did the light do that to him? Did it affect anyone else? I open my eyes to look, but the pure white light overwhelms me, sending a quiver through my body.

  “Don’t look at him!” Owen’s small voice barely reaches my ear. Despite being right next to each other, he sounds a mile away.

  How could he tell who I was looking at? I wonder. Did he look, too? Or is he talking about someone else?

  The whooshing words come back to mind. Did I really hear them? No, I decide, I experienced them. But who spoke them, and what the hell does it mean?

  The bright pink glow on the inside of my eyelids fades, and despite Owen’s warning, I open my eyes. Above, the view is stars. A lot of them, bunched together and slowly drifting apart. We race away through brilliant flashing clouds that coalesce and ignite into even more stars. The universe is being formed around us. Great spirals of light twinkle to life and spin into the distance, everything rushing away from everything.

  A cloud of dust envelops us, sifting past the domed window, forming larger chunks that merge and grow. I recognize the scene, played now in fast-forward rather than reverse. We’re watching the Earth’s formation, but we can only look up.

  I flinch when power is restored, the penthouse’s orange glow returning. I’d been able to see, thanks to the sourceless light of creation, and the illumination cast off by forming galaxies, but now I can see more clearly.

  I stare at the lowest point on the dome, six feet above the floor. Why didn’t Langdon put in any outward facing windows? I wonder in frustration. The answer is simple, short of a hot air balloon, a sniper’s bullet wouldn’t be able to find him in here. Not that any bullet in my time could pierce the thick glass.

  I flinch when the white, pre-human thing pulls itself to the window’s edge, looking out at what I want to see. Like me, it is dumbfounded and curious.

  What are you? I think, and the thing turns around to look at me. Pain wracks my head, along with a sense of welcome and wonder. It almost felt like an invitation.