Infernal

“Try SOPHIA19,” Sophia said.

Richard typed the code into the prompt on the RLP. The screen reset to ENTER CODE.

“Nope,” he said. “What else have you got?”

“I don’t have anything else,” she said, her shoulders dropping. “We always use our first name followed by our designation code. It’s practically SOP.”

“Given that this Sophia snatched her child and fled the BanaTech homeworld to avert a Multi-universal apocalypse,” Richard replied,” don’t you find it conceivable that she might have decided to forego standard operating procedures?”

“If she did, then she could have come up with anything. Any random word, number, or combination of both. We could stand out here inputting codes for a thousand years and not stumble over it.” Sophia’s newfound optimism, so great that Richard had seen it on her face and heard it in her voice, slowly began trickling away like air from a tire with a nail in it.

“Unlikely,” Richard said. “Random codes are easy to forget. If you write it down then anyone who finds it can access whatever it is you’re trying to protect so most people use words or phrases that are familiar to them. A birthday, phone number, or the name of a pet. You are her Mirror. You told me that Mirrors live similar lives and are similarly like-minded. You should be able to figure out her password.”

“You’re right, of course.” Sophia sighed. “Give it to me and I’ll try.”

“Try while we’re moving.” Richard handed her the device. “I don’t think it’s safe here.”

They moved on, not talking, keeping to an easterly course through the foothills of West Virginia. The going was easy despite being in a heavily wooded area. Dense vegetation overhead—amultitude of maple, elm, and oak leaves—kept the sunlight at bay. Only the occasional bright shaft broke through the canopy to reach the ground below and spark undergrowth.

A light but constant breeze played through the trees, stirring leaves of red and gold together in a sound like the whispers of conspirators. Leaves fell sporadically in swirls of crimson and amber. The only sounds were their footfalls, Sophia’s irregular tapping on the RLP, and zephyrs cavorting amongst the trees.

The air was crisp and redolent with the rich smells of loam, decomposing wood, and flourishing wildlife. Pollution on this Earth, Richard reminded himself, would mostly be contained to larger cities, mill towns, and areas boasting large factories. Out here in the sticks all was fresh and clean. The smell sparked melancholy memories of playing as a child in the scrub behind his home in Kansas. He was startled to realize he was homesick.

“Got it!” Sophia cried. A bird squalled from overhead as if scolding her for the outburst. Richard stopped and turned to her, a questioning look on his face. “It’s ELIANA,” she continued, excited. “I should have known. I wasted time running through names important to me when I should have been thinking about what was most important to her.”

“Very good,” Richard said, smiling. “You’re officially a hacker now.”

“Ha,” Sophia deadpanned, her fingers moving across the device. “Damn.” Her excitement vanished. “I was afraid of that.”

“What is it?” Richard asked.

“The nearest Rip is in Kowloon.”

“Kowloon?” Richard repeated. “As in China?”

“Yes.” Sophia sighed with frustration. “I knew this might happen.”

Richard reached for the RLP and she handed it over. He flipped through screen after screen from their present location to ever widening views of West Virginia, the United States, and then the entire North American continent. There was nothing to indicate the presence of a Rip. No indication that one would be forming.

“I don’t understand,” Richard said.

“It’s the nuke,” Sophia explained. “I told you that the Rips tend to shy away from people not intentionally entering them, as if there’s intelligence behind them. It’s the same for catastrophic events. When the nukes went off the Rips here all closed. We’ve seen it before. A year or so ago on E-88 the Yellowstone caldera erupted. The entire planet was affected and Rips didn’t form there for months.”

“A cosmic safety valve.” Richard imagined a Rip opening in the middle of a volcanic eruption, channeling pyroclastic ash and magma to the heart of a large city on another, unsuspecting Earth. “Probably a good thing.”

“Except that in this case it strands us here,” Sophia said.

“For how long?” Richard asked.

“It could be days,” she answered. “Or only hours. There are a lot of variables. Wind speed and direction of radioactive fallout. The rate of decay of the fissionable material used to detonate the devices. Resultant emission levels. The list goes on. We just have to wait it out.”

“We can’t wait here.” Richard handed the RLP back to Sophia. “We’re still too close. If the wind shifts we’ll likely get a dose of radiation ourselves. We should keep heading east and hope a Rip opens in that direction before too long.”

“There is one consolation,” Sophia said. “With the Rips closed on this continent, Jefferson won’t be sending anyone after us anytime soon. And if the one near Charleston closed after the detonation, Hatfield and his boys are stuck here too.”

“All the more reason to move,” Richard said.

Sophia slipped the RLP into the sleeve pocket of her BDU—the better to feel the vibration of the device when and if the proximity alarm went off—and they started off again. The bird overhead chirped at them again; a farewell perhaps, Richard thought as he stepped over a fallen tree branch as thick as his leg. A vole, grey and sleek, startled by the sudden intrusion of man in its habitat streaked away from the branch, a bit of fruit or tasty root still hanging from its mouth.

Richard felt for the animal. He too had been disturbed into headlong flight. One moment he was living in Kansas, trying to build a life from the rubble of his murder trial and subsequent incarceration; the next hiding out in California, trying to make sense of what had happened in Kansas. Who had tried to kill him there and make off with the mysterious woman? And why?

He’d gotten the answers to those questions, as fantastic and unbelievable as they were. But those answers had led to more questions. A number of which still remained unanswered.

He briefly wondered why, in moments of uncertainty, someone couldn’t just come along and give him the answers.

“What am I doing here?” he asked the wind, the trees, the very Multi-verse at large.

The Multi-verse remained silent. It was Sophia who said: “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what am I doing here? Why am I not at home, reading a book with my feet up in front of the fire? Petting my dog or remodeling my kitchen? Here we are, running around blind, with no idea whatsoever where your Mirror hid the Key or how to find her. We could Rip onto a thousand worlds, search every one of them from pole to pole, and be no better off than we are now. It sounds like a good premise for a TV show but it’s not very productive.”

He stopped and turned to Sophia, frustration evident in his eyes.

“Why does BanaTech think that I can find the Key? Why are you so damn convinced that I can save the Multi-verse? So I’m a Prime. What does that mean? That I’m better at math and sports? That I can see the Rips? So what? I’m not a hero and certainly not some savior. I’m just a guy from Kansas who lost his temper and acted when the system chose to protect a predator instead of the innocent life it was created to defend.”

“You’re forgetting,” Sophia replied, “that out of all the people in the Multi-verse, all the Primes in the Multi-verse, my Mirror came to you, Richard. That has to mean something. BanaTech obviously thinks so. What’s more, the Quantum Cray’s think so too, and they’re rarely wrong.”

Richard started walking again. “Did it ever occur to you, BanaTech, or your high and mighty Quantum Cray’s that your Mirror just happened to choose a random Rip that coincidentally terminated in the back yard of a Prime? That I’m here because of a capricious act of nature?”

“Impossible,” Sophia said, keeping pace with him.

Richard snorted. “I’ve seen a lot of things I thought were impossible recently.”

“The Rip my Mirror used to get to your home in Kansas wasn’t predicted by the Quantum Cray’s. It didn’t behave the way normal Rips behave and only lasted long enough for her to exit before collapsing. The QC’s have only ever recorded an event like it once before. That Rip wasn’t a capricious act of nature, as you put it. It didn’t occur naturally. It was created.”

“How is that possible?” Richard stopped and faced her. “I thought that attempting to create an artificial Rip would cause chaos throughout the Multi-verse. Have untold consequences on countless Earths.”

“We don’t know how it’s possible.” Sophia said. “Nor do we know who or what created it or why they would do so to help my Mirror. We only know that it happened. That someone or something has the power to open a Rip of specific duration for a specific purpose.”

“And BanaTech wants this power,” Richard said. It was not a question.

“It’s one of their goals, yes.”

He started walking again, mulling over this new information. The trees were thinning out. The underbrush grew thicker wherever sunlight broke through the canopy. He pushed through a knee high grouping of young hemlock trees.

Another power with the ability to create a Focal Point and open artificial Rips at will was certainly a threat to BanaTech’s scheme. Who, or, as Sophia had put it, what could have that power? Was this entity, whatever it was, benign in its purpose? Or were its goals similar to those of BanaTech and simply achieved in a different way? Did he and Sophia have an ally in all of this? Or was that just wishful thinking?

And why, he wondered, breaking into a field of milkweed and daisies, use that power on only two occasions?

“You said the QC’s recorded a similar artificial Rip only once before. When was it?”

“The night my Mirror fled the Homeworld with the Key,” Sophia said. “She’d been causing Jefferson trouble since she learned he planned to use Eliana to control the Focal Point Generator. It was her idea to use an autistic Prime but she knew the risks associated with attempting to open a Rip and refused to risk the safety of her own daughter. Jefferson feared she might try to abduct the child, so he took Eliana from her and housed her with a surrogate. Eliana became even more reticent than usual and stopped eating so they gave her back to my Mirror and held them both under armed guard. Then the monk appeared in her room and took them.”

“The monk?” Richard said.

“That’s what they called him. He was wearing robes and a cowl. The tech monitoring the room never saw his face. One second my Mirror and Eliana were alone in the room, the next there was this guy standing there talking to them. No one saw the Rip, the cameras in the room wouldn’t have picked it up, but everyone knew what had happened. The tech raised the alarm but by the time they got into the room the three of them were vanishing into the back wall. One of the guards got off a shot, swears my Mirror was hit in the side, but no one wanted to fire blindly into the Rip for fear of hitting the Key.”

“Oh, he hit her alright,” Richard said. “I patched her up myself. If I hadn’t found her as soon as I had, she’d have probably bled out in a matter of hours.”

Sophia frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. If the wound was that bad, someone else must have tended to it before you did.”

“No,” Richard said. “She hadn’t been treated. The wound was fresh when I found her. No dressing and no sign it had ever been cleaned.”

“That’s just not possible, Richard,” Sophia said.

“Why isn’t it?” Richard asked, thinking that these days the line between the possible and impossible was diminishing rapidly.

“Because the time between my Mirror vanishing from her quarters on the Homeworld and reappearing in your back yard wasn’t a matter of minutes, or even hours. It was four days.”

Night came, and with it an abundance of stars. They glittered across the Eastern sky, cold and uncaring to the plight of wanderers below. To the southwest the sky raged, red and angry as if the very air were afire. Richard knew the effect would last for many nights to come. Even after it faded, for a time, those looking in that direction in the evenings would see the most stunning sunsets they’d ever witnessed. In the midst of total annihilation, there is still beauty to behold.

He and Sophia had been walking a little more than six hours. Richard estimated they’d made twelve miles from where they’d been left at the side of the road and were now roughly fifty miles from Logan County

They’d shifted their course to a more northerly direction. To throw off Hatfield if he and his men were set on tracking them down for answers as to why their ticket off this Earth had been cancelled, and to stay closer to the inhabited areas skirting Charleston. They were both tired and needed rest. They were more likely to find shelter closer to a city.

The phrase doúlos tou theoú kept running through Richard’s mind. Slave of God.

Is that what it is to be a Prime? A slave? To God or something like Him?

He didn’t feel like a slave, exactly. More like a 19th century conscript shanghaied in a waterfront bar. Drugged and pressed unwillingly into service by a master Crimp. Forced to serve aboard ship until voyage’s end, under penalty of imprisonment or death.

Many a conscript had chosen to face the cold and unforgiving sea rather than serve, he recalled. Jumped ship and risked drowning rather than swab a deck or hoist a sail at another man’s behest. Some had made it home, he presumed. He knew that most had not.

Could I abandon this voyage—this quest—if I wanted to?

Or would something out there stop me? Force me to walk some numinous plank?

His thoughts were broken when Sophia touched his arm.

“Look,” she whispered.

He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t noticed they’d left the tree line and were walking on cultivated ground. A field that had recently been harvested, threshed, and winnowed for rest through the coming winter.

A large barn stood on the far side of the field fifty yards from where they stood. Beyond that a small house; its windows dark. Either the landowner was out for the evening or, more likely, had gone to bed with the sunset.

“It’s big enough to have a loft,” Sophia said. “We’d be out of sight and have plenty of warning if anyone comes looking for us.”

Of course, Richard thought. She’s been thinking of Hatfield too.

“Some MRE’s and some sleep, then,” Richard said, striking out for the barn.

Richard awoke to the soft sound of new snow falling on a still night.

It had been cool that day. The fauna they’d passed indicated it was early fall on this Earth with temperatures, he guessed, in the high fifties. While it wasn’t something he’d thought about at the time, there had been no indication that temperatures would drop low enough for it to snow overnight. Nor did he think their elevation was sufficient enough for such a thing.

He wasn’t cold. The barn was comfortable enough that they hadn’t felt the need for cover. He had, in fact, shed his bulky BDU ripstop, choosing to sleep in his A-shirt. He’d laid the ripstop beneath him to ward off the needlelike prick of the straw.

He looked around for the source of the sound. While it was dark in this far corner of the loft he could make out Sophia, lying on her side to his right, breathing deeply but not quite snoring. One hand was curled innocently under her cheek, the other across her waist. Her nose crinkled briefly as if she’d smelled something or got a tickle, then smoothed again.

To Richard’s left, a good eight feet away, was the edge of the loft and a twelve-foot drop to the barn floor below.

He heard nothing amiss save that light, airy tinkling sound. Saw nothing out of place from his supine position. Slowly, so as not to awaken Sophia, he pulled himself erect and crept to the edge of the loft for a better look at the floor below.

A light framed the side door of the barn. Not the yellow light of a candle or lamp but a light soft and white like the pure glow of an LED. Would they even have those on this Earth yet? Richard wondered. Wouldn’t they still be using incandescent’s?

He started to go back and rouse Sophia, certain they’d been discovered, and then thought better of it.

With no Rips on this continent, if they had been discovered, it was either Hatfield and his men or simply the landowner. He doubted Hatfield had a tracker with sufficient skill to pursue them in the dark. If they were out there searching for him and Sophia they’d have likely camped at sunset, intending to pick up the trail at first light.

If it was the landowner he could maybe convince the man or woman that they meant no harm, were simply seeking shelter for the night, and would now be on their way. A task better suited to a lone, unarmed caller than to two trespassers armed to the teeth.

So thinking Richard disarmed himself, climbed down the ladder, and crossed to the door. The light grew no brighter as he approached. No voices rose in alarm from outside. He expected to hear something; the shuffling of feet, low voices, a cautious “Who goes there?” There was no sound save his footfalls on the floorboards and the faint whisper of snow falling on velvet.

He paused. The glow cast itself a few feet inside the half open door, across his boots and over his shins. It neither warmed nor cooled his legs. It simply was.

This was certainly not right.

It didn’t feel wrong, either.

Richard opened the door slowly, not wanting to take a bullet if whoever was outside was of the ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ variety.

The light, pure and white, did not increase or wink out. No bullets crashed into the doorframe. No new sounds arose. With a single look back and up towards the corner of the loft where Sophia still slept, Richard cautiously stepped out into the radiance. His jaw dropped.

There was no snow. Neither on the ground nor falling from the sky.

A girl of about eight years old stood before him, her face downcast as if she were studying the ground. The incandescence seemed to be coming from her. She wore a white dress that rippled out to the side as if it were being blown by the wind though there was no such wind present. The same non-wind blew the purest blonde hair Richard had ever seen about the child’s head and face obscuring her features.

Above her shoulders and down her sides a pair of wings folded tight against her body. Tiny, delicate feathers of the purest white stirred in the breeze that wasn’t there. Her arms were at her sides, hands clasped in front holding a clutch of roses. Petals of the deepest red fluttered to the ground in stark contrast to the white visage of the girl.

Behind the child rose a staircase so high Richard had to crane his neck back to see all of it. Steps of cut granite ascended to a point far beyond his sight, the top obscured by the same clean radiance that surrounded the child.

The girl lifted her face to Richard and the non-wind blew her hair aside. Eyes as blue as the deepest sea pierced him and he gasped audibly, recognizing the face of young Katie Marsh.

Dear God, Richard thought, I must be dreaming.

“What is a dream,” the child spoke in a voice very much like the sound of snow falling in stillness, “but reality from another perspective?”

Neither a confirmation nor a denial, Richard noted.

“Who are you?” Richard said.

“You know who I am,” the girl replied.

“Are you Katie Marsh? Are you her spirit?”

“I am she,” the child said simply. “And I am others. I am Erelah. I am of the All.”

There it was again. That phrase. The All.

He’d thought it himself, back in Kansas at McCormack’s house. At the time he’d taken it for an errant thought brought about by the stress of confronting the child murderer and his intent to kill him:

This is the beast that must be vanquished. The evil light that must be banished from the ALL.

Then McCormack himself, or whatever had taken up residence inside him, had spoken of it: “Defiled them” he had said, referring to his victims, “And the All.”

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times…there was something to this. Something beyond Sophia, Banatech, and the Rips. Beyond anything he’d experienced thus far. Something he intuited this child, ghost, whatever she was, could or would not explain.

Just what is the All, he asked himself, and what does it mean?

“Why are you here?” Richard asked aloud.

“You called me,” the child answered.

Richard thought about it but could not remember doing any such thing.

“And where does that go?” Richard asked, indicating the staircase behind her.

“Everywhere,” the girl replied. “And nowhere.”

“That’s helpful,” Richard muttered.

“You must choose a path, Richard Farris,” the child said.

“A path?” he said.

“To what lies ahead,” the girl said, indicating the staircase, “or what lies behind.” Though she nodded in Sophia’s direction Richard felt she meant his old life back in Kansas.

“I can go back?” he asked. “End all this and just have my old life back?”

“Every living thing has a choice,” the girl said. “Every choice has its consequences.”

Meaning, he thought, that if he gave up this pursuit of the Key and returned to his Earth BanaTech might well create a focal point threatening chaos throughout the Multi-verse.

Some choice.

“I need answers,” Richard said, more to himself than to Erelah.

“Then go,” the child said and pointed over her shoulder.

“Can’t you tell me what I need to know?” Richard said.

“I am but a gatekeeper,” said the child, “it is only the Seraph, pure of dignity and light, who can lead you to the Messenger.”

With that the girl was gone. She didn’t fade out or vanish with a flourish. No sudden gust of wind sprang up. One moment she was there, and the next she was not. Rose petals littered the ground where she’d stood. The staircase remained; the steady white radiance from the top beckoning.

Richard glanced back towards the barn and the sleeping Sophia.

No harm will come to her the child’s voice spoke up in his head.

Richard mounted the stairs.

He had no idea how long he ascended. It felt like hours though it remained dark and the sun did not rise on this part of the world as it should have. His legs ached from the climb. His lungs burned with the effort.

Everyone should have one of these, he thought at one point. Beats the Treadclimber by about a million miles.

He felt no fear of falling though by this time he had to be thousands of feet above the surface of the planet. He had no urge to go to the edge of the wide steps and look down either. He didn’t suffer acrophobia; great heights didn’t bother him at all. But he had no desire to step to the edge and see the world spread out below him like the view from an airplane window either.

He expected high altitude winds of the force that threaten to blow urban climbers, known as builderers, from the faces of buildings but there was nothing save a faint breeze of fresh air coming from above. He expected the air to thin, making breathing difficult and ascending impossible but his lungs remained full of oxygen and, though somewhat labored from exertion, his breathing was the same as it had been on the ground.

One thing did change. The further he ascended, the closer he got to the soft glow coming from what had to be the apex, the more color he could see coming from it. The pattern was familiar, a swirling mix of every color imaginable. And a few that couldn’t be imagined.

At the top of the stairs was a Rip. A big one. By far the largest Rip Richard had encountered.

As he mounted the final step, Richard bathed in the luminescence. It had an almost imperceptible feel to it. As if he were being lightly caressed by the hands of many lovers. That much light should have blinded him but did not. The sheer beauty of it should have driven him mad but he remained conscious and sound of mind.

The Rip beckoned.

Like Alice through the looking glass, Richard stepped forward.