Diamond Sky (Diamond Sky Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘If anything, this invention
of yours is making me stronger. It is almost as if I can feel everything in
this room. You should try taking a ride yourself; you may just like it, you
know.’

What Charlie did not realise was that
Emmy
had been pressing the professor for some time to be given her chance. Thus far,
her pleas had been ignored.

‘We have guinea pigs for a reason,’ she said.

After shutting down the device, she left the lab to report
the day’s findings to the professor. As she walked down the narrow corridor,
which connected the laboratory to the main body of the observatory, she could
not help but smile. Despite her refusal to join in with her colleague’s
bravado, she was beginning to share in his excitement more and more with each
day. They really were on the verge of an important breakthrough and she could
hardly believe that she, Dr
Emmy
Rayne, was right at
the centre of it all.

***

In accordance with his wishes, Lucy had her father
cremated. He also expressed a desire to have the ashes scattered at a place of
his daughter’s choosing. Her first instinct was to return him to one of the
camp sites he took her to as a child. The outback was like a second home for
them and the stars their extended family. After giving it consideration, she
had a change of heart. She wanted those places to remain special for the
memories they shared in life, not death. She decided his final resting place
should be somewhere new, somewhere he had never been before and getting him
there would be their final adventure together.

‘Are you ready for this?’

Her sole passenger was unable to respond. He did not have a
mouth to speak through, for a start. To an outsider, it would look peculiar
seeing a woman driving whilst talking to an urn that rested on her passenger
seat.

Lucy did not care what people thought, she never had. From
an early age her father taught her to always have confidence and pride in
herself and this ethos served her well. Adelaide had a sizeable population, the
fifth largest in the country, but many of its inhabitants still held what
people from the larger cities would consider a small town mentality. It was not
as cosmopolitan as Melbourne, as brash as Brisbane or as liberal as Sydney.

The road she took was well travelled, yet hours could pass
without the company of another vehicle such was the vastness of its tract. She
passed through nature reserves and military testing grounds as she made her way
through the sometimes barren, yet never dull terrain of the world’s driest
state within its driest continent. By the end of the first day, she had covered
over five hundred miles and she could not wait to do five hundred more.

Urban myths as well as real life horror tales made it known
just how dangerous the desert highway could be, so she camped her first night
in the grounds of a roadhouse. The night was calm and dry, so rather than pitch
her tent, she slept in the open with just her canvas swag to cover her.

She lay flat and looked up at the stars; nature’s ultimate
security light. Hundreds of miles from home, in a place she had never before
visited, the surroundings felt familiar, they felt safe. Far above her head,
spread across millions of light years of space, she could see a koala. She
could hear her father’s voice inside her head, telling her the story he had told
her a hundred times before. The story they recited on his death bed. Lucinda
Skye was back where she belonged.

Chapter 2

Jackson Fox had never conformed to the traditional stereotype
of a physicist. He was always as comfortable in a pair of running shoes or
swimming trunks as a lab coat. Once a keen sportsman, he had taken part in many
state championships in both athletics and swimming. He was even in the running
for the Olympic team at Tokyo in ‘64. Of course, that was before the accident;
before he lost the use of his legs.

His health deteriorated rapidly over the following years.
Disability deprived him of many of his passions and like a lot of people he
filled the void with vice. A strong constitution protected him from succumbing
to the common sufferings of long term alcohol consumption. It was the
cigarettes that were his downfall. With the body of a crippled old man, there
was little to arm him against the onslaught of disease. He suffered from
chronic emphysema and required the use of an oxygen tank at all times.

Standing at the other end of his desk was Dr Rayne. She had
taken his work to a level he could only ever dream about. He could not ask for
a better protégé. What made her success even sweeter was that she was of his
flesh and blood. Just like her grandfather,
Emmy’s
talent for physics was rivalled by few.

‘How is the testing going?’ he asked.

‘Very well,’ she replied. ‘I think it is time we extended
the cord a bit. At the moment, it is like we are building sandcastles when we
have the potential to make pyramids.’

‘Do you think Dr Nguyen is up to the task?’

She understood his concern. Charlie was brilliant, but he
approached science like a child with his first chemistry set. Even though he
was several years older than
Emmy
, he lacked her
composure and restraint. He was too eager, too impatient to handle the
responsibility needed. This was a fact she hoped to use to her advantage.

‘I was actually thinking that I should be the one to take
the trials.’

‘Absolutely not.’

To emphasise his resolve, he turned and rode his motorised
chair to the far corner of his study, where he feigned interest in a reference
book picked from a shelf at random.

‘You have made it clear that you have doubts about Charlie.
Unless you want to delay any further progress indefinitely, you have to let me
do this.’

She waited for his response. The old man’s face gave little
away, as between the breathing tubes and liver spots his expression was rendered
completely unreadable. By turning his back to her, he revealed much more about
his feelings than he ever could face to face. He did not wish to look her in
the eye as to do so would be to stare at defeat. Despite all of the respect and
love that he commanded from her, he was ultimately powerless. Just a helpless
old cripple in a wheelchair. His hand hovered over the chair’s controls, but in
the end he could not bring himself to turn and argue.

‘The sun sets at eight at o’clock. I will initiate the experiment
at ten.’ She made her way to the door, but stopped briefly before leaving. ‘It
would mean a lot to me for you to be there.’

The old man did not answer. He waited for her footsteps to
disappear down the hall before returning to his desk. Although he loathed
admitting it, concern was not what was keeping him from granting his blessing.
The equipment was tried and tested and he had gone over her equations a
thousand times; they were flawless. What really bothered him was that he would
not be able to go with her. Put simply; he was jealous.

***

Lucy woke with the dawn. It was another beautiful day.
She rolled up her swag before going into the roadhouse for breakfast. The
exterior of the building had been boiled dry by the sun, forming blisters,
which cracked at the slightest touch. Inside was a different story. The heat
and humidity was replaced by cool and refreshing air as the air-con was kept
running twenty four seven to offer a safe refuge from the relentless heat of
the desert outside.

Two men, who had beaten even the sun to rise, were sat at
the counter waiting for their fried bacon and snags to arrive. They looked over
at the newcomer as she entered, but showed little interest. These were real
men, strong men and they liked their women strong too. A skinny little city
girl had little to offer them. Lucy took a seat at the opposite end of the
counter and waited to be served.

‘What can I get you?’ asked a waitress, who had been in the
kitchen out back and entered when she heard Lucy come in.

‘Just a glass of orange juice and some toast,’ replied Lucy.

‘Would you like peanut butter or vegemite with the toast?’

‘Just plain butter, please.’

‘It will be ready in a moment.’

The waitress placed her pen behind her ear and then
disappeared into a back room before returning just seconds later with fry-ups
for the two men. The food looked greasy and unhealthy, making Lucy glad she had
settled for simple toast. Whilst the two men tucked into their breakfast with
relish, she unfolded a pocket map onto the counter. She was only a further
hour’s drive from the small opal mining town of Coober Pedy.

Her father told her about this place when she was a child,
but never got round to taking her. It was rumoured to be one of the hottest,
most inhospitable places in Australia, if not the world. In an effort to become
masters of this savage land the locals had come up with a unique solution. They
lived underground.

‘Here you go,’ said the waitress, placing a plate beside
Lucy’s map.

‘Thank you,’ Lucy replied.

She watched the waitress walk past the two men and into the
kitchen. The woman must have been well into her forties and carried a fair
helping of middle aged spread, yet she wore the make-up more befitting of a
girl barely out of high school. The two guys were suitably impressed, as they
paid the waitress much more attention than they did Lucy.

After folding away the map, she pulled the plate in front of
her. The toast was well done almost to the point of burning. Having once worked
as a waitress, she knew the bread was probably stale to begin with and the
longer it toasted, the harder it would be to tell this. She opened up the small
carton of butter that was perched on the edge of the plate and spread it across
her toast. Once she finished eating, she placed a $5 bill on the counter and
walked out. The men did not look up from their food to offer her a second
glance.

‘Am I pretty?’ She asked, putting on her seatbelt and
starting up the car.

She at least knew she was not ugly. She was healthy and took
good care of herself. Her hair was long and blonde, and her figure trim and
petite. Yet she seemed to elicit zero interest from the opposite sex. It just
did not make any sense to her. Unsurprisingly, her passenger was unable to shed
further light on the matter.

‘I guess you’re probably not the best person to ask, are
you, dad?’

She looked at the vestibule containing her father’s remains.
High above, a wedge tailed eagle flew, casting a shadow over the windscreen and
across the urn. A trick of the light briefly bent the rim of the urn’s lid
producing the illusion of a smile. In her current mood, she was happy to accept
whatever sign she could.

‘Thank you,’ she said, before putting the car into gear and
driving back onto the seemingly endless desert highway.

***

The professor did not leave his study for the remainder
of the day.
Emmy
was disappointed, but she was
confident he would come around eventually. The one thing Pops loved more than
anything was science, perhaps even more than he loved her. She did not tell him
about the dry run she had arranged for the afternoon. If it did not go
perfectly to plan, it would give him the ammunition he needed to stop her
taking any further risks.

Charlie received the news that
Emmy
would be taking over the testing well. He knew that if he bided his time, his
turn would come around again and he was also glad to finally have somebody to
share his experiences with. There was no denying that since the first time she
had hooked him up to the device it had changed him. Scientists are generally a
cautious bunch, but what he now displayed was close to actual faith. Not the
hollow, blind faith demanded by religion, but a concrete and unwavering belief
that he had actually
experienced
something pertaining to a higher plane
of existence.

‘Have you got any tips for me?’

‘Relax,’ he told her. ‘The most important thing to remember
is that you will have little, if any, control over the experience. In time, as
your mind becomes more disciplined, you will be able to exercise some control,
but for now it is better to simply view yourself as the passenger and not the
pilot.’

She slipped off her shoes and grasped the top of her lab
coat, pausing as she was about to remove it.

‘Do you mind?’

Charlie quickly cottoned on to her meaning and turned his
back whilst she undressed. As she disrobed, he caught a glimpse of her in the
reflective screen of a computer monitor. Despite living in the hot climate of
the outback, she spent most of her time working indoors and her skin was pale.
It still possessed a healthy glow to it, thanks to a clean lifestyle and a
well-balanced diet. Her hair was long, brown and usually tied in a bun, but not
on this day. She had green, piercing eyes, which matched her intellect
perfectly. She also had an impressive figure and it was obvious she looked
after it. Behind her clinical nature there was a very beautiful woman.
Such
a waste
, Charlie could not help thinking to himself.

‘It’s okay for you to look now,’ she said.

He turned back around and saw that she was now lying on the
slab ready to enter the Mental Acceleration Chamber, which the scientists
affectionately christened “the matchbox”. The machine had ten levels of output.
Thus far, they had not advanced beyond level 1.

Emmy
attached the monitors to her
body and crossed her arms over her chest.

‘You’ll need to place your arms by your sides,’ said
Charlie.

She did as she was told and he secured her into place with
two straps. These measures were introduced at her grandfather’s insistence, but
she thought she would be able to exercise enough control to render them
redundant. After all, it was her machine.

‘Is this really necessary?’

You’ll see,’ he replied and then pushed the slab into place
inside the machine, which by appearance was virtually indistinguishable from
that of the CT scanners used in hospitals.

Once inside, a shiver passed through her body, giving her
goose pimples. She felt cold and vulnerable. The loneliness, however, was
nothing compared to what lay ahead of her.

‘Close your eyes and relax,’ said Charlie, whose voice she
could now hear through a small speaker built into the interior of the matchbox.
‘This process will only be successful if you allow it to. I’m going to start
you off slow and keep the cord to just two metres.’

She shut her eyes and tried to blank out any negative
thoughts or fears. She counted backwards from ten and with each number she
focused on a different body part, starting with her toes and finishing with her
head. As she did so, her body began to feel heavy and she could no longer move
her limbs. Then she felt herself drift upwards. The sensation was slow at
first, but seemed to speed up and then she felt like she was falling.

Her eyes opened and she felt the pull of her bindings as her
body tried to sit bolt upright. It took her a while to realise where she was
and what was happening, or rather, what was supposed to be happening. Instead,
what she had experienced was the same sensation felt by millions of sleepers
each night; the falling dream.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Charlie.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘I just lost my focus, that’s all.’

‘It can be difficult, but you must be patient. When you
first feel yourself start to rise, you will be tempted to help the process
along, but you can’t. You have to give up any illusion of control; do you
understand?’

‘Perfectly; I’m ready to give it another try when you are.’

She relaxed her body again and shut her eyes. This time,
instead of counting down she recited the phrase “I am floating” over and over.
Once again, her limbs became heavy and she felt herself rise up. When the pull
came, she simply concentrated on her mantra and rather than being jerked back
into full consciousness, she found herself hovering above her body.

The room and all of its contents became hazy and
transparent. She could not focus on any one thing and even her thoughts seemed
distant and vague. Charlie had written detailed accounts of his experiences,
but she was having trouble recalling little, if anything of what she had read.
The trouble was that her body was still in the machine and what she was now
experiencing was merely secondary consciousness. She was a disembodied essence,
relying on instinct and intuition to make sense of anything.

The longer she stayed under, the more information was
revealed to her. Everything is composed of energy compressed into matter and in
her altered state she could see that energy for the first time. Charlie was
standing at a raised computer console about ten metres from her. She was unable
to make out any of his features or even trace his silhouette, but she could
feel his presence nonetheless. She willed herself to move closer to him.
Without effort or physicality of any kind she felt her position begin to shift.
When she was just a couple of feet from her colleague, she stopped
involuntarily. She willed herself to move, but nothing happened. This is when
she saw the cord.

Since man first began to walk upright and developed a
consciousness, he has tried to find the answer to what connects the mind to the
body. It is the question that attempts to unravel the very mystery of life. In
the beginning the question was purely abstract, but then the philosophers
passed the baton to the scientists and now here she was, staring right at
nature’s greatest miracle. It is known to some as the silver cord. One end is
attached to the body and the other to the soul.