Gate Deadlock

GATE
DEADLOCK

BY

URANIA SARRI

BOOK 1

‘
Our heirs, whatever or whoever they
maybe, will

explore space and time to degrees we
cannot

currently fathom. They will create
new melodies in

the music of time. There are
infinite harmonies to

be explored.’

Clifford Pickover

PART 1

PREFACE

The heat of the summer
night did not get to me at all. I felt chills and I was trembling
like a leaf, shattered by the news that had struck me like a bolt
out of the blue.

Susan, the delirious female
Crusader and emissary of the future world,
was trying
to rationalize Christopher’s decision, searching desperately for
comforting words. But I was not listening to her anymore. I opened
the drawer of the desk next to me and took my car keys with a fast
move before Susan had time to react.
It
had to be one of the League’s tricks, I thought, although deep down
I knew Susan would never lie to me.

I was frantic. I thought of his
house. I had to go there, see with my own eyes, his clothes, his
books, sense his smell…
Maybe it was not too late.
Maybe I could still make him change his mind.

I rushed outside and Susan followed me, shouting
my name. But I was faster. Despair had been my motive power. I
started the car, wasting no time to fasten my seatbelt.

‘It can’t be true… It can’t be happening! Please
God, no! Don’t let it be too late. Oh, Christopher, what have you
done?’ I repeated to myself, speeding off, my face soaked from the
tears.

He could not have gone back, hundreds of years
away from me, leaving me here. Even worse, he could not have
returned to the life that had consumed all his humanity in the
past, to the crimes he was desperately trying to redeem his soul
from. It would sooner or later destroy him. I should not let him
sacrifice himself to save me. I could not allow that. There had to
be another way out of that deadlock.

I remembered the words he had whispered to me
that night, when I had told him I was determined to fight for
us.

‘When you get to a deadlock, will you
please remember that I love you…
That you are my life…
My heart and my soul…belong to you… Wherever I am… Whatever I do…
Promise me…you won’t hate me.’ he had pleaded. Their meaning was so
clear to me now.

Tears were blocking my view as I clenched the
wheel, but that did not keep me from stepping on the gas.

I only caught a glimpse of the car that appeared
out of nowhere, ignoring the stop sign. My Beetle swerved
dangerously in a last effort to avoid the collision and I found
myself heading towards a cluster of trees, having lost control of
the wheel.

The awful sound of the crash sounded as a blast
to my ears. Then, the darkness of the night surrounded me,
swallowing me into the blessed oblivion of nothingness.

1.

DARKNESS

I knew I had met him
before.

He’d come to me from somewhere outside of
this world, some other dimension, some other life, some other time.
He was mine as much as I was his, at least in this life. He had
told me that although the first time I’d met him he had come to
kill me, now he was here to protect me. My life had been spared
once but not without cost. Still, there were so many secrets that
he wouldn’t share with me which kept us apart and I knew we were
racing against the odds, till they beat us down. Could a man have
changed so much and yet remain the same? I wanted to believe him. I
was desperately in love with him and although the voice inside me
kept warning me to keep away, for the first time in my life I felt
complete, as if all the pieces of the puzzle were now in place.

Until that dreadful night.

The first memories after the crash were like
brief, incoherent snapshots of a wrongly preset camera. Tangled
images, meaningless words and dazzling lights. I remember becoming
aware of the fact that I was sinking into an enticing sense of
relinquishment, tired of fighting, exhausted by the unequal
encounter with time.

I couldn’t know for how long I had remained in
this state, bordering the bailiwick of death. Where I was, time did
not matter anymore. For once in my life, time was completely
meaningless to me. I was the one to mock its evil, ruthless face
now.

Gradually, I began to make sense of what the
people around me were saying, totally overriding their entreaties
to open my eyes, to go back to them, to fight. Because I had
nothing to fight for. My life had vanished that night when the last
letter of his name had disappeared in the dark background of the
computer screen, fluttered away, my heart and soul together,
irretrievably lost.

In a vague way, my mind refused to recall the
reason for my devastation; the deprivation of his voice, the
feeling of his touch, of his kiss. All I could feel was an
intolerable pain, the cause of which was buried deeply into my
subconscious. It was probably a physical defense mechanism, as my
mind was trying to protect what was left. I only saw the same
dream, the nightmare I had that morning in Christopher’s house that
had made me wake up in the empty bed. I kept searching his house,
shouting his name desperately, but he had vanished. The same
torturing nightmare, over and over again.

I often reminisce those
nightmares, especially one that had a different ending. I found
myself in an empty street, a familiar
neighbourhood
around me. At the bus stop on my
right, I saw my dad. I had not dreamt of him for many years after
his death. He was smiling to me with his arms stretched in a wide
embrace, waiting for me. I was ten years old again. He seemed so
real; I could feel his warm body, I could smell him, the smell of
my childhood. Next minute
,
I
was holding him tight, crying.

‘Where have you been dad? Why did you leave me?’
I asked him.

He looked into my eyes, smiling. ‘I never left
you Emma. My beautiful Emma.’

‘I’ve missed you so much. I need you, dad.
Please take me with you.’

‘Where I’m going, you can’t come Emma. You must
finish what you’ve started.’ he said with the same sweet smile that
used to brighten my childhood years.

‘Don’t go yet. Come home with me dad.’

I took his hand and walked him to our house. I
opened the door shouting ‘Mum, daddy is here, look!’

But when I turned to him, he had
vanished. I was all alone again in front of the big house.

Kate’s voice had been the hardest to ignore. And
then of course, there was my mum. I was not sure if she had been
there only once or if she had never left my side, but I kept
hearing her voice saying,

‘Wake up, Emma. Please, come back to us.’

I wanted to talk to her, comfort her that I was
where I wanted, and all I needed her to do, was to let me move on.
I needed her and Kate, my only friend, to release me, because I
could feel their love holding me back. I was afraid that the
slightest effort to respond to their plea would take me back to an
empty world, back to the pain and the suffering.

To a world without Christopher.

I could not live in such a world. It was much
worse than death.

Death. Eventually, it turned out to be the only
way out of the deadlock.

I had made my choice. Every day, every moment
was taking me closer to the end.

Forlornness.

Emptiness.

Nothingness.

Oblivion.

(Two months before)

2.

DEEP BLUE

I have always thought of the
first time I met Christopher, as the first day of my real life.
Nevertheless, I’ve never regretted letting him into my life, in
full consciousness of the outcome and, were I given another chance,
I would do exactly the same. Of course, I would have to change a
few things. Because I have my share of blame in this story. This I
cannot deny.

Every single detail of that evening will be
forever engraved in my memory.

The first thing I vividly remember is the
smothering heat and my total dependence upon the
air-conditioner.

It must have been one of the
hottest summers in Greece. My body had not become adjusted yet to
the waves of heat coming from the south, making me spend my first
two days in this vacation spot on the outskirts of the city of
Corinth, going back and forth between the beach and the
air-conditioned studio apartment I was sharing with Kate. Usually,
it would take me a week to get used to the hot
temperature
,
having spent the
most of my life in the cool and gloomy suburbs of London. This
summer I felt I would need even more time, as the overwhelming
brightness and the blue
of the sky did not match my
mood at all. I had been masochist enough to be missing the cloudy,
gloomy sky of London, even from the first day.

I was having summer holidays in Greece for the
third year as a university student. Brantel University offered
students the opportunity of spending eight weeks here every year,
in cooperation with the University of Athens. It had been a long
tradition for the schools of Archeology, History and Social
Sciences ever since my dad had been working as a professor and
researcher in Brantel. It goes without saying that for all of us,
not only the students but also the tutors, summer school here was
considered more as holiday time. But the school was not the only
reason for my coming to Greece as other, personal reasons called
for my presence here.

The second thing that comes to my mind about
that first day of my new life is the awful headache I’d been
suffering from, or should I say the hangover symptoms.

The previous night, Kate and Tony had persuaded
me to follow them to the beach party that was traditionally
organized by the Greek students to welcome us.

‘No way I’m coming. You know I’m in no mood for
parties.’ I had stubbornly insisted.

‘If you’re not going, I’m not going either.’ was
Kate’s, who was no less stubborn than me, last argument. She always
knew how to have it her way.

‘Please Emma?’ Tony had pleaded,
making me give up, while at the same time Kate was smiling,
enjoying her little triumph.

How excited I had been about this party the
previous summer, when Colin and I were still together! This time, I
felt like it was the wrong place to be. There were so many memories
of Colin there and I had hated myself for not being able to stop
thinking about him. He did not deserve it. Not since last spring,
when I discovered that my suspicion that he was having another
affair turned out to be utterly true.

The beach party was not over until the first
light of day. Greeks were used to crazy nights but it had been too
much for me. I had come home at the ungodly hour of 4.00 a.m. and,
although I had spent most of the day in bed, I had not been able to
make up for the lost hours of sleep. I had been suffering from
serious hangover all day, which had made me take down a
considerable dose of painkillers to be able to leave my bed and
help my friend with her cooking adventure. Which brings me to the
third memory of that day: the dangerous blending of smells coming
from the kitchen, as a very special dinner lay ahead for my friend
Kate and her boyfriend.

Kate had been my best friend for the last three
years. We were always on the same frequency she and I, and most of
the time I did not even have to talk to her for she could always
read my eyes as I could read hers. She had been a sweet comfort to
me ever since I’d broken up with Colin.

Kate was really enjoying her achievement that
night. I watched her slim, model-like figure move around the
kitchen, wondering if she would really eat anything. Over the past
few months she had lost some weight as she had decided to totally
exclude carbohydrates from her diet.

My roommate had big plans for that evening, as
she had decided to fascinate Tony with her cooking abilities. That
was why she had bought a book with traditional, Greek recipes, and
had chosen three of them for a romantic candlelit dinner in the
little garden in front of our studio. We had spent the last three
hours in the kitchen, which now looked as if a natural disaster, a
hurricane or something as violent and fast, had just come this way,
spreading debris everywhere.

Tony, a cute fellow student from Italy, was
Kate’s boyfriend. His apartment, which he shared with two other
History students, was only a few blocks away. He and Kate had both
been very excited about coming to Greece, looking forward to
spending their holidays here together. It was no surprise that they
had been the first to sign in for the University summer school. As
for me, I was pretending to share their enthusiasm although I had
known this summer would not be the same. I had been having second
thoughts about this trip ever since Kate had literally dragged me
to sign in. When she told me that Colin would not be here this
year, however, I admit I felt much relieved. After all, he was the
only reason for my inhibitions. Ever since I was a child, I had
come to adore this country and its people, due to my Greek dad, and
it pleased me to feel that summer holidays here had become part of
my life again, the same way they used to be when my dad was
alive.