Hexad: The Chamber (12 page)

"I hadn't thought of it like that," muttered Dale.

"Well you should, you too Amanda. You might well be the last one out in any of the worlds now. Who knows what has happened since you jumped back into Dale's life? You said that you jumped through timelines looking for your Dale and this one is as close to yours as possible but it's still not him, not one hundred percent. But that's besides the point anyway. All those other places only existed because they had to, for you to jump into. If you eliminate the need for them to exist then you kill us all, you kill endless universes full of us, full of billions of people each."

And set reality back to how it should be. Without the chance of lumps of flesh landing on your table, without going around killing versions of the woman you love. Without the risk of waking next to a woman you don't believe is your real Amanda.

Dale said nothing, but cursed the life he now had where he thought of the love of his life as one of many Amandas, rather than just Amanda, the one and only.

Host Amanda went into the kitchen, leaving them alone in their strange inverted world with a lot to think about.

A Walk

Time Unknown

Amanda was shocked, Dale too, but there was no escaping the fact that she would feel the words of their host much deeper than he would. Although Dale understood what she had said, and it really did make perfect sense, a lot more than anything had since it had all begun, he still couldn't help thinking of it all as little more than an abstract concept. It wasn't real, not really visceral and genuine, it was more like a thought experiment than a reality where billions of lives were at stake across more worlds than he wanted to even consider.

And did it really matter? It was a very hard question to answer. Of course people's lives mattered, and he wasn't about to go around exterminating them, but at the end of the day all they had planned to do was to set the world back to how it should be, how it was, how it had always been up until time travel madness interrupted the flow of reality.

But what of Amanda? She wasn't truly, exactly, the one that he should be with, was she? So if they somehow managed, and it seemed increasingly unlikely, to eradicate even the slightest hint of a Hexad, then would she no longer exist either? She'd just pop out of existence and Dale would be with the true version of her that should be the most important thing in his life. And all the others would cease to have ever been.

Trying to think of it from his own point of view didn't help much — would he sacrifice all the other versions of himself that were now in existence, having lived lives just like his? If he answered honestly then the answer was yes, he would do that, to get his normal life back. Even if it meant losing the memories of what had been happening he would do it, as it was what was right, wasn't it? But then, he hadn't been going around having conversations with alternate versions of himself had he? Maybe he would have a different perspective and his answer would be different if he had.

"Let's go for a walk." Dale turned to a still stunned Amanda, who nodded mutely and put her arm through his.

Once they were away from the house, walking beside a stream that seemed to be obeying all the laws of gravity even as it climbed up the curving bank of a heavy-scented, picturesque meadow, meandering up and overhead where it grew wider, meeting small tributaries and ending in a sparkling lake, Dale stopped Amanda and turned her to him. "Did that make sense to you? Because it did to me. Not much does, but that did." Dale focused on her, trying to read what might be left unspoken — he needn't have worried, it all came gushing out as if the lake above their heads finally realized it was upside down.

"Dale, what are we going to do? I don't want to die. I know who I am and I remember it all. But I'd swap everything in a heartbeat if it meant things could just go back to how they were, to being normal. But then it wouldn't be with you, it would be with a different you, the one I had the other crazy experiences with right up until I left and you carried on without me. Well, not you, him, the other you. Ugh, it's all horrible, so convoluted. But yes, I'd do it. I'd stop all this, stop it all just to go back to normal. I'm sorry, does that make me horrid?"

"Hush, hush. No, not at all. Look, think of me as him, your Dale. I am, aren't I?"

"Yes, yes you are. You feel like him, act the same. You're him."

"And you are you, my Amanda. That's all that counts. Look, are you sure, as I don't want us to get into anything if you are not going to want to really do it? This is serious, like mega-serious. Forget this weird place, we'll get out of here—"

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm going to do something none of the Amandas have clearly thought of, but more importantly are you really sure that you will be happy if you and me stop all this and all these weird timelines cease to exist? No time travel, no nothing, just us, all those lives will be gone, never were."

"I know, it's horrible, but it isn't murder is it? I mean, if they'd never been real then we can't kill them, can we?"

"Amanda, look, they do exist, you have to accept that. What you have to decide is if you want to undo that, undo your own memories, mine too. We will be different people then, not the people we are now."

"Like amnesia, missing a few days, or months, years, whatever. I don't care, I just want to be me again."

"Look, this is what I'm saying. It won't be you, and it won't be me. Which Amanda are you?" Dale was serious, and she clearly knew it. Fear was there in her eyes, a deep-seated, primal fear, the fear of death, of extinction, of having never been.

"What do you mean? I'm me."

"Yes, but which you?"

Amanda looked terrified, like the question could send her mind unraveling, the answer too difficult. "Well, um, I'm the Amanda that laughed at you for wanting to dig up the tin, the one that ran from Laffer, the one that waited ten years to dig up the Hexads and all that went with that. I'm the one that then got lost, taken by The Caretaker, and then jumped back after you'd set things right with the other Amanda that helped you."

"So you are the real Amanda, the original?"

"Yes, I think so."

"You think so? You are or you aren't."

Amanda nodded. "I am. I'm her."

"But I'm not him. Not that Dale. Not quite."

"Oh Dale, I'm sorry, I don't want you to die. You can't."

"Look, it's fine. It doesn't make any difference, that's what I'm saying. Don't you see? If we do this, set things truly right, then both of us here now won't remember any of this anyway. It will never have happened. We'll wake up that morning after drinking too much and my guess is we'll not even remember the conversation about the stupid bloody tin. So whether that is this you and me, or any other version of us, it doesn't matter, it will all be the same. We won't know any different. The point is that can you take the responsibility for all other versions of yourself and me? Let alone everyone else in the universes? We may have come to terms with it, but you heard host Amanda, she—"

"Host Amanda?"

"Well, I have to call her something. If I call all Amandas Amanda it gets too weird. As I was saying, you heard host Amanda, she wants to be her, be the her she is now, with her memories, living here in this weird inverse world, whatever it really is, with all the other Amandas. Look around, look at this place."

Amanda slowly turned and looked at their environment. There were Amandas coming out of cottages, some tending gardens, most just standing staring at them, curiosity mixed with all manner of emotions ranging from mistrust to happiness to outright fear. "They're all me."

"Exactly. They are different people now, aren't they? Will you make the choice for them, take it all away?"

"We have to, we have to Dale. They don't understand, not living here like this. Think of that horrible production line, where we were brain-dead, being used. Think of all the people that were brought into existence then gone, even in the one true world, all because people played God and jumped through time. If I hadn't come back then everything would be all right and none of it would have happened, so that's what needs to be done. It's what must be done." Amanda paused. "But that's not true, none of it. Above all else I just want to go home. Be normal."

"Then that's what we'll do. As long as you're sure? You make the decision, then we can't turn back. We find out how to really end all this and then we don't stop until we succeed. Okay?"

"Okay," murmured Amanda.

"Okay? You have to be sure Amanda, this is serious."

"I'm sure. I'm positive."

"Good. Now, let's go for that walk shall we?"

Skewed Perspectives

Time Unknown

Dale had seriously underestimated the size of the cylinder, the whole inside-out thing had skewed his sense of size and perspective to a higher degree than he'd anticipated. It took them almost an hour to walk to the gray end of the structure, although in part that was because they made slow progress, having to stop to talk to the few Amandas they encountered, most simply staring at them with varying levels of welcome, others with outright hostility.

More than any other factor that slowed them down was the sheer scale of the environment, and the more they walked the more Dale was sure that gravity was slightly off — plants and trees seemed to grow that little bit taller than normal, the stems and trunks a little more slender. Even the bees seemed to be making their cumbersome, scientifically impossible flight a little more elegantly.

Most of the interior was composed of single dwellings in large gardens, or a few tiny, quintessentially English villages composed of a handful of homes at most. There was even a tiny church, but most of the landscape was composed of small parcels of farmland. Dale couldn't help wondering how rain worked here, if it did at all, until he noticed the cleverly constructed irrigation channels that criss-crossed back and forth across a patch of land close to them, deeper gullies running around its perimeter to feed into the system that would ensure the crops stayed well-watered.

So the place had its limitations, it wasn't an exact replica of the world in miniature, just inside out. The water probably all came from outside the structure and was piped into the rivers and streams to ensure that the water levels, and thus the humidity and atmosphere, stayed relatively constant.

Probably all to do with making the place rotate more easily,
mused Dale, trying and failing to even begin to understand how such a system could ever be put into place.

Amanda was quiet, her face set determinedly, even though Dale knew that it was tearing her apart inside. The question of whether their decision was morally right or not still weighed heavily on both of them, but what alternative was there? To allow the rest of civilization to run rampant for a while before the Universe fought back and eradicated humanity from the planet? But if they succeeded their actions would have the inevitable consequence of destroying countless alternate universes — they would cease to exist, would never have existed, just as the alternative versions of themselves would never have been.

And what of them? Him and Amanda right here? They would be gone too, wouldn't they? Dale knew he would, for he was an alternate version of himself, and even for Amanda, who truly was the one that this all started with, she may as well be a different person too, for everything that had happened because of the Hexads would cease to have been a past that existed, so who would she be? Not the woman staring resolutely ahead beside him, probably trying her best not to think about any of the dark thoughts crowding Dale's mind.

They wandered through the madness, Dale trying not to follow the curve of the landscape too closely as it simply made him too disorientated. He noticed the same thing with Amanda: if she began staring up the curved sides, then eventually looking up at what he could only think of as the ceiling for his own sanity, then just like him she began to wobble a bit, the oddness of it overwhelming. You simply could not get accustomed very quickly to seeing buildings, animals, and tiny moving dots that were people, all hanging upside down and not feel certain that they were going to come crashing down onto you at any second.

The science behind the world may have been staggering but Dale couldn't even begin to understand why any of it existed in the first place. What real purpose did it serve? And how had he brought himself and Amanda here?

He'd set the dials on his Hexad carefully, making them neutral, a setting he had barely considered having only had very limited experience with the devices. Then he'd simply done what Amanda had said and thought really hard about where it was he'd wanted to be. There had been no time in mind, no specific location that he had past experience of, he mostly focused on wanting to be where the Hexad was first invented and just as importantly he focused on landing with feet firmly on the ground, which he'd almost got right this time. With host Amanda warning them about the dangers of jumping into the path of other objects, or jumping where there were no longer the things you remembered, he made a mental note to think doubly hard about the exact location he wanted to jump to in the future — if there happened to be one.

Despite it all, he was feeling confident. Dale was certain that the plan he had in mind to escape the tortuous tunnel would be successful, he merely wanted to wait a while so he could better understand what it was they were up against.

Cray was going to be behind it, he simply knew it. From the limited knowledge he now had then it seemed that Cray was involved in all possible futures involving the Hexad, and the people Amanda had dealt with in her earlier saving of the world were probably no longer in the picture as Dale had changed that future by refusing to follow the path that he should have gone down — new futures had opened up, unpredictable and extremely dangerous ones.