Hexad: The Chamber (17 page)

"True, how could I resist?" Amanda grinned then said what they were both thinking: "Let's go somewhere else, somewhere away from here, just until we know it's home again."

"Good idea, let me just put the mugs away, don't want to leave things any different to how they were when we arrived. Just in case..." Dale left the rest unsaid, he didn't really know what the just in case was, but if he'd learned one thing it was not to mess with timelines that may not be your own.

With the mugs rinsed and put back in the cupboard Dale went back outside. Amanda was ready, she held the Hexad out so Dale grabbed her by the hand, did the appropriate "Whoosh," and they vanished.

The squirrel dropped to the ground to feed on its prize; the robin landed on the table, cocking its head and checking if there was anything worth eating.

~~~

Cray scowled at the squirrel as he appeared next to the apple tree, before it did a double-take and scampered into the hedge. He walked down to the house and cupped his hands to the kitchen window, peering inside. He noted the mass of flesh, noticed the condensation on the spout of the kettle and muttered something about being too late before adjusting his Hexad and disappearing.

An Interlude

Present Day

Dale and Amanda had been talking for hours, but it didn't really get them anywhere. However much they discussed The Chamber, and the vast space it was housed in, they kept just coming back to the same question: why?

Why build it? Why were Amandas inside it when they could have been contained in a less adventurous prison, and why was it called a Hexad, or The Hexad as the Amanda had called it?

They needed answers, but the only person that could provide them was Cray, or maybe The Caretaker, both of whom they couldn't simply go and ask.

They were on their own, they had to figure it out for themselves, or not — they were both past the point of caring, all they wanted was for it to be over.

They talked and talked, the normalcy of the people enjoying their vacation on the beach they had jumped to making their recent adventures more surreal by the minute — nothing but a bad dream they had surely awoken from.

But they hadn't, one look inside their bags was enough proof that their life was far from normal, Amanda's much stranger than Dale's. After all, she'd been caught up in the madness for over ten years now, and just when she thought she had finally put it all behind her it simply got worse. Nothing could have prepared her for the consequences of her actions and now she was faced with having to deal with countless universes, all devoid of people in the end, that popped into existence when she began to mess with time, leading to such far-reaching consequences that all came back to her simply wanting a life of her own once more.

She told Dale all of this and more, explaining as best she could the feelings roiling inside of her, waiting to spill over into madness. More, there was a deep sense of shame and guilt about putting her own needs first, but Dale would have none of it — she had done nothing wrong, she wasn't responsible for the actions of others.

First it had been Hector and his mad giant Laffer ruining the future for everyone, now it was an incarnation of Cray, an evil Cray in one of endless worlds, each of them now playing out in who knew how many different ways? She could hardly be the one responsible for that — it was the universes, not them. Nothing more. Who could say they had already fought the Universe and won? She could, and that was certainly no mean feat.

"And now you will do it again. Well, we will. Together, as always."

"Always," said Amanda, wriggling her toes in the sand, smiling at Dale as he tried to get grains out of his mouth.

"How does sand find its way everywhere like this?" muttered Dale, poking his tongue out and rubbing it with a finger. "What?" Dale asked as Amanda stifled a laugh.

"My hero."

"Yeah, well, it's annoying."

"Come on, let's go eat, that fish still smells amazing. A drink would be nice too."

"Now you're talking." Dale jumped to his feet then began hopping around from one foot to another. "Hot hot hot."

"Put something on your feet you idiot," laughed Amanda.

"Then my socks will be full of sand," complained Dale.

"Oh, the things you have to worry about. Come on, you're buying."

They walked up the beach, at least Amanda did, Dale hopped about like he had serious issues.

He guessed that he did. He really did.

Back to the...

Present Day

As Dale leaned back in his chair, sipping on a cold beer and letting his meal digest, he couldn't help wondering what it had been like to have saved the world once before with an Amanda. The woman opposite him had said that he wasn't exactly the Dale she had known, but that he was as close as it was possible to be without actually being him, so Dale assumed that whatever adventure he and Amanda had been on then he, the one thinking these thoughts, had been on one very similar indeed.

It felt strange to think of yourself as not the right you, just as the Amanda he'd woken up with just a few days ago wasn't the right Amanda, even though they'd pretty much saved the Universe together, or a couple so close to them that it didn't matter.

What did get very confusing was that once they'd stopped the proliferation of Hexads then all the universes were supposed to have collapsed in on themselves, gone as if they'd never been, so how exactly had he been alive to be aware of anything? The mere fact that Amanda jumped into countless universes to find him was how — just by doing it she brought the almost parallel worlds into existence. But it was still an impossible concept to come to terms with: that he had never existed until Amanda showed up with her Hexad and everything began to go into free-fall.

How could entire universes just pop into existence fully-formed like that? Full of pasts and futures just waiting to be messed with so easily? And as soon as they succeeded? Rather, if they succeeded? Then all but one Dale and Amanda would cease to exist, with no memory of what had happened as it would never have happened if they put an end to Hexads for good.

So did it really matter which version of them it was? He supposed not. After all, if they succeeded then they wouldn't remember anyway, as there would be nothing to remember. And yet... Amanda remembered, didn't she? Remembered the fractured timelines, the madness. Maybe that was the problem: if she'd never remembered then everything would have been fine. No Hexads, no countless versions of everything and everyone stretching off into infinity, making a mockery of all that he'd believed to be true and absolute his whole life.

Madness. It was sheer madness.

Enough thinking, we've got to deal with this, deal with it once and for all.

"Let's do this thing."

"Let's get on with it."

"Haha, snap," said Dale.

"I guess it's time then?" said Amanda.

"Afraid so. You ready?"

"Wait, I just need to pay. Um, Dale, don't suppose you have any Bahamian dollars?"

"Oops, no. Well, I suppose jumping without paying isn't going to hurt, just this once. After all, if we sort this mess out this universe won't exist in all likelihood anyway."

"Dale!" admonished Amanda. "That's not the point. These men work hard to feed us, it's not right to not pay. We have to."

"Fine. Wait here." Dale pulled a Hexad out of his satchel, flickered and then pulled out three bills from his jeans.

"Happy?"

"Yes, thank you Dale."

"Never thought I'd use time travel just to make a visit to the Bureau De Change," muttered Dale, pushing his chair back and standing.

"It's all about standards Dale. First it's running out without paying for food, then before you know it it's the death of civilization as we know it."

Yeah, it's exactly the same,
thought Dale, knowing better than to say it out loud.

"Let's walk down the beach, just, you know, in case it's the last time we ever get to do something like that."

Amanda smiled and they walked onto the cooling sand arm in arm, two content vacationers walking off their evening meal.

~~~

They made their way along the shoreline, saying nothing, just enjoying the atmosphere of the isolated beach. The only sounds were the waves lapping languidly and the shouting of the staff at the open-air restaurant.

Dale looked longingly at the beach, wondering if he'd ever see one again, smiling at the man in a rather uncomfortable looking suit as he walked close to the water, skipping out of the way as the tide threatened to get his shoes wet.

Wait. Shoes? Suit? It took moments to register, and Dale slowly followed the figure up to his head. He fumbled with his buckle then pulled out a Hexad, a 4 flashing. "Time to go honey, we have company."

Amanda looked where Dale pointed and grabbed hold of him moments before they jumped, leaving Cray striding towards empty air. He really didn't look very happy, then he was practically livid as the waves washed over his tan shoes.

~~~

2016 Years Future

"I thought something felt different," said Dale, slipping the parang back into the sheath as Amanda did the same with her short sword. They'd jumped away, ending up at home once more, but then Amanda immediately jumped them back to the beach to where they'd hidden their blades as it wasn't really the done thing to sunbathe with dangerous weapons and they certainly didn't need the hassle of standing out like a pair of outlaws. Amanda smiled at him and then said, "Ready?" and with a nod they jumped again.

"Watch it," shouted a man in a white jumpsuit as Dale stepped aside before getting run over by the electric buggy with a huge trailer towed behind.

"Sorry," said Dale, staring at Amanda, questioning where she'd taken them to; when as well. Amanda just stared past him so Dale turned and mouthed a silent, "Oh."

The Chamber was open all along one side, like a window on the mysterious world running its entire length, thousands of people milling about inside, vehicles of all description moving like insects on an oversized hollowed-out tree trunk. All around them was chaos. People of all description in all manner of clothes and performing all manner of duties were working frantically, sauntering around open-mouthed, or running like their lives depended on it.

It was like a circus with little in the way of order as far as Dale could see, but there would be offices full of countless bureaucrats to run such an epic undertaking, Dale had no doubt about that.

"Come on, move over here," said Amanda, grabbing Dale and dragging him away from the open space they had materialized into.

She led them to a huge wall of crates and containers, towering over them, stacked higher than Dale thought was safe. It was like a maze in amongst them, the walkways large enough for machinery to enter, but it was quiet — they made their way deeper into the steel labyrinth.

The sounds of industry became muffled, yet still towering above everything was the sight of The Chamber, open for all to see, the interior bare metal, conduits, ducts and things Dale had no name for snaking across the huge sheets of metal that constituted the bare-bones of the world-to-be.

More Madness

2016 Years Future

Seeing the partial Chamber made Dale feel sick — exposed as it was, the sense of scale became more acute. Being able to put it into perspective with the chaos that surrounded it brought home quite how vast it was. All Dale could think of was that it was like mankind building some kind of Ark, ready to traverse the cosmos, sending humanity on a mission into the void.

The huge thing towered above the stacks of containers, dominating everything wherever you looked. Dale watched tiny ants that were people and huge trucks with tires as large as houses, looking like little more than tiny toy vehicles — it was too much to cope with, he had to look away, he couldn't take in the scale, the work involved.

How long had it been going on? Something of this magnitude would take forever.

Come to think if it, when were they now? He'd simply put his trust in Amanda, knowing she was much better at gauging these things than he was.

"When is this Amanda?"

"It's a few thousand years into our future; I just guessed really. We're a little too late, don't you think? Should we jump back further?"

"I'm not sure. If we're going to stop this then I suppose that it wouldn't hurt to watch for a while, see who's in charge, what the setup is here. It might help."

"Okay, but we aren't going to be able to just wander around, not for long anyway. Sooner or later somebody will ask questions."

"How about up there?" Dale pointed up.

"The Chamber? Are you mad?"

"No, on top of the stack. I never want to go inside that thing again. Ever."

Amanda visibly calmed. She obviously had the same misgivings about the inside-out world-in-construction as he did. "Good idea. We can watch what goes on hopefully without being seen. And if we are it will take a while for anyone to get us down. Let's do it."

Dale held on, something that was becoming all too familiar. They jumped.

~~~

The height made next to no difference when it came to The Chamber — it still dominated the vast space, but it gave them a bird's-eye view of what was happening — it really was pandemonium. It appeared chaotic, but there was order underneath the chaos, that much was clear. Supervisors wandered around what appeared to be their sections, directing workers. Vehicles of all description were constantly moving, bringing materials and labor, and even as they watched, the open gash in The Chamber was slowly closing up as massive machines moved even larger sheets into position while various crews worked frantically to seal the interior.