The Man From Taured (20 page)

Shaw felt his breath hitching in his lungs. His heart was pounding. He was both terrified and tremendously excited.

"So, how does this work?" Shaw asked. "We walk between the dimensions and we can see everything, but no one in the dimension can see us?"

"That's pretty much it," Ezekiel said. "You cannot interact with the people in the other dimensions. No matter what."

"But - but that isn't what happened with me," Shaw pointed out.

"Well, there are extenuating circumstances with you," Ezekiel said. "Plus, as you’ll soon see, there are differences with this dimension that aren’t fully explained even to us. OK, now, are you ready?"

Shaw shrugged. "I have no idea, but let's do it."

Ezekiel reached out and pushed a button on the device on Shaw's wrist. Then Ezekiel pushed a button on his own wrist.

An instant later, it felt to Shaw like the world exploded.

The world turned white. Shaw felt as if his entire body was ripped apart. There was an instant of total pain and then there was a familiar tingling sensation. A moment later he found himself standing some place that felt solid beneath his feet, but was covered with a gray mist. It was like being lost in the fog. An instant after that there was another bright white light and Ezekiel was now standing in front of him and as soon as he saw Shaw he began typing on his wrist.

"We are almost there," Ezekiel typed. "Just one more short jump and we'll be able to see another dimension."

Ezekiel reached out and touched the device on Shaw's wrist again. There was no pain this time. Instead, something odd happened to the goggles (he could hear them kick into life with a soft electronic whine) and color flooded his eyes.

There was a lot of color, too.

So much that it nearly overwhelmed him.

They were standing on a hilltop. The field in front of them was a bright brilliant emerald green. There were trees in the distance with orange tree trunks and bright purple leaves. The sky was a brilliant red with white clouds. Despite the odd color of the sky, the clouds looked exactly like Shaw’s home dimension – white and fluffy.

He gasped in total surprise, amazement and awe. He could just barely feel the wind which carried smells that filtered through the force field that surrounded him and were new and yet entirely familiar. The smell of grass, flowers, old leaves rotting beneath their feet, even water. When he reached out his hand he could touch that field, the tall grass all around him, brushing his fingertips. When he touched the bladed they shimmered. It was gorgeous.

Ezekiel appeared next to him.

"See how gorgeous it is?" Ezekiel typed, the words flashing across his goggles. "This dimension is mostly populated by wonderful animals. Let me show you."

Ezekiel clapped his hands.

The purple leaves on the tree down the hill flew into the air. They fluttered and danced in the breezes and flew directly toward them. Shaw saw that the branches were now empty and Shaw and Ezekiel were surrounded by purple butterflies. They were the most gorgeous things that he had ever seen. Shaw typed onto his wrist device.

"How can you call them when we can't interact?" Shaw typed.

"Well, some rules can be bent," Ezekiel typed back.

Shaw held out his hands and the force field went with them. He could not touch the butterflies, it seemed, although several of them landed on the field. Some of them had black spots and some had white. Some of them just had differing shades of purple. They danced around his head, circling around and around and then flew into the air where they circled and danced again.

The breeze blew and the grass bent and waved along with it. The trees bent forward, as if reaching back out to the butterflies, and Shaw could swear he could hear the trees singing. It was a steady moaning that rose and fell with the wind like a chorus.

Shaw looked into the sky and could see a bright white sun in the sky. As he scanned the horizon he saw another white sun lurking there. Then, above his head were giant birds with feathers of dazzling color. Red, white, blue, azure, turquoise. They resembled herons or some other bird that Shaw was sure he had seen before - long necks and equally long beaks. They were huge, with wide wingspans and flew with amazing grace.

The butterflies headed back to the trees, once again becoming like leaves.

Shaw typed: "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Ezekiel replied: "All of this would be gone if Void gets his way. Let me show you."

Ezekiel typed into the device on his wrist. Numbers filled screens that comprised Shaw's goggles and the world turned white and he felt like he was torn apart once again. There was the tingling and everything went gray for an instant. The dimension came into focus.

It was a nightmare.

***

At first Shaw thought that maybe something had fallen over his eyes. It was blackness. There was an instant of panic, of feeling as if he were buried alive, claustrophobic and terrified. Then the goggles kicked into life and he was able to see things - sort of.

Everything was tinged with red, but he could make out buildings and objects beneath all of the blackness. The world was covered in a kind of inky black sludge. There were no people. The force field, however, provided him with oxygen and warmth. He was separated from the black, at the same time it was all around him. There was nothing living, except that the blackness itself seemed alive.

There was a white flash to Shaw's left and there was Ezekiel. He stood out amid the darkness.

"What is this?" Shaw typed, already fearing what it was, hoping that he was wrong.

"This is Void," Ezekiel typed back. "This is what happens when Void enters a dimension. There is nothing living. All of it gets absorbed into his being. If you turn up the sound using your wrist device, you can hear them screaming."

Shaw did not want to hear them screaming. Except, some part of him did, the scientist part that was always curious, always probing and looking for information. He reached out with a shaking hand and touched the wrist device. Suddenly the sound of the rushing inky blackness filled his ears. At first it sounded like rushing water, like rapids, flowing past him. Then, just beyond that rushing sound, he could hear it.

It was like a thousand voices all screaming at once. Pain, fear, death all around him. Just past the sound of the screaming was another sound - laughter. Deep laughter from someone or something that enjoyed the pain it inflicted. It lived off of that pain. It loved inflicting that pain and it was hungry. It wanted to consume more and more and would never stop until it had consumed it all.

"Get me out of here," Shaw typed into his wrist. "Please. I've seen enough."

Ezekiel touched the wrist device. There was the light and an instant later they were back in the underground lab. Shaw marveled at how fast he had gotten used to that feeling.

He removed his hat and his goggles and breathed deep, smelled the lab, the mustiness of it, the silence save for the sound of the fluorescent lights. He leaned against the table in front of him, the sound of that screaming and terror still ringing in his ears and inside his mind.

"I'm sorry to do that, Dr. Shaw, but you had to see it," Ezekiel said. "That's what Void does. We don't even know its real name or what it is, but we refer to it as Void. It is blackness. It is darkness. It is the epitome of all that is evil."

"Is it the devil?" Shaw asked. "Is it what people have always thought of as the devil?"

"We don't know, but it’s pretty close" Ezekiel said, walking around the lab and removing his coat, hanging it up. Beneath he was wearing a white shirt and something that looked like denim pants. "We just know that whatever the Void is, it's old and it is somewhere near the center of the multiverse. We know that it has been trapped there, in its own universe, for untold centuries and, over time, it has developed a powerful desire to get out. It seeks out weak spots that it can exploit on its own, or it reaches out to people within each alternate dimension who can create those weak points. Each time we punch all the way through, a weak spot forms. Sometimes they form naturally, but not in every dimension."

Shaw shrugged his coat off and hung it up. He was tired. Apparently jumping into the in-between and from one dimension to the next took some of your energy away. Removing the coat made his exhaustion wash over him like water and it was all he could do not to fall over.

"You'll feel very tired," Ezekiel said. "You get used to it. The nanobots take quite a bit of energy from you to do their work. You'll probably need a good eight hours of sleep."

"I have so many questions," Shaw said. "So many."

"I know you do, Dr. Shaw," Ezekiel. "Just find a cot in that adjoining room there. It's comfortable. You will find peace here. Tomorrow, we can discuss the questions that you have."

Shaw could only nod. He walked toward the room. His legs felt like they had lead weights attached to the ankles. He opened the door, saw the cots along the wall and headed for the first one and fell into it.

He was sound asleep soon after.

***

"There are weak spots within this dimension," Ezekiel said the following morning as Shaw and the old man sat around a table near the kitchen eating fried eggs, bacon and toast with marmalade. "Void and others have been trying to breach the walls of the multiverse for a long time here. That has created additional weak spots. Some of the spots are natural and there are parts of this planet where strange things happen all the time. You hear tales of ghosts and Sasquatch and demons and a myriad of other urban legends. Those are times when things from other dimensions slip through. There is a town, for example, called Knorr in Pennsylvania that has at least two dozen weak spots. It sits atop one of the biggest rifts and reality itself, at times, has been turned upside down there."

Ezekiel took a bite of eggs and toast. Shaw took a drink of his coffee.

"So, what do we do?" Shaw asked. "How do we stop Void and save the multiverse?"

Ezekiel laughed. "There is no way that I know of to destroy the Void. We can only try to repair the damage done. But, there are things that we can do with a little help. We are very fortunate right now."

Ezekiel stood up and walked across the room and rummaged for a bit in closets and desk drawers. He came back a moment later carrying a manila folder which he tossed onto the table in front of Shaw. He put down his coffee and opened the folder. Inside was a name, a bunch of stats, and the photos of what looked like a young man perhaps in his early teens.

"What's this?" Shaw asked, studying the information.

"There are people within our dimension that, for whatever reason, are drawn to the rifts," Ezekiel said. "We call them Rifters, actually. Most of them have no idea what they are or why they keep finding themselves in strange situations and places. Some of them do know. They sense the rifts, are drawn to them, and they can enter them without causing damage like when others do.
For some reason they do no damage when they enter the alternate worlds. They can jump between dimensions. They are rare and exclusive to our world and our dimension. This is one of them and it's the first we've had in over a hundred years."

"He's a boy," Shaw said.

"Yes, he is," Ezekiel said. "He had his first moment at the age of five when he breached the dimensional barrier. We've been keeping an eye on him and, from what we can tell, so far Void is unaware of him. In the past, the Void has tried to absorb Rifters. We think that the more he absorbs, the stronger he gets and that may be why he can now create those black-eyed children we see. At the very least, he can punch his way through dimensional walls easier the more of them he absorbs."

"So, what do we do? Do we recruit him or something?" Shaw asked.

"No, we leave him where he is, but we guide him," Ezekiel said. "You see, there is something even more rare. He is not just a Rifter. He's a Healer. That is something that has not been seen in almost four hundred years."

"What's a healer?" Shaw asked.

"There are some who have the ability to go through Rifts and then, when they come back into our world, they release a burst of energy that heals the Rift," Ezekiel replied, gesturing with his hands. "They seal it off. Each Rift still leaves a scar. I mean, a Healer could walk into every Rift in Knorr and Knorr would still have weak spots and holes. However, this young man has already healed a couple of them. We need to guide him into law enforcement or something. Something that involves protecting people. Then, only when he's ready, can we bring him into the fold."

"What about Whitten?" Shaw asked. "Isn't he going to keep trying to find ways to breach the dimensions?"

"Yes, he is, which is where we need to keep working," Ezekiel said. "We can let our Rifter do his thing and grow up while we do all we can to keep the multiverse from falling apart. When the time is right, we can recruit him and bring him into our organization. Then, maybe, just maybe we can have a real weapon to go after the Void and Whitten."

Shaw looked back down at the manila folder and felt sort of sorry for the young man that stared back at him. There was a kid who just wanted to grow up and be something remarkable, or perhaps boring, it didn’t really matter. Instead, Shaw and Ezekiel and the people with IDEA were going to guide him and shape his entire life. That was a bit sad. The future that this young man desired would be ripped away.

Sorry, little man, Shaw thought. You have a big destiny.

Shaw flipped through the papers to find the kid's name. He figured it was the least he could do was know the kid's name. If he was going to be involved in this kid's life and guide him in certain directions, he could know who he was.

Ah, there it was.

Noble Randle.