The Man From Taured (21 page)

“That is the biggest pile of horseshit that anyone has ever tried to shove down my throat and I have had tons of horseshit shoved at me over the years,” Noble said.

So far Dr. Shaw had been talking for more than an hour. Dash, meanwhile, sat in the corner of the office and listened. Noble had listened with amusement, then interest, then horror, and now was convinced that all of this was an elaborate joke. It had to be a joke. The alternative was too terrifying and ridiculous to even consider.

"None of this is a lie, Noble," Dr. Shaw said. "Given the things that you've seen, I cannot imagine why you'd think this was all bullshit."

"And what about you?" Noble asked, ignoring Shaw and looking at Dash. "What the hell is this? Is this a joke? Am I to believe that you've been guiding me toward this my entire life, too? That you are in on this?"

Dash cleared his throat. "Sorry, Noble. I hate to tell you this, but I have been a part of IDEA for quite some time. Yes, I was put into my position in order to guide you. It's all been in preparation for this day."

Noble stood up and waved his hands in front of himself and shook his head.

"No, no, no," Noble said. "This is all too much. You've been watching me since I was a kid?"

"That time in the grocery store, when you suddenly lost your mother?" Shaw asked. "Remember that? You were in the food aisle and stepped away for a moment, then turned around and your mother was gone? That was a rift. It was a small one, just big enough for you to step through. When you stepped back, it healed. I was right there."

Noble felt chills run up and down his body. He shook his head again. No, no, no. He had to make this not true. This had to be a fiction.

"How about the time that you and your wife were in that restaurant?" Shaw continued. "She went to the restroom and you stood by the door. Suddenly it seemed like she was taking such a long time. You walked down the aisle and then she texted you. When you looked around, there were strange people behind the counter. She couldn't see you and you couldn't see her."

"No!" Noble cried. "No, this is bullshit! This cannot be happening!"

However, there was something inside of Noble that knew it was true. It suddenly felt right. It was as if he had been stumbling around blindly throughout his life and suddenly he was on the right path and could see everything in front of him. The blindfold had been yanked off of his face.

"No," Noble repeated. "No way can this be real. Please, tell me this was all a joke."

Dashiell stood up and walked over to Noble. He put his hand on Noble's shoulder.

"Noble, you are a very special person," Dash said. "You've been seeking this your entire life. You had to become part of this. You were destined to become part of this. You have the perfect storm of abilities that we need. You're a Rifter and seek out these weak spots. You are a Rift-Healer and can stop Void. Plus, you have a knack for finding people. That's why you were destined to be a cop or a detective or something. We guided you this way and got you into Homeland. It seemed like the perfect fit."

Shaw said: "When you think about it, aren't the people who cross over into our world illegal? They aren't meant to be here and they need to be found. They are a real danger to our national security. Void is a threat to national security."

Noble just stood there shaking his head. "How can I believe any of this?"

"How would I know about the time when you were five or the time with your wife?" Shaw replied. "How about the time when you were ten? How about the time you saw the woman in the driveway? There are so many alternate dimensions and in almost all of them we have doppelgangers. There are duplicates of ourselves. Except for you, Noble. You and Whitten. You are both anomalies. That means you are destined for this."

"So that was my grandmother?" Noble asked. "She knew me because I was her grandson or she had some kind of residual memory? In that dimension, she was younger and hadn't died?"

"Something like that," Shaw said. "That's how people see ghosts and poltergeists and such. See, you’re already piecing it all together. Some part of you understands all of this. It’s your destiny."

Noble sat down and put his head in his hands. "You sound like someone out of a bad movie. How can I process all of this?"

Dash said: "Look, just relax, Noble. You've found your calling. We'll bring you up to speed on things now. There's a lot of work to be done."

Noble was still shaking his head. He felt like he had been turned into a bobble-head and he couldn't stop shaking his head. The more he shook his head the more he tried to deny it, the less sense anything made.

"So what are you telling me?" Noble asked. "That Francis Duveen was someone who accidentally crossed over into our dimension? That he was from some place where there's a country called Taured?"

Shaw replied, "Exactly. That's because we believe that Whitten or someone working with Whitten is conducting experiments again. Unfortunately, I also believe that someone is working with Gemini and using my past experiments and equipment. That's why Duveen, a Gemini employee in another dimension, was somehow targeted. It was a major breach of the dimensional barriers, Noble, and I think the experiments are getting stronger. Void is able to get into our dimension more easily. We are getting reports of the black-eyed children all over the place and from all over the world."

"I can't do this," Noble replied. "I cannot accept this. I mean, that was a great story and there are great villains. I mean, there's some formless black entity thing that destroys entire worlds. Then there's some Steampunk villain matched with an equally Steampunk good guy named Ezekiel. Where is he, by the way? Why isn't he here?"

"He died," Shaw replied. "Years ago."

Noble looked at Shaw, waiting for a further explanation. The man said nothing. Noble cleared his throat.

"OK, then," Noble said. "Well, this is great. So, do you have one of those coats and outfits? Are you going to show me alternate worlds? What's the next step?"

"Well, I do think that you and I need to spend some time together," Shaw said. "There are things I need to show you. There are things about yourself that you have to be comfortable with. There are things we need to do. However, I need your detective skills, too."

Noble sat back in his chair. "Let me guess," he said, "we need to track down Whitten or whoever is doing this at Gemini and, what, kill them? Banish them? What are we doing here?"

"Exactly," Shaw said. "You need to become part of IDEA, Noble. We have to do this or the entire thing is going to collapse."

"What happened to Francis Duveen?" Noble asked. "Was he banished to some pocket dimension? Was he part of this?"

"There are others working on breaking down the barriers," Shaw replied calmly, as if speaking to a child. "Void is trying to get others to work on this. We have managed to bring about technology like we have in this dimension to try and stop Void from breaking through in other realms. However, that has only increased Void's desire to reach into those other dimensions with the black-eyed children and other methods. They are searching more and more for weak spots to exploit."

Shaw leaned forward, folding his hands on the desk. He was fascinated that this elaborate ruse continued to get more complicated all the time.

"We think Duveen was an accident," Shaw said. "Something went wrong with an experiment at Gemini and one of their employees got sucked through a rift. When he was put into that hotel room - something that we engineered, by the way - we appeared to him, put him to sleep, and then got him back through a rift. It was risky, but we got him through without too much damage."

"How did you influence those people?" Noble asked.

"You saw the footage," Shaw said. "One of our shadow men was there in the room. We have improved the technology since my first days. We can subtly influence people when we have to. Again, there are risks. If we don't do it very carefully, a full breach can happen, and you can end up driving someone insane. A whisper in the ears of those two agents, after they were completely exhausted, and they were more than willing to break the rules and put Duveen up in the hotel."

“So, the shadow men are you guys? IDEA? No one else? The shadow men are the good guys?” Noble asked.

Shaw and Dashiell nodded in sync.

“And those creepy black-eyed children?” Noble continued, very animated and waving his hands around. “What are they? They’re something the Void constructs? Am I getting all of this right?”

“Yes,” Shaw replied. “The Void creates them to try and get into places inside this dimension. They are his avatars, if you will.”

“Why all of the creepy knocking and asking to come in?” Noble asked. “If he can manifest them anywhere, why not just inside the homes?”

Shaw said: “You heard us mention the machinery in place that protects this dimension? You should see the place where it’s housed, Noble. It’s underground and these days it’s enormous. As the Void grows in power, we have to improve the machinery. Some of the machines go back to the early 1900s and some of them are brand new with touchscreens. It’s a hodge-podge of old and new. The machinery prevents the Void from doing what you just described. It creates a kind of barrier around the people in this dimension, particularly around the places they live. It’s not perfect and, as we soon found out, if the black-eyed children are invited into the home, they can defeat the machines and break through the barriers.”

Noble whispered: “Like vampires?”

Shaw shrugged. “Something like that.”

Noble laughed. "Oh man, this is all just too much. What about my wife? Are Void and Whitten going to go after her?"

"We have some men watching your house, but there are risks," Dash said.

"I need to call her," Noble said. "I need to talk to her. I don't know how to feel about this. This sounds insane, but I have to admit that nothing about the man from Taured was making any sense. I feel betrayed, Dash. I feel completely betrayed."

Dash said: "Look, Noble, I know that this is all a lot to throw at you. But there are dangerous events happening. It was not our intention to bring you in this way, but things have been moving very fast and it keeps moving faster. There have been breaches from other dimensions coming faster than we’ve ever seen. People are vanishing. There are…things…creatures coming through. We've had to speed things up because of this. The Duveen thing was just the final straw and we had to bring you in. I pulled the strings and got you on the case."

"This is just too much," Noble sighed. "This is just too much to take in. I feel like nothing about my life has been my own decision. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

Shaw and Dash just stared at him for a long time and the longer they stared the angrier Noble got. "I don't know what to tell you," Shaw replied. "Everything we did was with the best of intentions. You are special and important to IDEA. IDEA is important to the entire fabric of reality. Do you understand what will happen if Void succeeds in tearing down the barriers?"

"Yeah, I get it," Noble said. "The entire multiverse falls apart and we all die. However, that's a rather nebulous thing to think about right now. Right now I’m worried about my wife and trying to get over the fact that my entire life might have been planned out. I mean, one day I'm just a guy working for Homeland and now I'm a guy who has the responsibility of saving, not only this world, but the entire multiverse. Oh, yeah and the fact that the multiverse is something that I only just now have been told actually exists. Can we also throw that into the mix? Just yesterday I was convinced that this was the only dimension and had a pretty standard idea of what the world was. Now, I am being told that there are infinite amounts of alternate dimensions and realities."

Shaw stood up and whispered into Dash's ear. Dash nodded.

"OK," Shaw said, "let's do this. You go ahead and head back to the hotel and take the night. Talk to your wife. Tell her whatever you want, but I would suggest you do not tell her about the alternate dimensions. It may be too much for her to deal with. But I ask that you spend time with me tomorrow. I am going to show you some things that are going to change your views, your entire life."

“Haven’t my views on the world, the universe, been changed enough?” Noble pleaded.

Shaw leaned forward again, trying to look somber, staring directly into Noble’s face dramatically.

"I must warn you, though," Shaw said. "Void must know about you by now and what’s happened here today. Whitten must know about you right now, too. They are going to try to get to you. They will try to turn you to their side, but if they cannot do that, they'll try to turn you over to Void."

Noble put his head in his hands. "Oh my God, please stop this," he said. "Just stop. I'm going to head back to the hotel. I am going to lock myself inside the room and I am going to watch bad movies on cable. At some point I am going to call my wife and try to explain to her what the holy fuck is going on here. I have no idea what I’m going to tell her as she already was thinking I’m hiding something from her."

"There's more," Shaw said.

"I was afraid that you would say that," Noble said, throwing up his arms and sitting back in in the chair. “Lay it on me, already.”

"The people who were there that day at the airport are in great danger," Shaw said. "You know that. You saw the black-eyed children just last night, didn't you? That's just one incident and already people involved with the Duveen case are vanishing. That is going to continue. If you try to reach out to them, you are likely to run right into them or Void."