Infernal

In another Universe, nearly a mile beneath the surface of a planet known simply as Earth 01, Alex Jefferson strode through a series of twisted corridors. Anger burned within his six-foot two inch, two-hundred and twenty pound frame. Anger that Farris had bested him and then slipped away. Anger that the traitorous Bledell woman had stolen the Key right out from under his nose and spirited it away.

Decades had been spent researching and locating the Key. Without it, nearly a half-century of experimentation and untold billions of dollars would be wasted. The Focal Point Project would never reach fruition and the Elder’s plans would fail. Finding another Key would be impossible.

The current Key must be located. But how does one find an object hidden on an uncharted Earth in an infinite series of Earths? It was like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.

Jefferson turned a corner and entered a cavernous space filled with towering computer servers, crowded banks of monitors, and control consoles. A dozen or more technicians bustled about the room engaging in technical conversation, checking this monitor and that, recording various data on the touch pads they carried for transfer to this or that device. It was like walking into the control room at NASA just minutes before a launch. This was BanaTech’s communications room. From here one could communicate with any of the hundreds of security and research teams in the field, access any of the nearly ninety-thousand satellites in orbit around the hundreds of Earths BanaTech had interest in or controlled, or even interface with the forty-seven Quantum-Cray’s buried in super-cooled chambers another half mile beneath the complex.

The Quantum-Cray’s were a marvel of bioelectrical engineering. While BanaTech owed its rise to power and global domination to the discovery of the Rips and the subsequent use of them, it owed its continuing existence and expansion onto other Earths to the QC’s. Each of the massive devices had an individual intelligence, a distinctive personality that gave rise to multiple perspectives. While unnecessary for common computing problems, this trait allowed for collaboration and competition among the QC’s; an essential element in consensus decision making. Though the QC’s did not always unilaterally agree on the outcome of any given situation, their collective intelligence enabled them to predict results with astounding accuracy.

Jefferson strode towards a secure room at the back of the area noting the looks of alarm and trepidation on the faces of the technicians that saw him. He smiled inwardly at the reaction. He was an imposing figure, he knew. His broken jaw had healed, but his nose had remained crooked, giving an already predatory countenance a brutal appearance. These mousy little techs should scurry away before him like mice from a sinking ship.

He pulled a keycard from his pocket and swiped it through a security lock on the door. The door beeped and opened before him.

“Where are they?” he growled at the lone man seated in the room.

“On E-372,” the tall, thin man whose security card identified him as Robert Wilson replied. “The Oxwitic facility.”

He was unphased by Jefferson’s aggressiveness. The two had known each other for years, since before Wilson had come up through the ranks of the Security Service. They’d fought side by side for most of a decade before the Elder had, at the QC’s suggestion, placed Wilson as the head of the Communications Division, making his security clearance second only to Jefferson’s. Though he looked ungainly, Jefferson knew he was a skilled martial artist and could kill with his bare hands if necessary. His prowess with firearms and bladed weapons was equally impressive.

“We’ve been getting some strange readings from level six ever since they got there,” Wilson added, “but they’re up on level three right now. Sleeping.”

“The new tracking and communications system is working well then?” Jefferson said.

“It’s had its share of glitches,” Wilson said, “but it is working. I have a team in the vicinity and despite Farris changing the facility’s access codes I can have them retrieved at any time. Are you issuing an order?”

“I am,” Jefferson said, “but it’s not to retrieve Farris or the traitor. They are to be followed, assisted if necessary, but nothing more. They are in no way to be made aware that they are being tracked.”

“That’s the standing order, sir,” Wilson prompted, awaiting an update.

“You’re certain you can track them once they’ve left the grid?” Jefferson asked.

“Absolutely, sir. Testing has confirmed that they can be tracked and retrieved from worlds with no BanaTech satellites or Rip tracing technology. Essentially, there are no versions of Earth that are off the grid anymore.”

“Very well,” Jefferson said. “The order is that when the time comes, Farris is no longer to be retrieved at all. Once the Key has been located he is to be terminated.”

Richard knew something was wrong the moment he entered level six. The air here was thicker. Stale, as if the recycling units weren’t running efficiently. An electrical tang like burnt wiring filled his nostrils. Beneath that was another odor. Sweet, yet pungent. The smell of fresh roses tinged with an unpleasant hint of blood.

The hallway was long and full of jumping shadows. The overhead fluorescents had come to life as Richard stepped off the elevator. Before he’d taken more than a few steps they’d begun to blink erratically. The result was unnerving. Shadows leapt before the light like living things, and the simultaneous ticking of warming and cooling ballasts gave an audible impression of light-footed creatures slyly cavorting just beyond his senses.

The elevator doors slid closed behind him, leaving him alone, his imagination at the mercy of faulty wiring and the vestiges of a nightmare.

He’d slept no more than seven hours before the unfamiliar name

Infernal

rang in his ears, jolting him from much needed sleep. In the seconds before his waking mind had fully asserted itself he’d felt power in the name. An ageless, boundless power that sent ripples of gooseflesh up his back and arms and across his skull. He’d been touched by the divine on his second jaunt through a RIP. Now he knew he’d also been touched by its opposite number. The effect was humbling. It made him feel small and powerless.

He’d shaken off the feeling and gone to check on Sophia. They’d chosen adjoining rooms on level three, leaving the door between open in case one of them needed the other. The rooms were small but each contained a bed, a small desk, and a wardrobe. Out of curiosity, Richard had peeked in the wardrobe in his room. It was been empty, as was the desk save for a fountain pen bearing the logo of a bank he’d never heard of. At least one thing is the same everywhere, Richard mused. Money, it would seem, makes every world go around.

Sophia had been snoring softly, curled on her side, one arm slung over her head and the other tucked under her chin. If she were dreaming it wasn’t the sort of dream that had wakened Richard.

He smiled. Despite the military style BDU’s she wore and the Beretta lying inches from her outstretched hand she looked very much like a child. Small and defenseless. Trusting. This Sophia, he decided, would come to no harm. Not as long as he was alive to protect her.

Leaving her to slumber a while longer Richard had decided to do some exploring. This was BanaTech turf and there was knowledge to be gained by poking around in it.

He’d retrieved the pen he’d found in his room—Community Bank of the Commonwealth it said in bold red and blue letters—and an old receipt from his wallet and jotted his intentions down. Leaving the note in the middle of the desk where Sophia wouldn’t miss it, he went back to his room. He collected one of the H&K P30 handguns from his duffel, checked the loads, and tucked it into the small of his back. Only a fool poked around on the enemy’s turf, abandoned or not, without some way of protecting himself. Then he headed for the elevators.

Seized by curiosity from the moment he’d read the legend FPGR: RESTRICTED—a curiosity only heightened by Sophia’s earlier deflection of the subject—Richard had deleted the access restrictions to all levels within the facility while reprogramming the computers. At the time he told himself he’d done so because they would want access to the armory, also on the restricted list, before they departed. If BanaTech hadn’t removed the weapons before they’d abandoned the base they’d be able to re-arm. Their current supply of weapons and ammunition was rapidly dwindling.

Curiosity might be a great cat that greedily devours others. Richard could almost feel it perched on his shoulder, its warm tail wrapped around his neck, whiskers brushing his ear as it purred to him that what was on level six could reveal the answers to all his questions. Questions about himself. About BanaTech. And, if it were more than just a specter in a bad dream, the Infernal.

He’d descended to level six, the doors obediently parting before him.

Blood and roses, he now thought as the overheads continued to flicker. Or maybe rotten fruit. The parts of the facility he’d encountered thus far had smelled antiseptic; like bleach or ammonia. Cleansers in the kitchen. The hot smell of working electronics in the computer room. This level smelled different; as if an animal had crawled into the ductwork and died, its decaying corpse releasing the gasses of decomposition into the air to circulate on this level and this level alone.

He swallowed and could taste the odor.

“Lovely,” he said aloud. His voice echoed back to him from the end of the corridor.

The hallway ended in a T-junction. He strode toward it, shaking off his unease.

Three words were painted on the cream colored wall at the end of the corridor:

FPG

CONTROL

ZeVATRON

The first word was painted red, the second yellow, and the last blue. Each had corresponding solid lines painted on the floor indicating direction, much like he’d seen in hospitals and other large institutions.

The word ZeVATRON sparked a memory. Something he’d read about gluons and other subatomic particles, but he was focused on the first word: FPG. He turned right, following the red line, recalling that there had been red lines in prison. Warnings that one was approaching the perimeter fence. Crossing that line into the so-called no man’s land was a good way to get shot.

The floor sloped downwards here, the walls widening out until he was walking a corridor he estimated to be three times as wide and twenty feet deeper that the one before. He felt as if he were shrinking. He cast a look back over his shoulder. In the flickering fluorescents the corridor he’d just left looked tiny. Impassable. It reminded him of the perceptual door trick used in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Something stirred the hair at the nape of his neck. Brushed down his arm and raised the hair there as if a cold hand had touched him. He looked above, certain he’d see an air vent that had kicked on. There was nothing but smooth white ceiling panels far above. He shifted his eyes to the right, certain he’d seen motion there, but there were only shadows thrown by malfunctioning light fixtures.

The corridor curved to the left ahead. Richard continued following the red line much as Dorothy had followed the Yellow Brick Road, trusting it to take him not to the Emerald City but to the FPG, whatever that was. The hallway continued to curve before straightening out and ending in a solid steel door.

The door was featureless; made of polished stainless steel about fifty feet wide and twenty feet tall. A single almost invisible seam ran down the center. Richard approached it and ran his finger along the closure. He didn’t think he could get as much as a sheet of paper in there. He looked around and saw no controls. No lighted keypad, no computer interface. Nothing he recognized that would gain him entry to whatever lay beyond.

He doubted that waving his arms and shouting “Open sesame!” would have any effect.

The light shifted again and he saw motion behind him in the reflective surface of the door. Heard footfalls coming closer. He spun, drawing the H&K. Then sighed, dropping the weapon to his side.

“You’ll never get in that way,” Sophia said. “That door is twenty inches thick with another ten inches of porcelain lining the other side.”

“What the hell is in there?” Richard said, tucking the gun back into his waistband.

“A failed experiment,” Sophia answered. “One in a long line of failed experiments. And the reason for all of this. The reason you’re involved in all of this.

“The Focal Point Generator.”

They retraced their steps and were approaching the T-junction when a shadow passed them accompanied by a sound. Richard reacted. This was no mere shadow thrown by flickering lights. It had form. Richard could almost make out an arm moving towards a mass that might have been a head, followed by a soft expulsion of air like a cough.

“Ignore them,” Sophia said. “They’re not there.”

“Something was there,” Richard said. “That was not visual matrixing.”

“No,” Sophia said. “It wasn’t. It was a time rift.”

“A what?”

“A time rift,” she repeated. “Remember I told you that Dr. Bana had theorized that most hauntings could be explained by thin spots in the fabric of reality? Windows onto other places and times?”

“Yes,” Richard said.

“That’s what’s happening. We’re seeing things that happened here in the past. Or maybe in the future if those spiders I saw upstairs were real. The experiments BanaTech carried out in this complex had devastating consequences. Not just here but all along this planet’s natural timeline. A literal hole was ripped in time. Though the effects should have been confined to the generator room it’s obvious that they’re leaking out and spreading. It seems to only be affecting this level for now but it won’t be safe to stay here much longer. If we’re caught in one of these rifts there’s no guessing what could happen.”

Richard digested this as they passed through the T-junction.

“This way to the ZeVatron,” he quipped as they passed the legend painted on the wall.

“What?” Sophia said.

“An old P.T. Barnum ruse,” Richard said.

“The circus guy?” Sophia said.

“Yes.” Richard answered. “But before that he ran circus sideshows. In one of his most successful he put up signs that read ‘This way to the EGRESS.’ Since egress is nothing more than another word for exit…” he trailed off. Stopped walking. A look of shock came over him.

“What is it?” Sophia said, alarmed. She looked around for another apparition but saw nothing out of place.

“ZeVatron?” Richard said. “Dear God, they built a ZeVatron?”

“I suppose,” Sophia said. “That’s what they call the machine under this complex, anyway. I’m not familiar with the technical aspects of it but I know it’s a particle accelerator. What’s the big deal?”

Stunned, Richard resumed walking.

“The big deal,” he said, “is that it’s not possible.”

Recognizing that it would take some time before Richard fully realized that there was no such thing as impossible Sophia waited for him to work out his thoughts.

“On my Earth,” Richard said, “a European organization named CERN wanted to prove the existence of the so-called God particle; a hypothetical Higgs boson they believed was responsible for giving particles mass. It was the only particle science had yet to prove the existence of. To that end, they built an unimaginably powerful particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider.

“There were protests about the huge amounts of money it cost. The possibility of an accident. The damage so much power could do in or near the 17-mile toroidal ring that would be used to accelerate the particles. The biggest fear was that they would inadvertently tear a hole in the fabric of space-time or open a black hole under Switzerland that would destroy the planet. None of that happened, but that’s not my point.

“My point,” he continued, “is that the Large Hadron Collider is a TeVatron. That means it can accelerate and cause the collision of particles in multiples of TeV, or a trillion electronvolts. One TeV roughly equals the kinetic energy of a mosquito in flight.

“A ZeVatron would be a collider with the ability to accelerate particles in multiples of ZeV. That’s a sextillion electronvolts. Or a one followed by twenty-one zeros. That sort of particle acceleration only occurs in galactic jets where new solar systems are born. It’s not something man is meant to control.”

Sophia appraised Richard as they approached a door marked CONTROL ROOM.

“They’ve done it here,” she said. “and on at least seven other Earths that I know of. It’s a critical part of the Focal Point Generator. But it has had its consequences.”

As she spoke, Sophia thumbed a keypad on the wall. Since Richard had removed all access restrictions the door obediently slid open to the right revealing a room twenty feet on a side. The space was crowded with control panels displaying flashing lights of every shape and color that lit the room like a carnival midway. Calliope music would have completed the scene but the only sound was the hum of electricity and the whirring of hard drives running unfathomable programs. To Richard it sounded like stridulating locusts.

A window of thick glass six feet high and fourteen feet wide dominated the far wall of the room. In the vast space beyond it looked to Richard as if it were snowing. He approached the window and realized he wasn’t seeing snow but some other white substance slowly swirling about a space he estimated to be twenty yards across and as much as fifty yards high.

The window, situated near bottom of the space, revealed that the curved ceiling and floor were round, the walls tapered in at the bottom like an egg standing on its small end. At the center of the floor, amidst a conglomeration of unidentifiable machinery was a chair similar to those he’d seen in dentist’s offices. Except this chair had wrist and ankle restraints—and there was a man seated in it.

He appeared to be screaming.