Infernal

If one could look at the Multi-verse from the outside it would be observed as a glorious machine. Shiny and smooth running, silkily purring away inside the realm that contains it. Individual events inside the machine, from the most impressive galactic jets spewing out matter at inconceivable speeds and energies to the smallest particle of dust falling on a planetary body, are merely functions of the machine. Like the motion of copper wire within a magnet in a simple electric motor, each event has its own function. Serves its own purpose.

If the copper wire in a small motor breaks it is a simple matter to throw the motor away and replace it. No harm, no foul. Larger, more complicated engines have more parts; pistons, valves, magnetos and electrical wiring to name but a few. Still, when the individual parts in a larger engine break down the engine can be dismantled, rebuilt, the defective parts replaced or repaired and the engine is serviceable once again.

Yet more complicated machines—a computer, for example—rely not only on hardware like motors and electrical wiring, but on circuits and motherboards, hard drives and software, with each component carrying out its individual task, all working in unison to insure the functionality of the machine as a whole. When one of these components breaks down—say after a power surge has wiped out critical circuitry or a virus has rendered the hard drive inaccessible—it is often more economical to throw out the machine entirely, replacing it with something newer, faster, more reliable. And far more complicated.

An old adage states that the more complicated something is, the more things can go wrong with it.

The largest, most complicated machine ever devised—the Multi-verse—was breaking down. The Source had been tapped for power, an artificial Rip created. This interfered with the natural function of the Rips—safely discharging the enormous excess energies of the Source like the power regulator in a generator.

As the ZeVatron beneath the FOB on E-579 poured sextillion electronvolts into the Focal Point above to sustain the Rip, a critical point was exceeded. The Source, being channeled into the oculus in an unnatural manner, began to overload. Rips began opening and closing spontaneously throughout the Multi-verse, like randomly arcing electricity along an old and frayed power line, in an attempt to regulate the excessive energies being created. The thinking machines buried deep beneath the surface of E-1 sensed the power loss. In an effort to maintain control they directed the twelve massive turbines powering the particle accelerator to pour more power into the ZeVatron. Like a battery under too high a load, the turbines blew. Those in the control room felt the explosion several hundred feet below their feet as a jarring thud. Those in and around the chamber housing the turbines died instantly. Despite the loss of its power source, the ZeVatron continued accelerating particles, now at an uncontrolled rate. More Rips opened on more Earths as the process became self-sustaining.

E-6 was one of Banatech’s earliest conquests. Viewed from above her land masses were crisscrossed and scarred with deep vertical trenches, pockmarked with yawning wide quarries large enough to be seen from space. There were no green fields, no lush and vibrant forests. No snow capped mountain peaks. Her mountains had long ago been leveled, flattened, blown apart with explosives. Centuries of global surface and strip mining had reduced her to an unremarkable orb with features no more striking than those seen on the moon. What one could not see from above were the results of drift and shaft mining. Massive holes, some miles deep and hundreds of feet in diameter had been dug, drilled, and blown into the earth. Precious deposits of gold, uranium, coal, and any other mineral deemed useful had been looted. Raped from her bowels until the land masses had become too unstable to mine any longer. Earthquakes from collapsing tunnels were common and frequent.

When land efforts became too dangerous, BanaTech had turned its attention to the waters. Fresh water lakes and rivers had been drained and removed in massive tankers for use elsewhere. Gold, platinum, and oil had been stripped from beneath the seabed. Slurry and tailings, toxic by-products of mining operations, had polluted the oceans, killing all but the heartiest of creatures.

Even in the most extreme conditions life finds a way to survive; to evolve and proliferate. Whereas E-6’s land masses contained little life—mostly small insects and rodents of every sort—her oceans teemed with aquatic creatures. Sharks had endured; particularly the great whites. They had evolved to a size that would amaze paleontologists, dwarfing even their own great ancestors, Carcharodon megalodon. Some species of dolphins had also survived, along with rays, eels, tuna, halibut and even the tiniest of sea life; krill and phytoplankton.

Whales were the largest and most numerous survivors. Grey whales, Sperm whales, Common Minkes and Fins all thrived—indeed prospered—within the oceans depths. Adapting to the toxic waters over the centuries and mutating to incredible size. None, however, could boast the size of earth’s mightiest life form: The Blue. Mature Blue whales can measure anywhere from 75 to 100 feet from head to tail, and can weigh as much as 150 tons. On E-6 these behemoths had grown to three times that size; nearly the length of a football field.

A pod of these majestic creatures numbering in the dozens called the Indian Ocean home and were busily feeding on a krill swarm off the coast of Africa when a Rip opened in their midst. The Rip closed within moments but not before the eight-hundred and fifty pounds per square inch of pressure at that depth forced thousands of gallons of ocean water and three hapless whales inside. The sudden absence of all that water disrupted currents for hundreds of miles, disorienting the rest of the pod and causing them to crash into one another as if someone had stuck a giant spoon into the ocean and given it a stir. Seven mature Blues and two calves were injured in the melee. The pod recovered and swam north in search of calmer waters.

On an Earth as yet unknown to BanaTech, Eddie Norton was late. His twelve year old daughter Natalie’s first violin recital had started ten minutes ago and he was stuck in evening traffic on the West Congress Parkway; a full two miles from the Daley Civic Center in downtown Chicago where the recital was being held. His wife was going to kill him and he’d never hear the end of it from Natalie. She’d been so proud to have been selected to play in the Thanksgiving recital; so excited and nervous at the same time. She was damn good with an instrument he, a construction foreman, could not even hold correctly. A near prodigy. And now he was going to miss her big moment because all four hundred and eighty windows ordered for his current project—a ten story condo on South Michigan Avenue—had been the wrong size. It had taken nearly two hours to sort out that debacle and now he was stuck in traffic behind a moving van that completely blocked his view of the road ahead.

And to top it off it was snowing again.

He turned on his windshield wipers to brush away the rapidly accumulating snow—it was coming down much faster than usual given the mild winter Chicago had experienced thus far—when the snow turned to spicules of ice. And then to hail.

The Parkway bucked under Eddie’s vehicle as if he were on a bridge that had suddenly dropped a foot or so before holding, and a hard, thick, smashing sound came from further up the Parkway. Screams and cries of dismay followed.

“What the hell?” Eddie muttered as his windshield and hood tapped and thonked in response to the impact of hail. “Shit!” he cried when a ball of ice the size of a softball crazed the right side of his windshield, first fouling and then breaking off the wiper on that side.

The car in the lane beside him, driven by an elderly woman who clearly felt that an inch was sufficient space between vehicles when idling in a traffic jam, suddenly lurched into reverse, crashing into the car behind her. Eddie watched, stunned, as she slammed her transmission back into drive before tromping the accelerator. The Volkswagen Beatle she was driving smashed into the Pontiac ahead of her with a resounding crash. Cries of pain and outrage came from within the Pontiac but the old woman ignored them and reversed into the car behind her yet again.

Eddie rolled down his window to yell at the woman to stop, just what the hell is your problem anyway? and noticed that the occupants of other vehicles around him were acting with similar alarm. Some were talking or shouting animatedly, others were pointing towards the sky in the direction ahead of them—the direction he couldn’t see because of the Mayflower truck belching exhaust into the air directly in front of him. Some had fled their vehicles and were winding their way between cars and across the Parkway despite being pelted by hail, perhaps seeking shelter in the surrounding buildings.

The old woman who’d decided the best option for forcing her way out of the traffic jam was to act like a driver at a second rate demolition derby had stopped her vehicle. She was looking towards the sky, a look of sheer terror on her face. She glanced in Eddie’s direction, briefly making eye contact before a slab of ice the size of a kitchen stove smashed through her windshield, crushing her upper torso. A fine mist of blood rose up as the car shuddered under the impact.

“Holy God!” Eddie screamed.

The moving van ahead of Eddie screeched backwards against its airbrakes as a similar sized chunk of ice smashed through its trailer, destroying a child’s bedroom set and throwing stuffed animals into the air. A Pooh Bear with a hunnypot bounced off Eddie’s hood and onto the road.

Eddie threw open his door. The car dinged its disapproval of this action while the engine was running but he ignored it. He heard several more crashes and thuds from ahead and behind as more vehicles were pelted. People fled their cars in panic, most heading for the Federal Building on the south side of the Parkway.

Some made it. Most did not. A man carrying a briefcase went down in front of Eddie; his head burst open by a hailstone the size of a softball. His briefcase sprang open when it hit the pavement spilling out papers and his now useless PDA.

A teenage couple, running hand in hand, made it to the sidewalk in front of the Federal building before their relationship was permanently severed by a plate shaped sheet of ice that sliced cleanly through their arms at the elbows. The boy was then pelted on the back of the neck and went down, his spine shattered. The girl clutched the stump of her arm and screamed as her life’s blood gushed out onto his body.

Eddie almost made it. He had gained the curb and was arrowing towards the screaming girl to drag her into the building and do something about that arm when he saw what had started all of the commotion. He stopped, stunned. Two blocks ahead something that was not ice had smashed down on the Parkway, crushing dozens of cars across all six lanes and the fronts of the buildings facing it. The bulk of the thing was grayish black where it hadn’t split open, spilling ichor and intestines outward in a gory semi-circle. The front of the beast was hidden in the remains of an office building on the North side of the Parkway. To the South Eddie could make out a tail.

Not a tail, he thought. A fluke. That’s a big goddamn whale lying in the middle of the West Congress Parkway!

He looked up in horror as the sidewalk beneath his feet darkened with shadow.

The Rip that had opened on E-6 had terminated in the lower reaches of the Mesosphere, one-hundred and seventy thousand feet above the earth. Temperatures of one-hundred and twenty degrees below zero had frozen the displaced ocean waters and instantly killed the three Blues. Warmed by friction as the mass descended through the stratosphere and troposphere, the mass broke apart, much of the water evaporating or turning to harmless snow and rain. Significant portions of ice and the animals themselves, however, remained intact and rained down on downtown Chicago causing widespread destruction.

Eddie briefly wondered if there would be enough of his body left to identify so that his wife and Natalie would know he hadn’t abandoned them as more than four-hundred tons of whale plummeted towards him, the Parkway, and the Federal Building.

The public library in Glenfield, Montana, housed in the basement of the local High School, is run by a no nonsense librarian named Beatrice Pfortmiller—the students call her Beady because of her small, deep set eyes—who wears her hair pulled so tightly into a bun that her forehead bears not a single wrinkle despite sixty-seven years of wear. The Glenfield Public Library boasts a collection of nearly six thousand tomes, all tightly packed together on industrial shelving in five crowded rooms. Outside the library, Beady will brag to any and all who will listen that this meant the towns inhabitants, numbering a mere 946 as of the most recent census, could each check the maximum allotment of three books at the same time and the shelves would still be overflowing. Inside the library, patrons are more likely to hear the stout woman barking “Silence!” at the smallest sound that disrupts the tranquility of her domain. One dared not talk or even whisper in Beatrice Pfortmiller’s library for fear of banishment. And anyone with a cold or scratchy throat that produced a cough of even the quietest sort would be pointed to the stairwell exit in short order.

When the clatter arose Beady’s head came up from the Dickens novel she’d been checking back in at the reception desk—first carefully screening it for damage or dog-eared pages—like a meerkat who’d sensed a hyena in the underbrush. Her tiny eyes scanned the reading area before her, piercing into the three fifth grade boys seated there. Each met her gaze in turn before guiltily looking back to the book or magazine they’d been perusing.

The sound hadn’t come from them. She’d have noticed any of them furtively slipping back into the hard wooden seats despite her attention being on the book detailing the travails of Esther Summerson. No. The sound had come from the Special Collections room, down a short hallway and to the right. No one had slipped past her, either. She was certain of that. She took great pride in knowing who came and went from the library at all times.

Saying nothing to the boys—they too had heard the noise but knew better than to comment on or acknowledge it—Beady slid open the top drawer of her desk and removed the keys to Special Collections. The door to the room was kept locked at all times, even when it was in use; by prior appointment, of course, and only then with Ms. Pfortmiller’s direct supervision. No one had been allowed into the room in three days. And that had only been because little Becky Robeson had been given permission by the principal to peruse a rare sixth edition of Chaucer’s Cantebury Tales for an extra credit report on The Hundred Years War.

Beady quietly padded down the hall, curious as to what had made the sound from behind the wood and frosted glass door.

She might, just might, mind you, have left Chaucer’s tome out of place after ushering Becky Robeson from the room on Monday evening. It was unlike her. She was usually fastidious about the placement of materials in the library. But she’d found herself forgetting simple things lately. Like where she’d left her house keys, or whether or not she’d fed her two cats that morning. It was nothing serious—nothing like dementia, or, God forbid, Alzheimer’s disease. Not yet, thank the maker, but she’d been more tired than usual as of late and was well aware of her advancing age. The noise she’d heard sounded exactly like a large book clattering to the floor, so she couldn’t rule out the possibility.

As she slipped the key into the lock there was another clatter of falling books followed by the crash of one of the metal bookshelves falling over.

Startled, Beady took in a breath. Then two more shelves went over and books cascaded to the floor with loud, papery thumps. An odd hooting and clicking sound followed.

Someone’s in there! Beady thought, becoming angry. And by the sound of it, they were vandals. Vandals, in Beatrice Pfortmiller’s opinion, like violators of the library’s no talking policy, should be dealt with swiftly and harshly; given no quarter to repeat their offence at a later date. She would first apprehend the criminals—she had no doubt there was more than one what with all the ruckus coming from within the confined space—and then call the sheriff. Furthermore, she would demand they be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Without hesitation Beady unlocked and threw open the door. Her cry of “Stop there and come out!” died in her throat when she saw the destruction inside. The room looked like it had been hit by a small twister. Not three but five of the seven eight foot bookshelves been toppled. Precious editions of Shakespeare, Poe, Milton, Dostoyevsky, and a complete first edition set of Maya Angelou had been scattered about, pages torn and wrinkled, spines bent and broken. Half of an early edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, in the original Italian and complete with reproductions of Gore’s engravings, lay atop a scattered collection of M.C. Escher’s work. Its pages had been mutilated, as if partially eaten.

Beady scanned the room for the remainder of the manuscript, her anger rising further. Someone would pay dearly for this outrage. This blasphemy! She would personally see to it that there was a prison time and a hefty fine involved. Whoever it was was skulking behind the last still standing set of shelves in the back corner of the room. She could hear them back there. Tearing into paper and making giggling sounds like the chirps of a big bird.

“Come out here!” she bellowed.

And it did.

Beady’s anger died like a flower wilting in too much sunlight as a long, reptilian, head appeared over the shelves. The head turned at an angle like a quizzical dog while urine colored eyes examined her with cool detachment. It had greenish grey skin and elongated jaws, bristling with teeth that were embedded in the second half of Dante’s allegory. The creature issued a hooting sound of curiosity followed by three distinct clicks.

As Beady stared in wide-eyed horror, a long, thin arm ending in three clawed fingers rose up and toppled the bookcase forwards and away. Her bladder let go as she saw the creature’s long neck, the greenish tint fading to brownish black at the crest, the long, thin body and tapering tail. The tail swept to one side, scattering a pile of books into the corner.

The creature opened its jaws, dropping the Divina Commedia atop other books as it emitted a loud, deafening honk like that of an old air horn mixed with the roar of an engine.

Beady turned to run but was brought down by the agile, nine foot long Calamosaur, displaced by a Rip from its home on the Isle of Wight on a Lower Cretaceous era Earth.

The three boys in the reading room were out of their seats, had run up the stairwell exit and out into the school’s gymnasium before Beatrice Pfortmiller’s screams had echoed away.

On and on it went.

A Rip opened during a high school graduation ceremony in Bethel, Utah on E-197. Four hundred and seventeen graduates, high school staff, and attending family members were instantly pulled to their deaths deep inside planetary nebula NGC2818, over ten-thousand light years from Earth. None of them had time to scream.

A Lufthansa 747-8I flight en route from Cairo to Germany flew into a Rip thirty-six thousand feet over the Mediterranean Ocean. The Rip terminated ninety-four feet above ground level just outside of Bay Lake, Florida. The pilot suffered a massive heart attack while trying to wrestle the behemoth back to altitude. All three-hundred and ninety-seven passengers and over sixteen-thousand guests of Mr. Disney’s World Resort died as nine-hundred and sixty thousand pounds of aircraft traveling at five-hundred and seventy miles an hour slammed into Cinderella’s Castle, spewing wreckage and better than sixty-thousand gallons of burning jet fuel over a six mile square area.

E-712 was completely incinerated when a Rip opened simultaneously in Elkhart, Nevada and at the core of a white dwarf several hundred thousand light years away.

Residents of Moscow watched in shock and horror as twelve hundred confused and frightened Confederate soldiers marched into Lefortovo Park on the banks of the Yauza river and began firing upon unarmed civilians.

It continued, on and on.

The Infernal waited. For millennia they had done so, cut off from their brethren, severed from each other and the Source; mere shades without essence or power. Their wait had not been in vain. The Keeper Michael had been destroyed. It would be decades before his new human shell could act against them, if ever, and by then it would be too late. The Keeper Gabriel, his human form old, frail, and without courage had hidden himself away on an Earth they could not see where he could offer them no resistance. The other Keepers: Ariel, Raphael, and thousands of others, had never achieved enlightenment—due largely to the efforts of Alex Jefferson to first kill all known Keepers, and then to subvert their loyalties when that proved impractical—and remained ignorant of the task they’d been assigned by the ALL.

None who stood against the Infernal remained.

Soon the Multi-verse would converge and they would be free of their discorporated forms, granted access to the Rips, and reunited with the Source. They would feast on the power. Delight in the decadence. Shred and maim to their hearts content. Then they would have the souls of the billions who had perished, who were perishing this very moment. With that power they would reshape the realm into their image. Darkness, destruction, and death.

Their domination was imminent.

As an ever increasing number of Rips opened throughout the Multi-verse in an attempt to control the energy overload caused by the Focal Point, Earths were joined together, if only briefly, resulting in devastating chaos on millions of worlds. Violent storms arose out of clear blue skies. Ash and lava erupted from peaceful, long believed to be extinct mountains. Hurricanes and typhoons raged on normally calm seas.

Billions died.

Little considered but vast forces of nature began to be affected.

Countless lives were lost on E-418 when spontaneous geomagnetic reversal occurred. A naturally occurring event, geomagnetic reversal is a change in Earth’s electromagnetic field. Magnetic north and south switch, the poles entirely reversing. The process is typically slow, taking thousands of years to complete. In the case of E-418, the reversal took all of seven seconds. The rapid and massive magnetic shift caused vigorous convection deep in the Earth’s mantle. As a result, Lake Toba in Indonesia, Whakamaru in New Zealand, Cerro Galin in Argentina, and Huckleberry Ridge in Idaho, USA—four of the largest caldera’s on Earth—erupted simultaneously. Those not killed outright by the massive eruptions and subsequent pyroclastic flows—toxic gasses of nearly two thousand degrees traveling at four-hundred and fifty miles an hour—perished of starvation in the volcanic winter that followed.

Finally, gravity itself responded.

Gravity is the dominant force in the Multi-verse. It forms, shapes, and is responsible for the trajectory of astronomical bodies including asteroids, comets, planets, stars, solar systems, and galaxies. It causes the Earth and other planets to orbit the Sun and causes the Moon to orbit the Earth. It forms the tides and is responsible for natural convection. Gravity is the only force that acts on any particle with mass. It has infinite range and cannot be absorbed, transformed, or shielded against.

As chaos ensued throughout the Multi-verse, as more and more Earth’s were exposed to the violent energies triggered by the creation of the artificial Rip, gravity began tearing aside the veils between each Universe, exposing them, en masse, to the gravitic forces of each other. Slowly at first, then gaining momentum, they began to draw together like iron filings exposed to a magnet.

The Multi-verse began to converge.