A Latent Dark (50 page)

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I apologize for the misunderstanding.”

The archbishop smiled. “Well, at least no harm was done. What do you say we show Father Thomas the gallery?”

They walked down the white hallway past other Tinkerers who gave John curious and sometimes concerned looks. He scratched at his beard and wondered just how often they received guests who weren’t prisoners.

“Are you sure you don’t want a coat?” asked Stintwell, with a sideways glance of concern.

“I guess the lost-in-the-wilderness look isn’t in fashion anymore,” he said.

“Father Thomas has been working in the field,” said the archbishop. “The Wilds are in need of serious assessment and culling. His research has been invaluable.”

John shot a stunned glance at the archbishop, who continued to stare straight ahead as the Tinkeress led them through the twisting white corridor. The lack of any straight corners or flat walls gave John the feeling of being unanchored from his own reality. He wondered if that was the point.

“Oh,” said Stintwell, looking interested in him for the first time. “I didn’t even realize people were ready to study so deeply inside the Flux. We would have sent someone to assist.”

“Not necessary,” said Christopher. He was deliberately not looking at John. “Father Thomas has done remarkably well in identifying the demonic presence there. The Church has been very happy with his progress.”

The hallway rounded a corner and terminated at a pair of double doors, barely visible against the whitewashed walls. Stintwell stopped and faced them.

“Well, then I’m sure the visitor’s center won’t be anything strange to you,” she said, eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “What’s your opinion of the distance variation of Flux destinations leading between the city-states? I was thinking that the previous breakdown in the sin engine’s reciprocator had possibly overloaded…”

“Ms. Stintwell—” the archbishop interrupted.

“Dr. Stintwell, please,” she said.

“—
Doctor
Stintwell,” said Christopher, with a sigh. “I’m sure he’s still tired from his last romp in The Wilds. Let’s get him oriented and then we should be ready for a demonstration. Exciting times, John, exciting times indeed.”

The Tinkeress opened the double doors into an equally sterile white room. “Please follow me,” she said.

There were several rows of chairs and a table at the far wall, on which rested a large scrapbook. The walls were covered with small grainy black and white photographs.

“The gallery is just ahead,” said Stintwell. “Normally we do a quick orientation for new arrivals, but I’m sure you are familiar with the process.”

“Father Thomas doesn’t—” Christopher began, but was cut off.

“
Father Thomas
would like to know why confessionals are being used to hold people prisoner,” said John. “
Father Thomas
would like very much to know as much as possible.” He glared at the archbishop, no longer really caring if he was ignoring hierarchical protocol. Christopher returned the stare, but said nothing. John forced a smile at Stintwell.

“I’d like to see the presentation,” said John. “I think it would do me good after being out of touch for so long in The Wilds.” He gave Christopher a direct look.

Stintwell, taken aback somewhat, glanced at her watch. “Oh, well...” She walked over to a white section of wall. She pressed a button. “I take it you are versed in quantum theory?” She said.

“I uh… took some physics in seminary,” John said. “But I’m not sure where you are going with this.”

“But you know what atoms are, or has The Church banned that?” She smiled at the archbishop bitterly.

“No, I know what you mean,” said John. “They make up matter, molecules. They look like tiny solar systems.”

A section of the wall lit up, revealing a diagram with several concentric circles orbiting a central point, like planets circling around a sun. ”This is what you have in mind, I imagine,” she said.

John nodded.

“This is a model of a simple atom, but this is an oversimplification,” Stintwell explained. “The scale is much larger, but it isn’t the particles we are really interested in.”

John listened attentively. The image zoomed out until the nucleus of the atom was nothing but a speck. The circling electrons were only visible by the illustration of their paths.

“If you were to magnify an atom to the scale where we could see its parts,” she said, “the electrons would be a speck somewhere near the city of Arist.”

“That’s pretty far,” said John, watching the picture zoom out.

She nodded. “Does anything strike you as peculiar about that, Father Thomas?”

John thought for a moment, staring at the image. “Well, I’d be curious why they didn’t just fly away. Gravity I suppose?”

“That’s just the thing,” she said. “You see, these particles have no gravity, Father. How could they? They in of themselves don’t even have enough mass. What do you think keeps them together?”

John shrugged. “Maybe a charge… magnetism, I suppose. Maybe they just want to be.”

Stintwell considered this. “I’ve certainly heard stranger explanations.” She smiled. “But if that were the case, it would be like saying that the particles had a will of their own. But what I think you’re missing, Father, what we are really looking for is this…”

The image inverted, and John was now looking at a series of white rings over a black wall. He blinked as if finally seeing the forest instead of just the trees.

“The space in between the rings… the dark area.”

“Right.” Laura pointed to the darkened wall that made up most of the image now. “This space here isn’t actually vacuum. Dark energy and matter were once believed to make up ninety percent of all matter. By slowly eliminating this dark matter in the center, we think we might be able to measure and better understand it, understand how particles interact, what they really are.”

“But with nothing in the center, the negative space… or whatever you call it,” John said, “wouldn’t the particles just fly out into nothing?”

In response, she pressed a button and a new image appeared; it was a cartoon representation of a frowning figure, a glowing gingerbread man. The body of the man was composed of tiny red dots. A line slowly passed across the figure from left to right like a wiper blade, painting the dots blue as it went. The dots shifted behind the moving line then rearranged themselves again, like motes resting in a pool. A comically happy smile appeared on the man’s face.

“They actually collapse inward as the dark matter is removed,” Stintwell said. “But if it is done smoothly enough—like you see here, using a trained operator—there is little to no damage. Most of our inmates return to a fairly normal life.”

“The confessional?” John said, suddenly alarmed. “You use the prisoners?”

“They aren’t harmed in any way,” the Tinkeress said.

The archbishop interrupted. “The Clerics who work here help to rehabilitate the released convicts. It’s far more humane than hanging and much more efficient than jailing. The average inmate is only admitted here for a few days, then released back into the city as a productive citizen.”

“Not to mention,” Stintwell added, “we’ve been able to produce a remarkable amount of power this way. Rhinewall may very well be the most powerful city in the Western Archdiocese by the end of the year.”

Stintwell pressed another switch, and the wall returned to normal. She led them through a door and into the vast gallery. John stared wide-eyed at the size of it. A fifty-foot wall stretched upward, lined from edge to edge with photographs. The pictures were all no more than several inches wide, each one a grainy representation of a landscape or structure; people populated every photograph. There was something peculiar about them that John couldn’t quite place.

“One theory supported by the Vatican,” she said, glancing at the archbishop, “is that the soul is not in the mind or the body, but exists in the spaces not only between the atoms, but in between the particles themselves that make up matter.”

“Sounds like a tight fit,” said John.

“Not at all,” said Stintwell. “If you think back to the images I showed you before there is actually more space than atom. You could say that we are, in essence, souls wearing a thin sheet of body, not the other way around.”

“So we’re made up of nothing,” said John.

“Not so,” she said. “Obviously we’re here aren’t we? But what makes us real?”

“Faith,” the archbishop interjected.

“That’s one theory,” Stintwell said, frowning slightly. “Or will alone? What the machine here does is measure the amount of negative space between the particles, extracts it, then produces power. It stores the overflow and the person is free of ‘sin’ for lack of a better word.”

 “What does Skyla have to do with all of this then?” he asked.

“What I believe… what makes Skyla so remarkable,” Laura said, “is that Skyla, just like her mother and aunt before her, is able to see this space in between the atoms, in between the particles. She is seeing the dark space, not just what the light bounces off of.”

“She can see people’s sins, John,” the archbishop said. “And maybe even more than that.”

“So what makes her so dangerous, then?” asked John. He had begun to browse the photographs on the wall. “I mean, all she does is see things, right?”

“I believe that she can do more than just see them,” Stintwell said. “Not that
that
makes her dangerous.” She shot a glance at the archbishop.

“She’s begun to manipulate them, hasn’t she?” the archbishop said to Stintwell.

“I don’t think it means what you—”

The archbishop waved her away and continued to stare at the photographs. “Born in sin,” he grumbled. “I’m not surprised. Her ilk plays with the sins of humanity like a child plays with clay.”

John heard all this, but was more interested in an image fixed to the wall. It was a Roman style building with pillars and a courtyard. Several people were frozen, strolling about.

“Where were these pictures taken?” he asked.

Stintwell smiled excitedly again. “They were developed here on this wall. They are actually residual images that seem to originate from the stored, negative energy cells. The illusion of photography was completely unexpected.”

“Why do they look so much like photographs then?” John couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“That’s where quantum theory comes into play,” Stintwell said. “The very observation of the stored dark energy changes its form and shape. Those images only exist once you actually look at them.”

John looked back at the picture. Something seemed off and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The figure walked near a fountain, with other people further back. The sun must have just been rising, or setting, judging from the shadow—but the other figures—

“Their shadows,” he said. “Their shadows are wrong.”

He retraced his steps looking at all the previous pictures. In every one, the figure’s shadow didn’t actually conform to their body. Some shadows simply went the wrong way compared to the surrounding structures. But in other pictures the shadows were wildly off. They bent out across the ground in strange patterns that looked nothing like the person they were attached to.

“That’s pretty good,” said Stintwell. “Most people go through the entire gallery and don’t notice that. It’s psychological mostly. People don’t like to see things they can’t understand. Also, with the fixing agent used—”

“How did you do this?”

John was staring intently at a particular photograph of a man whose shadow spread out behind him like a claw. It was mesmerizing. He turned around and looked at Stintwell. He asked again.