Entropy Risen (The Syker Key Book 3) (3 page)

Jessica could see the whole of the spiral as a slightly flattened circle. It was impossible to comprehend the scale. Light from the Sun took eight seconds to reach the Earth. That same light would take nearly a hundred thousand years to reach the other side of the galaxy. Massive didn’t begin to describe it.

It made sense, considering there were literally hundreds of billions of stars in just this one galaxy, that there were over a million sentient races.
In just this one galaxy
.

With the help of the Key she could “see” the planets with intelligent life. They were everywhere, though certainly more concentrated where there were more stars.

Jessica had decided to go on a little tour, get a sampling of these intelligent races around the galaxy.

She had never tried invisibility before, but a quick lesson from Pan had taught her all she needed, and thought it the prudent way to visit other worlds. Nobody needed to know there was someone watching them.

The first world she visited was one smaller than Earth, and only a few dozen light years away. It orbited a brown dwarf star, rather closely. The surface looked completely unlike anything she expected, yellows and dull greens, with fauna that was completely alien. At least the sky was still blue. She didn’t dare taste the atmosphere since it was likely poisonous to humans, never mind what pathogens might have been present that would be innocuous to the locals yet toxic to herself.

The locals themselves were tall, about fifteen feet she estimated. Three arms, one on either side and a short on in the middle, and three equal legs. Their heads were larger too, shaped like a shield facing the sky, but like humans only had two eyes. Well, there was one common characteristic.

The head contained only the eyes. No mouth or nose, but she suspected that parts of the shoulders not covered by clothing might have been for breathing.

Their arms were much like human arms, perhaps more slender, and definitely longer, ending in three fingers and an opposable thumb. They were very dexterous.

Whether due to fashion or taste, their clothing sparkled.

This race was not space faring, and in fact did not appear to have any visible technology, but were obviously organized into a society. Interesting.

Time to move on.

The next race was lizard-like in appearance, and Jessica quickly realized she was looking at a Draconian. This was dangerous.

She moved on again.

Another ten times she did this, moving amongst the worlds, seeing the various races, some strange, some familiar. Some were pre-industrial, but the vast majority were space faring, and their spacecraft were like themselves, different in ways she could not have imagined.

The octopus-like race designed craft that looked like themselves, and seeing massive spacecraft with tentacles that moved was disconcerting. Another race designed craft shaped like a net, with the fibers of the net being the interior of the craft, leaving a hollow space between the fibers. Yet another lived in what looked exactly like a tree, except kilometers long, with the root a spindly mass in the middle and each end covered in branches and leaves.

All of it was breathtaking, and encouraging. She could sense that many of these races had been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and a few for more than a few million. That gave her hope for her own species.

She decided to return home.

As she arrived at their home in Hawaii, she could sense something amiss, but could not put her finger on it, and the Key was aware of a danger of some kind.

Nobody else was there, so what could it be?

She never had time to find out.

Hidden in the bushes near their makeshift home was a warhead from a stolen W80-1 US Air Force cruise missile. Though small, it was effective, and for the first time a nuclear blast detonated on the Hawaiian islands.

Jessica’s family hideout disappeared in a twenty kiloton nuclear furnace, and Jessica with it.

John felt it immediately, but couldn’t believe it.

He jumped to what he thought might be a safe distance, just in case he was wrong, but he wasn’t, and watched as his home evaporated into a nuclear hell.

The mushroom cloud was beginning to form, and beneath it the island was now dead. Everything.

Tears filled his eyes immediately. “No...” he could barely choke out. Pan appeared standing next to him, the ridge they were standing on overlooking their home from ten kilometers away. Even this far they still needed to shield themselves.

Pan grabbed his son.

The grief began to overwhelm John as it sunk in. Jessica was gone. Murdered. He fell to his knees, all strength draining from him. “No,” he said again, trying not to believe it.

Pan extended his shielding around his son as John started to weaken. Even with the Key, he was unable to maintain enough concentration to protect himself.

Catherine and Arthur appeared next to them, and John could, barely, notice Pan extend his protection around them as well. Catherine was sobbing, and Arthur was holding her.

“Who did this Pan?” John asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

John looked at him, amazed. “Why would you even say that?”

Pan looked at his son, firm. “Because right now all you want is revenge. I can’t let you do that, because it would bring you down to their level, and risk everything you’re trying to accomplish.”

“I don’t care, if this is what they have in mind for us, then to hell with all of them. Let them burn.”

“You know it’s not what Jessica would want, and it’s not really what you want. Besides, you don’t have to worry about getting even.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to kill them all.”

***

In the early days, their race was named Teela.

Uula remembered that, despite the several billion years that had elapsed. They were a physical race then, like many others, though perhaps in shape and design, unlike any others. It was only by visiting the past that she could even recall how they had appeared in that early history.

Upon evolving into the fourth density, time and space were no longer constraints, and their physical form literally disappeared. They were physical, when they wanted to be, but since their evolution they would spend the remainder of the life of the universe as a mixture of ethereal and physical, shaping life as they desired.

They knew all that had happened, and all that would happen. That did not mean things could not surprise them, and this would be the case with some regularity, since will was an effort unto it’s own. For even though history existed, will had a way of rewriting it, of forcing a divergent path. Some paths were anticipated, predictable. Few were not.

Uula watched many races, all races, throughout the cosmos, delighting in their lives, their adventures, their accomplishments and their failures. Whether destruction or construction, it was not for her to pass judgement. It was as it was.

Yesterday, or a million years ago, or tomorrow, she tried an experiment. She constructed three artifices, three crystals, and decided to leave them with a young race to see what would happen.

Uula had intentionally locked the crystals to a single genome, a single race. It was to be an experiment for them only, since the potential abuse of the power of these crystals was enough to be of consideration. She knew races from Draconis and Lysat, both nearby, would lust after them, so it was necessary to protect them. She was not in the mood to have entropic species in their control.

And in the moment she created them, she was able to see all of history unfold, twist, change in their wake. It was spectacular to see the adventures these crystals created. Entire societies thriving, collapsing, and rebuilding.

Yet will was always there to create sharp spikes in time, periods when the future was completely rewritten in ways she had not anticipated, ways that would have consequences for the entire human species.

The humans, like their handlers from Draconis, were still entropic. But there was hope too. Uula had seen that Syker was the catalyst for this change, that humanity had a chance to rid itself of the shackles of enslavement, however small that chance may be.

While Uula may not have been able to predict the actions of the Syker and Walker families, she had been easily able to predict the actions of the Draconians. They were single minded and obvious in their purpose, and execution.

The Key itself could have easily withstood a nuclear explosion, but the amount of energy present created an opportunity. Instead of allowing the explosion to destroy the body of Jessica Walker, thus sending her essence directly to fifth density, Uula guided the Key to transition her instead.

Jessica Walker, now a creature of fourth density, stood before Uula, smiling. And laughing. Curious creature indeed.

She knew what Jessica was feeling. It was familiar, as she had experienced it herself once, and on occasion when she chose to revisit the moment. It was elation, joy, understanding. At least for some. Entropic essences had a tendency to see what they believed, but Uula knew that Jessica was not of that designation. She was creative and giving, and upon her transition begun to see the Universe as it truly was.

Can I go back?
Jessica asked.

Yes of course, but only for short periods. You will find that the energy required to stay in third density is substantial
.

Sadness, even if a little. Sometimes, often, the transition was disorienting as the flood of information began to flow. Uula could feel her emotions, her love for her family. For a brief moment she could feel the longing trying to wedge its way into her thoughts, but it quickly evaporated. There was no longing when the Universe was literally and in every way your playground.

Then the smile returned.
Thank you.

Uula smiled back.
Thank me?
Curiouser and curiouser.

You created the Keys, you made this possible. You made my life with John possible, and I thank you. But...what do I do now?

It was Uula’s turn to laugh.
My dear, you may do whatever you feel! You no longer require the Key, since it was merely a conduit to fourth density energy.

What will happen to it?

I have already hidden it for a future generation.

Jessica smiled again. She was going to enjoy this, and Uula was going to enjoy watching the changes she would bring.

***

John stood before the President. He was struggling to keep his composure, but wanted to explain to the leader of the so-called free world what had happened.

“One of ours?” Peter asked.

John nodded. “It was planted by the forces who made sure you were elected, the same forces driving the world economy.”

“But why?”

John almost laughed. Almost. “I would say because they consider us a threat. Clearly they wanted to send us a message.”

The President appeared to consider this for a moment. Self serving or not, having an American nuke go off on American soil was not a good thing for a President’s tenure. 9/11 had nearly backfired on Bush, but by shear cult of personality he had pulled it off. Country bumpkin indeed. But this time the populace was more weary, more cynical. At least John hoped they were. And he hoped the President knew that.

“Is there something you would like me to do, specifically?”

“No. I just thought you should know.”

And he disappeared.

Only to reappear in the office of Tam Lee, the television reporter, who promptly jumped. “Jesus, John! I hate it when you do that!”

John sat down and looked at one of his few friends solemnly. “Did you hear?”

“The nuke in Hawaii, yeah...what happened?”

“They killed Jessica.”

Tam’s jaw dropped. He apparently didn’t know how to respond. “Who?” he finally asked after a moment.

“A cruise missile was stolen from Eielson Air Force Base, out of Fairbanks. One of the warheads was placed at our home on an uninhabited island in Hawaii.” John sighed. “I’ll admit we weren’t exactly there legally, but it’s kind of tough for us to go anywhere unnoticed. And we thought we were unnoticed.”

“But someone found you.”

“Some first lieutenant stole the missile. We have proof of that, but how the warhead got from Alaska to Hawaii there is no record of. Except we know how. Pan was able to see through the secrecy and find the source.”

Tam was leaning on the edge of his chair.

“It would seem the warhead itself was teleported, much as we teleport ourselves. We were able to find out that the person who teleported it goes by the name of Marcus. And he’s not human.”

“You mean he’s
inhuman
, or you mean he’s an alien?”

“Alien, but living here for millennia. In fact, not only living here but traveling backwards and forwards in time, manipulating events to bring us to the brink.”

“Why?”

“So they can feed on us.”

“Oh right, the Draconians. Jesus. What are you going to do?”

“I need a favour.”

***

“Hello, my name is John Syker,” the television broadcast started. Liz Patton turned to her husband who was busily chatting away on the phone.

“Shut your piehole, I want to hear this!”

He glared at her for a moment, then got up and left the room, never letting his conversation lapse.

“Many, if not most of you have seen me before. I’m one of the people responsible for putting that planet in the sky, Hermes. Today around noon local time, a nuclear weapon was detonated on an island in Hawaii that was our home. My wife Jessica was killed in the blast.”

Liz watched him take a deep breath. She had thought they were all powerful. Apparently she was wrong.

“The aliens we were trying to protect the Earth from were already here, and have been throughout our history. We have been manipulated, prodded, tricked and deceived since the collapse of another civilization over twelve thousand years ago.”

Liz watched as he took a small crystal out of his pocket and held it up. Ah, the famous Key! It was smaller than she expected. It was glowing slightly, purples and blues, almost like a reflected aurora.

“This is the Key of Power,” she watched him say. He almost choked on the words. “We don’t know who made these Keys, but we know they are millions of years old. And we know the aliens known as Draconians cannot use them. Whoever built them engineered them so that only humans could control them, and that has been a point of frustration for the Draconians for thousands of years.

“So instead they decided to try to control the humans who possessed them, the bearers. That didn’t turn out so well, and you all know what happened to Atlantis. So for thousands more years the Keys went missing.

“My father found the first of the three Keys in the eighth century, and the other two were found less than a year ago.”

John looked at the Key for a moment, seemingly mesmerized by it. How could he not be? “It was these Keys that told us about the threat to mankind, and gave us the tools we needed to protect our home. But it apparently wasn’t enough.

“The Draconian World Ship was turned away, but there were, are, still thousands of Draconians around us, and they decided that it was necessary to send us a message by murdering my wife.”

She could almost see the fire erupt in his eyes, but he kept his cool.

“As you might imagine, my first reaction was to avenge my wife. I had it in my power to find and destroy every last one of these...individuals.” He paused. He had clearly struggled with this. “Instead, I have decided to expose them. For the last year we have been working to help politicians around the world sever the ties to those behind the scenes pulling the strings. We have been doing this quietly, trying to gain favor with the
humans
who had been pawns of these creatures. I will no longer be quiet.

“On your screen is a web site. On this web site is a listing of every connection, every association that leads to or was directly influenced by the Draconians. I think you will find this list as shocking as I did.

“You should be warned that if it sounds like there is too much coincidence, too much planning, there’s a reason for that. The Draconians have the ability to travel through time with no more difficulty than you travel to the store. They have been manipulating events in such a way to make humanity a feed stock for their race. The more misery, the better they feed. It’s as simple as that.

“And their changes in time have hardly been perfect. They keep experimenting, trying to get the perfect balance. Fortunately the only thing they haven’t been able to affect is the Keys. We are the fly in the ointment for them. And it is my intention to poison their well so badly that they get the hell off our planet.”

***

Arthur’s grief was second only to his wife’s.

Their association with the Keys had shown them many things about the universe, one of them being the secret behind life and death, and as a result they knew that Jessica was not
gone
, just
changed
. But it still meant she was gone from their lives, and the pain was almost unbearable.

Even Zack cried, but Arthur knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Jessica had become the mother he was missing, and losing a second mother was not something any child should have to go through.

He worked for endless hours getting the web site done, and continued to work on it long after John’s broadcast. They were getting millions of hits, and he was updating the information as quickly as Pan could feed it to him.

Arthur was going to make sure the world remembered his daughter, and the sacrifice she’d made for the entire damned planet.

***

Jessica decided to have some fun.

Of course, what she was finding out was that everything in the fourth density was fun, with one exception: She still missed John. Uula had shown her that sometimes memory of emotion was strong, and could carry across the density barrier.

But Jessica knew it was more than that.