Hexad: The Chamber (11 page)

"Fine, but last one. I'm exhausted," said the new Amanda.

"Where are we?"

"Why, isn't it obvious? We're in the Hexad, the original."

A Strange Interlude

Time Unknown

Dale felt fear grip his guts like a rat was inside gnawing away at nerves, bringing them to life only to destroy them eagerly. He felt the certainty of the words echo around his mind, words he knew were the truth the minute he had stared at the far ends of the cylinder but refused to admit to himself.

Of course they were in a Hexad, the blunt gray end and the other a blue dome, it was obvious. They were in what could only be described as a giant Hexad, or maybe the first? A huge Hexad that somehow gave rise to the others?

"But... but, what do you mean? How... how do you know?" Amanda looked like she was about ready to collapse — it was easy to forget that she had been out of her normal life for a long time. Dale was feeling bad enough, who knew how mixed up Amanda was.

"Can we carry on with this tomorrow please?" The new Amanda got up from the bench and gathered the empty mugs, leaving Dale and Amanda alone.

The light was fading fast, almost as if the transition from day to night wasn't really a concern. Dale noted tiny pricks of light high above, light bouncing off the upside down ground as it spilled out of windows as people settled down for the evening.

"What do we do now Dale? What is this place?"

"It's hell, but we aren't staying." Dale was resolute: no way was his Amanda going to be some kind of prisoner like countless others, if what they had been told was true.

~~~

They were put up for the night in a comfortable spare room, told that they would be allocated a home of their own the following day.

Dale knew he wouldn't sleep as he cuddled in to Amanda under thick covers in the musty smelling room. He'd lie there, keep her company, just enjoy the closeness and try not to think — although he knew his thoughts would be going a mile a minute all night.

The next thing he knew there was pale blue light spilling in through an open window, the sound of a cockerel telling the rest of the inverse world it was awake and they better be as well.

The second of many surprises of the day wasn't long in coming.

He dressed and padded down the stairs, wondering where Amanda was, hoping that she was okay and that nothing terrible had happened. He couldn't believe he'd slept through the fake night so soundly, but the effects of jumping through time were evident in the ache of his bones and the feeling that his brain was somehow different: rewired to cope with the madness.

He felt tired, a deep lassitude that almost made him crawl back under the covers and sleep away the nightmare until he was back home and it was just going to be a normal day mowing the lawn and dozing on the sofa.

As he made his way into the kitchen he heard laughter. It was disconcerting hearing the woman you love laughing twice. Two Amandas getting on well, which shouldn't come as a surprise really. After all, they were near enough the exact same person — just not quite.

"Haha, I never really thought about that. I'm amazed it hasn't happened already," he heard his Amanda saying.

"Amazed what hasn't happened?" Dale walked over to Amanda and gave her a kiss on the head, stunned her hair looked so radiant. He put his hand to his own, realizing it was sticking up like a scarecrow's as it did every morning. He tried to pat it down, knowing it was useless — he needed a shower. "Um, morning Amanda. Wow, that sounds weird."

"Morning Dale," said the new Amanda brightly. "I was just telling Amanda here about the silly things some of us have done, the ones of us that were actually involved in jumping, having Hexads. Although," she said, turning to Amanda, "some of it was quite serious. You have to be careful."

"I will, definitely. Oh, well, if we ever get out of here."

"You won't."

Silence descended, the atmosphere darkened.

"Gee, something I said?" Dale looked around the kitchen, checking if there was any coffee.

"Help yourself," said his host, gesturing at the kettle.

"Anyone else?" asked Dale, as he filled up the kettle from the tap, glancing out the window at the weird landscape that was unchanged from the day before.

Both wanted a refill so Dale busied himself gathering mugs and making the coffee. It almost felt normal, until he turned to look at two almost identical women sat around the table.

"So, what were we talking about?"

"Oh, I was just telling about some of the things that have happened to some of the girls. The ones that had Hexads."

"What, being chased by giants, meeting The Caretaker, losing your timeline? That kind of thing?"

"Wow, I forgot how grumpy you were without your morning coffee," said new Amanda.

"Yeah, well."

"No, I was telling Amanda how some people landed in rather unfortunate situations. It's a dangerous business jumping, you can end up anywhere."

Ah, this could be interesting. I wonder how much she knows?

"I thought it was all down to setting the destination by thinking about where you want to be?" said Dale, leaning forward curiously.

"Well, yes, but it's a lot more complicated than that, a lot more. Many of the girls have ended up with near misses, almost jumping and dying, or in the middle of something."

"In the middle of something?"

"Yes. Say you set the time for however far into the future you want, then you picture where you want to be and you jump, right?"

Dale and Amanda both nodded, happy to be given any information they could get.

"Okay, so you want to jump forward maybe a day in your kitchen, just as an example. So you set it up, picture landing on the tiles that were a great investment, and you jump, probably with Dale making that stupid sound of his."

"Ha, it's so annoying isn't it?" Amanda ruffled his hair affectionately.

"Hey, it's cool. It has to be dramatic," protested Dale.

"Anyway," continued their host, "the problem is that you don't know that if you hadn't jumped then you decided to mop the floor the next day and you moved the table out into the middle of the room, then bam! The next thing you know you are stuck there in the middle of the room, stood clean through the center of the table. Game over. Or worse, the you that didn't jump is there with you, watching as you materialize right through the table, and then you both disappear. Or one of you dies and the other has to try to come to terms with seeing themselves dead and stuck through a table."

"Bloody hell, I hadn't even thought about stuff like that. We've been lucky."

"I've thought about it," said Amanda. "It's why I'm careful where I jump to and make sure I know it will be safe."

"Ugh. And when I jump I usually end up a little above the floor. It could just as easily be under it."

"Exactly. Imagine jumping only to find your feet stuck in the carpet. Well, it wouldn't last long, you'd topple over pretty quickly, your feet chopped off."

Dale felt sick. He'd never even considered such possibilities, thinking it was more or less a given that there was some kind of a system that looked after you when doing such impossible things."

"I think I'm going to be more careful from now on," said Dale.

"I told you, you can't leave. Amanda anyway. You, well, I'm sorry Dale but you shouldn't be here, you won't be for long."

This morning is not getting better with coffee.

"What do you mean?" Dale asked reluctantly.

"I mean that there have been others, only a couple mind you," said new Amanda hurriedly, "and they, well, they sort of just slowly disappear."

"What, like whoosh and they were never here?"

"No, more like they fade away slowly until they are nothing but a ghost." New Amanda looked around nervously. "Like they might still be here, we just can't see them."

Dale jumped to his feet. "That's it, we're getting out of here Amanda. I'm not staying in this place, no damn way."

"And how are you going to leave? You can't, nobody ever does Dale. Nobody." New Amanda began to cry; Dale walked outside, he couldn't deal with it.

~~~

"Sorry," said the new Amanda. "It's been so long since I spoke to you; I miss you so much Dale."

"It's okay, come here." Dale hugged Amanda tight, but it felt wrong, strange, bringing back the terrible feeling of betrayal after his Amanda came back and the woman he'd woken up with only the day before, if he forgot about timelines and how long it had really been, had disappeared, and now the poor thing was here somewhere.

Amanda came out of the house and nodded at Dale as he slowly let new Amanda go.

"Do you know how this all works?" asked Dale. "How the whole timeline thing and the different versions of you, me, everyone, really works?"

Host Amanda brightened, clearly pleased to talk rather than dwell on the life she was living. "Sort of. You want me to tell you?"

"God yes!" said Amanda.

Dale nodded his head.

~~~

"So it just goes on and on? Timeline after timeline, for ever and ever?" Dale's head was spinning out of control, and he was just now realizing that he felt somehow lighter, as if he'd suddenly lost weight or he'd become that much stronger. He hadn't noticed it before in his state of confusion, but moving was easier, things felt imperceptibly lighter, like... That was it, gravity was slightly different, a little less than he was used to. Dale returned to the conversation, trying to digest what they'd been told.

"Not infinite, well, I suppose not, but as close to it as it not mattering. Look, for time travel to be possible it means that the past and the future have already happened, right? We know the past has, as we lived it, but the future? That's hard to come to terms with. But if we can jump into the future then it's also already happened. So every time you jump you create an alternate reality, and the more jumps that happen the more alternate realities, or parallel universes there have to be. There's no other way it could be possible otherwise."

"And in each new universe there are then almost parallel timelines where different futures happen, right?" Dale thought he was finally getting somewhere with understanding it.

"Exactly. And the chances of you ever, and I mean ever, jumping back to your right timeline are just about impossible. Things will always be slightly different, as the minute you've done one jump you create countless universes, timelines and on and on it goes. Most will be so similar you would never notice the difference, but they are not the same one, and in some cases they are incredibly divergent."

Amanda interjected. "So that's why when I jumped trying to find Dale I saw him looking so different? Me and another him had set everything back to being right, without Hexads, but they were still alternate realities that then existed. Just without time travel?"

"I don't know about all of that, about them all being set right forever, but yes, they were each just distinct futures spreading out in countless ways from when each of the timelines was created." Amanda paused to think. "It's complicated, but as far as we, all the Amandas, can tell, then the possibility of you jumping creates some kind of series of possible futures where pretty much anything can happen. It sort of has to, to allow it to be possible."

"I don't get it," stated Dale.

"Okay. So, I have a Hexad, I'm sat at home and I decide that my first jump will be a week away, so I jump forward a week to the same place in my living room. So that's one future that had to happen, one where I didn't jump and just carried on with the rest of my week. But there is the new future now, where I did jump, so it's different. But what about everything in-between? What if I'd decided to jump a day later, an hour, a minute, a second? That would see the need for other futures to have happened too. And it just gets worse, spreading out forever. That's why the timelines were in such a mess for you Amanda. I guess if you had a whole generation jumping back and forth then it makes sense that reality couldn't cope, so it just got rid of the problem: people, and closed everything down to one reality."

"Then it started up all over again once we set it back to a future that never had Hexads. Everything in all of them that could have been possible is possible again, even though at the moment they are functioning with people."

"Maybe. But with you having been in your world then all those futures may have already happened again, as this is how it started for you."

"But not for you," said Dale. "So that wasn't the reality for everyone's futures?"

"No, I told you, it's endless. As long as there are Hexads then there are us here and there will always be problems out in the timelines."

"So we need to get rid of them all, then we will all just go home and not remember any of it as we will never have done it. End of story. We just need to be sure to get them all." Dale felt pleased with himself. That was the solution, just as they'd agreed ever since Amanda came into his life and warped his perception of reality.

"No, you can't."

"Why not?" Dale was startled by new Amanda's ferocity — he'd never seen her as angry or scared. Not that this was her, he had to remind himself, looking at his Amanda, trying not to sink into insanity at the perverted situation.

"Because you can't. This is our home and it's all we have. If you did manage all that, which you won't, then we will all disappear."

"And go back to where you are supposed to be. Home."

"No Dale, you still don't get it, do you? Amanda, whoever the first one actually was or is, would be it. All of us that are now alive because of what happened would cease to be. There would be only one. There would be one Amanda, one Dale, one universe and no more. If there never was a Hexad, no time travel, then there would be no need for timelines, universes or parallel universes, whatever you want to call them. The chance of jumping to the future would never exist, so there would be no need for anything but the past and the present. We would have never existed. Ever."