Strangers and Shadows (13 page)

“Why isn’t it working?” Jack asked.

“Don’t blame the chair, Jack.  You’re just not thinking in the right way.”

“How the hell is the right way?” Jack shot back.  The chair beneath him shivered, like a frightened dog.

“Jack, be nice.  You’re scaring him.”

Jack shot out of his seat and stared back at the suspect chair.  “What kinda place is this?!”

“I’ll get to that.  First, Jack, please sit down.  This time I want you to imagine the way you’d feel if you were lying in a hammock on the beach.”

Jack sat back down and closed his eyes.  Nothing happened.  He opened his eyes again.

“Jack you’re just thinking about it, you’re not
imagining
it.  Here, let me help you.”  

Jack closed his eyes once more.  All of a sudden he sensed a foreign presence in his mind, pulling strings and twisting knobs.  In his mind’s eye, Jack was suddenly on a beach.  It was like he was dreaming.  It felt like he was actually there.  

He turned around, investigating his new surroundings.  Sure enough, there was a hammock, tied up between two palm trees.

“Now, walk over and sit down on it,” Desmond said. 

Jack did just that, sinking down onto the netting, swaying in the breeze like a leaf in the wind.

“Now, open your eyes, Jack.”

Jack opened his eyes to find himself reclining back in the chair that had changed to the exact shape of the hammock in his mind.

“That’s incredible!” Jack said.  “How does it do that?”

“The chairs are alive, so to speak,” Desmond said.  “That is to say, they have a brain and a body.  But they work more like a pet.  They exist to serve us.”

“Isn’t that a bit like slavery?” Jack asked, sitting up in his chair.  The chair changed shape again to compensate.

“Are the cells in your body slaves?  Or are they free to leave?  Free to do as they wish?” Desmond replied.  “Think of them more as symbionts, living together with us in a mutually beneficial way.  They are not unlike your computers or cars or flying machines.  We just have a different
interface. 
Everything in
this
universe exists in relationship with everything else.  It’s give and take.” 

“
This
universe
?
  So, we just…
”  Jack
wondered
if there was any end
in sight
to the strangeness of everything in his life lately.

Desmond nodded. 
“
When we walked through the door, we switched verses.
  There are many, but not all verses support human existence.  In our verse, we evolved differently than any of the others that we have discovered.  We’re telepaths, and there are those among us that have other abilities as well—we can affect the physical world around us with our minds.  That’s how I got the phone in your cell, and why no one saw you, and why Kid didn’t see me at your apartment.  Well, actually, I wasn’t at your apartment, that’s why Kid didn’t see me, but...”

“Wait!  What do you mean, you weren’t at my apartment?  Where the hell were you then?”

“I was in your head.  And actually, if you want to get technical, the phone in your cell was in your head too.  See, I can cause things to seem real to other people, just by thinking them, and I can also hear other people’s thoughts, most people in the Sixth can.  Only a select group of us are telekinetic though.”

“Back up a sec... 
The Sixth
?” Jack asked.

“Sorry, the Sixth as in the
sixth universe.
  It’s a nickname of sorts.  For instance, you came from the Fifth.”

“Just how many universes are there?”

“That’s a tricky question.  Technically there are an infinite number, but there are seven in the MultiVerse.  The first two are nothing but wastelands.  The Earths there have been decimated by some sort of cataclysmic event.  Perhaps a combination of meteor strikes and earthquakes, we’re not really sure.  Then there’s the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh, which came up with the brilliant naming system.  But to be fair, they did introduce us to the other verses.  If it hadn’t been for them, we never would have discovered how to travel between worlds.”

“You’ll have to forgive me, this is all a little much to take in.”  Jack sat back, rubbing his temples.  He could feel
another
headache coming on. 

“I can help you with that, if you want.  You know, take the pain away, or rather, show you how to take the pain away,” Desmond offered.

 Apparently, Jack could feel the headache coming on a little too strongly.  “Wait a second, you sensed that?”  Jack couldn’t decide if he was upset or impressed.  He felt like screaming, just to let some of the pressure in his head out.

“You sent it, I just picked it up.”

“What do you mean, I
sent it?
  I suppose next, you’ll be saying that all of this is my fault.”

Desmond paused for a moment, considering how best to go about the business at hand.  “Relax, Jack, I’m not saying that at all.  All I’m saying is that at the most basic level, every human is telepathic.  Most people just don’t know it, or don’t know how to use it if they do know it.  It’s like having a comm in your pocket, but not realizing it’s there, or once realizing, not knowing how to turn it on and make a call.”

“You mean to tell me that I can hear people’s thoughts?  Like some kind of mind reader, or something?”  

“You can hear most thoughts that someone sends to you—for instance, like the thoughts I sent you at your apartment.  That’s why Kid didn’t see me, because I only sent it to you.”  Desmond took a deep breath, pausing.  There was so much to catch Jack up on.  “The hard part is sending, anyone can receive.”

“Well, it can’t be that hard if I just sent to you,” Jack said, still confused.

“But you didn’t send it to me, Jack.”

“Then how did you hear it?”

“How could I not?  You practically screamed it at me.”  Desmond leaned back in his chair.  He appeared to be thinking about something. 
Jack, I’m going to order some tea, would you like some?

“Yes, I’d love some.”  Tea sounded fantastic.  And then it dawned on him.  Desmond’s lips hadn’t moved, yet Jack had heard him, clear as day.  “This is really strange.”

“Yes, of course.  Let’s just relax for a moment.  The tea will be here shortly.  I think you’ll find it to your liking, and then we’ll just let everything sink in.”

The tea arrived a few minutes later by way of what Jack could only assume was a waiter.  Maybe he was a servant or a butler.  The man carrying the tea tray was tall, wearing a finely tailored suit, his hair slicked back like a European fashion model.  He moved with a grace about him that Jack was instantly envious of.

“Thank you,” Desmond said.  “You can set that down here.” 
He’s not human, Jack.  He just appears to be.  Think of him as a more mobile, versatile version of the chair.  Some of us call them mimes, some refer to them as reps—short for replicas.  They provide the services and do the jobs in our society that very few humans would do if given the choice.

“Very good, sir,” the mime replied.  “Will there be anything else?”

Desmond gave Jack a questioning glance, and receiving no reply from him said, “I think we’re all set here, thanks.”

The mime left the room by the same door that Jack had entered.  Jack wondered if the door led back out into the alley in New York, but, somehow, he doubted it.

“In fact, it doesn’t,” Desmond said.  “Sorry, I keep doing that.  I’m sure it must be very strange and alien to you.  To have someone responding to your thoughts and not just what you say.”

Desmond poured the tea into two cups, adding a spoonful of honey to his own.  “Any for you?”

“No, it’s fine as it is.  Thanks.”  Jack took the offered cup of tea and tasted it.  “Mmm, this is great.”  The tea cup bore a strange resemblance to the set that Jack’s grandmother used to pour him tea from when he was a young boy.

“I’m glad you like it.”  Desmond stood, walking around the desk and out to the edge of the dark office gazing at what appeared to be the wall.  Jack realized that it was, in fact, a window.  One large window that wrapped around in a large arc to encompass most of Desmond’s office.  “Come.  Have a look.” 

Jack stood next to him and gazed out the window.  It was night, of course, wherever they were.  Jack could see a vast city sprawling below, covered in lights and dazzling architecture.  Lights whizzed above the city’s streets, and Jack realized they must have been this place’s version of hovers.  Most were moving too fast to see well in the darkness.  

“Where are we?”

“This is my home, Cairo, the capital of the Sixth.”  Desmond stared off into the night as if searching for answers.  “This is what I’m trying to protect.”

“Protect from who?” Jack asked.  He was still a little fuzzy over the details of just which side was which and who was who.  Not that it mattered that much.  He’d already made up his mind that whoever was responsible for Kid’s abduction was the enemy.  

“But is it that simple, Jack?”  Desmond had been reading his thoughts again, or maybe Jack was still shouting them.  He needed to learn how to conceal his thoughts, and soon, for his own sanity, as much as the sanity of those around him.

“To answer your question, though, the people who have taken Kid are from the Seventh—they are the ones who I must protect my people from.”  Desmond had an earnest look about him that warmed Jack’s heart and chilled it all the same.  He’d seen that same look in the eyes of hundreds of soldiers, policemen, and firemen.

“We used to be friendly, if not friends.”  Desmond turned away from the window, pausing before he walked to the chair at his desk and sat down.  “We discovered each other’s civilizations hundreds of years ago, back when both our worlds were much younger.  We started as cautious friends with wary borders.  We set up joint task forces to explore the rest of the known verses, but, slowly, distrust grew.  And despite our best efforts, relations unraveled.”  

Jack sank into his own seat and listened to the rest of Desmond’s tale. 

“Years passed, each side growing more distant, less trusting, and less willing to share information.  We closed our borders first.  I tried to tell our people that it would only increase the downward spiral between our two worlds, but only a handful of elders listened—not enough to do anything about it.

The Seventh followed suit, deporting our people back to the Sixth.   A few from both verses were allowed to stay behind.  Those few Sixes and Sevens who had started families together and, of course, our ambassadors.  There was no bloodshed at the start of it, but things continued to worsen.”

Jack opened his mouth to ask a question, but Desmond continued on, answering it before Jack had the chance to get any sound out.  “This was almost three hundred years ago.”

“Holy shit, man!  How old
are
you?”  Jack had heard of life extension, but this was beyond his ability to grasp.  Back in his time-line, even with the latest in scientific achievements, the longest-lived humans were barely two-hundred years old.

“Let’s just say that I’ve seen a few things and leave it at that for now, shall we?”  Desmond said, changing the subject.

“
Jeez
, I thought women from
my verse
were secretive about their age…”  

Desmond took the jest in stride and continued, “Back when we first closed the borders, there was a woman from the Seventh, Julia White.  She was an Ambassador to the Sixth, who left our Verse to return home so she could convince her people to stop the foolishness of what was going on.  She was my counterpart to her own people, trying to keep the paranoia in check.  She failed, as did I.”  Desmond stared off into the distance, reliving some other life in some other time.

“Had a thing for her, did ya?”  Jack smiled knowingly.

Desmond returned from whatever far off land he had been momentarily living in.  “Once upon a time, but no longer.  Julia has since risen to the position of Prime Minister in the Seventh, and I have little doubt that she’s behind what’s happened to Kid.”

“No offense to you or your people’s conflict with the Seventh, Desmond, but I just wanna get Kid back.  After that, you can just drop us off where you found us.”

Desmond looked Jack straight in the eyes, holding his gaze for a moment before speaking, “I hope it’s that simple, Jack, I really do.”

Desmond stood up, abruptly.  “Forgive me, but I must get some rest now.”  

There was a noise at the door and the mime from before entered the room.  At least, Jack thought it was the same mime as before.

“Would you show our guest to his room please?”

“As you wish, sir,” the mime said with a slight bow.  “If you would follow me this way,
Mr.
Spade.”

Jack was a little surprised at the abrupt end to the conversation, but he said goodnight to his host and followed the mime down a series of halls, finally arriving at a rather plain looking door.  The mime opened it and escorted Jack inside.