Ashley stood at the bottom of what used to be the stairs to a small cottage on the rim of the lake. A wooden ramp covered those stairs now, offering a gentle slope from the quaint porch to the blacktop driveway alongside the small, one-story home.
In her hand she held a bound, blue booklet that bore the logo of an open hand with an eye at the center. The title printed below the symbol offered a cryptic clue as to the contents: Imperial Intelligence Summary Report: Voggoth Prime.
Ashley knew from her tear-filled discussions with Trevor that the report detailed the location of The Order’s primary base of operations on Earth, half a world away.
She took her eyes from the report and looked at the cottage entrance again. Behind her a car drove around the lake perimeter road causing a small breeze of wind to offer slight relief from the humid morning air.
Ashley grunted with resolve and climbed the ramp. She knocked on the metal-framed screen door. A few seconds later the heavier white-wood interior door opened and an older gentleman in casual dress greeted her. She noticed that one of the man’s hands had been replaced by a plastic prosthetic, no doubt a wound suffered while in service to Intelligence.
“I’m here to see Gordon.”
“He is not taking any visitors,” the man answered in a voice lacking any emotion, any concern. He could have been a robot.
She held the booklet up and said, “It’s about the report he sent over. Tell him there is a big problem with it.”
The man’s eyes widened as if Ashley had just insulted his mother.
“Wait here,” the man closed the door.
If any other servant in The Empire had tried to dismiss Ashley so casually, she probably would have exploded. But she knew that the man served Gordon Knox.
The door opened again, this time all the way. Ashley walked in.
A hallway ran the length of the cottage from the front to a rear kitchen. Wide archways to either side of the hall opened to other rooms, all coated with hardwood floors. She saw very little furniture and no mirrors. The air smelled stale.
“He’s in his study,” the servant directed and Ashley found her way.
She came upon Gordon in one of the rooms at the back of the house. A big, sliding glass door offered access to a wood deck overlooking a yard surrounded by tall pine trees. Inside, computers and printers, video screens and a HAM radio with a glitzy LCD display, formed a ring around the center of the room. A simple ceiling fan revolved slowly above it all.
Gordon Knox sat in his wheelchair near the sliding glass door his eyes staring outside.
Ashley paused.
“May I come in?”
Without turning Gordon replied, “Yes. Of course. What will we be reading today?”
Ashley said, “Tomorrow is our reading day, remember? And besides,” she walked to his side, “you know we haven’t finished Heart of Darkness yet.”
“Ah, yes, we haven’t even met Kurtz, yet, have we?”
“So you have read it before,” she smiled as if she had won a bet.
He finally turned. “I admit it, yes. But it sounds different when you read it. It sounds- better. Of course you don’t have to, you know. I’m more than capable of reading. The eyes, at least, still work just fine.”
“I enjoy our time together.”
“Yes,” he mused. “I suppose this monster isn’t quite so scary anymore.”
She swallowed hard and insisted, “You are not-you never were-a monster.”
“Yes, I was,” he corrected with no malice. “That’s why you were always afraid of me. That’s why you turned to me last summer. You needed a monster.”
“I was never afraid of you.”
He ignored her. “I suppose that is one good thing to come out of this,” he patted his hands on the wheelchair rails. “You’re not afraid anymore. Thank you for visiting with me and reading to me each week. It’s a bright spot in what has been a very bad year.”
“I enjoy it too.”
“So why are you here, if not to read to me? It’s not the report. There’s nothing wrong with it.” His voice suggested he found it amusing she would say as much.
She looked at the booklet in her hand then at him again.
“It’s missing something.”
“What?” He took the book and paged through. “It’s all here. Everything we know about Voggoth’s position. The temple, the Urals-years of strength estimates. Do you know how many agents we lost? Do you know how many of our European friends we lost? No, it’s all here. It’s-”
“It’s missing you.”
Her statement puzzled Gordon.
She did not wait. She pushed, “I’m not letting you send couriers over with your intelligence reports. That’s not enough. There’s a meeting today and you need to be there.”
His faced glowed red. His hands pulled into fists.
“I told you before, I can do my job from here. Besides-besides I don’t think-I don’t want people to see me-it’s better if I stay in the shadows.”
“That was good enough for a while. But it’s not good enough anymore. The end is coming, Gordon. This meeting may be the last one we ever have. Trevor needs more than your reports, he needs your insights. He needs your thoughts. He needs that more than ever.”
Gordon shot, “Well that’s not what I do anymore.” He pushed the joystick on his motorized chair and wheeled into the center of his ring of equipment. “I work from here. This is my nerve center. From here I can communicate with the field offices, with agents, with ships and military posts. I analyze the data as it comes in. My reports are the best they have ever been. And they will have to be enough.”
“Who is afraid now, Gordon?”
He turned to her, still red-faced.
“Don’t try that reverse psychology bullshit on me. Do you really think I’m that stupid? You think you can guilt me into something?”
“Okay, fine,” she returned his stare and, surprisingly, he blinked. She was, after all, the one person who could give him pause.
“You have a job to do Gordon, just like Trevor has a job. You think he wanted all this? No. But he’s done it, because it’s been his responsibility.”
“Ashley, I serve Trevor from here.”
“And I could have served him as nanny to his son. But what have I done for the past decade, Gordon? I’ve been his figurehead wife. The smiling face for all The Empire to see. I’ve been on his arm for every official reception, for every press conference. Look! There is Ashley Stone. How beautiful a first lady she is! How devoted to her family!”
Ashley’s breath grew rapid. She shook a finger at him saying, “But you know the truth, Gordon. It is has been a lonely, miserable life for me. I have no husband. There has been no love between us for years. He has his duty, I have mine. I could have sat around crying day in and day out or hid away in the attic of the mansion but I didn’t. I did what I had to do!”
He did not respond, but the color drained from his face. In his expression she saw something she rarely saw from anyone: empathy.
“Do you think I’m going to let you shirk your responsibility to Trevor because you’re embarrassed to be in a wheelchair? Do you think when the others see you they think you’re weaker because of it? Don’t be an ass, Gordon. They know how you got in that chair. Of all the friends Trevor ever had you were one of the few to put it all on the line for him.”
He hung his head.
“If you don’t see it that way, that’s your problem. I know you hate it. But right now you have to set all of that aside. Right now you have a job to do. After all these years my responsibility to Trevor is over. But you still have more to do. Now you get your ass over to that meeting and be there for your friend. He needs you.”
She walked closer to him, knelt in front, and said, “We’re all counting on you, Gordon. And if you’re there for Trevor this last time, then maybe we just might have a fighting chance.”
Did the key really exist? Trevor could not be sure. Of course he could not be sure what ‘real’ was, either. Regardless, twice in his life Voggoth’s minions took him prisoner and twice they failed to discover the key. Perhaps more telling, during his trip to a parallel Earth the key had disappeared from his neck.
He wondered if, perhaps, the key the Old Man had given him was actually a product of his mind. Then again, Nina had seen it when he had shown her his secret. Of course, she only saw it after he produced it. Maybe the thought of the key made it real; or, rather, it became real when he needed it. Or…
Trevor shook his head and gave up the idea of solving that particular riddle.
Regardless, the secret key opened an equally secret door hidden behind a cabinet inside the utility closet in the mansion’s basement. That tiny door opened to a tight staircase descending into darkness. The modern feel of the finished basement disappeared replaced with earthen walls. The stairs ended at a small, damp room. A gentle hum radiated in the darkness.
Trevor moved through the lightless chamber aided by memory and habit until he found and ignited a small lamp atop an ancient wooden table. An oily burning smell added to the aroma of damp rot.
The soft glow of the lamp illuminated the room’s only other object: a decaying wood and iron chest that could have come straight from the set of a pirate movie.
He walked to the chest, stooped, and opened the lid. A blue and gray glow radiated out, filling the chamber in light.
Trevor retreated a step from the chest and waited. A sphere floated up, hovering above the chest like a buoy floating on water. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light Trevor saw-through the orb’s clear membrane skin-the image of a double helix-of DNA.
“One more time, I suppose,” and as he spoke he stopped to think. He had visited the orb on his first night in the mansion. It imparted knowledge and skills from a library of genetic memories. In the years since, he periodically returned to recharge from the data bank by standing within a few paces of the object as it delivered bursts of knowledge. Sort of like warming his hands near an open fire.
The glowing sphere taught Trevor how to shoot like a soldier, how to fly an Apache helicopter, how to repair electrical wiring, plumbing, and drive a main battle tank. All skills taken from dead human souls whose memories had been stored by the floating sphere.
“That’s not exactly true, now is it?” Trevor spoke to the sphere. It did not react. The humming continued. It glowed with the same intensity. “A collection of human memories, sure. But a few alien ones, too.”
Indeed, Trevor knew how to fly Centurian shuttles and understood the workings of the Witiko device, certainly due to this sphere’s library of knowledge. He had also found that Fromm-the Chaktaw leader on that parallel Earth-knew how to fly Geryon dirigibles, no doubt a gift from his bank of genetic memories, albeit Chaktaw ones with-apparently-some Geryon sprinkled in.
“A collection of human memories-and alien,” he repeated aloud to fully grasp the idea.
Those memories-or the people who had bequeathed those memories to him-were a tremendous weight of responsibility that nearly drown his humanity, leaving no room for anything other than the mission; an end that justified any means.
The Old Man had said at their first meeting that Trevor was a link in a chain. It appears that chain was, in fact, a chain of DNA stretching back to the dawn of man on one end and his son on the other. In fact…
“The conception of my son started all this; started Armageddon,” Trevor reasoned in the glowing sphere. “Sort of like the starter pistol to get things going, right? At the same time, you enter the picture. A coincidence? Somehow I doubt it.”
Of course Trevor had not known of JB’s conception at the time of the invasion. Ashley disappeared before she could tell him. His son’s birth had been delayed by more than a year due to his mother ‘riding the ark.’
“But that didn’t matter, did it? JB was the right genetic code. The reunion of an original strand of DNA the Old Man and his pals slipped into the primordial soup here on Earth. From there it dissipated and worked its way through the human race from the cave man days until me and Ashley conceived JB. Some kind of pure line of the genetic code. So being the father of the reincarnated original son earned me the privilege of becoming my race’s champion? What then does that make Jorgie?” He pointed at the humming ball of light and suggested, “What if you come from JB, too? You’re a ball of DNA, right? Maybe all that time that his genetic code was floating around the gene pool it started soaking up all those memories and knowledge and whatever. Then the Old Man and his buddies sort of pulled out a little bit of JB when he was conceived and made you? What about that? Could that be the truth?”
The ball hummed and hovered. Trevor could feel the energy radiating from it. He could sense the ideas and thoughts and power trying to seep into his mind. It wanted to teach. That, after all, was its purpose. It’s only purpose. Much like Trevor’s single-minded purpose demanding he survive, fight, and sacrifice.
“So where did it all start?”
Trevor remembered fragments from the conversation between Gods he overheard when plugged into The Order’s machine. They had discussed a ‘root cosmos’. No doubt an original universe in which the original versions of the Duass, the Feranites, the Geryons, the Hivvans and the rest-as well as humanity-had sprung. After all, Trevor had learned more than four years ago that humanity truly belonged on Sirius, if not for the powers behind Armageddon who had transplanted mankind to this Earth, just as they had transplanted each of the other races to other Earths across a series of parallel universes.
“Wait a second. Wait just one second.”
He smiled to himself as an idea came to mind. He felt certain he had discovered another piece of the mystery, one that could explain why his personal library of genetic memories included skills from alien races. Trevor took that idea and filed it away for another day.
“Ah, shit, enough of this,” Trevor muttered as he realized he needed to get this over with in order to attend the upcoming meeting. “Okay then-give it to me…”
He stepped closer to the glowing sphere. The feeling of energy grew as if the ball might be a fire and he stepped closer to the flames; closer to the raging heat.
“C’mon-give it to me…”
The memories came in bunches, but not in a recognizable manner. Images floated through his mind. He saw an ancient catapult pulled taut. He heard the battle cry of Zulu warriors. He felt the cold in the bloody snow at Stalingrad.
Trevor did not know which specific memories or skills entered his mind. They would rise to the surface when needed.
“I want more. Give it all to me.”
The energy crackled around him in a cocoon of static and fire. The ball glowed more intently. He closed his eyes and the images poured into his mind. A cloud of deadly mustard gas floating over a trench. A wall of water 150 meters high crashing into the Minoan ports on the north side of Crete. A Prussian general leading columns of Fusiliers toward Waterloo.
“More.”
Trevor held his hands just above the orb. The membrane pulsated and rolled like churning sea water. His hands shook as the energy tried to repel his reach.
It came. All of it in a line of images, sounds, and ideas. Trevor saw concepts on blackboards and computer chips from the inside out, weapons factories, and rockets carrying the first satellites to orbit. Shouts of victory, screams of pain, tears of anguish-one after another.
But he needed more. He needed it all.
He already stood closer to the sphere than ever before. Now, he took the final step.
Trevor grunted and plunged his hands into the orb. The membrane bent then popped in a flash. Tendrils of energy wrapped around his arms up to his elbows. He cried out as the power deluged his mind. The energy crackled across his entire shaking body. The sphere warped oblong, then round again, then its surface splashed and kicked in a turbulent storm.
Trevor no longer felt grounded in that sub-basement room. His eyes snapped shut and his mind floated through time even as the pain shocked his brain like a thousand electric eels swimming in his mind.
Colonial minutemen marching to battle-Shogun warriors fighting for honor-Genghis Khan’s hordes sweeping across the steppes-and-and…
— ancient Hivvan tribesmen first mastering the use of a cross-bow like weapon and using it to down a giant shaggy beast terrorizing their village-a Witiko scientist test-firing a powerful rocket across a jagged red landscape boiling under a red giant-a Chaktaw trainer subduing a monstrous Jaw-Wolf with an electric rod-warring tribes of duck-billed Duass battling through the night in a swamp filled with spilled blood-formations of Centurian soldiers marching in neat order under the heat of two suns…
The library of genetic memories flashed and unloaded. The beautiful sphere of blue and gray withered and crumbled into grains of black sand which fell into the open chest below. Trevor stood there, his hands clutching at nothing, shaking as the last impulses of energy bounced around inside his body and mind like ricocheting bullets.
And then the flood came, of information and memories, languages and skills, images and thoughts. The collection overwhelmed his senses and he fell to the soft floor of the secret room.