Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm Read online

  Whoa.

  The voices intruded once more, shattering his trip into his memory. Charlie asked what Angel was throwing as the wall exploded, covering the basement floor in chunks of drywall and dust and concrete from the foundation. The debris moved continually farther into the basement, away from the wall with the hole.

  “It’s not exactly… falling in there, is it?” Angel asked. “So what’s making it move?”

  “I think the answer’s the same for all of these questions,” the Mechanic said, his voice thoughtful. “We saw Angel throw something in the direction of the wall. It can’t be coincidence that the opening appeared at just that instant. So… whatever she threw is both invisible and can tunnel through drywall, concrete, and dirt.”

  Fil’s memory of the timeframe continued, but the conversation had lessened his concentration and the immersive quality of the experience. He could see the memories in his mind’s eye while listening to the conversation. As much as he enjoyed the feeling of retreating fully into his memory, he realized it was best if he stayed present.

  “Adam looks worried about something,” he said, letting them know he was listening in again. “I remember sensing that concern from him. He was very worried about the condition of the craft.”

  “We have several mysteries to resolve after seeing the memory to this point,” Eva stated. “The meaning behind Angel’s throwing motion, the nature of the invisible material responsible for boring a hole in a concrete wall, and the reason for Adam’s concern about the condition of the craft.”

  Fil’s memory shifted back to the debris flowing into the basement, each bit moving the piles further from the hole.

  “There’s intelligence at work there,” the Mechanic said. “This isn’t something trivial at play.”

  “Energy could do that,” Angel said. “But why would I throw Energy at the wall?”

  “What if you’re throwing something, not because you need to throw it, but because you want us, sitting here today, to know that it’s not Energy?” Eva asked. “If you’d done nothing, we would have suspected Energy at play.”

  “She didn’t use Energy,” Fil said. “I was there. Yes, I was six years old. But I would have sensed any Energy used to do what she did. And Porthos made note in Dad’s memory that he sensed no Energy coming from the house. There was a door opened and the back of the house was gone by this point. No, Porthos would have sensed Energy had Angel used it.”

  “Thus, we must conclude Angel’s throwing motion is a clue to those of us watching this memory today,” Eva said, nodding.

  “Why, though?” Charlie asked, puzzled. “Why would Angel make the effort to do something just to give us a clue like that?”

  “Without that clue, I would most certainly have used Energy to develop that tunnel.” Angel’s voice was firm. “And as Eva noted, there was no way Energy usage would have gone unnoticed. So… the clue here prevented me from making a critical mistake. That alone makes the clue important. But I suspect there’s more to it than that.”

  On the screen, Fil’s memory’s continued. He’d paused the playback of his memory as they discussed the rationale behind the throwing motion. When the memory resumed, he watched future Fil descend the stairs carrying the Assassin, whom he deposited roughly in the trunk of the time machine. Adam climbed into the machine and scooped a small device from a bag resting on the front seat of the machine. He stood on the seat and affixed the device to the basement ceiling. As he stepped back down, Adam glanced directly at the young Fil and flexed his fingers apart, mimicking an explosion.

  “Ah, so Adam blows up the house.” Angel grinned. “The Assassin will be jealous.”

  Fil snorted.

  The older Fil moved up the stairs once more, and his six-year-old self returned his gaze to the hole in the wall, just in time to see, not dirt and debris, but the battered body of Will Stark appear. The body floated, held aloft by some invisible support system, and moved to the time machine. Will nestled into the back seat of the vehicle, held upright despite the fact that he was clearly losing consciousness. The older Fil returned to the basement with Smokey—Fil felt a tear slip down his cheek inside his cocoon—and he saw the dog’s tail twitch.

  He was already starting to restore his old friend to health before they left 2030.

  The three time travelers were there, talking to him, telling Hope to accept the help she needed, urging him to take care of his mother, urging him to let go of his anger. He wasn’t sure if they were talking about his previous obsession with his father’s abandonment, or his continued struggles with guilt over the Cataclysm. In either event, he needed that message.

  The messages about his mother’s health, about not waiting too long to correct everything… he began to wonder about those messages. Were they intended for his mother? Or were they directed at the invisible participant in all of the events that day, the man invisible to every human and Energy sense?

  Angel looked at a spot above his head, and motioned toward the hole in the wall as she spoke. “Josh, that is something your sister needs to return to take care of. She needs to come back here and claim what’s rightfully hers. You won’t understand this, not yet. But remember my words, and when you do understand them, pass them along to her.”

  The thoughts came together. Angel throwing something not Energy based at the wall. Something able to dig holes in walls, something able to fetch his father from the grip of the Hunters. It was something Porthos couldn’t detect.

  He shook his head to pull completely free of the memory. “Let me out. I know what it means.”

  The cocoon opened moments later, and the cool air aggravated the chill of the sweat he’d generated during the more intense memory sequences. Charlie had warned him of that when they first discussed reviewing his memories, and Eva said Will emerged from most of his immersion experiences drenched in sweat as well.

  Fil didn’t care.

  “It’s all tied together,” he said. He glanced at the Mechanic. “The advanced nanos in Dad’s memories of our future, things you’re working on now, it all fits. Remember? Adam told Dad that the nanos could do almost anything; they were problem solving, intelligent, operated by specialized versions of the machines in our heads. Just like the machine I was just in. That’s what it was. Dad had the ones he got in the future. That’s how he shielded me and my Mom that day. He used them to keep us hidden without Energy, used it to Shield both of us when Mom gave up her memory of her Energy skills and both of us were at risk for Energy exposure. Angel had those same intelligent nanos at her disposal. They’re so small that they’re invisible, but they’re physical devices that aren’t Energy based. Those nanos she pretended to throw dug the hole, pushed the dirt aside, and refilled the hole later.” He paused and saw the looks of partial comprehension. “Don’t you see? They left before the hole was refilled. She left her nanos behind when they returned to the future. That’s what the message meant, Angel. Your nanos are still there at our house in Pleasanton. And we’re supposed to go get them.”

  The Mechanic tapped his finger on the table. “If that’s true… then we need to try something with Angel, something we’ve not done before.”

  “Which is?” Angel asked.

  “I’ve been… trying to build those communication nanos that they mentioned in the memories from the future. The ones that let you talk to your own batch of nanos with your thoughts. We need to get those communication nanos into Angel so that she can claim the machines left behind in Pleasanton as her own. But I don’t know how well they work. Not yet.”

  Fil gave the man a stern look. “You’re saying you want to inject my sister with something unproven so that we can collect the advanced nanos in Pleasanton?”

  The Mechanic took a deep breath. “I don’t like it at all, I assure you. I’d do it myself. And I will do it myself. But at some point, yes, we need to get those communication nanos into Angel and travel back to Pleasanton to see if she can talk to and control the nanos from the future.”
>
  Angel nodded. “Then let’s get started. I’m not afraid.”

  Fil felt his face tighten. She might not be afraid. But that didn’t mean he had to like the idea.

  Speaking of ideas he didn’t like…

  He glanced at Charlie. The look on Charlie’s face said he, too, was no fan of using Angel as a test subject for an unproven technology.

  His face burned once more. Angel had finally found her special someone.

  He resisted the urge to incinerate Charlie on the spot, reflective. Angel had been unhappy with Sarah at first, but had gotten to know his wife. The two had quickly become the best of friends. But they’d lost two years of their time as friends due to that pettiness.

  He glanced at Angel, saw the look of determination on her face, saw her glance at Charlie, and he made up his mind.

  He didn’t have to like it. But if Charlie was the one his sister chose? He’d be supportive.

  It was the least he could do to support her.

  XV

  Retrieval

  2155 A.D.

  “You can open your eyes now.”

  Angel let her eyelids flutter open. “Should I notice anything different?”

  “At this point, we’ll consider noticing nothing to be a sign of success.”

  She glanced at the Mechanic. His face showed focus, mild apprehension, but an unmistakable look of excitement as well. She could feel his concern, a worry that this process would hurt her. He would never hurt her, but he knew that this experiment was the potential breakthrough they needed to reach levels of technological sophistication they’d never before imagined.

  And Angel was the only one who could serve as the test subject for that experiment.

  Charlie was there. He was always there, always watching her, always ensuring nothing bad happened. “Do you feel okay?” His voice was anxious, full of concern.

  She took a mental inventory, testing all of her limbs and extremities, sensing her Energy, tapping into the expanded sensory abilities she’d had her entire life. “I feel fine.” She sent a shy smile at Charlie, laughing at herself inwardly. There’d been little hiding their relationship. Fil had a big-brother-to-boyfriend chat. Charlie had left the conversation with little doubt that a man who’d once leveled three dozen major metropolises while angry considered his sister just as important as his wife and daughter. Charlie had looked Fil eye-to-eye, nodded, and told Fil to save his Energy, because anyone who harmed Angel wouldn’t be around long enough for Fil to wreak vengeance. Fil had nodded, they shook hands, and with their relationship thusly blessed, they’d stopped worrying about appearing together in public.

  Fil hovered into view, concern on his face. “I’m fine,” she repeated. Would the men in her life ever stop treating her like a child? She glanced at the Mechanic, curious about the process. “Did you actually place the machines in the correct places, or did they travel there themselves?”

  “They traveled there,” the Mechanic replied. “We reused the target-seeking technology used in some of the simpler, more specialized nanos. It’s the same technique first used to get nanos to specific captives in the old Aliomenti prisons. The target in this case was far smaller, and the recoding effort was made more difficult as a result. It had to be just right, attaching inside the endings of very specific batches of nerves. We also had to keep the nano count small because we didn’t want to trigger your immune system into attacking.” He glanced at a nearby screen. “The readouts tell me that the machines are acting appropriately.”

  Angel nodded. “It’s time for the field test.”

  The Mechanic nodded in return.

  Those who’d participate in the field test had already gathered in the room, though most hadn’t hovered over her during the insertion procedure. Fil had returned to his seat next to Adam after checking on her. The two had become quite close since the Cataclysm, building upon a mock relationship used to explain Hope’s presence in a small suburban neighborhood so many decades earlier. Josh Stark had become Fil Trask and called a disguised Adam “Grandpa.” Adam was now a close friend and mentor, and conversations between the two had helped heal her brother’s deep emotional traumas, for which Angel felt a sense of eternal gratitude.

  Charlie stood near the Mechanic, watching the older man shut down the equipment they’d used for the insertion and activated a portable device they’d use for the field tests. Charlie had deep interest in the most advanced technology the Alliance created, and that meant he acted as an apprentice and assistant of sorts to the Mechanic. The Mechanic was a technical phenomenon, able to see solutions others could not, fix things others had broken, and anticipate changes they’d need to make before others even recognized a problem. He seemed to enjoy Charlie’s presence. Charlie was decidedly young by Alliance standards. Charlie’s father left the Aliomenti prison minutes before the tsunami destroyed the building. He and his wife celebrated the two-year anniversary of his freedom by welcoming Charlie into the world.

  The Mechanic looked up from the machine and glanced at Angel. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  The Mechanic flicked a button on the portable holographic projector. The space above erupted into the image of… nothing. Nothing but a blurry haze of static. “Go.”

  She pictured an old-fashioned automobile, bright red in color, willing the image to the target devices. Those devices, the prototype nanos the Mechanic had built, received the signal and translated them into images and code. The Mechanic watched the microscopic view on his display; he’d check to see if their test machines—crude forerunners of the machines they’d seek out shortly—moved in response to her mental image. Everyone else watched the space above the projector.

  A perfect holographic replica of the red sports car in her mind appeared.

  “Nice car,” Fil said, chuckling. “Where’d you come up with that idea?”

  She sighed. “It was the car Dad took to the lawyer back before the Fire. Mom showed me pictures of it a few times. I always thought it was a beautiful automobile.”

  Fil nodded. Charlie looked intrigued, and Angel made a mental note to share that story with him one day.

  The Mechanic glanced up. “It’s not perfect, but… the nanos definitely are moving in response to your images. That’s a strong first test.”

  “Strong enough?” Adam asked.

  The Mechanic thought for a moment, then nodded. “It’s enough. We can move on to the next phase.”

  They all stood while the Mechanic powered down the holographic projector. They walked from the room in pairs, staggering their departures, trying to make it look as though they’d arrived at the Port Hudson docks together by pure chance.

  The Cataclysm had derailed initial efforts to replicate the southern hemisphere undersea ports. Survivors wanted to congregate in more populated areas, and the new facilities, sparsely populated, had suffered mass emigrations as a result. The Bakers, old friends of the Starks in Pleasantville, had moved out of Port Hudson—the first of the new northern outposts completed—and moved to a human community, working to ensure the humans living there had safe buildings for sleeping. The work on other ports had resumed only a few years earlier; Port Hudson, located in the bay of the same name, served as a residence space for workers and the primary factory for producing prefabricated parts. Plans to bore a tunnel into the Arctic icepack and landmass were on hold until they completed the two additional ports and assessed if the needed a northern Cavern as well. Sites like Port Hudson already provided them with direct access to locations in the Northern Hemisphere. Angel doubted they’d ever decide to build another Cavern.

  They climbed into two four-passenger spheres and set course for Pleasanton. The autopilot capabilities took over, and they soon emerged from beneath the frigid northern waters and flew toward the city of Pleasanton.

  Charlie looked thoughtful. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could apply the technology of these spheres to the nanos? Powered flight and automatic navigation systems. That would be impres
sive.”

  The Mechanic stiffened, startled at the comment. “That’s a great idea, Charlie. I’m not sure how we could get the anti-gravity pieces into such small devices, but… that would explain quite a bit.”

  Adam, who watched from the view screen in the other sphere, looked at the Mechanic with deep interest. “What would it explain?”

  “We’ve attributed what happened at the Stark household to nanos, but I’ve not been able to reconcile everything we saw with known information. We’ve got nanos that can form preprogrammed patterns and seek out targets, but they must remain bound to a surface. Will Stark floated when he left that tunnel. How? Nobody used Energy. The only explanation…”

  Fil tapped his fingers, the noise audible from the other sphere. “The only explanation is that the nanos can fly and are strong enough in sufficient quantities to support the mass of a fully grown man. That technology is available today in the spheres. We just need to minimize it and apply it to the nanos.”

  The Mechanic nodded. “Exactly.” He frowned. “The timing on everything that day has been bothering me for a while, relative to the time travelers. Why did the three of you arrive when you did? We can figure out almost to the second at this point when everything happened.”

  “They did cut it rather close,” Charlie said. “If you have a time machine, why not give yourself plenty of time?”

  “Good point,” Fil agreed. “Why not arrive ten minutes earlier, get the tunnel ready, and be standing by to whisk Dad into the basement?”

  “It was all done to give us clues through Fil’s memory of the day.” Angel said. “Fil saw us build the tunnel and saw me throw the nanos at the wall. If we’d gotten there sooner, Fil doesn’t know that. He probably thinks we’d been there for hours, and in discussing his memory of the day, we conclude we dug the tunnel by hand. Instead, we realize I have access to tiny, invisible machines capable of performing incredible feats.” She glanced at Fil on the view screen. “Your memory has served us well, big brother.”