ARC of the IMMORTALS/Book 1

Pursuit: 10.5 Scattered Factions

Recap: In Chapter 10.4 Pursuer-Jac and Harry were killed by Nez Fish’s defensive lasers. Yon’s jumps set the ship in self-destruct mode which results in the ship’s

explosion.

Recap continued: The blast triggered Needlecraft to explode. Everyone save Jac, dies. Jac reversed time. In 10.4.2 Pursuer-Jac (P-Jac) hits Harry with his fist in his jaw and knocks him out. P-Jac fires a laser at a ghost and is blinded by a flash of light. Bendel removes a sarcophagus from Needlecraft’s hold. Yon jumps into Nez’s Spirit world. On the way out he enters his body at the bottom of the pool of life and dies. His body was crushed by Bendel’s sarcophagus. In 10.4.3 Yon escapes with Jac into the next realm. Harry and Bendel are on-board the Fish. P-Jac finds the fog that may lead to the town, the gatekeeper, and the key to the Platform.

Touzdae

“I am alone, now. Jac and Yon are gone. Pursuer is here somewhere. Bendel is on-board. Harry, the two-faced. Nez has hunkered down in the inner world, protecting herself/the ship and in a way me, at least passively,” she stopped whispering to herself. An inventory of all the items with me, then what to do… she thought.

12 dampener posts, a field generator, the dampening field in operation, one laz pistol fully charged, one headlamp, all the food I can eat, a cooking box, all inside an escape craft.

Yon

I don’t know why I have stayed here this long. Even now I can feel billions of possibilities awaiting exploration. I have to restrain myself from the desire to explore all of them at once. In my consciousness travel, I observed one of the other names for this kind of realm on what they call 20th-century Earth in the far distant past. It was called the Akashic Records for spirits to explore roads not taken in the lives where they lived in flesh bodies.

Jac seems confused. Well not as confused as when he triggered the time loops. Is my decisiveness rubbing off on him? He says I can jump back to my home. And while that is true. I choose to stay so that I may give him, no no, impart to him the larger reason why I am helping him. It is because of his Fa-Ma, Yon, same name as me. We are linked, this family of mine and his.

“Jac,” I say to him, said to him, will say to him. He flexes/flexed/will flex his eyebrows acknowledging my prompt.

“When you speak and give more than one possible choice for action you set up echos in the timeline. Do you understand?” I asked him.

“No,” he said to me.

“Good answer because it is singular. Do you understand about the echos?”

Jac

“What was that? Do you see it? Did you feel it?” He wants me to explain about echos. I know what they are. He needs to leave, I thought. “There was a shift somewhere in the center of this — place.” Yon is nodding as he knows.

“Yes, echos. My natural ability to point out choices is working against me here. Spacetime is an intelligence that needs definitive answers, not options, I understand it, yes. The choices I was offering to you, and Touzdae were making potential alternate realities with a short half-life. Splinters in spacetime,” I say, said to Yon. He smiles. I know he understands.

Bendel finished installing sets of control boxes on the bridge of the Nez. Harry moved closer, hovering.

“What?” Bendel snapped.

“Did you bring the device to free me from this younger shell of myself once and for all time?”

“No, I had my hands full with these control boxes and Luna.”

“Where is it?” Harry demanded.

“It’s in the cockpit jump-seat of the Needlecraft.”

“Get it. Get it now,” Harry demanded furious.

“Get it yourself,” Bendel dismissed him as a nothing, a bother, a hindrance.

“Fine,” Harry stormed off in a snit.

P-Jac went towards the light in the fog. He came to a long street of high lamps, There were thin lines of yellow light that did not originate with the lamps. The street seemed to go on forever. P-Jac strode passed the other light lines and down the street.

“Where are you, town?” P-Jac yelled into the fog.

A light appeared to the left of the main road. As he stepped off road a swirl of fog obscured his view. He felt cobblestones beneath his feet. The town, he thought.

Harry climbed down into the jump seat of the Needlecraft. “That Bendel,” he fumed. Tucked into the folds of the seat was the tiny device that could perform three functions. “I have to remember how this thing works. After all, you’d think I’d know how it works. I designed it.”

He fumbled and accidentally pushed one of the buttons.

“I didn’t want to do that. What did I do?” He stood up and tapped out the code on the buttons like a long-remembered rhythm. “Let’s see… Count to nineteen or twenty?” He started counting “one-one thousand, two one-thousand…”

At nineteen his body released a slimy substance on the floor of the small cabin. The ship vacuumed up most of it.

“How do I feel?” he asked himself aloud. “I don’t know, yet.” He dropped the device into a remaining blob of slime. Do I leave it or pick it up? he wondered thinking about it. “Leave it,” he said and climbed out of the cockpit onto the ladder. Harry decided — I feel pretty good.

“I miss Touzdae. How do I bring her here?” he looked at Yon. “Right, she has to get here on her own.”

On the Nez

“I will find a way to get to the Platform,” Touzdae decided. “I know the way there.”

“Touzdae is aboard somewhere. Let’s see if these controls I’ve set up can find her,” Bendel determined, continued with ferocity: I will find her. She is mine!”

Thanks to the editors of Illumination Curated and Dr John Frederick Rose for publishing Pursuit chapters.

All Chapters:

Thank you for joining me in the adventures that span lifetimes and worlds. (If you do NOT wish to be tagged, let me know, and I’ll tag you not):

Barbara Murray | K. Pearson Bradley | René Beauchemin | Dougfrombk | Rebecca Romanelli | Joseph Lieungh | Adam Mackay | Dr. Preeti Singh | Pene Hodge | Ravyne Hawke | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Kris Bedenian | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Blaine Coleman | madmess’s thoughts | Lee David Tyrrell | DL Nemeril | David Price | Rip Parker | Annelise Lords | Libby Shively McAvoy