ARC OF THE IMMORTALS Book 2

Time Rifts-21: A Rent in Reality

Violence in a World of Peace

(warning: two scenes of violence)

Recap of Chapter 20 Unintended Consequences: The two gigantic ships from separate dimensions Mu1 (with Jac and Geordae Phorae aboard) and Mu2 (with Touzdae aboard) jump into the arc two more times with similar results.

Touzdae docks her Needlecraft to an emergency airlock near an Entu Monk enclave. As the merged realities separate she is pulled back into the Mu2 reality. Jac is taken on the third round to the Gypsum’s stronghold at the bottom of the sphere in the starboard quarter of the Mu2 to a chamber. When the realities separate he loses consciousness and regains in at the bottom of the sphere of Mu1 under a holographic mask near the Lingham Stone. The stone has morphed into an egg and is glowing.

Docktor Vishop Malley tells Touzdae that the Gypsums may be holding Jac because they see him as a key to their future. He challenges Touzdae to look at the emotional underbelly of the Mu2 inhabitants. Touzdae discovers that her empathic and telepathic abilities are blocked. Malley helps Touzdae’s understanding of the violence of the Mu2 doppelgängers and their magnetic appeal to non-doppelgängers. He tells Touzdae that her doppelgänger was murdered thousands of years ago. DKr. Malley says he has built a device similar to the Obz Time Hopper without the risks. He invites Touzdae to see the murder for herself.

Current Episode:

I have a thirsty need to know what happened to my other half. Was it Luna? Is that why I can’t remember? No, No, NO. Don’t get confused between the two dimensions, Touzdae, she thought. She followed him through his lab to a hatch, down a ladder, and through a narrow passageway.

They passed into a narrow owl’s pupil-shaped control room. Malley stood behind a chair with his hands on the back.

“Sit here, please,” he said. She sat.

“I should strap myself in?”

“That’s right. In a few moments, the wall in front of you will dissolve. You will be in a room made with bands of gold, turquoise, and amber, in-laid into alabaster. Other precious stones, elements, and metals are in the alabaster too.” He stopped talking and looked at her face filled with awe.

“You’ve seen this configuration before, yes?” he asked her.

“I have. In two places. Aboard the Nez, Jac’s ship, and at the Obz Station.”

“We can talk later about it,” he paused, smiled, and continued, “I set spacetime coordinates. I will be monitoring you from here. Drink of water?”

“No,” Touzdae responded and strapped in.

“Let me know the moment you want out,” he told her. “I will bring you out when you say.”

The walls behind Touzdae dissolved. Her chair turned in one 360-degree downward arc of about three feet down-angle. It stopped. A few seconds passed. The wall faded to her cottage on Theta Prime, located in the region known as The Wilds. It was a rural area outside the bounds of the Multiversity and the Institute.

Do you hear me? DKr. Malley asked. His voice was inside her head.

Yes. I hear you, Touzdae responded by thought.

I am here to explain it, if need be, and as your safety value, he thought. And he asked, What do you see?

She transmuted the images she was seeing onto one of his overhead screens. Directly above, do you see?

At first, he didn’t know where to look. He looked up. The fuzzy image cleared as he participated with it.

Yes, this is extraordinary, bravo, Malley was enthusiastic in his thought to her.

Bendel was napping on a recliner by the bay window. A man in a radiation-protection suit dematerialized inside the window. He took the suit off, piece by piece. She recognized him. It was Bendel. There were two of them.

Touzdae’s heart started to race.

Remember your breathwork, DKr. Malley’s thoughts soothed.

She breathed the first breath of the 27th breath exercise and slowed her heart rate.

She saw them talking. But she couldn’t hear them.

I can’t hear them, she thought to DKr. Malley.

No audio available. Do the best you can to understand their haptics. Read lips if you can. DKr. Malley encouraged.

Touzdae completed nine of the twenty-seven breaths. Her empathic and telepathic abilities opened. Her thoughts translated their words and they came through on DKr. Malley’s overhead screen speakers.

“Would you like a drink?” the sitting Bendel asked as he started to get up.

“Yes, I would. Don’t bother getting up I know where your bar-back hutch is,” Invader Bendel told his double.

Bendel, back turned to his double, opened the hutch and poured himself a brandy. Resident Bendel stood. He snatched a poker from the tool set by the fireplace.

As Bendel the invader walked back with his drink, the resident Bendel posed a question. “Did you come here with a proposition to steal my Touzdae or kill me and take her from me?”

“Neither. I came to ask what you did about Jac.”

“Who?”

“Jac, who stole my Touzdae away from me,” invader Bendel said.

Resident Bendel thrust the poker into invader Bendel’s chest. The impaled man wavered and the glass fell to the floor unbroken.

“Bendel, I’m home,” Touzdae heard the voice of her duplicate self in the foyer of the cottage. Bendel the invader was coughing up blood. Blood pumping out of his front and back sides. Bendel, the resident, pulled a tapestry from the wall and through it over the body in a haphazard manner.

Touzdae, the observer, knew that duplicate Touzdae would go to the toilet. It was habit, for the both of them.

Resident Bendel stood by the window looking down into the Entu ornamental garden and waterfall at dusk. He had invader Bendel’s glass with a small thimble of brandy at the bottom. Shock pervaded his body.

Resident Touzdae entered the living area and stopped short.

“What have you done?” Resident Touzdae shocked, she turned towards the distorted figure at the window. He was in shadow half turned away from her.

Resident Bendel turned, hesitated, and spoke:

“What do you mean?”

“You killed my Bendel, you freak.” She felt his darkness.

“How could you know that?”

“I have eyes. I can see,” Touzdae gestured at the body.

The tapestry had slid off invader Bendel’s face.

When resident Bendel turned observer Touzdae caught a momentary glimpse into resident Touzdae’s mind. Touzdae saw what her double saw in Bendel’s face.

“You’re a freak, a monster.”

He leapt 16 feet across the room in a frenzy of teeth, tongue out, a growl, claws for hands. Blackness and the deep dark covered her consciousness.

Take me out, Touzdae wept. DKr. Malley, take me out!

The scene was replaced by the alabaster and the rest.

She wept in Vishop Malley’s arms.

Jac gazed at the off-white walls with slow recognition. He heard a distant voice and the roar of a lion.

“We must return him.”

Jac found himself in his quarters shivering. He saw an image of a half-man, half-wild beast leaping across a room upon Touzdae.

He wept.

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