Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) (10 page)

“I’m sure she has wondered, but she didn’t become obsessed with the question. She had a lot on her mind. She had just created a new world and had a new life to build. Thereafter, others crossed over. Who had time for unanswerable questions?”

“Yes. Who had time?” Mara mumbled to herself. She stood up from her stool and paced inside the doughnut hole of the circular counter, taking in the elaborate laboratory and all its strange equipment. It struck her as odd that someone so willing to build such a grand facility dedicated to experimentation—which, after all, was a means of exploring the unknown, a search for answers—would chalk up the question of the Chronicle as unanswerable. Perhaps her counterpart was busy building a new life, or maybe it was just a child’s acceptance of the way things are. The Chronicle of Cosms was there because it had always been. She happened to be the first one to find it.

The question prompted Mara to recall her first lesson with
her
Ping at the warehouse in Portland.

Tell me your creation myth, he had said.

My creation myth? I don’t follow.

How do you think this world, this universe, came into being?

You mean, from a religious perspective or a scientific one?

From your perspective. What do you believe?

Well, I guess I believe in the big bang theory.

Explain.

There was this big
bang
billions of years ago, and then the universe came into existence. It has been spreading out since.

What
bang
ed? What caused the
bang
?

I have no idea. God? I don’t think anyone knows.

And this is what you believe? Something went
bang
, and here we are?

Mara chuckled as she walked to an elaborate piece of equipment sitting on the counter that looked like a large copper microscope.

“What’s so funny?” Ping asked.

She grinned at the familiar face of the stranger before her. “I was just thinking about some of my own unanswerable questions. I guess we all have them. Don’t we?”

Ping cocked his head.

Mara laughed. “I’m not crazy. Sometimes I need to work through these things on my own, in my head. You know what I mean?”

“Some people might call that being stubborn,” he said.

She conceded the point with a nod. “So how does my counterpart use this lab to alter her Reality? You said it’s different than the
magic tricks
I do.”

“It would be more precise to say this laboratory is where she experiments with ways to alter and enhance our Reality. She uses the Chronicle of Cosms to accomplish that.”

“Oh, so she still has the Chronicle. Can we take a look at it?”

Ping nodded to the device on the counter. “It’s right here.”

“The Chronicle is a microscope? This is what your Mara found in the void? A magic microscope that helped her create this world?” Mara regretted the incredulity in her voice the moment the words left her lips.

Ping gave her an irritated look but didn’t reply immediately. He unsnapped from its brackets the tube portion of the device—currently pointed down at a turntable that featured five round holes. “To the uninitiated, I suppose it looks like a microscope, especially when it’s mounted, stabilized. And functionally it works somewhat like a microscope, but, as you can see, this device has no stage on which to place specimens or a turret of lenses with which you can adjust magnification.” He pointed to the turntable and then held up the tube. “See? Quite distinct from a microscope.”

“But it’s clearly some kind of eyepiece. Correct? Why else would it be suspended in brackets like that?”

“The stand allows the progenitor to observe a sample without being immersed in its substance,” Ping said.

Mara raised an eyebrow. “
Immersed in its substance
? What does that mean?”

“It’s how she does her work, how she refines the characteristics of a given substance to make it more useful. It’s through these means she alters our Reality. Understand?”

“No. Not at all,” she said. Holding out her hand, she added, “Perhaps if I took a look through it, I might get a notion of what you’re saying.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea since you aren’t familiar with how the Chronicle works.” Ping pulled back and held the copper tube to his chest.

That’s when Mara noticed some of the ornamentation—gems and engraving along its side. She couldn’t see all of it through Ping’s fingers, but the blue azurite crystals encrusted in rings were familiar. Glancing down the shaft of the object, she noticed the black crystals ringing the bottom and the orange ones encircling the top. Between the rings of gems, engraved symbols—some horizontal lines, others circular glyphs—adorned the surface. She straightened, reached into her pocket and pulled out the Chronicle,
her
Chronicle, the Chronicle of Creation.

She held it out to him and asked, “Do the symbols on this medallion look familiar to you?”

Without loosening his grip on the eyepiece, Ping examined her medallion. After a moment, his eyes widened, and he held the twelve-inch tube next to the medallion. “The engravings, they are identical. Even the stones are the same.” He shifted his gaze to her. “What does it mean?”

“These symbols represent the metaphysical principles I told you about earlier. At least that is how
my
Ping explained them. Do they have significance to you or to your Mara?”

Ping shook his head and looked down at the two objects.

“Let me guess. Another unanswerable question?” she said.

“More like an unasked question. We have never discussed the ornamentation of the Chronicle of Cosms. We accepted it at face value—simple decoration, I suppose,” he said. “It implies these objects have a similar provenance though.”

Mara slipped the medallion back into her pocket. “Does that mean you trust me enough to look through that thing?”

He pulled it back again but not so close this time. “It’s not a matter of trust.” After pondering the question, he turned to the brackets and reattached the tube, suspending it once again above the turntable with holes in it. “That object in your pocket, when you first encountered it, did you have any unusual experiences—things you didn’t understand or couldn’t explain?”

“That would be fair to say,” she said. “Why?”

“My Mara had a few mishaps with this Chronicle as well. That is all I’m trying to avoid,” he said.

“All right. I won’t touch it. Do you mind if I take a closer look?”

He stepped back. “Just don’t look into the eyepiece.”

She leaned over the counter and looked closer at the turntable. Nearby, a small flat crate with rows of indentations, like an egg carton, sat on the counter. It held two dozen clear plastic globes. Mara reached out for one but pulled back her hand. To Ping she asked, “May I?”

He shrugged. “Sure. They are sample containers.”

Mara picked up one and examined it. It was transparent but felt like thin plastic, like those Easter eggs used to hide candy. A seam split its equator, and each pole featured a tiny raised button that looked like a camera shutter. She held the small clear ball over a hole in the turntable and dropped it in. The circumference of the hole was smaller than the ball, providing a stable place for it to perch without falling through. “She puts a sample in one of these little globes and looks at it with the Chronicle. Is that it?” she asked, picking up the ball, placing it between her palms and twisting. It split into two halves, like a toy Easter egg.

“Yes, but she does more than observe. She searches for usable constituents that she applies to undifferentiated matter, to steam,” he said. “Understand?”

“Not really. Sounds like you’re talking gibberish.”

“Did the metaphysical concepts my counterpart taught you sound like nonsense when he explained them to you?”

“Frankly yes. When he first told me, I thought it was a bunch of hooey. It took a while for it to click.”

“And what made it click?”

“Experience. I met people—strange people—from other realms, and I learned how to use my abilities. It was hard to deny metaphysics when I was living proof of it.”

Ping’s eyes slid to the side, and he eyed the Chronicle of Cosms while pressing a finger to his lips. “Hmm. Maybe we could do the same here without causing too much trouble.” His gaze shifted to Mara. “But only if you do exactly what I say. No more and no less. Do you understand?”

“Deal. What are we going to do?”

“A little experiment. Hand me one of those sample containers,” he said.

Mara reassembled the one from earlier and gave it to him. Glancing up, he walked backward several steps until he stood beneath a transparent hose dangling from the ceiling. He pulled down the hose, pressing its nozzle onto the button atop the plastic globe. A hissing sound filled the room. The copper organ pipes in the back of the room let out a
clunk-clunk
that made Mara jump. When this hiss turned into a whistle, Ping removed the nozzle, which emitted a spitting sound. The process reminded Mara of putting air in a tire. He held up the tiny globe, now filled with a tiny swirling cloud.

“That’s our sample?” she asked.

He shook his head. “That’s our steam, our undifferentiated matter—our canvas, if you will.” He dropped the sample into the turntable and rotated it with a finger until the globe aligned with the bottom lens of the eyepiece. “Now, look through the upper lens without touching the Chronicle, not with your hand and not with your cheek. Look. Don’t touch. Understand?”

Mara’s brows knit into a frown. “Whatever.”

She bent forward and lined up her right eye with the top of the Chronicle. Clouds roiled inside a masked circle—like any microscope. After an instant, the image swallowed her. Vapor filled her field of vision. It rolled in from as far as she could see, as if to a horizon out there in the steamy distance.

After she gasped, she heard Ping’s voice. “Be careful not to bump into the eyepiece. Tell me what you see.”

“It’s like I’m floating in clouds. No, wait. They’re not that thick. It’s like a thick fog, but it keeps rolling and rolling, swirling from every direction. It even seems like it’s coming from behind me. Weird.”

She turned around, and the image melted away. After shaking her head, she stared down at the hand she’d used to steady herself, grasping the edge of the counter. She looked up at Ping and said, “That seemed so real, like one of those virtual-reality headsets. Amazing.”

“That’s not even the impressive part.” He looked around the room and stopped at the beaker Mara had shattered earlier. Picking it up and handing it to her, he said, “You like breaking glass, so why don’t we give this a try?”

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“Just hold it for a moment.” He walked along the counter and stopped when he spotted a metal bucket. Grabbing it by its wire handle, he returned to Mara and set it on the ground before her. “Now, shatter the beaker in the bucket.”

“Just throw it in there?”

Ping nodded.

She shrugged and threw the beaker as hard as she could into the bottom of the bucket.

He cringed at the loud clatter but smiled as he lifted it, shaking it, making
clink
ing noises as he walked to the counter. Once there, he plucked a sample globe from the carton and gave it to Mara. “Please open this and hand me half.”

She twisted the clear ball into two pieces and handed one back to him. He used it to scoop broken glass from the bucket. Handing it back to her, he said, “Okay, put the top on and place the sample on the turntable.”

She did so and stepped back. “Now what?”

Ping pointed and said, “Rotate the turntable. How can you look at the glass sample if it’s not aligned with the eyepiece?”

“Oh. We’re going to look at the broken glass through the Chronicle? Is that what we’re doing?”

“What did you think?” he asked.

“Look, I’m new here. Don’t assume any of this makes sense to me.”

He nodded. “You look so much alike, it’s easy to assume basic things. You know what I mean?”

“Yes. Now, what’s the point of this?”

“We will look at the glass through the Chronicle. While you examine it, I want you to think about the characteristics of the glass that might be useful in other contexts.”

“You mean, like the fact that it is transparent?”

“Yes, exactly. Imagine how useful it would be if you could take that quality of glass and apply it to other things in the world. Understand?”

She looked confused. “You mean as a thought experiment. You know, like what Einstein used to do?”

“Who’s Einstein?”

“Never mind,” she said. “Think about the clearness of glass. Got it. Can I peek now?”

“Go ahead, but remember to observe. Don’t touch the eyepiece at all.”

“What’s your hang-up with touching it?”

“We do it my way or not at all,” he said.

“Okay. Okay.” She leaned over the eyepiece and looked into it. This time she felt it sweep her into a world of swirling steam, but it looked different, wispier somehow. Making a point of staring ahead so she didn’t break her visual connection, she peered more intently, ascertaining how the glass sample differed from the steam she’d examined before.

“What do you see?” Ping asked, out of her sight.

“Steam. Like before, just not as much of it. No, that’s not right. It’s thinner than before. And it’s not moving as quickly. Seems to be less volatile than the previous sample,” she said. “Is that normal?”

“Generally differentiated matter does move slower, but are you sure it’s thinner? That sounds like it might be off. Take a moment and examine it more closely. Concentrate on what constituents give the glass its transparent properties.”

Mara stared into the steam and realized more was there than she had first realized. Wisps of steam faded to and from sight, like strands of gossamer catching the light. The space around her was thick with the strands, glistening and disappearing into the sheer vapor.

“I think I see it. Nearly invisible fibers wound into the steam. There’s hardly any steam now, just a residual bit wafting about.”