Hexad: The Chamber (24 page)

"This is too weird," said Dale quietly to Amanda, finding it next to impossible to have her talking to him from across the divide between them.

"You're telling me. Does my hair always look like that?"

"What? Yes. You should be used to it, we've met loads of you, but look at me, I look like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards. Why is my hair sticking out like that?"

"You always look like that," said Amanda.

"What!? Really?"

"We can hear you, you know?" said Dale, from at least fifty meters away.

"What? Oh, sorry, this is just a little bit weird."

"I know," said the Dale.

"Sorry about this, but we had to come," said the Amanda.

"Um, okay. Why?" said Amanda.

"Because when we were you we had this exact same meeting, so we had to jump to be sure that it happened as it did."

"Oh bloody hell, do we have to go through all these mind-melts all the time? You jumped here to talk to us, because when you were us you had this exact same conversation?" said Dale, sure his brain was right now oozing out of his ears.

"Yes, exactly. We didn't want to risk it so here we are."

"And what if you didn't jump, what then?" asked Amanda.

The Dale and the Amanda stared at each other, and then the Dale said, "We really were that stupid, weren't we? Bloody hell."

"Hey!" said Dale. "We can hear you too."

"I know, but it's what we said when we were you. Well, what the Dale and the Amanda said when we were you. Damn, now I'm doing it. And damn, this is what the Dale said when I was where you are."

The Dale was obviously just as confused as Dale was, but he supposed it was understandable — after all, the Dale was saying exactly what another Dale would have said to him when... "Ugh, okay, enough of this, what the bloody hell is going on?"

"This is what's going on, and we're sorry, but it has to be done." The Dale held the Amanda's hand and they began walking toward Dale and Amanda.

What are they doing? Don't they know they are going to create a paradox if they get much closer? We'll just disappear and... Oh no.

"So you get it then?" said the Dale. "You know what has to happen?"

Dale nodded his head, trying not to freak out.

"What? What has to happen?" said Amanda, looking as worried as he felt.

"We're creating a paradox. That us is doing this to us, just as they had it done to them. And on and on it goes."

"I don't understand," said Amanda. "Stand back, you're coming too close," she warned, as the Dale and the Amanda walked towards them.

"Sorry Amanda, but it has to happen this way. You understand?" said the Amanda.

"No, I don't understand. What are you doing?" Amanda began taking steps backwards, but Dale held onto her arm with a tight grip. "Dale, let go of me. What are you doing?"

"We have to go back."

"Back? Back where?"

"Inside," said the Amanda. "You have to go back inside."

"The Chamber you mean? No, I'm not going back in there, I can't. It's too awful."

"I'm sorry," said the Amanda, and she and the Dale rushed toward them, Dale holding her in place as they got closer.

"Dale, let me go. Let me go!"

"I'm sorry, but if they think it's for the best then we have to trust them."

"No, I can't."

It was too late, the Dale and the Amanda were just a few feet away now.

Dale and Amanda disappeared.

Inside Out, Again

Time Unknown

"No, it can't be," cried Amanda, letting her head fall forward, hair covering her eyes so she didn't have to look.

"We obviously had no choice Amanda. We wouldn't have done this to ourselves just to be mean. But stay quiet, let's not draw attention to ourselves." Dale was glad of the cover provided by the canopy. At least jumping into a forest meant the upside-down world of The Chamber was somewhat less dizzying, although the glimpses he got of fields and farmhouses in miniature far above his head were still doing funny things to his insides.

Dale knew it was coming as soon as the Dale and Amanda began walking towards them in the huge empty space. The one thing he hadn't expected was to end up in The Chamber — if he was honest with himself he'd kind of expected to just disappear, even though there was another Dale saying that was what happened to him, so clearly he'd managed to survive. Knowing and believing weren't the same thing however, so he'd just accepted that he had to trust himself and let them do what they felt they had to. Anyway, it was him and Amanda, so they'd already been through it and survived, right?

That was the problem: nothing was guaranteed. Just because they were here now didn't mean something couldn't go horribly wrong.

"We're going to die in here. We're going to get attacked by those horrid Amandas that gave themselves to that disgusting machine and we're going to die."

"I don't think so. If we're still in the right time, which I think we are, then remember what it was like when The Chamber was still where it was supposed to be? Cray was alone outside it, there were no more Hexads being produced, and we came back so we could stop it actually being used as one giant time machine. That was the plan, right? To jump up to the gantry like before, and then stop him from doing who knows what with it. Something's changed, sure, as it wasn't there, but we, the other we, obviously found out where it was and then came back to make sure we do too."

"No Dale, they didn't do that did they? They just jumped because when they were us that's what happened. Who knows what happened to them before they came and did this to us."

"Amanda, you're not thinking straight. I know you're scared, but the only logical explanation is that we are doing exactly what they did, so everything is going to be fine in the end. It's kind of encouraging."

"Dale, don't be absurd. This is time travel, nothing happens how it should. For all we know that was a version of us that would do anything to avoid this, so they jumped back and made us come here instead. Anyway, I thought this was a place where the lost Amandas came, not Dales." Amanda suddenly realized something, her hand going to her mouth in shock. "Oh."

"Yeah, exactly." Dale didn't want to think about it, but he knew what would happen now he was inside.

"Oh no, Dale! And you let this happen? You're going to just fade away, disappear into nothingness. We have to get out of here. Now."

"Look, I trust myself, and I trust you, okay? If we made ourselves come here then we sure as hell make it back out. We just need to find out what's going on first. Oh." Dale grabbed the thin book that thumped to the earth, brushing the dirt off it. On the cover it said, 'Stuff You Need to Know in a Hurry,' and that was all.

"Well, I guess we've been through all this a few times if we manage to write a damn book about it," said Amanda, peering over Dale's shoulder and reading the title.

"Guess so. Shall we?" Dale indicated a spot under a tree and they both moved onto the soft moss and sat down. Dale opened the first page. Judging by the thickness there weren't going to be many of them, and the handwriting was large — Dale's usual style in other words.

"You really do need more practice writing," observed Amanda, trying to decipher his almost illegible script.

"It's not my fault. I never use a pen anymore, it's always the keyboard."

They read the thin book. It didn't make them feel any more comfortable; it made them feel a whole lot worse.

~~~

"Well, looks like we are really in for it. Wish we could have been a little more specific. This is just background stuff, not actually telling us anything much at all."

"We're not exactly very helpful are we?" said Amanda, leaning back against the tree, dappled fake sunlight highlighting her hair.

"At least we know why The Chamber wasn't where it was supposed to be," said Dale, putting the book aside.

"It's something."

"A lot of it's conjecture though. Anyway, I don't really get our own explanation if I'm honest."

"I do, I think. Everything that we've done, all the jumping, all the reversing of things we've done that we then changed by sending notes and who knows what else, it just warped the future for us a little, well, a lot, so The Chamber still exists, and still functions just like it has all along, but Cray changed the location of where it was housed. I bet us watching had something to do with it. He may have found out and simply decided to build it somewhere else, or maybe whatever it was that happened in Dubai still had consequences that led to it being relocated."

"Well that's what we say in the book, isn't it? But it doesn't actually explain any of it. Nothing."

"I don't think it matters, the exact same things will have happened..." Amanda paused for a moment, thinking. "No, wait, that's the point, isn't it? We don't know what's happened as things have changed. For all we know we followed it to the new location at some point, did something, but once the future got changed then we wouldn't remember that. We only remember what's happened, not what's been changed because of something we did."

Dale looked at the book again, wondering why it didn't tell them more. "And the last bit?"

"I agree with it. It said to get a move on and that we have two days at the most to put an end to this, or I'll be stuck here, and you'll be..."

"Gone. For good."

"Let's get busy then shall we?"

"You sure?"

"What choice do we have?"

She's a brave woman. This must be terrifying, knowing what she's going to see, who she's going to meet once we get out into the open.

Dale wondered if there would be any memory of them being here before and what happened. If the timeline was the same then they would all be long dead by now, that happened thousands of years in the past, well, the future he supposed, not that any of it mattered any more. All that mattered was stopping Cray from using The Chamber as a giant time machine, if that happened then the repercussions would be devastating.

They'd talked about it endlessly while they kept their vile vigil on the gantry, arguing over if it really was a time machine and what would happen if it actually made a jump, and where it might jump to. The conclusion was simple: it would end everything, permanently.

Cray seemed unconcerned by his actions, he'd said that it didn't matter to him that Hexads ruined things, that people ended up gone, as he could spend lifetimes jumping back to before the events occurred, but clearly some future version of him had decided to finally make use of what he'd built and perform the largest jump of all, complete with everything inside the chamber, plus everything that made it function, Dale assumed.

Such a massive shift through reality would do damage that would reverberate through time and universes in ways Dale and Amanda didn't even want to imagine, but there was no doubt that it would put a strain on everything, destroying an incredible number of lives.

It wasn't just that though — the fact the thing existed meant it had to be destroyed. There was no way they could live knowing that there was no future for anybody, and that an endless procession of Amandas became warped inside the machine, endlessly looping back on themselves, paradoxes building up, all so that Hexad production continued until the time in the future they had witnessed where it seemed it was just Cray alone with his machine, all other people gone.

The strange thing was that maybe the Cray they had been meeting didn't even know about that yet. After all, what they witnessed had been a future version of him — he was much older and definitely a lot more insane than the version they had the misfortune to encounter.

"Right, come on then, let's get to it." Dale jumped to his feet. He was tired of thinking; it was time to act. Time to do something. He just wasn't sure what, but hiding under a tree definitely wasn't the answer.

Same but Different

Time Unknown

The tiny forest they had jumped to, although Dale didn't really see it as jumping as they hadn't physically used a Hexad, was cool and quiet, the thick carpet of decaying leaves and moss emphasizing the slight difference in gravity, making Dale feel like he was a man on the moon and could bounce around with giant leaps if he so wished. But soon enough they were at the edge, looking at The Chamber in all its topsy-turvy glory.

Except it didn't seem quite the same as it had before — there was something about it that was intangible yet definitely changed. The air was a lot warmer for one, and the humidity level was high. In the forest Dale had assumed it was due to the dense canopy and the trapping of moisture between the trees, but it was the same out in the open.

They had moved from the tree-line into a green open field, but it wasn't a healthy color, it was as if the grass was clinging to life under less than ideal conditions. As they stood mute, taking in the inverse world that spread out in all directions, self-contained and nothing but a giant coffin, it became apparent that the rest of The Chamber was in a similar condition.

The once almost gaudy patchwork of arable land was stained brown where it should have been shining with healthy crops, and everything just seemed listless, less animated, almost like the entire landscape was slowing down for autumn, or in semi-hibernation.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Amanda stood nervously beside him, reaching out a hand absentmindedly, taking his and squeezing tight, eyes locked firmly on the curving landscape. Dale couldn't think of it as up and down any longer, it was all just the same really — if you walked around it you would feel like you were walking on the same flat ground, even though you could end up above where you once stood, the top of your head viewed by anyone that was now in your place.

"Something's not right, can you feel it?" asked Amanda, squeezing his hand tighter, wiping her forehead where beads of sweat were forming due to the high moisture content of the air.