Hexad: The Chamber (6 page)

Perfect.

"Dale, what are we going to do?"

The spell was broken, reality inescapable. Dale wished the moment could have lasted forever but it was wishful thinking. He was surprised he'd been able to put the day behind him at all, but maybe the totally bizarre nature of it was too much to take so he'd simply been able to block it out as something that had happened to someone else, not to him?

Damn, there I go again. This stuff could seriously mess with your head.

"Dale?"

"Sorry, just trying to hold onto this." Dale took in the beautiful view with a terrible feeling that it would be a long time until they got to relax again. "Let's go somewhere where we can sit and have a drink. We need to talk."

Amanda looked at him worriedly, but turned back toward the beach. "Okay, but I don't have any money. You?"

Dale checked his pockets but knew he never carried money in them. His cash and cards were always in his wallet, a wallet that the other him had taken to the pub. "Nope."

They dried their feet in the sun for a few minutes, used their socks to brush the sand off before covering up, and then they both said at the same time, "Home."

With a smile Amanda set the Hexad and they jumped back to the only place either of them really wanted to be.

No matter how beautiful it was on the beach, there was no place like home.

Time for a Plan

3 Years 11 Days Past

"Where are we?" asked Dale.

"Home, of course."

"Um, no, I meant... them. The other us. Ugh."

"Oh, we're on holiday in Venice, so we have the place to ourselves," said Amanda smiling.

"Damn this stuff is confusing. How the hell are you supposed to make sense of it all?"

"That's the point, you aren't. Cuppa?"

"Yes please, but there won't be any milk will there." Dale really hated his coffee without milk.

"Well, if what happened in my version of events happened in yours, then there will still be half a bottle in the fridge. Remember? You forgot to throw it out before we left and it stank when we got back."

"Haha, I remember."

Damn, this is too mental for words.

Amanda busied herself in the kitchen, and Dale sank back into the sofa, skin feeling dry from the salt of the ocean, toes itching from the inevitable sand that was impossible to eradicate for days after a trip to the beach.

It was strange being back in their rented accommodation — in Dale's present they had only been in their home for just over a year, seeing the rather squalid state of the rental came as quite a surprise.

Dale popped his head around the kitchen door and told Amanda he was going to have a quick shower.

Once he was finished he got dressed and remembered the strange mystery that they'd had when they returned only to find clothes and sand in the laundry basket he never remembered putting there. Well, mystery solved.

Amanda showered too while he sipped on his coffee in the living room, trying to make sense of things, to come up with some kind of a plan. He drew a blank. Although Amanda had gone over the events that he, or a version of him, had been involved in — no, it was him wasn't it? — anyway, what he'd been told made sense once you accepted the whole premise, but it was still just a story, not actual fact for him personally, so it was hard to really get deep into the problem that now faced them, and everyone else in his world it seemed.

He tried to make a list in his mind, making a sequence of events up until the present, but it fell apart before he could even get started. How could you make such a list when there were multiple versions of everything going back and forth, countless realities and the converging of multiple versions of the same people all tied together, acting out events that had already happened, just so they would happen in the future?

Finally, knowing he would be waiting a while for Amanda to finish her beauty regime, he decided once and for all that none of it mattered. How could you take responsibility for things that happened in other versions of a reality you had no experience of? What had been done to eliminate the existence of Hexads in all other possible timelines had succeeded, right? So all he had to focus on was doing what he had to do in his own world to ensure that the future was a good one for him and Amanda.

He thought about the fact that there was another him and her, in this world, that would put into action everything that he had been told had taken place, and that they were successful, apart from here. So what was the answer?

Sacrifice one world for many? Billions of lives for countless trillions? He didn't think so — at such numbers it all became meaningless, mere digits, not real live people. No, he had to think of the here and now, or, well, the future anyway.

So the solution was...?

Dale decided there was only one answer: somebody was lying to him. Either Amanda or The Caretaker. Maybe both.

He was no time travel expert, heck, he'd only been doing it for one day, but there was no escaping the fact that if what he'd been told was true concerning what had been done to eliminate Hexads and had succeeded, then it would have succeeded in his own world as well. Surely?

"Hey Dale, you okay? You seem worried." Amanda appeared looking like a new woman, hair glossy and shining, clothes clean but casual as always: a simple cotton dress that set off her complexion. The only thing ruining it was the frown of concern as she walked across the threadbare carpet.

"Are you lying to me?"

"About what?"

Is it me or does she look nervous?

"About what? About everything. You said you hunted high and low, jumped about all over the place, and although you only found me, or as close to me as possible here, you said that all other versions of events meant that there were no Hexads, right?"

"Right."

Something was clicking with Dale, something important. He just had to let it come, let the knowledge crawl up from his subconscious.

Here it is.

"So how did you do that?"

"What do you mean? With the Hexad of course."

"But you only get six jumps then you're done. And apart from that, if we succeeded then there shouldn't have been any, should there?" Dale really hoped Amanda wasn't lying to him, and why would she?

"Let me think, but I promise you, I'm not lying to you Dale, everything I have told you is true."

"Okay then, so where did you get the Hexads to do all the jumps?"

"From that room we were in. The room I told you the detective made: Cray. It's full of them."

"And that room is in this world, in the future?"

"Yes."

"But nobody else knows about it, as everywhere else it won't exist?"

"Yes," said Amanda, clearly getting exasperated.

"Right, come on, we have someone we need to go and see." Dale stood, ready to jump immediately.

"Dale, Dale, calm down. What's going on? Where are we going?"

"We are going to see this Caretaker of yours. He's lying to you, lying to us."

"Wait, what do you mean? And Dale, we can't go to see him, or I won't anyway. Don't you get it? That's where I was while all the craziness was going on. I can't go back there, I won't."

Amanda was in tears, visibly shaking, like a dog that had been locked in a cage all its life and was now expected to go for a nice walk in the park.

"Tell me," said Dale.

Amanda told him all about it.

~~~

By the time it was over Amanda had regained her composure, but Dale agreed that it was no kind of place to go to voluntarily. In fact he was amazed Amanda had come through such an experience with her sanity intact.

But one thing was for sure: things were not as they seemed, and the fact remained that if Amanda had been diligent with the truth then The Caretaker had been playing with her. For what reason neither of them could figure out, but it left only one course of action and one possible explanation: Amanda had ruined everything and The Caretaker hadn't told her. Why?

For the first time since he'd been with the new Amanda it was him doing the explaining.

Dale had finally figured it out as they sat talking — it should have been obvious.

Everything Amanda had told him had been true, right up until she jumped and found him and told him not to dig up the garden. So he hadn't, had he?

"And that's it, none of it happened. None of it. You stopped it all."

"No, wait, that can't be right. We saw us going to the pub, like we did before, and I jumped everywhere and everything was back to normal, apart from in this world."

"Everything was back to normal because I never dug up the note in the first place, and if I never dug it up and then a Hexad appeared in the kitchen, blah, blah, blah, then none of the rest of it would have happened. We didn't need to go off and have all those crazy adventures as there was no note, no Hexad, so no us in the future doing what had already happened so it would play out that way. Everything was just normal."

"So how did we see you at the pub if you are here with me?"

She was right, he wouldn't have been, as Amanda interrupted all that.
Damn, you muppet Dale.

"Because that was a different timeline we jumped to."

"Damn! Of course, you're right." Slowly it was all making sense to Amanda, Dale could see that now.

Amanda spoke, trying to get her thoughts straight. "So everything that happened had to happen, and we stopped the problem, but me coming back here, stopping you digging up the tin, that means that none of the rest of it happened anyway, not any longer. Everything's cool and right with the world. Worlds?"

"Exactly."

"Except..."

"Except now we have to stop the damn thing playing out anyway as we now have Hexads and the whole thing will happen all over again, somehow, and will warp reality again and we'll be right back where we started."

"Dale, I can't go through that again, not all of that. Not that room, not any of it. It's too much; I won't cope."

"Don't worry, you won't have to. Look, forget everything that has happened, everything's normal everywhere, peace is restored. All we need to do is get to the heart of where these damn things really came from. Stop them and it's all over."

"But I explained that Dale, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. We did it, we made them happen because of the paradox."

"Bullshit." Dale was certain that there was someone else at the heart of it all, there had to be. "Look, I know what you told me, but you can't invent a time machine by saying you will invent it in the future so in the future you will send it back to yourself. That's just too far-fetched."

"But that's how it works," protested Amanda.

"Not in my mind baby, not in my mind."

"Okay," sighed Amanda. "Fine. But you do know that all of it is going to happen, or has happened now, don't you? This world is empty in a few years and the whole cycle will repeat over again."

"No, it won't. Not in the same way anyway."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I promise you this Amanda: I will not dig up any Hexads. I will not make them appear, I will not dig up the tin, I will not send notes to myself, I will not get Peter to release the plans, I will not go into that roomful of lobotomized Amandas, and I will not go hurtling through time and space killing versions of you. So, that version of events is done and dusted. I will not do it so it can't happen."

"So what will?"

"I guess we just have to go find out, now don't we?"

"Guess so," said Amanda, resigned.

"One question," said Dale, as it had been playing on his mind. Amanda raised an eyebrow. "Why here? Why this dump rather than, you know, home in the present?"

"I got scared Dale, I don't know where the other us is, or even what 'the present' is any more. What's present for me? For you?"

"Good question. Very good question."

Dale really was hating time travel more than he thought possible.

The Future's Bleak

47 Years Future

With a short detour to get a leather satchel Dale had to admit was pretty cool even if it didn't have that worn-in feel of his long-time accessory, they jumped forward to the roomful of Hexads, grabbing as many as they could before making a jump to forty seven years in the future to see what the world was like.

This time they chose Rome.

It was empty. No slow-crawling traffic inching through the congested streets, no beeping of horns and fume-filled air, just a pleasant warm day, them, and silence.

It was the spookiest thing Dale thought he had ever experienced.

They knew the place well, having visited a number of times over the years, often coming just for long weekends as it was only a three hour flight from England. They wandered the streets for the day, one part of Dale relishing the chance to experience the ancient architecture unhindered by tourists and people offering their services as guides, or hawkers trying to get them to buy trinkets that would be put in a cupboard and never seen again.

It was like visiting for the first time. As they held hands and walked the ancient streets, marveling at the architecture, he felt like he had never truly seen it before — it was beautiful. Such accomplishments, such pride and skill, it made him proud to be a part of the human race. And that was exactly what made it all so wrong: without people, without the hustle and bustle, the noise and inconvenience, it all just felt so pointless.

One thing was for sure, however it had happened, and Dale was certain it wouldn't have played out like it did for Amanda, Hexads were a part of life and at some point the Universe had enough and simply got rid of people so they couldn't screw things up any longer.

The only questions remaining were how it happened and who started it all off. Dale was adamant that it wouldn't be him — he wasn't about to repeat the same mistakes a version of him made, so he kept that firmly in his mind, vowing that he would do none of the things Amanda had told him, ensuring that there would be none of those stupid paradoxes where you went around in circles until nothing made sense and you ended up thinking you'd invented time travel just by digging up a bloody tin.