Jigsaw World (30 page)

The Sorcerer had taken some measurements, and
he told the group that there was a time flow differential between
the Place of Beginnings and the compound. According to the times
shown on a couple of wristwatches, a day in the normal world was
about six hours in the Place of Beginnings.

Because of the difference in time flow, the
plan was that one of them would use their artifact at the place per
day. A two hour stay over there would make them absent over here
for eight hours. After that, everyone could rest up over in the
real world, and then the next victim could go do his or her
thing.

Today would be taken up with a brief gathering
at the Place to prepare for the Healing. In about two hours, as a
matter of fact, the Four and their seconds, plus of course
Cernunnos, would visit the Place, and Cernunnos would outline the
playbook for this project. They should get the trip in, and make it
home by about ten in the evening. Eight hours sleep, a couple of
hours to prepare, and then the first of the artifacts would be
used.

“
We probably need to get a
baseline for changes after each visit.” Markus remarked. “I noted
that our immigration issue changed from long term litigation to
turnaround deportations after our first visit. I would assume that
only the people on each trip would remember the first
history.”

The idea was that if they stepped back in time
and changed something that effected current event history, only the
people who were on that trip would remember the old history. Anyone
staying in the changed worldline would be changed right along with
the timeline.

If the person with the artifact being used and
their second were the only ones on a visit to the past, they are
the only ones who would remember any changes to the timeline. That
was simply not
acceptable
! Tom knew that at a minimum, if he
or Karla went to the Place, the other also would be
going.

“
I assume that we are going to
have half of us or more making our visits to the Place in each
case.” Tom addressed the congregated group. “We don’t want our
timelines to become wildly separated.”

Everyone started discussing the implications
of the timeline confusion, and readily agreed that they did not
want to lose track of the original timeline in the process of
healing the worldline. The problem with this was that the number of
people involved in this process had climbed steadily, and if all of
them should attend
every
visit to the Place of Beginnings, it
would get very crowded, and the process would be much less
efficient than it should be.

With thirteen or more members, they decided
that they could run two teams, so that at least six people were
caught up with the disparity of the timelines, and could fill in
everyone else on what had changed. Obviously, neither couple of the
two Healer couples wanted to be separated in this, so when Tom
went, so would Karla, or when Markus went, so would Vera. The
appropriate Seconds would also go with them, and two or three of
the others.

Everyone would have to crowd in on the initial
trip, of course, since it concerned everyone. They would all be
headed out in less than an hour, and they would get back just in
time to get a good night’s sleep before Karla, Tom and company
would be planting the Seed of Creation tomorrow.

There was just time enough to get and eat
pizza, drink the beverages of their choice, with an emphasis on
stimulant rather than alcoholic, and pretty themselves up for the
trip, and then it was time to depart. Everyone gathered in the
Parlor as the obvious staging area. Tom could hear a slight sound
coming from the wormhole that still rotated beyond the door. He
thought of it as a sound, because that was the way he perceived it,
but there was no process which should have generated any sounds
that was going on. Not everyone heard the sound, but those who did
insisted that it was real.

The old laughing form of the Seer went to the
front of the crowd, and stood in front of the doors that hid the
wormhole. Cernunnos went over and stood beside him, towering over
everyone present except for Heimdall, even taller than Tyr. Tom
considered it to be cheating in the height competition business
when better than a foot of your height is horn, but he didn’t make
the rules.

“
It is time to gather in the Place
of Beginnings, to familiarize ourselves with the Healing.” Said
Cernunnos. “Be aware that resistance will mount to our presence
after a time.”

The Seer held up his staff, and the crystal at
its crown glowed. The double doors of the wormhole hall flew open,
and the group could see the white light glowing hole to that other
place and time. The Seer strode to the door, and over the
threshold, and in a moment was lost in the light. Everyone checked
about to assure themselves that they had what they meant to bring,
and one by one, they too walked into the light.

The light at the end of the trip strobed with
each step one took, and Tom soon saw the primal place that they had
all seen before. This time the place was marked with the tree, but
it was bushy with energy sucking branches, and the tree was barely
at head height. The branches were thin and spindly, and the leaves
were pale and somewhat wilted.

It felt as though the strobe of the wormhole
was continuing in this place. This time, the vision of the tree was
strobing in and out, and when the tree was not present, the group
could see a sort of globe of energy in its place, and when the tree
returned, it seemed that the globe of energy transformed into the
tree. Everyone present understood that the tree was a symbol of the
universes grown from this time and space. It was the face that the
universe put on to be seen.

Everyone gathered in front of the ‘tree’, and
watched as it phased in and out of existence. Cernunnos and the
Seer stood in front of them, with their backs to the tree. It
looked as though the two of them would conduct the instructions in
the healing process.

“
As you can see, the tree is in
poor health.” The Seer began. “Like any plant, it cannot grow in
all directions at once and remain healthy. It has expended too much
of its energy trying to be everything that everyone wants, and it
has not protected itself. We have to do this for it.”

“
Karla will meld the Seed of
Creation into the tree, which will be like a shot of fertilizer for
it.” The Seer continued. “Then Vera will read from the Book of
Eternity, which will be like the perfect blend of light and water
for the tree.”

“
Markus will touch the Staff of
Infinity to the tree, and it will serve to prune the useless
branches away from the tree.” Cernunnos said. “After that, Tom will
set the Stone of Reality at its heart for a time to reset the
Universal Consensus Reality.”

“
If all of these things are done
correctly, at the end, we can collect the Seed and the Stone from
the heart of the tree without harm.” The Seer contributed. “We will
have all four artifacts in hand, and a newly healed worldline. It
should be a worldline without the monsters, a nice world to live
in.”

As the Seer added this fairy tale conclusion
to the tale, the group felt what seemed almost like a
conceptual
storm begin. They felt the
feelings of the air beginning to move, though it did not ruffle
anyone’s hair. There was a howl of wind inside their minds,
although their ears did not hear it. There came a pressure from the
direction of the tree, and it must have been real, for it pushed
against them, pushing toward the wormhole.

Above the tree there formed a swirling cloud
of light and shadow, and lightning flashed deep within the cloud.
Now Tom could smell the damp and cool smell of rain and ozone, and
he knew that the world was doing what it could to drive the
interlopers away.

“
The world is beginning to resist
our presence here.” Cernunnos said. “We are done here, but we
should practice our defense against this sort of attack now, so
that we all know how to protect ourselves later.”

“
You have had some meditative
practice, most of you. Place yourselves into as deep a state of
meditation as you can, and then focus on the storm.” The Seer said.
“Visualize a force that you generate that surrounds and contains
the storm in a globe, from which it cannot escape, and from which
it can do no harm.”

Everyone did as the Seer and Cernunnos
instructed, turning to stare at the storm, visualizing energy
surrounding the storm and containing it. For a moment, the storm
grew and advanced, but then it seemed to strike an invisible
barrier, and after spreading along its border to try to find a
hole, it finally just sat and churned in a fit of light, and
shadow, and half-hidden lightning.

Now at last they were well and truly done, and
by Tom’s reckoning, well ahead of schedule. He wasn’t sure of the
time they had spent in this place, even though his watch said that
38 minutes had passed so far. It did not seem that long, and yet
the watch was likely to be more accurate than his sense of time.
Time seemed to pass strangely in this place, and not just in its
rate of passage, but in its essence as well.

At any rate, the time had come to leave. The
storm still swirled within the globe, and when they were gone, it
would doubtless be unloosed. Once they were gone, it could do no
damage, and when they returned, it would be to improve the world.
They all looked to the Seer, who led them with a glowing staff back
to the mundane world through the glowing gate.

The first thing that Tom checked when they had
returned to the parlor was the time. The crazy looking Cuckoo clock
in the corner said that it was 4:15 P.M., and so the evening was
still available to eat, drink and be merry. A brief meeting of the
minds of those of the group which actually originated in this
worldline determined that the afternoon and evening absolutely
demanded the presence of large amounts of pizza and
beer.

Tom had just got off of the phone, where he
had taken the opportunity to order ten pizzas for the group, using
the credit card that he had lifted off of the Sage while he was
preoccupied with one of the girls. He went and checked the fridge,
where he found enough beer to last the group at least for a couple
of hours.

Everybody settled down at the courtyard table
to enjoy the last part of the sunlight, and the first part of the
evening. The pizza arrived in a few moments, and everyone dug into
their favorite flavors. They all popped the tops of beers, and sat
in the gentle sunlight eating and drinking. Markus brought over the
day’s newspaper, and they all looked to see what changes they had
wrought.

The front page held a sizable picture of
several men in prison orange, working at building a fence. The
headline blared, “Illegal Crossers Build the Barrier.” Yesterday
they had seen a world where the Illegal aliens that were caught
were sent back to Mexico quickly, which was a change from the day
before, where the Illegals were to be held for a lengthy process.
Now, a day later, the same Illegals were being used to build the
Border fence to stop the Illegals from crossing.

All in all, the world was already making more
sense. What was a better use of people that invade your house than
to put them to work reinforcing your house’s defenses? Tom knew
that the earlier processes to deal with the problem were born of
some wooly-headed logic and kindness intention, but nothing about
the procedures actually solved the problems.

The day progressed, and the night came on to
drape the world with tresses of black, and at some point Tom
borrowed Karla from the group to do a special deed for his and her
enjoyment. This took both of their remaining time before the
chiming of the midnight hour, and soon enough, they settled into
the same bed that they had used for their fun, but a bit before.
This time was different, because this time, it was all about
comfort and sleep.

******

Someone was talking way too loudly, and it
seemed like it was just outside the door. Tom squinted a bit after
he opened his eyes, upset that he had been awakened, and determined
to triangulate on the source of the interruption, possibly to
deliver a terminal message. The problem was that he still heard the
voices, but they didn’t seem to belong to anyone he knew, and they
seemed to originate right here in this room. Karla was still
sleeping, so apparently she was less sensitive to the voices than
he was.

Tom eased out of the bed, and slowly moved
about the room. He noticed that the voices were loudest about five
feet to the North of the head of the bed. Moving anywhere in the
room away from that spot would diminish the volume. He could not
make out what the voices were saying, not because they weren’t
clear enough, but because the language they were speaking in wasn’t
English, although it sounded so much like English that Tom could
not quite stop trying to understand it better.

Karla had awoken while he was traipsing around
the bedroom like a crazy person, and she was giving him a quizzical
look. When he explained what he was doing, she listened carefully,
and then she told him that she couldn’t hear the voices. She
suggested that today of all days was probably not the best day to
go nuts, and that since it was 10:45, it was time to go get some
coffee, and a good breakfast, and a smoke. He agreed, and they left
the room to get those things.