Marrow (31 page)

I was swallowed in spikes just as I was swallowed in green infinity.

Everything went black.

I woke up in a world of white.

Literally.

There was no floor. There was no ceiling. There was no anything. Just an endless white stretch reaching into infinity. Blinking desperately, I struggled to adjust my eyes to the whiteness. I sat upright on an invisible surface that felt both solid and like nothing at all.

No. There was something. A gradual golden glow that intensified around me. I was being swallowed in it. I turned both ways, thinking maybe it was coming from behind me. Then I looked down.

I didn’t have a body.

At least…not really. Where my body should have been, the whiteness seemed to distort around an invisible shape. I climbed to my feet and glanced at my hands, turning them back and forth. I could make out my outline, but other than that, I was just a transparent distortion. Except for one significant detail…

The golden glow was coming from me.

Or from my chest, at least. Floating at my core was a soft, simmering ball of effervescent energy. My invisible outline hardly contained it. The golden rays seared through my transparent form, flooding the whiteness around me. I felt like a miniaturized humanoid version of the sun.

“Marrow…?”

The voice was a raspy wheeze, but I somehow recognized it enough to make me cringe. I reluctantly turned around.

It was Fantom.

Or…it used to be. Fantom was the same invisible shape as me, but much smaller. His transparent face was gaunt with the subtle hint of sunken eyes and emaciated cheekbones—a barely recognizable shadow. He was bent over on sticks for arms and legs and seemed to be having trouble doing even that. Like me, he also had something floating in his chest…but it was black and about the size of a walnut. A subtle flicker of purple energy glazed the edges, but otherwise, the thing looked pretty shriveled and dead.

“I can’t move…” Fantom wheezed. “Why can’t I move…?”

His clear, sunken eyes shifted past me. “Gaia…”

I turned back around.

The creature standing only feet away from me was nearly twice my height and about half my width. Its limbs were like young tree branches with three gangly fingers or toes sprouting from each. Its neck was nearly as long as its slender abdomen, towering erect to a perfectly circular head—no eyes, no mouth, or any distinguishing features at all. The only exception was a core like the one in my chest, except it was glowing neon green.

Though it had no eyes, I could tell that it was ignoring Fantom and focused solely on me.

Hello, Marrow,
said Gaia’s conglomeration of voices directly into my mind.
I am sorry for trying to kill you. That is normally not in my nature.

What was going on here? Where were we? Why was this psychotic alien suddenly apologizing? Especially after I had just tried to destroy its comet.

“Are we dead?” I asked. I glanced around at the endless whiteness around me. “Is this…heaven?”

Your subconscious energies have somehow become temporarily submerged within my subconscious.

“Our
whats
have done
what
inside your
what
?”

You’re inside my head,
said Gaia.
Similar to the way I was submerged within Fantom’s subconscious, only reversed. And allow me to be the first to say that this is highly unusual. You are the first carbon-based lifeforms of your kind to perform such a feat. Such a surprising side effect.

             
“But the comet is destroyed, right?”

No, fortunately. Your hypothesis to destroy the Gaia Comet by collision with yourself at a very high speed was incorrect. In human terms, you were like a very fast insect hitting a stationary train at a high speed. The train is not damaged, but the insect is. If your hypothesis had been correct, the explosion of the Gaia Comet would have been catastrophic. The Comet’s energy is composed of stable antimatter—the destabilization of which would have produced an explosion comparable to the Big Bang. I don’t know about the rest of the universe, but the Earth would surely be destroyed, and your galaxy would likely be thrown severely off its gravitational orbit.

My metaphysical jaw unhinged. “Wait, what? But…how? How can that blow up the Earth? I mean, the Comet hit the Earth from outer space, right? How come the freaking galaxy didn’t explode?”

I apologize. This must all be very confusing for a non-collective-mind being. Let me explain: Your Earth did not explode when the comet first landed because the ocean provided a cushion that reduced the chances of destabilization. Our landing calculations were almost perfect. Does that make sense?

“Yeah.” My metaphysical heart stopped. “Wait, you said I was like a bug hitting a train . . . am I dead?”

Almost certainly. It is unfathomable that your body even survived the impact.

“But…the Tartarus! What happened to the Tartarus?”

Nothing has happened to the Tartarus. Yet.

“Yet?” I said. My tone was one notch past hysterical and I was an eye twitch short of a mental breakdown. “What do you mean, ‘yet’? What the heck’s that supposed to mean?”

According to my calculations, the comet and the Tartarus will hit the earth in exactly three minutes and forty-seven seconds. You see, the Tartarus runs on nuclear energy. The nuclear explosion will destabilize the antimatter of the Comet and destroy the planet.

I collapsed onto my hands and knees. My arms started shaking and then I just dropped my face on the invisible floor. My eyes burned and then I starting crying tears that my soul body couldn’t produce, sobbing uncontrollably. All of my insides felt like they were imploding—even though I didn’t technically have insides.

Meanwhile, Fantom started laughing in his wheezy excuse for a voice. It almost sounded more like coughing.

“We showed those pathetic insects, Gaia…” he rasped. “And they thought they could stop us.”

I didn’t even care about Fantom anymore. I just wanted to die. Except, in a sense, I was already dead. This was worse than being dead. I was in Hell. I wanted to just rip that golden orb out of my chest and crush it in my transparent hands.

To my surprise, as I opened my burning eyes, the orb was shining even brighter than before. It hurt just looking at it. As I stared up into the white expanse, it was obvious that my luminescent golden glow could have filled a football stadium.

Why did you do it?
said Gaia.

“Do what?” I asked.

Try to destroy the Comet. Surely you knew that the probability of you surviving was less than 3.5 percent?

“My friends were on the Tartarus. Flex, Sapphire, Whisp, Havoc…and all those people.
And
my dad. Him too. I couldn’t just let them all die.”

And then I felt sick all over again.

“A lot of good it did,” I said. “Everyone I’ve ever loved…they’re all going to die because of me.”

Marrow,
said Gaia.
May I request something of you?

I pulled my heavy head up, straining to meet his nonexistent gaze. I couldn’t talk though. Breathing was painful enough—if I was really breathing, that is.

I can see to it that you survive this,
said Gaia.
And then I would like to become a part of your mind.

“What?” I said.

“No…!” Fantom gasped. “Gaia! What are you doing? You’re a part of
my
mind!”

I know that must sound like an unusual request,
said Gaia.
That is the sort of research my kind does. As we select a world to study, we do it through the eyes of a host. Though it’s a gradual process, we eventually begin to think as the host thinks. It’s all a part of our research, getting to understand the world better and knowing how to interact with it.

“Gaia!” Fantom screeched. “No, Gaia! I need you!”

Gaia tilted its head slightly, and I could tell that it was finally paying heed to Fantom

Personally, I don’t enjoy being inside Fantom’s mind. He was a pleasant enough specimen when he was young, but now… I don’t like the effect his thinking has on my mind. His greed and hatred is consuming. And as you can see from his current state, his subconscious has become extremely dependent on my energy. Without me, he would be a human vegetable. You could almost say that our symbiotic relationship digressed to a more parasitic nature. It will be a very long time before his subconscious recovers.

“Gaia…” said Fantom. He had exerted the last of his strength, and his head was now cocked at an awkward angle on the invisible floor.

Gaia returned its indiscernible focus to me.
Will you do it, Marrow? Will you let me study you? I can assure you that it is for the sake of a better universe.

“A better universe?” I said. Now that I could finally speak, my devastation was replaced by something new. I was still shaking, but my fists were trembling most of all. I wished I could feel my fingernails digging into my palms—any physical pain at all. “My planet is dying because of you.”

Gaia didn’t respond. Instead, it tilted its head to the other side.

“My father has been a fugitive for as long as I can remember because of you,” I continued. “Every bad thing that’s happened is because of
you
! Because you gave power to that…that
thing
!”

I stabbed an accusing finger at Fantom. He merely glanced at me from his awkward angle on the floor and laughed—a slow, disturbed laugh that wrenched my insides. Whatever Fantom was, he sure as heck wasn’t human.

It’s true that my research through Fantom has wrought destructive results,
said Gaia.
To be fair, his mind was much different as a child. His motives were much more pure. It’s possible that the power he accumulated through me is what led to his corruption. I never could have calculated that he would become what he is now.

“And you want to give that power to me,” I said.

That is correct.
I am intrigued by the wavelengths of your subconscious. The fact that your subconscious has become temporarily lodged in mine speaks for itself. Judging from what I see, I believe my power would be used to much different effects in your hands.

“Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want your power. I don’t want you inside my head. I don’t want to live
anywhere
without my friends, thinking about all the funerals I can’t
go to because THE PLANET IS ABOUT TO BLOW UP! Screw you, Gaia. Screw you
and
your power
and
your stupid research. I don’t want any part in it.”

I figured that would be your response,
said Gaia.
I must admit that it only makes me want to study you that much more.

“Yeah, well, it’s not happening.”

Gaia pressed six of its spindly fingertips together, as if in contemplation. Its green orb flickered in thought.

I don’t think you realize what you can do with my power.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

With my power, you will have all the omnipotent power that Fantom had—

“Did you not hear me? I DON’T WANT—”

—and you can possibly stop the Tartarus from crashing.

“—IT! Wait, what?”

That shut me up. There was no way I heard right. I was silent for several long seconds before saying, “What do you mean?”

Fantom only had his telepathic and telekinetic power because of me. I am offering you the telekinetic power that could stop the Tartarus and the comet from hitting the Earth and exploding. 

Fantom contorted his transparent body at an even more awkward angle from the invisible floor. “Huh?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My heart leapt inside of me—except I didn’t have a heart. Maybe it was that golden orb thingy inside me. It did seem to be glowing and pulsating brighter than ever now.

There are a few conditions, however,
said Gaia.
Once I am a part of your mind, you’ll have access to my power, but only you will be responsible for stopping the Tartarus and the Comet from impacting the earth. If you can’t stop it, then I will be forced to open a wormhole in the fabric of space and time so we can escape, and we will continue my research elsewhere. My kind uses wormholes as sparingly as possible. The ripples in the space-time continuum can distort our research. And before you ask if I can use the wormhole to go back in time to stop earlier events on Earth, the answer is no. If you were to encounter your past self, it’s possible that the space-time continuum would implode into a black hole and devour your planet. That would be detrimental to our research.

“So we’re traveling back in time to stop the Tartarus?”

No, why would you think that?

“But you just said that the Tartarus only had three and a half minutes before the crash! We’ve been talking for at least that long.”

Ah. I don’t think you understand. The transfer of information between our connected minds is almost instantaneous. We have been communicating for no more than twenty earth seconds.