The Spaces in Between (20 page)

Warren looked over at the Urban Shaman. He had finished his sandwich already. He noticed a picture lying in he Urban Shaman’s lap.

“Who is that?” Warren said.

“Oh sorry,” the Urban Shaman replied, “I’m a little preoccupied today. It’s just…someone I used to know. His presence dropped off the face of the Earth nearly ten years ago. Yesterday it showed up again for an instant. I know you don’t seem to believe in this stuff…”

Warren’s eyes widened. “Could you show me that picture?” The Urban Shaman did. “That hair color I’d recognize it anywhere. Where did you get this?”

“Out of his wallet? Do you know him? He apprenticed to me a while back, but honestly you’re a better student that him.”

“Not exactly…” Warren said and thought
No that’s the man who haunts my dreams the Dread Pirate, Cameron!

“You are a difficult man to read Warren Elliot,” the Urban Shaman said, “There is a veil about you that prevents any clear looks at your aura.”

“Yes, right,” Warren said, “I just realized that I might have left an oven on at home! Erm, or at least I have a fear of that. Anyway! One quick follow-up: How does one go about opening their Third Eye?”

“For your story?”

“Yes…of course.”

The Urban Shaman grinned. “If it had opened before then you only need to be confident that it will happen again. If you get too caught up in the results you’ll get, how you say, performance anxiety.”

“Yes! Thanks!” Warren yelled back to him.

***

After a quick stop in Janet’s office and then their apartment Warren hailed a cab to the airport. Her boss informed him that she just up and left the office one day. Never bothered coming back. Warren knew why and there was no reason for her to come back. He wasn’t expecting a take a flight, but the airport was the only place he knew where he could rent a car.

“I need a car with a GPS,” Warren told the smartly dressed lady behind the counter. “Most sophisticated one I could rent.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied, “We only need to see some ID. Will this be cash or credit?”

“Cash,” Warren replied. He had nearly two grand in his pockets. He had become too paranoid about the Irishman watching his bank activity to deposit it

“We’ll need you to run a credit application then,” she replied. “We need to run it through OFAC to make be doubly sure this car will not be used in any terrorist’s acts.”

“OFAC?” Warren asked, “What does that even mean?”

“Standard procedure.”
The colors don’t run.
Warren read in her eyes. No, not her eyes.

“Alright, fine.” he said. “I’ll just pay with my bank card.”

“Very good.” She swiped his card.

The third eye in Warren’s brain opened. He could hear the hum of her computer – its voice. He told it
Approved. Thank you.

“You’ve been approved thank you.”

Within minutes instead of hours he was ushered into a Lexus something or other. It didn’t really matter to him.
Take me to Janet.

Continue down this road.
It replied in a voice that no one else could hear.

Well he had gotten this far, but the hard part was yet to come – convincing Janet that the Cameron stories were true.

***

Take a right on this road
, the Lexus’ GPS said in Warren Elliot’s head. Despite having only one functioning arm the Lexus was very easy for him to handle on his nonstop drive from Baltimore to Washington, DC. Some feature of the car was helping him out. Not in the way it was intended, but like the GPS it was going the extra mile so to speak.

Stop here.

Warren jumped out the car’s door right in the middle of the street. Worry began to creep up his spine. “Uh, go find a parking spot.” He wasn’t terribly surprised when the car drove off on its own accord. He ran with a limp all the way to the red brick apartment building’s front porch. He was met with a locked door and a series of numbered doorbells. Many of them had labels, but most did not and Janet was among them.

“Tell me which one is Janet.” Like most inanimate objects the switchboard made no response. “Then which one do I press? Do I try them all?”
If I could get that GPS to find her calling her should be no problem.
He went for the cell phone in his pocket and remembered that the Irishman had “borrowed” it. Probably thrown it away by now since Warren cancelled the service the next day.

The Zune was still in his pocket. But even in all their infinite awesomeness what help could Wolfmother be to him right now? Well, Apple made that god damn cell phone inside an Ipod, and there are those cell phones that can use Wi-Fi as a free alternative. He pulled the Zune from his pocket, pressed a few buttons, and found an unprotected network broadcasting from inside the building.

Call Janet.
The LCD screen lit up and announced her name and number followed by “Dialing…”

“Hello?” she answered on the other side. “Mom?”

“No,” Warren replied. She recognized the voice immediately it was spoken with clarity like he was standing in the room with her.

“How did you find this? I’m unlisted!”

“I’m standing outside.”

“Oh my God! Jesus Christ! You are involved in the Mafia. I
knew
it! I’m calling the police.”

“Jesus, Janet! If I was involved in the mafia then why the hell were we living in a slum in Baltimore?”

“It makes far more sense then those two horrible men targeting us for no apparent reason. They knew everything about us!” Her words were beginning to slur together. She was starting to speak faster than he could understand. He waited for a moment while his brain translated.

“That man was a vampire and the reason he hired the Irishman is because something wanted to find me because of my association with Cameron!”

“What? Who?”

“The Pirate King!”

“I’m calling the police. Either you’re a horrible liar or insane!”

“I’m only the first part and my only lie is that the whole thing was just a dream. You knew it was true even if you’ve had the chance to push it away now, but I finally just got it!”

He could hear her weeping now. “Those kinds of things just don’t happen. Just a dream of all that damn Sci-Fi you watch.”

“Look out your window then. I’ll prove it to you.” He saw the blinds go up on one of the upper story windows.

“Lights go out.” Nothing happened. “Lights go out!” The streetlights stubbornly continued to illuminate the streets below.

“Well?” he heard her say through the Zune. That reminded him that he really could do this. That he wasn’t insane.

“Lights go out!” he screamed.

“I’m calling the police,” she said.

“Wait,” he whispered. He was suddenly reminded of psychics’ claims of jealous phenomenon blocking their powers when they try to demonstrate them in a scientific environment. Until now he thought that was a pretty poor excuse. He took a deep breath.
Lights go out.
And they did.

“What now? A black out?”

“Are you on a landline phone?”

“Yes, but I don’t see how-”

“If this was a blackout then how are you still talking to me?” The other end was silent. “Wait, now look!
Pink
!” But all that she heard was “Wait, now look!” followed by strange humming that reminded her of driving under heavy power lines.

“Hello? Warren? Are you still there?” All the lights flickered back on now pink. Not a pink tone, but each light was burning a clearly pink glow. By the morning most people forgot the pink lights or didn’t notice them all together, but for Warren and Janet they would always remember the pink lights. “…I’m so sorry. I’ll be right down-“

“No I’ll come up.” Warren didn’t know what he was trying to do, but he was going to do it anyway. He concentrated until everything melted away but them and pink stars over their heads. They danced awkwardly in space with Warren’s one arm.

“I missed you so much,” she said over a sob. “I’m so sorry.”

And under the pink stars they were one.

“The biggest misconception about reincarnation is that we remember our past lives. Memory is mortal, and that is the most terrifying truth about death to most people whether they realize it or not. Then how is there past life memories? Mostly delusional, but what people don’t realize is that when memory dies it doesn’t go away. It’s more…public domain.”

Book Four: The Spaces Beyond

In which Cameron meets God.

Lord Sananda of the Ashtar Command was enjoying his morning mug of green tea while reviewing the morning reports. Despite his calm exterior he was quite troubled. An anonymous tip came to the Command informing them that the
Soulforge
was stranded in deep space. Of course most of the tips about the Pirate King are taken with a grain of salt. Usually the stranger and more farfetched the more likely they are to take it as serious information. This was a policy picked up after reports of the Pirate King stealing an entire sector of Andromeda. How is that even possible? What would he even
do
with that?

The claim was circulated around the Command before it was deleted off the LCD sheet. It made for a good laugh even amongst the higher-ups. It was only a snicker when another report came in from an Atlantean cargo freighter claiming to not be able to find said Andromeda sectors despite their Intergalactic Positioning System being in perfect condition. When the officer manning the mailroom came back to his desk after circulating that little report on an LCD sheet his wireless inbox was overflowing. More reports of missing planets. He grinned while going through the top of the pile. It amazed him how fast galactic legends can spring up and spread. This was faster than when a site on the Wireless reported that the genetically engineered chicken foodstuffs of an intergalactic restaurant chain were in fact actual chickens. Absolutely preposterous.

His grin faded halfway through the list. This one was urgent. It would have been on the top of the pile if the inbox wasn’t so crammed. Andromeda Intergalactic Wide Web Commission reported outages of all communication in the supposedly stolen sector. Each new report in his inbox got increasingly more urgent, and it became apparent the e-mail filters were overloaded. By the time he had gone through all those reports his inbox was full again. His system has three e-mail servers capable of holding 50 terabytes of information each, and an e-mail only takes up about thirty-two kilobytes. Now that’s about 1.6 billion e-mails.

His math was off because the calculator function wouldn’t open under the stress on systems, but it was still billions. A patrol was dispatched to check the sector, and within the afternoon the Ashtar Command was gripped in full panic mode. The Pirate King’s threat level was elevated from Yellow-Orange meaning ‘high-vague threat’ to pure Red meaning ‘will probably kill you soon.’ The highest rating.

Now claims of the Pirate King stealing planets are regarded and investigated with the outmost seriousness. However, claims of the Pirate King filling up at a way station are still passed around the office to snicker about. The anonymous claim that the
Soulforge
was stranded was going to be deleted, but there was a startling amount of accuracy about the description of the ship. Command patrol ships have spotted it before, but eyewitness accounts could rarely describe the
Soulforge
. The entire Paladin unit was deployed, but there hasn’t been a report from their ship for three hours now.

Lord Sananda took another sip of tea. He didn’t really have to drink. He had ascended beyond the need of his physical body centuries ago, but he still enjoyed tea. It was one of the few pleasures he afforded himself. Plus there were the lower officers to consider. The fact that the higher-ups of the Ashtar Command were all ascended masters was something they tried to keep on the down low. Drinking tea helped keep up those appearances. However, the missing Paladin unit was not the most pressing of Lord Sananda’s concerns.

He found it far more troublesome that time had appeared to stop.

2

The officer that had brought Sananda his morning report and tea was now frozen solidly in place. He plucked the LCD sheet and tea cup from the officer’s hands with surprisingly little resistance. No resistance at all actually. One of the benefits of not having a physical body is not being under the constraints of time.

It would probably not surprise you at all to find that the Command has a protocol in place should time cease to function. The deep time scanners were supposed to find the anomaly then the Paladins would be sent to put an end to whatever it was. It happened a couple of times before - usually when the Universe collided with another Universe. Or when the Merger happened. That screwed up a great deal of the Universe’s infrastructure.

It just so happened that the Paladins had not returned from a seemingly legitimate tip concerning the Pirate King. Lord Sananda believed in coincidence, but also knew there was far less of it than most people accepted. He also knew that he wouldn’t have to wait long to find the source of it.

The barrel of a flintlock pistol pressed into the base of Lord Sananda’s skull.

“It took you long enough to get here,” Sananda said.

“It’s not like I really have to keep a schedule considering present conditions,” Cameron replied.

“So you are responsible for…this.” Sananda waved his arm across the room in a Vanna White fashion.

“Yeah, I filched some more of Creation’s source code and decided to give it the old college try.”