Authors: Ben Bequer
“We’ll see,” she said, in full hero pose, looking as formidable (and sexy) as she ever had.
“You should go get help,” I said, not really believing, nor hoping she would.
“I’m not sure anyone would believe me.” She laughed. “Would you believe it if you hadn’t lived it? I mean, there’s another dimension with floating planet shards and aliens watching us from the moons of Jupiter.”
“I guess. But you’re Apogee, sexy heroine chick extraordinaire,” I mocked.
“Fuck you,” she snapped, half joking. “The truth is; I’m curious myself. I can see the danger of the alien, and I want to know what Retcon’s plan is. And besides, if things get hot, I can always call for help.” Apogee smiled. “I’ve got a warning beacon in my suit.”
“What?”
She laughed.
“You could have called for help all along?”
“If I had been in any danger,” she smiled coyly.
Finally, the legs disappeared under the first floor of the Retcon building and it settled on an open area of the parking lot of Apogee’s apartments. The landing lifted a cloud of smoke much like Retcon’s rocket arriving. The front doors opened, and to my surprise, Dr. Walsh came out, a few of her lab robots in tow. We rushed over, protecting our faces from the dust cloud.
“Blackjack,” Dr. Walsh started, reaching out with her hand, which I shook. “It’s so good to see you again. The others told me of your troubles back on the Shard World, and of your bravery.”
“I don’t know all about that,” I managed bashfully, watching Apogee’s smile as I tried to fumble my way out of a heroic deed. “This is Apogee, by the way.”
Dr. Walsh looked over, a broad, pleasant smile on her face she outstretched her hand and shook Apogee’s hand, “Ellen Walsh, Dr. Retcon’s daughter. I am a big fan of yours.”
“Thank you,” Madelyne managed.
“Would you like to come with us?”
Apogee nodded.
“Excellent. Please,” she said, motioning us towards the Retcon building lobby.
She brought us into the grand lobby of the building, which was as I had remembered before, except I saw that Apogee was oblivious to the decorations, more concerned with Dr. Walsh.
“I don’t understand,” Apogee interjected. “Nothing in the files pointed to Retcon having a child before the incident. And how could he have children when the rumor was the Original Seven were all unable to?”
“I was conceived in-vitro,” Dr. Walsh said, settling the matter. “Father utilized his own cells, and those of his wife, my mother, who passed away several years before the incident.”
Apogee nodded, but I only saw all sorts of problems and wondered how Retcon had overcome them. Especially forty-some-odd years ago, as Ellen Walsh appeared to be, when gene technology was in its infancy.
“Will we meet Dr. Retcon now?” Madelyne asked.
“Shortly,” Dr. Walsh said. “Father is still recovering. We only broke him out of Utopia prison this morning, you see.”
Chapter 24
On the ride up Dr. Walsh had an eerie smile, her gaze directed at the roof of the elevator, lost in her own thoughts. She also hummed something that I couldn’t identify, with her hands dug into her lab coat and a little bounce as she swayed in the balls of her feet. At one point, she realized I was staring at her and smirked, returning to her little song.
Apogee’s face was intense and focused. She watched us both and kept an eye on the lift numbers climbing up the list.
There was no button pad for you to choose what floor to go to. Instead, the elevator seemed to have a mind of its own, or perhaps Dr. Walsh had a control in her person. I couldn’t tell, but halfway up, the car came to a stop and the doors slid open.
Two of Dr. Walsh’s lab robots waited at the floor, which I remember being where my old room was.
“This is your stop, Apogee,” Walsh said, holding the door open.
Apogee didn’t move, confused and a bit upset.
“Isn’t she-” I began but Dr. Walsh interrupted me.
“You have a meeting. I’m afraid, she can’t come.”
Madelyne seemed about to object, but she nodded and stepped out, following the robots.
“I’ll be back down in a few moments,” Walsh continued, “And we’ll have a little chat.”
Apogee stood at the elevator doorway, facing me. She nodded reassuringly. I sometimes forgot who she was.
Then the elevator shot up again.
“If anything happens to her,” I started but again the doctor interrupted me.
“Please don’t worry Blackjack,” she assured me, then after a moment, added; “You won’t believe me when I tell you this, but she actually fits into our plans perfectly.”
“No games, Walsh. If she’s hurt, I’ll bring this place down to the ground.”
She actually smiled at my threat.
Moments later the door slid open to reveal a floor I hadn’t seen before. The decoration style was mostly wood, with 1930s Art Deco flair with odd geometric shapes of wood with brass and glass adornments. She led me down a hallway to a double door monogrammed with an exquisite terracotta sunburst design etched into the wood, and inlaid with brass.
The door slid upwards and I was treated to Dr. Retcon’s private sanctum. It was a large chamber dominated by a curved rear wall with shelving for an impressive library. The floor was of some polished wood I couldn’t recognize, with a faded Persian carpet spread out near the shelving, and a pair of “Dragons” leather chairs sitting at either side of a small mahogany table and light. Atop the table was very old copy of Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, beside a still smoking cigar.
Two hallways led out of the room, one up to a more brightly lit room, an open observation deck with a huge wireframe window that overlooked the onrushing ocean. The other led down into darkness.
“Go on down,” Dr. Walsh said. “My father is waiting for you.”
I studied her face, trying to get any read from her. Was her father down there, or some anti-Blackjack device to kill me? I had no idea; she flashed me a nondescript pleasant smile that told me nothing.
There was no avoiding going down those stairs. Once inside the stairway, which twisted to the right, I was in total darkness, only the smoky fumes from the cigar assaulting my senses. The stairs down were oaken, covered with red carpeting and complained with every step down.
“Ellie,” a voice called from below. “Can you get my cigar?”
A bit of light intruded into the final few steps of the stairway, and I came out to a small, cozy chamber, Dr. Retcon’s vestiary. On either side of the walls were long rows of suits, shirts and pants, all of the finest tailors, but some were of older styling, including some pretty ugly wool and polyester sets.
Standing in the middle of the room, atop a small box, and surrounded by a pair of droids who worked to tailor his suit was the man himself, Dr. Retcon.
As I came out of the stairwell, he was ducking and turned away from a massive floor-length mirror, his demeanor surprised and wary. His hand glowed slightly, as he had some power ready in case I was an enemy. When I was finally revealed, Retcon smiled, straightened up, and waved me closer as he released the energy from his hand.
“Blackjack!” he beamed, hopping off the box and motioning me over. “Get your ass over here.”
He looked different than when I had seen him a few days before, older, more haggard, deeper bags under his eyes. His pale face was clean shaven, but his hair unkempt and long, badly needing a trim.
From what I understood, they had broken him out of Utopia prison this very morning, so the man I had met with in the Karesansui garden was a younger version of him. Dr. Retcon was a man unstuck with time, with access to previous versions of himself throughout the space-time continuum.
I walked up to him and felt his warm embrace, his face lit up with the joy of seeing me alive. Or at least he made a good show of it.
“Hell’s bells and cockle shells,” he exclaimed after getting a good look at me. “You look like hell spat you out.”
Indeed I did. No item of garment was whole and complete, and all my clothes had a dark gray pall and my hair was covered in grime and dirt. I didn’t want to even think of what I smelled like, but Dr. Walsh hadn’t given me a chance to clean up.
“What I’ve put you boys through,” he said, releasing me, still watching my shattered form. “But now you see, right?”
I nodded.
“Dr. Nutcase, they used to call me,” he continued, hopping back on the box with a spring in his step. Retcon turned back to the mirror and the tailor robots started their work after the pause.
“And now we’re on the cusp of humanity’s greatest moment.”
I didn’t know how to tell him that I wanted to leave, that I didn’t belong anymore. My arguments to Apogee why I became a villain rang more hollow now than they ever had.
“Dr. Retcon,” I started, but couldn’t continue. I couldn’t even match his gaze through the mirror.
“I know,” he said. “This hasn’t been easy for you. And it’s not going to get any easier, I reckon.”
“I don’t think I can do this,” I admitted.
Retcon turned, to the protest of the tailor droids and regarded me for a moment.
“I need you,” he said plainly.
“I’m muscle. There are a hundred guys that could-”
“No there’s not. And no you’re not,” he snapped. “I chose you, Dale, because you’re not one of those hundred guys we could have called. You got something up here,” he pointed at his head. “And something here,” he patted his chest.
I shook my head, “I don’t know if I’m the guy you think I am.”
He chuckled, “I think you’re exactly what I thought you’d be. This whole thing with the girl shows it, Blackjack.”
Looking out the window, watching the rolling seas float by, I thought of her, wondered if she was safe.
“I need you because at the end of everything, there’s going to have to be at least one decent person with me that I can trust.”
“But all I’ve ever done is fuck everything up,” I said, suddenly overcome with emotion, fighting back tears of failure. “I mean my whole life-”
“Has led you to this,” he said with a tone of finality putting his hands on my shoulders. “Blackjack, I need you. What we’re going to do today has such grand implications that I may lose myself, I may get lost in the whole thing. Hell’s Bells, man, these aliens are trying to destroy our whole planet. You’re telling me you don’t want a chance to put them in their place? Show them we have some fight left in us? That’s why I wanted you to see everything, so you would know what’s at stake.”
“I missed the trip to Jupiter,” I started, “but I’ve seen the aliens up close.”
“You did?” he said, surprised.
I nodded and told him of our ordeal, and our brief meeting with the angel/alien.
“They revealed themselves to you. How interesting,” Retcon turned back to the mirror and motioned for his droids to continue.
“They mean to add our world to their menagerie,” I said declaratively.
Retcon pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.
“And it’s all my fault, you know.”
I walked closer, and around his stand so I was standing beside him, making it easier for us to talk.
“We were working on a lost book of Nikola’s. You saw the second part, which Shivver’s kept after the accident. He was part of it too, at first, before he went mad. But that was much later.”
He paused and looked at me, a smile crawling across his face.
“Sorry. I tend to ramble when it comes to the past. It’s all I’ve had for the past few years. But it all came down to the original experiment, following Tesla’s work in spatial dynamics. We were studying something called a Bok globule. You know what that is?”
I shrugged, “I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s basically a region of space that doesn’t really follow a lot of the rules of space. It’s a lot colder, for starters, and quite dense. We know a hell of a lot about them now, to be sure. But back then we didn’t know diddly. It’s much like an insect’s cocoon, you see. But it also might be a precursor to the formation of new stars or star clusters. It’s very dense and surrounded by a dark cloud that veils everything within.”
The robot that worked on his suit had a lot of trouble staying with Retcon as he gesticulated and moved around, excited in recounting the story.
“So we were designing new machinery that would allow us to penetrate that sheen and see within. You have to understand that radio telescopes were in their infancy at the time. We couldn’t see a goddamned thing.”
“But the Tesla device that we built,” I started, surprised that I had taken ownership for the machine. “I can’t see how you would have thought that it would allow you to penetrate the sheen, as you call it.”
“Well, I had this stupid idea...” He trailed off, a mischievous smile flashing on his face. “If we could penetrate the sheen utilizing a wormhole, why not take visible light readings through the wormhole. Turn it into the biggest telescope in history, as it were.”
“Interesting,” I said, and a brilliant theory, though a dozen problems immediately popped up in my head, and I imagined there were thousands I couldn’t instantly think of. But he continued: