He couldn’t look at the New People directly; none of his group could. They shone too brightly, they were too real, too overpoweringly there. Stamped on this world like an identifying imprint. Each of the New People existed in more than three dimensions at once. They had length and width and breadth, and other things, too. Other dimensions, physical and spiritual dimensions.
Happy couldn’t cope with what he was seeing, or experiencing, even with his shields in place. He dropped to his knees and vomited noisily. Melody crouched beside him, partly to comfort and protect him, partly so she didn’t have to look at the New People any more. She didn’t vomit, but she looked like she wanted to. JC understood. It hurt him to look at them, even with his blessed eyes. The New People existed in spiritual dimensions as well as spatial. The human brain wasn’t equipped to deal with so much information at once.
And all the time, JC was thinking… Is this what we were meant to be? What we all should have become? Or is this what we were spared?
Kim moved in close beside JC, gazing uncertainly at the New People. “I can’t see them,” she whispered. “It’s all just light to me. Why can’t I see them?”
JC shook his head vaguely, then turned his whole body away from the New People. It didn’t help. He didn’t need to see them to know they were there. Their presence overlaid everything.
The longer JC and his people remained in the new place, the more they saw. Contact with the New People opened their inner eyes, opened up their minds, to the noumenon-all the adjacent levels of reality, the worlds within worlds, or surrounding worlds, the interpenetrating and overlapping worlds that most of us are mercifully unaware of. All the places and all the things that exist right next to us, blessedly hidden from normal view. Because if most of Humanity knew who and what we shared this world with, they’d go stark, staring mad. JC had seen some of it before, through his golden eyes, but never as much as this.
He shut his golden eyes and still caught glimpses of other places, other worlds, other dimensions, where life had taken on shapes and aspects far beyond the possibilities of this limited Earth. He saw two suns shining fiercely in a sick green sky, over a landscape that was always moving, never still. He saw dinosaurs with huge, distended heads stalk purposefully through stone galleries and massive tunnels, carved into the side of a mountain. He saw a dull red sun drop sullen bruised light from a mustard yellow sky, over man-sized insects that crawled all over a stone mound the size of a skyscraper, darting in and out of deep dark holes in its sides, intent on unknown missions.
JC cried out, and put his hands to his head. He thought he said, Too much, too much, but he couldn’t be sure. His thoughts came painfully fast, idea upon idea, rushing through his mind, darting this way and that beyond his control, as he fought to understand and assimilate a dozen improbable things at once. Sudden sharp insights slammed into his head, insights into the nature of reality itself. Blindingly obvious… but he was never able to remember them afterwards. Or at least, not in any way that made sense. Except sometimes in dreams… from which he woke cold and sweating, crying out, gripped with a nameless horror.
He sat down suddenly, and Kim hovered over him uneasily. JC gritted his teeth together, and concentrated on being the master of his own mind, the captain of his soul. And slowly, piece by piece, he put his thoughts back together again. And when he opened his golden eyes, he was at last able to cope with what he saw.
And one of the first things he saw was Happy, pushing away Melody as she tried to stop him dry-swallowing a handful of pills from various containers. JC forced himself back up onto his feet and went over to Happy, who abruptly stopped what he was doing and let more pills fall from an open hand. He looked at JC and his eyes were wild, almost feral.
“Guess what, JC? You were right all along! The drugs don’t work!”
JC still stumbled doggedly towards him, Kim floating timidly at his side. Even with his renewed mental discipline, he was still seeing things. Great inhuman faces, with incomprehensible expressions, watching, watching. They seemed to come from all directions at once, and some things that weren’t even directions. Strange things moved through the air, filling up the spaces between spaces, like the micro-organisms that roil and riot in a drop of water. They shot this way and that, passing through things and people and even each other. And then there were large forms, so big JC couldn’t even guess at what they were, moving through the building and its contents as though they were the ghosts.
JC forced them all out of his gaze and his thoughts, and went on, step by step, refusing to be stopped or turned aside until finally he reached Happy and Melody, after what seemed like miles, or hours, or worse. Melody was trying to talk to Happy, but her words couldn’t reach him. She didn’t seem as bothered by the surroundings, perhaps because most of her attention was fixed on Happy. JC lurched forward and thrust his face right in front of Happy’s. He whipped off his sunglasses, so that his golden eyes stared right into those of the telepath, filling his view. Happy met the golden gaze and slowly relaxed, as though someone had thrown him a lifeline. The golden glare kept everything else out. Happy breathed deeply, and sense returned to his eyes. He nodded jerkily, first to JC, then to Melody.
“All right. I’m back. I’m not sure where, and I don’t think I like it, but I am quite definitely here. Can we go now?”
“Go where?” said JC, stepping back. “You see any way out of here? We’re in the world of the New People now, and we have to start with them.”
He turned to face them, and everything else disappeared. Driven away, pushed aside, by the sheer presence of the New People. Only them, and the light they stood in. Or generated. And when they finally spoke, they all spoke at once, like a thunderous cloud or choir of voices. Just four motionless figures, in all their many dimensions, but when they spoke, there might have been four hundred or four thousand, as many aspects as there were dimensions.
We’ve been waiting for you. The intrepid Ghost Finders of the Carnacki Institute. We knew you were coming. Clearing up the mess left by our creation. Birth is always messy.
“Do you know who’s behind your creation?” said JC, forcing the words out. “Do you know about Patterson?”
Of course. He had plans for us. So did the people he represented. But they were so limited in their thinking. So human. Patterson couldn’t understand us. Nor could his organisation. We are so much more than they expected. They planned our creation but couldn’t deal with what they got. You are all of you incapable of understanding what we are, what we have become. The human mind lacks the capacity to contain what we are. And what we will do.
“What do you want?” said JC.
To make everyone like us, of course. To wake up the world, and everything in it, and set it to useful work. To do all the things that matter, instead of filling in time till death. There is so much that needs doing, matters of great scale and worth-putting the universe to rights.
“What if we don’t want that?” said Happy, moving forward to stand with JC. “What if we’d rather choose our own way?”
You will want it. After you’ve been changed. Upgraded. Made wondrous New People, like us. When you are like us, you’ll understand everything. The universe and its purpose will be clear to you. All the answers to all the questions you ever had, will be yours.
“But will we still care about those questions, and those answers, when we’re not human any more?” said Melody, stepping forward to be with JC. “Will we still care about any of the things we care about now, as poor, limited, human beings?”