A lone figure in the rift.
Not a soul. No astral body, no separated-self.
An actual form of matter, braving the howling winds of energy, the maelstrom between the world of the game and the world of the truth.
Somewhere, deep down in his recent memory, he recalled that this shouldn’t be.
Couldn’t be.
It gave him pause, just enough to question it.
And in that moment, something happened. On the fringes of his being, connected still to the tree, that one loose element waiting to fully accept the fruit…
…introduced a level of doubt in the whole enterprise, interrupting the stream and dislocating the truth.
“Dad,” came the voice from the emerald glow.
And with it, toward Caleb, flowed wave after wave of emotion, of love and longing. Of a lifetime, short and meaningless in light of everything else he’d just absorbed, but one that would be missed so powerfully. The crushing weight of the loss overwhelmed him suddenly and triggered the sense of protection only a father could feel.
Alexander was headed for the rift, was almost at it.
He couldn’t survive. Nothing could. He would be torn to shreds, all because of Caleb.
“Going to save you, Dad…”
No!
Caleb tried to shout, tried and to yell to Orlando, stop him, stop! Not another step.
Alexander took another step.
The rift shimmered, cracked, twisted and jittered as Alexander approached.
The emerald glow… Caleb saw it around his son’s neck. It was protecting him, somewhat, but it couldn’t save him in here. In fact…
He knew, knew based on its nature, its true cosmic-matter structure, it would in fact do the opposite, and probably much worse.
“Dad, listen to Orlando. I know this is the end of your quest. You’ve won, found the ultimate treasure, but please… It’s not what you want.”
It’s not… Caleb already knew how this conversation would transpire. Knew already in a half a billion universes and alternate realities how it played out. He knew he would always come to the same conclusion that Alexander had just brought him to.
Knew, because it was the truth, and because he was who he was.
In this life or in any.
“It wasn’t the treasure you were after. It’s not the knowledge, or all the books in the world, or all the knowledge that was ever lost that made you what you are.”
It’s the hunt, the thirst for that knowledge, and…
“It’s the quest itself. The hunt, the chase, and the certainty that we may never be certain of anything. That’s what drives you. It’s what it means to be human, what it means to deny that last bite of the apple.”
But Caleb was no longer listening. He had already spit it out, every last morsel. The taste still lingered, but it felt like his throat burned and he had consumed the foulest, most acidic alcohol. He detached himself from the vine, and with a thought, blasted back toward the rift, where he caught the serpent in its hesitation, grasped it by the tail, and with a strength rivaling the Titans of Greece, flung it back into the upper branches of the tree.
With a last, giddy breath, and a bow toward the writhing, trembling tree of light, Caleb exhaled and did his best to leave the infinite breath behind. Like a deflating balloon it pushed his astral self backwards, colliding with Orlando and knocking both out and through the rift—
— through Alexander and returning to their own bodies.
40
Caleb shot up an instant later, gasping and disoriented in every one of his senses. His body felt alien, his skull a tiny thimble. Nothing fit inside. All the knowledge and wisdom of the Tree and the other place, just trying to cram back inside and scatter among the pockets inside his brain. He imagined billions of alcoves, his mind an ancient Greek library, overflowing.
So many sights, and truths, and…
“Dad!”
Someone shook him, then embraced him. A boy, and a woman. Someone else was getting up from a prone position and rubbing his head.
“Dad, do you know me? Do you know where you are?”
Caleb blinked and tried to focus his eyes on the material world taking shape around him. Dim and shadowy, almost fake in every way like a projection. Maybe from… that, the crimson tear hanging in the air, giving off waves of heat.
“Caleb,” a woman’s voice, her eyes as green as…
The little stone around the boy’s neck. The boy calling him…
“Dad?” He pulled him close, and the boy was tall, not at all as he would have pictured a son. More like a grown man, more and more every day.
“Big brother?” Another voice, from the woman helping the other dreamer back to his feet. This one familiar, like they had just been together, along with a pair of little ones.
He heard crying now, soft and weak, but full of hunger and need, and the couple went to the table to pick up and hold the twins.
“Give him a moment,” said the green-eyed, tan-skinned woman, sleek as a cat. Attractive suddenly in a way that at once made him ashamed, as if before this moment he had been incapable of feeling attraction, or lust, or shame.
An image of a man and woman, naked before an apple tree came to his mind, and then his surroundings shifted into place.
The man holding a child came closer, eying him curiously. “Caleb, don’t fight it. Don’t try to hold onto everything. Our brains aren’t meant to know everything. To retain all of it would be… well, it would really suck.”
Caleb frowned and tried to do exactly what he’d been told not to, mentally grasping at wispy bits of knowledge and items of truth. He felt like waking up after a beautiful, meaningful dream and trying to hold onto all the facets of it, the imagery and the discoveries, yet most of it just slipped away. He would always let those go because deep down he knew that dream world wasn’t important; wasn’t where he spent his days, wasn’t where his life would be lived. And thus, it didn’t matter.
Throwaway knowledge, no matter how truthful, had to make way for the information that really mattered.
He was Caleb Crowe. He had a sister, two sons. A lover… named Nina. A friend named Orlando.
And a world depending on him.
He had created this psychic catastrophe, He had to help end it.
He took a deep breath, hugged his son close, then backed away, studying the green stone around his neck. He was close to remembering something else, something vital about the nature of this thing — and everything around them when another sound jarred his senses.
Gunfire from somewhere above, echoing painfully, followed by the sound of engines, and screams.
“No!” yelled Nina. “Jacob!”
“Wait,” Aria said, holding up a hand as she had started up the ramp. “I saw him… Leading them up the ramp, about to enter the pyramid, coming in fast and he’s got an injured person with him.”
“Temple!” Phoebe said, viewing it herself.
Nina cocked the M5 and tossed the 9mm over to Aria. “Let’s go!”
“No,” said Alexander, stepping away from his father and moving ahead of the others. He touched the emerald stone, the gem of power and control. “I have another way.”
He reached out to the sense the area up there, seeing it in his memory first, and then, he closed his eyes…
…and saw it for real, opening them inside of one of the soldiers pursuing Jacob. Ahead of the dozen or so other black-clad para-military members, he roared up the ramp fast, tearing into the ice and maneuvering the corners at breakneck speed. Gaining on the two lumbering up on the Snow-Cat, he would catch them before the mangled entrance and before they could get inside to safety.