PHASE Part II
by C.M. Hiebert
“So, where do you keep the real you, Andrew?” Davidson asks, pushing away his dinner plate. His Lodotian servant pads in promptly to clean the mess, making fleshy, galloping thumps across the floor. In a flurry of tentacles she clears all the cups, bowls, plates and silverware from the tabletop and is out the door. “There’s got to be an original somewhere.”
Over the years I've spend watching him, I’ve gotten to know Davidson. Up next to the guy on Atlantis who invented the Ultra Syndrome, he’s the smartest human who’s ever lived. Yet he’s got this streak of moron in him. He knows everything about chemistry, physics, biology, etc., but he doesn’t know shit about people.
On Earth, everyone is asleep and I am sitting with my eyes closed in the headquarters’ library. The other me, is sitting on the outside of gigantic pearl that seems to be encased in a box the size of the universe. There is no sound. I keep my eyes closed there all the time.
With only one me in an active state, I focus my full attention on the conversation with Davidson. I am feeling melancholy tonight.
“There is a constant me that cannot be divided,” I tell him, out of boredom and against my better judgment. “It’s located in an austere place. Everything is gray and white. It seems like I’m standing on the surface of a pearl larger than the world. And the pearl is inside an even bigger building. A box maybe.”
Davidson is transfixed. “You’re kidding me.”
“No, I’m not. Nelson thinks that I’m standing on the outside of time and space.”
“That is weird,” Davidson says. I see his brow tighten and his eyes flit around the room. He’s calculating something.
I wish I hadn’t said anything.
^^^
“You told him what!” Nelson freaks the next day when I tell
him what I told Davidson. “Andy you have no idea what he might be
able to do with that information.”
“Like what?” I ask without sarcasm.
Nelson is flickering blue and red zigzags across his featureless face in perfect symmetry.
“He might figure out a way to capture one of your selves, or somehow manipulate your perception. He could even figure out a way to kill you.”
^^^
Watching the Lodotian sunrise is like seeing a mountain of fire being born. It starts out as a small quivering slice of flame on the horizon, then in just a few minutes, it expands like an H-bomb, growing into a blazing red dome that takes up half the sky.
“…until Man arrests his self-hatred, war must be abolished by force.” Davidson is giving me one of his lectures and spoiling the sunrise. “A single-point decision-making process is the only path around humanity’s ego-driven hunger for war and exploitation. I’m trying to save the world, Andy. I could’ve destroyed it a million times already. Why would I do that? I’m for peace.”
Etc., etc.
Ten years ago, what Davidson did to prove he was for peace was to destroy Paris, France. Totally scooped it off the globe just so everyone would know he could do it. He had used some kind of gravity bomb. White dwarf technology. It left a perfectly smooth, funnel-shaped crater 25 miles across and about 200 miles deep. Two million dead. Yeah.
He also pissed off about a hundred Ultras on both sides of the rules. After that, Davidson disappeared for a while and didn’t pop back up again until the South Pole incident.
“How can you kill two million people and claim to be for peace?” Fuck him.
His teeth clinch and I see him angry for the first time since I’ve known him.
“It was a decision that had to be made. A decision that took courage and indomitable will. The League of Heroes and Union Ultra had to know I would follow through with my threats. Had the other Ultras stuck with me, I think we could’ve won.”
“Well,” I say. “Life’s a bitch.”
A smirk tugs at half his face. “And then you die,” he says. “Or at least some of us do.”
^^^
Back in the 1980s, when the testing of my condition was all the rage, a number of theories arose about my existence. None of which generated any answers but many produced entire libraries of questions, such as: Why did the Atlantians create this condition? What purpose did it serve? Is he mind? Is he matter? Why can he walk on floors? Would he ever die?
That last one always got to me. You see, unless things change, it doesn’t look like I will ever age another moment, much less die. I will never get in an accident or catch a fatal disease. Before you think that’s a good thing, think about it a little more.
Never die. There was a possibility that I would live forever, as in, forever. After the last man died, I would still be here. After the world eroded into nothing, I would still be here. When the sun snuffs out, I will be here. Even after the universe finally implodes and I had nowhere to be, I would be here.
Now what kind of shape will I be in by then? Still in this goddamn Led Zeppelin t-shirt?
^^^
Davidson is tinkering with his modified and enlarged teleportal. Unlike the shower we came here in, this one is the size of a carwash and big enough to drive a tank through. Several tanks actually.
“So, Andy,” he says, not taking his eyes from his work. “Just how many pieces can you chop into?”
I answer quickly. Perhaps too quickly. “I can hit ten before my mind gets blown. Two or three besides the quiet place is about all I can handle and still function.”
Davidson stops what he’s doing.
“How does it work? How do you divide?”
“I simply think about it. It’s not hard. The next me comes off the last me I made. But they are all me. I have only one mind. Different eyes, different ears, but only one processor.”
On earth, at the very minute I’m telling him this, I’m walking along a beach in southern California. I had gone there to relax and think things through. It’s an easy place for my earth-half to chill out while I focus on Davidson, a good place to get away from Nelson for a while. I lie down on the beach and close my eyes. That way I can focus on my conversation with Davidson.
“But this part of you in the ‘quiet place,’ that part never changes or divides, right?” He asks.
I hesitate for a second, then give him what he wants.
“It doesn’t do anything. It’s like I’m there, but I’m not there. I can’t see my self. No shirt, no boots. When I open my eyes all I see is the pearl in the box.”
“Let me ask you this,” he says, crossing his arms. "Are you standing or sitting in this place?”
The truth was I didn’t know. I tried not to know too much about that place, its vastness, its foreverness. But I want to answer Davidson’s question, so I shut my eyes on Lodo…
…And open them in the quiet place. A great convex white-gray expanse rolls off into an impossibly distant horizon, a shadowy flat ceiling above me, but so far above me my mind cannot grasp it. I try to look down to see if I am standing or sitting, but there is no down, there is only the curved and flat expanse before me, and a roaring silence. Then I realize the answer to his question and shift back to Lodo.
“I think I’m floating,” I say, and Davidson gets a weird look on his face. Round eyes, arched eyebrows, round mouth. I can tell something just clicked in his twisted mind.
Suddenly, I’m really scared I fucked up.
From that point, Davidson stops working on his king-sized teleportal and starts another project. This one revolves around me. I follow him, as I always do. He’s in a frenzy and calls a conference with his Lodotian scientists. He speaks perfect Lodotian, a language that sounds like wet fart noises. At various times during the gathering the entire Lodotian scientific community stares and me and makes fart sounds. A couple of them walk over to me and wave their tentacles through my body.
They meet for most of the day, and I am bored senseless. If it weren’t for my terror, I wouldn’t be paying attention at all.
Back on earth, I have left the beach and am sitting in another briefing with Nelson, his weird suit pulsing and flickering.
“So what’s the news on planet Lodo?”
I shrug. “Not much. Same old, same old.”
^^^
A couple of weeks go by and Davidson goes full bore on Project Me. He’s
got a good-sized army of Lodotians working in a gigantic building that’s
half laboratory, half assembly line. He farts orders to various groups
of Lodotians throughout the long hours of each day. In the end they produce
a strange, confusing machine that looks like a giant tuning fork on the
back of a go cart.
I’d pestered Davidson throughout the machine’s construction with questions about its function. He told me that if the device worked, he might be able to find “my wavelength.” Another time he says the thing will let him “touch me.” Given his masturbatory habits, that didn’t sound too good to me.
One morning in his limousine on the way to the laboratory, he turns to me and says: “Well, Andy. Today’s the day.”
“For what?”
“I want to test the machine.”
The one thing I can still feel is emotion, and I have lived in constant fear since the day I opened up to Davidson. I knew if anyone could figure out how to get me out of this state -- one way or another -- it was him. I also knew he would use whatever he learned from me to further his own cause. Now was my moment of truth. Would I help him or put a stop to all of this?
I cave.
At the laboratory, I stand where Davidson tells me to stand and turn the way he tells me to turn. They bring the tuning fork over and point it at me.
“To be quite honest, Andy,” Davidson says as the machine begins to glow and hum with incredible energy. “I don’t know whether this will hurt or not.”
He puts on a pair of red goggles and pulls the trigger. For the first time in 20 years, I feel something; a tingling, electric pulse that rises from my feet to my head and feels incredibly pleasant.
“Now, Andy, I want you to concentrate on those nifty hikers you got on your feet. Try to untie the shoelace with your mind.”
The request is strange, but these are strange times. I close my eyes and think about untying my boots. Nothing happens.
“Okay, same thing. But this time take your mind to the quiet place and do it from there.”
I don’t like that idea. It’s like asking me to stick my tongue on a 9-volt battery. I just don’t want to do it. A long moment passes. Then, I close my eyes and open them on the back of the pearl.
From there I think about untying my boots.
I return to Lodo and look down at my bootlaces. Nothing. Same old, same old.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” I chide Davidson.
He removes his goggles and smiles. “Not exactly, Andy. Take another look.”
I look down at my boots. The laces are tied, but there’s something else. My feet have switched sides. My left foot is on the right side and vice versa.
“Oh, Geez! Now how did that help?” I exclaim.
“I don’t know yet. We’ll have to see,” Davidson says, but he’s got on a smile that eats the bottom of his face. He sure thinks he’s right about something.
My feet change back in a few minutes, but I can’t take my eyes off of them.
^^^
“Are you okay, Andy?” Nelson asks me back on Earth. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
I realize that every one of me has reacted to the foot problem. Even the one on the pearl.
“No, it’s all right,” I tell the doctor. “Just got a bit distracted for a second.”
“Is Davidson doing something?”
I try not to show reaction to the question. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is that distracted you.”
“No,” I say. “Nothing.”
^^^
“What’s Nelson saying now?” Davidson interjects back on Lodo. “I know you’re talking to him. Did he see your feet?”
^^^
Back on Earth I want to end my conversation with Nelson so I can talk to Davidson about what the hell just happened.
“What a minute, Dr. Nelson,” I say, looking into the distance. “Davidson’s on the go. I need to focus.”
It’s not uncommon for me to tune out on Earth, so I shut my eyes.
^^^
Davidson is still smiling. I now understand what the phrase “shit-eating grin” means.
“What the hell was that?” I demand, pissed off, scared. “How did you do that?”
“To answer both your questions: One, that was confirmation of my original theory about your existence. Two, by use of a primitive quantum harmonics device.”
I wait a moment, struggling with the value of this information. Randall Davidson, the evilest bastard who’d ever lived could “touch me.” What did it mean?
“What does it mean?” I ask still looking down at my now-normal boots.
“It means, my friend, that when we get back to Earth, I’m going to construct a first-class, top-of-the-line quantum harmonics generator and bring your ass back to the third dimension.”
It is, of course, what I want to hear. I feel hope rise from my intangible gut.
“But you are going to owe me big time,” Davidson says with a smile that’s got to hurt.
To be continued....