The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

host. That was the purpose of the Chancellor’s design. I realized that right before I died. But then I saw you and Coop. I couldn’t let you go. I just wanted to give both of you another chance. I saw a way, even a way to heal myself. But she warned me. She knew what would happen.”

“Who? Lydia?”

“I saved you by setting her free. It was me all along, Sammie. I became the Jewel reborn. And now, I’m something more.”

She sat beside him and laid her head against his shoulder.

“It’s OK. We’ll do what we have to do.”

“I’m different now,” he said. “I see how it fits together. I know things I shouldn’t. I’m not human.”

“We’ll make this work, Jamie. Whatever we have to do.”

“I can’t stay here,” he whispered. “I’m dangerous. I have to leave.”

“I know.”

He turned to her. “Will you come with me?”

She smiled. “Are we going home?”

“Yes, Sammie. I reckon it’s time to go home.”

 

72

7:26 p.m.

The Interdimensional Fold

20.1 miles north of Albion, Alabama

T he fading sun burnished the dying forest in murky tones of amber and sepia, the only light forced through the dust-filled sky and the tall pines of these hardscrabble woods. This was a place rarely visited by humans. They were often hunters or hikers; recently, they were mechanical monsters, their weapons tested upon arrival, given the scorch marks in all directions.

Yet none of these things interested Jamie as much as what this place represented. Fifteen years ago, he arrived here with twelve adult observers, two older children, and an unborn girl. He did not remember the arrival. He was glad he was too young to understand.

The exile, however, gave him a chance at life and most of the observers time to reconsider their mission. What most amazed Jamie was how he understood Agatha Bidwell in a way she never allowed in the classroom. She was far from the monster he once assumed; she was simply trying to destroy the real monster. Jamie supposed that if he endured the same exile, he would have made the same choice.

Now, as he stood feet away from the interdimensional fold rift, Jamie wanted to explain everything he processed the past nine hours since they fled. He wanted to tell them about his internal conversations and the secrets he was uncovering. He wanted to tell them that he was now in control, that he could no longer be infused with a programmed thirst to kill. Yet Jamie was in no position to make promises.

He could not shake the Jewel’s proclamation that the Chancellors overreached, that even they did not know how powerful the Jewels of Eternity were. We will show them the way home, and the dark will follow. Jamie knew this was bigger than them all, and he could not believe his audacity to think he might fight something so fearsome.

Yet he saw no option: The Jewels could not be allowed to exist in the universe of the Collectorate or any other.

Two hours earlier, as the dust-shrouded afternoon faded, they gathered food and survival supplies into a duffel. They stole a car without incident and took the long way around toward the fold, the location of which Jamie sensed by instinct. They traveled the interstate north then cut west across back roads as far removed from the disaster zones as possible.

As they neared the fold, Michael became jittery and suggested he was having second thoughts. When he first learned of Jamie’s plan to leave this universe, he took a carefree approach.

“What the hell?” He laughed. “A little holiday with your Chancellor buddies, assuming they ain’t trying to waste us, too? I could be down with that. We take care of business, do a little sightseeing on the U.S.S. Enterprise, and we’re good to go. Right?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Jamie said. “My plan has a pretty reasonable shot at getting us all killed.”

Michael rationalized his decision, knowing the world considered him dead – a fate probably better than if he turned up in public.

However, on the drive toward the fold, Michael insisted his parents must have been going out of their minds with grief. How could he put them through that? If he at least called them, he could say he was all right but couldn’t come home again.

Jamie pulled the car over and wanted to give Michael an out, but he didn’t need to say a word. Michael stiffened.

“No, dude,” Michael said. “This is best. They’ll move on. It’s better than me in jail hurting them the rest of their lives. Besides,” he added with a grin, “we ain’t wrote the end of this turkey yet. Who says we can’t come back someday? The fold ain’t going anywhere. Right?”

Jamie looked at him in stunned silence.

“What if we don’t pull it off, Coop? The Collectorate is a dangerous place. At least there’s still some love on this Earth. But the Chancellors … they’re empty. They’ll do anything to hold on to what they got. They built those Shock Units. They bred people like me. An army of Berserkers. You might never see this place again.”

“Reckon you’re right. But hell, I ought to be a ghost. Must be some reason I got a second chance. We all did. You get my speed?”

Now, as they stood near the fold, Jamie faced his friends. They met him with eyes that conveyed equal parts trepidation and excitement. He exhaled all the burdens of the past day.

“This is where it started, fifteen years ago,” he said. “They came through the fold somewhere near here.” He pointed to a spot between a pair of tall pines. Although they saw nothing, Jamie beheld the fold as a throbbing red seam inches wide. “My so-called parents and yours,” he told Sammie. “They thought they were doing the right