The Dance Eternal

ch 9

9

The research facility was massive, at least a mile underground, and fitted with basic but plentiful accoutrements, including a good-sized gym with a pool; two movie rooms (seats about forty per room), an arcade and pool hall for entertainment, and a cafeteria with decent food. Of course, these were all on one of the facility’s seven levels.

Rather than showering, he elected to nap first, finding a couch in a quiet lab near the gym, where he’d be going to shower. He never liked the idea of showering with other men, and figured an hour or two would give plenty of time for the others to have their turn.

Afterward, as he got dressed in some jeans and a deep blue polo that was among some clothes left for them all to take, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. His short, black hair was still dripping, and matted to his forehead, just passing thick eyebrows and into the view of hazel eyes. He ran his finger over a two-inch scar that ran horizontally on his cheek; that was from one of the first times he and Tommy had hung out as friends, and they’d gotten into a bb gun war. Tommy had nearly shot his eye out, but they laughed it off in the end, and their friendship was cemented.

He pulled the polo over his head and shrugged into it. He preferred a t-shirt or a good button-up, but polos always felt too tight. As he looked in the mirror, he noticed that it did accentuate what Lacy called, in an exaggerated tone, his “looove pouch”. He liked the color, though, and it was better than the other choices – he felt for the poor sucker that ended up with the super-neon pink polo he had spotted on the table. He stomped his legs into the jeans, feeling lucky to find the right size, slid on his shoes, and headed out.

At around eight thirty in the evening, he arrived in the lab where he was told he’d find Haverstad – the same he’d napped in, earlier. The doors slid open automatically with a quiet whoosh (they reminded John of an old show he’d seen, Star Trek), and inside were tables littered with all manner of laboratory equipment; here a beaker simmered over a Bunsen burner, there a set of glass tubes in shapes and patterns that looked like miniature hyper-coasters. Computer screens on terminals stationed around the lab flickered with ongoing research data; molecular diagrams rotated, orbited by complex mathematical equations, and topographical diagrams of various regions of Earth were highlighted with various bits of data.

Haverstad sat at a large table piled with books and mechanical parts, tinkering with what looked like a carburetor from a classic car, when he looked up and saw John approach. He stood, wiping his right hand on a rag, the left still balancing the part.

“Not often you see a researcher get dirty,” John mused, as Haverstad offered his hand.

“Not your typical researcher,” Haverstad replied with a grin, “used to work as a mechanic on classic cars. Got a degree in aerospace engineering, but liked mechanics a lot more.” He chuckled, “Pissed my dad off something fierce.” His handshake was as confident as his demeanor, and his speech carried authority, with a hint of the South.

“I’m guessing war changes things, huh? What’s the carburetor from?”

Haverstad nodded to the first question, gesturing to the nearest empty chair. He gazed warmly at the part in his hand, “It’s from a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, my Great-Great-Grandfather’s car.”

As John sat, he whistled and said, “Damn! You’ve had a car in your family for,” he always had a tough time remembering how to keep the generations straight, and decided to change the subject, “So, Mister… Har… vestrad…. I’m sorry; I’m terrible with names,” he stopped talking, looking embarrassed.

“Steve’s fine. John, was it? I’d offer coffee, but I’m still waiting for some, myself.” Steve checked his watch, as if to emphasize the point.

“Listen, Steve, I’m not sure why you wanted to talk to me, but I’m no scientist… or a mechanic,” he added with a chuckle, “So if you’re looking to recruit- “

“What do you know of your family’s history, Mister Shandor,” Steve cut in. John felt pinned under the other’s intense gaze, dark hazel needles holding him like a bug on a board.

“Excuse me? What… what does…” He suddenly felt flustered, cornered.

Steve held his hands up, “It’s okay, John. Apologies if I come of too strongly – I realize that I do at times, but this is kind of important. You’ll understand soon.”

John sat back and crossed his arms, his curiosity peaked, “Go on.”

Steve reached into his shirt pocket and produced a hand-rolled and lighter, stuck an end between his lips and struck the wheel of the Bic. He puffed a couple times, and as he held it toward Johnathan, a pungent odor hit his nose, sweet and familiar, and caused him to grin, “Yes, thank you.”

Releasing a small but solid cloud, Steve began, “John, there was a man in scientific research, long ago, who was often considered ahead of his time. Indeed, much of the scientific community considered his work insignificant at best, completely farce at worst.

“You see, his particular area of focus was dimensional theory. He believed that there were multiple “dimensions”,” he quoted the air with his fingers, “and that ours was only one of possibly infinite. Furthermore, he theorized that there were rifts that occurred, either naturally or fabricated, and that travel was possible in either direction.”

John interjected by releasing his own cloud like a gout of dragon’s breath, trying to test his understanding, “So, he was talking about the multiverse, in essence?”

Steve nodded, “Yes, he was, though he called it the Paralleium. At the time, science was not ready to accept such a thing. There was a basis for his theory – a basis that caused him to be ostracized by the scientific community.”

John couldn’t help feeling like some of this sounded familiar; the Paralleium, for one, struck a deep chord, so deep that the friendly slimeball in his mind quivered – quivered – at the mention of it. He also couldn’t help but notice that his face must have been telling, as he caught a slight smirk twist the corner of Steve’s mouth - just a hint, then it was gone.

Steve continued, as if he’d been waiting for a response, “His belief, or theory as such, was that these dimensions could be anything, from alternate realities to completely different planes of existence.

“When posed the question from the theological standpoint, he claimed that, ‘yes, Heaven and Hell were probably among those dimensions, as was the possibility that one could find Valhalla or Hel. One of his main points was that there were dangerous things in some of those other dimensions, and that we needed to be ready. He claimed proof, but none in the “community”,” he quoted the air again, contempt plain on his face, “were never interested enough to check, so the whole issue fell into obscurity.”

That spot in John’s mind was twitching intermittently while Steve gave his account, and reminded him of the last forty-eight hours, but he still just couldn’t figure out why he was getting the lecture.

“This is truly fascinating – I have always had an interest in the subject – but I am curious as to the reason you’re giving me this science lesson.”

They passed the joint in silence a couple times, before Steve continued. John mildly suspected this man liked being a storyteller. “That man’s name was Jakob Shandor.”

John sat, poleaxed. Grandfather? Well, Great-Grandfather, he’d remembered being told; the man was ancient when he was a kid, and he’d only seen him a few memorable times. The pieces began to click. Could it really have been him? He remembered that Grandpa Jakob had some odd stories to tell, but the details were flailing in the fog of old memory and m*******a – besides, that was years ago. Grandpa Jakob had been dead since John was eight. But, the Paralleium – just thinking the word made the slimy little thing in his mind pulsate with increasing intensity.

“Name ring a bell,” Steve asked, trying not to sound too eager.

“My Great-Grandfather. I hate to disappoint, but I didn’t follow his career. It sounds like you did, though.” He remembered he had been curious about Grandpa Jakob, what with the things the man did talk about; there was a long argument between Jakob and John’s own father, Ivan, about the “true perils of space travel” that had made the trip home long and full of complaint of the “old man’s craziness”.

“Oh, no. We have his research. Jakob Shandor and his research have been my focus for a decade and more, and has inspired much of my own research and experimentation. There was a lot more to it than simple dimensional theory. Your Grandfather was a metaphysical genius. Through his research into various energies, we’ve been able to create something… wonderful. Several, actually.” Steve smiled like a little boy on Christmas morning, held his hands up nodding and wide-eyed, and stated, “Dude.”

While John wanted to share the feeling, that sensation of mental sludge was beginning to make him want for something mind-numbing. Suddenly, it fell silent and still, and that voice echoed from the depths, “As you wisssssssh.” John shuddered.

Steve stood, “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He turned and strolled toward a door at the back of the lab.

John got up to follow, and as he passed the table where Steve was working, he saw several blueprints, from different angles, detailing some sort of craft. He heard the door hiss open, and moved to catch up to the other man, but hesitated, thoughts tumbling in his consciousness. What was this guy planning, and just how much does he know?

He looked through the now open door, into a longish passage; looking as if it were bored through by a massive drill, a strip of bright LED lights lined each side of the hall, about seven feet above the floor, which was made even with a series of metal floor panels. The mental sludge surged from its promised silence, and he got the sensation that it was reaching behind him. The chair he’d been sitting on rolled between the two men, and up the hall in a beeline, finally thwacking against the far door hard enough to set the seat into a spin.

John stared at the chair a moment, then looked at Steve, who was already looking at him, pushing up his glasses, as if seeing him anew, and said, “interesting.”

Without another word, they walked up the hall, and at their approach, the chair considerately moved aside, the seat’s rotation slowed to a languid twirl on its post. The door opened, sliding quietly upward, and inside was a massive cavern. John spied several openings above (he spotted the moon on one of them – apparently the storm had finally cleared), and catwalks lined the cavern walls, spider-webbing across the cavern’s space to meet in the center around a massive cylinder, which was at least one hundred feet in diameter and at least twice as much in height. Given its size, the cylinder was dwarfed in the cavern.

Steve led John to a lift and pressed a button, and the lift clanked and began its decent. Quickly, they sank into the cavern’s depths, an array of lights keeping the underground gloom away, as they descended past floors where people went about in work.

“What is this,” John asked in amazement.

“This is the heart of it all,” Steve proudly replied, with a grand sweeping gesture indicating the whole cavern, “Originally, it was only the first two levels, but as more came to help in my work, we came upon the need for more space. During some exploratory drilling, we broke into this cavern at the point you and I entered.

“Obviously, there was plenty of room, and any extraneous room-needs – quarters, equipment rooms, separate labs – we added later, using this cavern as a start point. We even found a clean water source we’ve been able to safely tap into.”

John looked took the place in, smelling the cool subterranean air mingled with the scent of oil and other chemicals he couldn’t quite place. As the lift slowed, then stopped at the bottom of the cavern, Steve lifted the gate and stepped onto a steel-plate walkway, and over to an area with a couple couches and a few chairs set around an old folding table. Steve dropped onto one of the chairs, an overstuffed recliner.

John sat on the adjacent recliner, facing outward and leaving the cavern’s center feature in view. His head felt a little light, and he wasn’t sure if it was the ride on the open elevator, or the pot they smoked. He wasn’t sure how long it had been going, but that feeling in his head had fell mostly still, though it did seem to be purring contentedly.

Finally, he asked, “So, what is the cylinder? Is that a power source for this place? I imagine you’d need a lot.”

Haverstad shook his head, “Before I tell you that, let me ask: how much do you know about the state of world affairs?”

“You want to ask me about current events?” Johnathan felt confused at the deflection.

“Not for my own knowledge. I want to know how well informed you are. Nothing personal, mind, just so I know how to proceed.”

John sat back, still trying to figure out Haverstad’s angle, but decided to go with it for now. “I know that it’s basically the apocalypse out there. I know that the Arabs and the Chinese have been pissed for years over American foreign policies and business practices, and I know that they have been attacking cities on U.S. soil – I lived in New York City until a few years ago. That’s what brought me to Flagstaff.” He stopped there to see if that would satisfy. He felt put on the spot, and never was comfortable in such situations, an issue that caused him no end of problems in school.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, yet, but several cities around the globe have been wiped from the map – some unknown weapon of true devastation. Worse, no one is taking responsibility for the attacks. Flagstaff was one of them, as was Johannesburg, Minsk, Florence. Oddly, none were considered major cities of strategic military importance.”

Listening, John was beginning to wish for another joint as he shifted, still wondering about that circular monolith in the middle of the cavern.

“There was, however, one thing each target had in common.”

John suddenly met Steve’s gaze, “Something else showed up, didn’t it?”

Haverstad held the gaze a moment in silence, then, “So, you’ve seen it?”

“I saw… something… a couple different somethings. In different locations.”

“Nasty smell, kind of greenish, amorphous?”

“That’d be them. So, they’re not just here.” That realization made at once him relieved and concerned.

“It gets worse,” Steve added a trio of people in lab coats meandered near the seating area, all seeming to talk at once. Two of them, a man and woman, both in their thirties, seemed to be tagging along with an older woman carrying a sheaf of papers topped with a tablet.

“We’re telling you, Martha, this will work. It uses the existing systems, all it needs is a higher storage capacity. These chips are…” They were about to sit on the couches when they saw the pair already there and fell silent.

Martha smiled, “Apologies, Steve, we didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Its fine, Martha. Something good?”

“Tamera and James, here, are with the power team, and think they’ve found a solution to our power efficiency issues. They were just going to show me their work, but we can move elsewhere.” She started to turn, but Steve stopped them.

“No, no, go ahead. I was about to show John around.”

They stood, and Steve started toward the cylinder. John caught up in a couple steps, “So, you said it ‘gets worse’. Worse than World War III, plus aliens?”

“A nuclear strike is imminent, by both of the opposing forces. We’ve had word from military contacts that they’ve enacted evacuation plans on all remaining major cities, and urged what civilians are left to get supplied and seek deep cover. We truly have reached the end of the world, I think.”

As Steve opened the gate for another lift, this one for accessing the various levels around the cylinder, John stood trying to process what the other had just said.

“Come, John, it isn’t over yet.”