Chapter 10: Discovery
"Nita, what are you doing?" Ronan asked finally.
Nita pushed a lock of brown hair behind her ear and turned to look at him. "Sit down," she told him. "And I'll show you."
Ronan obligingly plunked himself down beside her on the grassy hillside. A grey mist had seemed to take form a flat screen in front of them. Using a pencil, Nita was drawing and erasing lines in the air. Shimmering white lines threaded through the fog-screen, intersecting here and there with Nita's lines.
"These-" Nita pointed her pencil at the shimmering lines, "are hyperlinks. Hyperlinks connect all Gates, remember?" At his nod, she continued. Pointing at bright spots where the shimmering lines occasionally crossed, she said, "These are hypernodes, the places where Hyperlinks cross. It's easiest to set up Gates on hypernodes, because the power collects in the nodes. The more hyperlink crossings, the bigger and more powerful the node." She turned at looked at Ronan. "With me so far?"
"Yeah. So what are those?" he pointed at her pencil lines.
"Those are other hyperlinks that intersect with Earth's."
"Other Hyperlinks? From where?"
Nita shrugged. "All over. Other planets, other dimensions, other universes. Take your pick. No one is absolutely sure. It's hard to do anything with them without screwing up something; usually a Gate. Most people just let the cats worry about them. They're better at Gate stuff anyway."
"So why are we worried about them? If we throw Gates offline no one's gonna thank us."
"It might be unavoidable, but lets hope not. The thing is, this -" she waved her hand at the fog-screen, "shows me a detailed map of all the hyperlinks in this area."
"Well that's great but what's it got to do with anything?"
"Quiet! I'm getting there!" Nita glared at him, then redirected her attention to the screen in front of them. "Anyways, like I said I was playing around with the settings and, well, check this out." She touched the eraser on the tip of her pencil to a marking on the screen. The grey screen instantly turned green in color and showed several bold black lines slashing across it. Where the black lines occasionally intersected, there was a dark point so black that it looked like a void."
"What on Earth is all that?"
"Well that's exactly what I wanted to know. I'm still not entirely sure. I just have some ideas based on my research."
"Well that's better than nothing. Care to share them?"
Nita bit her lip. "Alright. It appears to be an alternate variation of Earth's hyperlinks superimposed over the existing systems."
"In English please? Or at least some recognizable dialect?"
"Basically, it's a view of an alternate Earth's hyperlinks superimposed over the real ones. In other words, these," she waved at the green screen with its odd black hyperlinks, "don't actually exist, or at least not in this reality, or this dimension, whatever you want to call it. But they could be or are real in a different reality or dimension. I think what I'm seeing here is our real hyperlinks - the shimmery ones - but every time I change the setting, I can see the hyperlinks of alternate or parallel dimension Earths. Does that make sense?"
"Sort of." Ronan frowned, trying to absorb the foreign concepts. "You really have put a lot into this, haven't you?"
"Yeah. But that's not all. Take a look at this." Nita touched the screen again, and it returned to its original grey color with shimmering lights threaded through the map displayed. Nita pointed at one section of the map, which obligingly isolated and enlarged her selected section. She touched another point, zooming in on a specific section.
"Where is that?" Ronan asked.
"This is where I live. New York City. Look." She tapped something on the screen with her pencil. "Look at this."
"So? Its just a line? What's it stand for? A road or something?"
Nita shook her head and tapped the screen again. The screen dissolved into green and black, with a bold black line in the exact same place it had been on the previous screen. She returned the screen to its original settings and looked at Ronan. "It's one of those other hyperlinks." She said. "I'm not positive, but that's what I think it is. And look at this." She zoomed out again and selected a different section of the map.
"Hey, that's your aunt's place, isn't it?" Ronan recognized the area.
"Yeah. Check this out."
A dark spot covered a section of the map. Nita wordlessly switched the settings. Ronan examined it, then watched as Nita switched the settings back. "So the node is in both Earths? Like the hyperlink? What's it mean?"
"I learned something else interesting," Nita said.
"Oh?" Ronan gave her a quizzical look, ignoring her apparent avoidance of his question.
"Mind you, I'm not entirely sure about this, since the people who write this stuff either have no clue what they're talking about, or speak some crazy science dialect that's impossible to translate unless you know what they're talking about already, but…" She pulled out her manual and opened it to a well creased spot. "Notes, please." she said. The manual complied, and several pages of notes in Nita's handwriting appeared. "It seems to me that the kernels are not only power sources, but something more."
"Like what?"
"I'm not sure if there's a word for it. They are like, like... the soul of a world; a living thing in and of themselves and they seem to feed off possibilities. The more creative the people of a world are, and the more they develop possibilities, the more powerful their worldkernel is and the more alternate dimensions a world has. Earth's seems to be pretty powerful, by the way. But apart from that, the thing is, the kernels also seem to be … calibrated to a certain reality. I'm not sure how or by who, but this reality is 'real' because that is how the kernel is programmed, so to speak."
"Now you're losing me…" Ronan shook his head slowly.
"Ok, basically the kernels hold all the possibilities of a world - the collective imaginings of everyone on Earth, such as this reality - the one we're living in -, and others. For example, mythical history or created worlds, like from books or movies. They're all stored in the world kernel and it is powered by our creativity, for lack of a better explanation. The thing is, the kernel has to understand what is real and what's not. We can't live in a world that's constantly switching between realities, so someone or something has - for lack of a better term - programmed Earth's kernel - and all other worldkernels - to understand and display a certain reality. For us, it means that this," she waved her hand around her, "these rocks, these trees, this ocean, this sky; this is 'real' to us because this is the reality programmed into the kernel."
"Alright. So if say, a different reality was programmed in, like from… oh I don't know, Star Wars or something, then…?"
"Then the world would respond accordingly. Then things like blasters and wookies would be 'real'. And if it was some mythical reality that was programmed in, we'd expect to see gods on Mount Olympus and flying horses and medusas and things."
"That's amazing," Ronan said frankly. "My head hurts just thinking about it."
"No kidding." Nita agreed. "The thing is, I think something's tampered with the programming of our kernel."
"What?"
"Yeah. Seriously!" she said, looking at his disbelieving expression.
"The node is right on Ballyvolan, Ronan. Right on the fault. Where the dragon and the winged horse came from."
"Great Powers!" Ronan swore softly. "But how could someone tamper with the kernel? It's got to be hard to play around with that sort of thing, otherwise the world would constantly be shifting realities. Someone would be bound to notice after a while, or so you'd think."
"I know." Nita looked troubled. "That's what I don't know. How anyone's doing this, or why, or how to fix it."
"Maybe that's where we come in."
"How, Ronan? Tell me, how? This is impossible! It's huge! It's crazy! We're not scientists! I practically failed physics last semester! How on Earth are we supposed to fix anything? It's too big for us! And we don't even have anywhere to start!" Nita leaned back hard and lay flat on her back on the grass, the gray fog-screen still floating before her as she stared up at the clouds.
"I can't answer that. But maybe the answer will present itself. The Powers don't give out assignments that are totally out of a wizard's abilities."
"Maybe this time they have." Nita maintained stubbornly. "I can't do this. They can't expect me to!"
"You're forgetting something." He told her.
"What?"
"Its not just you. We are in this together, like it or not. I'll help you. I think I was meant to help you. That's why we both got the feeling. We're supposed to work together."
Nita looked doubtful still, sitting up to stare at the lines across the screen again. Ronan put a comforting arm around her shoulders. "It'll be ok." He said. "We'd best get to work though." Nita felt better and worse at the same time.
"Hey Nita," Ronan called from behind a wall of books across the room, "You may want to have a look at this."
Nita marked her page, set her book down, and picked her way through the various research materials that lay scattered everywhere towards Ronan. He pushed aside two stacks of books to make room for her. "Look at this!" he said excitedly, waving a book with cracked yellow pages and an ancient, musty-smelling cover. Nita leaned over for a better look and Ronan put his finger under the passage he wanted to draw her attention to.
"The Shadows first came from Vernalla, the world entrusted with the Guardianship. Strange things began to occur - myths and legends came alive, and the world began to behave strangely. To those with wizardry, it appears to be changing its very fabric and shifting from one time and place to another. We do not know how it is happening. Time, space, and the very fabric of the world itself seems to buckle around us…"
"Wow," Nita said, and looked from the book back to Ronan. "Who wrote this?"
Ronan flipped the book around and opened it to the first page.
"Journal of… Councillor Nikez of Yazaan, Senior Planetary Advisory." Nita read. "Interesting. Where the heck is Yazaan? Or Vernalla for that matter? And this is great as an informational source, but if they didn't know how to fix things then, then how does it help us fix things now?"
"One thing at a time," Ronan held up a finger. "Why don't you check your manual and look up Vernalla and Yazaan, while I keep reading. I'll tell you if I find anything interesting."
"Alright." Nita leaned back against a stack of books and paged to the index in her manual as Ronan flipped back to the interesting passage in his journal-book. Both settled into a companionable working silence, marred only by the soft fluttering of pages being turned and the occasional sneeze and accompanying dust cloud.
"Found it," Nita remarked, paging through a section about the locations of planetary bodies.
"Where is it?" Ronan put down his book and leaned over to look over her shoulder.
"Here." She called up a map showing five neighboring galaxies. "Ok, that -" she pointed at a bright spiral galaxy, "is us." She tapped a flat spiral galaxy across from the bright spiral of the Milky Way and watched as the map isolated that galaxy and zoomed in on it. "This is the Triangulum Galaxy. Yazaan is located in the Cryo Arm." She tapped a section of one of the galaxy's spiraling arms, "in the solar system of the binary stars Qaaya VII and Quaaya Oochee," she tapped a bright double star with the stellar classification A0-1V scripted under it. "Third planet from the star… here." She tapped a reddish planet with her pencil and the manual obligingly isolated the planet and magnified it, while the opposite page scrolled through basic planetary statistics. "The planet Yazaan." Nita declared.
"Great." Ronan said. "Now where is Vernalla?"
Nita tapped her map several times, zooming in on a different section of the Triangulum Galaxy. "Here… Wolf's Arm, solar system of the star Raff, second planet. Vernalla."
"Its very … green." Ronan commented.
"According to the manual, it was inhabited by werewolves. They never forested it, and lived very close to nature. Well I suppose you'd have to if you were a wolf half the time," Nita mused.
"Hold it one second…was inhabited? As in past tense? Who lives there now?"
"Oh, um…" Nita consulted the book in her lap. "No one. Huh. That's weird. Why's it still in here if … wait a second…" Ronan looked on with interest as she called up a more recent list of the planets in the solar system of the star Raff. Vernalla was not among them. "This can't be right," Nita muttered. "Bleddyn, Eyulf, Felan, Mingan, Ulric, and Z'ev. Six planets, not seven. No Vernalla. Where is it?"
"It was destroyed," Ronan said suddenly. "It disappeared into the Void nearly fifty years ago."
"The Void? What's that?" Nita didn't question the authenticity of his information. Irish wizards might not have manuals, but they had other ways of obtaining necessary information.
"I'm not sure. What I'm getting is a sort of… memory from someone… or something. I see the planet in orbit, then I see it falling into a … sort of … black abyss or a darkness; a shadow. They called it the Void. Then there's a blue flash, and the entire planet just… dies. It turns black and then is swallowed by the shadow."
"Blue flash?" Nita questioned.
"Yeah. I can't find anything about that. Apparently there were wizards active on Vernalla at the time that it was destroyed. There was some sort of a falling out between two factions as well. It has been suggested that the flash was a last attempt by those wizards to save some of the inhabitants of their world. No one knows exactly what happened though."
"Interesting." Nita's mind was racing back to Kit, her partner, and his werewolf companion back home. She wondered if Electra could shed any light on their situation. She was about to suggest a visit back home to Ronan when he suddenly asked her to call up her fog-screen again.
"We have to go outside then," she told him, "preferably somewhere away from the worst of the overlays."
"Lets go then." He scooped several books into his knapsack, grabbed Nita's arm, and fairly dragged her out of the room.
"What's this all about?" she asked.
"I just had a thought. I want to check something," he said. "I'll do it myself if you'll teach me how." He said apologetically.
"No, its ok. It'll be faster if I do it. It's one of my personal wizardries. It's kind of like a projection of my manual, so I'm not sure how well it'd translate for you." She closed her eyes and searched for the spell she wanted. It was a shortened version that she pulled out. She was in the middle of adding parameters when she heard a mindvoice calling her name. She tried to ignore it; whoever it was could wait. Then the voice became more insistent and she realized who it was.
Hi Kit, she said absently, her mind still focused on her work. I'm sorry, I'm kind of in the middle of something here. Can it wait a bit? She really did want to talk to him, but Ronan was waiting… she told herself she'd make it up to Kit later.
Ronan watched Nita as she began weaving the wizardry, then, suddenly, in the middle of it, she sort of froze. Unsure whether to say or do anything, he simply looked on. Finally she came out of it, opening her eyes, and refocusing. "Sorry." was all she said, before closing her eyes again. This time the fog screen appeared shortly. "What was that all about?" he asked finally.
"Nothing. Just Kit. I need to talk to him later." A troubled look passed over her face.
"Is everything ok?"
"I think so. Just…some things to think about. Anyways. What did you want to do with this?" she asked him, indicating the fog-screen before her.
"Make it show the hyperlink things again," he told her.
Nita obligingly called up the view he had asked for.
Ronan touched the screen, calling up a different map. Nita recognized the Triangulum Galaxy, as he unerringly isolated and magnified the solar system of the star Raff in the Wolf's Arm of the spiral. Then he tuned the settings. A huge black node appeared, located between the first planet of the system, Bleddyn, and the second planet, Felan. Large black lines crossed the entire system, and spread out from there like a network of black spider's threads. Ronan touched a few more sections, travelling down the length of one of the threads. They found it crossing three more black nodes in the Triangulum Galaxy - two other dead planets and a dead star.
Nita took over then, hands shaking, as she returned again to dead Vernalla and used the map to trace other threads. Through dead world after dead world they followed the deadly progress of the strands as they tightened their grip around the Galaxy and began spreading outward. They spent several hours consulting the fog screen before Nita finally had to drop the wizardry. It was a new and rather draining wizardry, since she hadn't yet had time to figure out how to make it more energy efficient.
"Ok. So, what do we know now?" Ronan asked, lying on his back and trying not to think about the significance of their discovery.
"Well," Nita began, "We know that the source of the dark threads is Vernalla. We know that Vernalla is dead. We know that whatever killed Vernalla has continued to destroy planets." She drew a shuddering breath. "Six hundred twenty-three planets and eighty stars in the Triangulum Galaxy alone. Not all of which were inhabited, but still…" her voice trailed off.
"It's mainly centered in the Triangulum Galaxy though," Ronan stated. "Still that doesn't look good."
"Yeah. For the most part. We didn't follow all the threads but it doesn't look like they have many threads in the rest of our Galaxy Cluster - none in the Large or Small Magellanic Clouds, and virtually none in the Milky Way… just our solar system, and one or two threads on the other side of the Galaxy. But they have a pretty hefty presence on Andromeda. Six systems, a binary star, and eighteen planets, six of which were inhabited. Vernalla is the only world that had active wizards on it when it perished though."
"The main problem is why some of the threads are switching realities. How are they able to cross over into our reality? And why?" Ronan mused. "You know, I'm starting to agree with you. This is huge, maybe too big for us.