Maxwell and I left his office, and got onto a bullet train that led deep underneath the compound, where all the more dangerous technological research was kept. Soon, we emerged into a long corridor. Maxwell briefly gave me instructions on where to go, and turned back into the car.
"Why are you disappearing?"
Maxwell thoughtfully looked at me. I could notice he was trying to stare into me and try to identify with me beyond the fact that physically we were identical. That we had both shared and lost something.
"I think when you see, you will know why." At that the door closed and the car raced off. I contemplated that for a moment. Maxwell revealed he had only met a double of Mr Mallory once, and no duplicate Ms Welles or Mr Brown, so it couldn't have been any of my companions. I started walking down the corridor, until I reached my destination.
The door was unusual. Unusual for the compound anyway, as it was made of solid oak in contrast to the usual high-tech metal doors that adorned the place. I knocked on the door, and after a shout of "Come in," I opened the door.
After the door, the technology was obviously Consortium. Imbecilely clean and sterile surfaces that carried human comfort with them. Tools that were possibly at least a few years old looking brand new. This room was also a shock in itself, not only due to its vast size, but it's contents.
It was virtually barren for the size of the place..
Along one side, far to my left, was a gigantic silver ring adorned with what looked like quartz, and leading up to it a padded ramp, at once solid and ready to cushion any fall. A generator was hooked up to one end, with a control panel next to it. Looking about I took in the size of the room. It was a least as long as one block, but seemed nearly barren of anything. Up above me I saw what looked like metallic spiders. These same robots I recognised as the machines that had saved me from death, although these one's were all damaged in one capacity or another. Along to the other end was a desk, with a computer and a bundle of papers adorned all over the place that just barely concealed another robot that was being repaired. I could just see someone underneath the pile, and I softly walked up to the pile. Then I realised why Maxwell felt uncomfortable about the place. The women who looked up at me was Katrina Fox, or at least her double. My late wife, and I supposed also Maxwell's. She glanced up at me and smiled.
"I wondered when you would wake up."
I recognised her now. She had been there when I had first revived. And I started to feel the anxiousness of meeting her again. I had met one of her doubles previously, when my double had foolishly left her and I tried to patch things up again. It possibly did not work, but it had in a way allowed me to say goodbye to her, something that I never got the chance to. Saying hello to her again was not so easy.
"I'm a deep sleeper. Or so I'm told. I didn't snore, did I?" I tried the joke to mellow the mood, at least for my sake. But she smiled at that.
"Perfect gentleman. No snoring. So, you are our errant slider then? I would think that you lot would learn by now."
"A Quinn Mallory is to blame, not I."
"You didn't create sliding on your world? Unusual." She somehow grabbed a chair and handed it to me while I made myself comfortable.
"How so?"
"It's mostly doubles of yourself who do the deed. Mallory's are a close second though."
"You do polls?"
"Polls on many different situations. Who the president is, who discovered electricity. It seems as if sliding is just complex chaos mathematics. If we can find a pattern to how different universes diverge, then we can possibly discover how the universe was created as it were."
I digested that nugget of information. I was not sure if it was true or not, but it was a possibly valid point. "So who runs third?"
"You probably never heard of them before. Bennish?"
I nearly had a heart attack at that. "Yes, I have heard of them."
Some light chatting followed. She had obviously guessed that I had known my double, since she was his wife until he had died. Seemingly the more things change, the more they stay the same, even across parallel worlds. It was good to meet her again, even if it wasn't the Katrina I knew. She explained how she was the only remaining slider, after all of the other members of the team had died. Worlds seemingly more dangerous than any of the others I had been on existed, and she had seen a lot of them. Although their understanding of sliding was greater than my own, it was still not an exact science, and there had not been a great call to expand on it. What they had started however was to form a dimensional map of the universe, and one of the worlds that they had previously visited shared a quantum signature with myself. A quantum signature basically is unique to any particular universe, or anybody who originated there, and so by mapping their records and my signature, they had found my Earth Prime. The theory of infinite universes had apparently been made defunct, because otherwise to find one infinite number to match another would have been impossible, as well as removing the question of free will. After all, if every possible choice was reflected on in another dimension, where would we all stand? Our lives would really have no meaning, but I was not about to let that spoil the possibility of my return. But there was the question of whether I wanted to truly go home. The office I would be offered would be to further the Consortium's understanding of sliding, something that they had lacking due to either unscrupulous sliders, deaths of their own teams who were unprepared for what they ended up against, or Kromaggss. They were not a problem here, due to some form of shielding, but still they were a threat. So I had to balance whether I would go home or not. Katrina obviously wanted me to stay. She didn't show any of the awkwardness that I was suffering, and so was trying the hard sell as it were.
"So you have no family. No real job prospects, after being away eight-odd years. What have you got to go back for?"
That made me think. All the others had family. I didn't have a wife anymore; no one I had that level of attachment to. My work had kept me going after her death. So in all honesty I could have easily stayed in any world we had landed on. But I still had wanted to go back. Home is home after all, and I did miss my old life.
Katrina seemed to understand what I meant, although she was obviously disappointed. She didn't leak any suspicions of any ulterior motives in any case. And so she took me for the grand tour.
The gigantic ring was known as a 'Slide-gate', a permanent and stable wormhole creator. A great deal more reliable than any timer, it could be programmed for any of the worlds on their map, or a random one, and could recall anybody with the appropriate tether device. Mr Mallory, if he was still alive, would have never had left this place. And I was welcome to return here whenever I decided to formally retire. So I after a week of farewells, I packed my meagre belongings, took a tether that was secured to my fob watch, and slid.
The journey was longer than usual, but more comfortable than most. And I didn't run the risk of Mr Brown slamming into my back at the end. The sight I saw was more discomforting than any physical pain would have been when I emerged to Earth Prime. San Francisco laid out in front of me. I was standing in what had used to be a park.
It was now a battlefield. Trampled, decaying corpses covered the ground as far as the eye could see. I retched and managed to stumble to a fountain as I empted the contents of my stomach some more.
That had been a mistake. The fountain was filled with long congealed blood, and contained other bodies.
Small bodies. Small enough to be children.
I tried to see where there was a space away from the bodies, but the nearest I could see was a rough path that would have been formed by what must have been a tank of some kind. Mercifully there were no bodies on the road, and so I walked further into the city.
It would have been a different sight to grasp. Myself, a middle-aged, and I admit, overweight Englishman in an Armani suit walking through a garden of corpses. Mercifully the mess dissipated into the city. Buildings were still intact; only a few had been burned or scorched. Shops had glass smashed into the inside of the building; obviously raiders. I was temped to use the tether to return to the Consortium, but one problem that it had was that there was a window of opportunity to return. Mercifully it was not nearly as bad as a wait of thirty years if I had missed it, but it would take a day or so before I could return. And I wanted to find out what had happened in any case. So I plodded on.
If anything could be figured out from the destruction, it was this. Whoever the invaders were, they were scared by cutting-edge technology and learning. Most bookshops had been burned down. The same with the libraries. I managed to finally get to my old office at the university, to find it ransacked. The same with the lecture halls, the research facilities, everything. I decided to investigate Mr Mallory's home, and noticed that the whole building had been destroyed. The only part that was still vaguely intact was the gate, that squeaked as I turned and walked off. So I decided to try my home.
There had been some fire damage to the kitchen, but other than that, the house seemed fine, and so I unlocked the door and entered. There was a lingering smell of damp, so I surmised that my home survived being razed to the ground by a brief monsoon. I thought if it was worth trying to sit on my favourite chair, and eventually decided to risk it. Still as good as ever. I sat down for a few minutes and pondered. There had been no obvious sign of life. No animals apart from maggots and flies. No way to discover what had triggered whatever had happened. I wondered if I was the only human here. There was still plenty of daylight about, so I decided to secure the house for the night. I would stay, collect any of my belongings, do a little more exploring, and return to the Consortium, if only to ponder my next move somewhere I would feel safe.
It was my own home, just as I remembered it. I collected any valuables that remained, mostly loose money and heirlooms. It was a relief to see that even though none of my notes or books were still there, they hadn't been destroyed on the spot as all the others had been, so there was the possibility of rescuing them, however slight. All of my old photographs had been taken as well, but I ignored that and decided to start my reinforcement in the kitchen. Although the fire had been enough to burn away a gap in the wall, the structure was still secure, so I could barricade it with a wardrobe if I moved it down from the bedroom.
Removing the clothes would help, but originally I needed the help of two strong removal men to help me move it up the stairs. If it came down to it, I would break the back off it and nail it into place. I was surprised however when I found I could move it on my own. I had tried to move it before, and all I got for it was a nasty back strain. I nearly dropped it when I realised I had carried it as far as I had. The stairs were a problem, but I managed to slide it down the stairs and into place. I had been told that the nano-technology cure had 'enhanced' me, and there would be 'side-effects', but nothing like this. I wanted to know exactly what else I could do. Unfortunately, while up the stair, I had failed to hear the intruder enter through the hole I was about to cover, and so I was knocked unconscious with my own frying pan.
Nano-technology or no, my head still throbbed when I woke up. Pain-nullification was not part of my extra features apparently. The pain soon disappeared however, along with the usual disorientation when waking up. I was underground, in some disused basement that had been converted into what looked like a bunk. Not the best kept one, and I rolled off it onto my feet. The door was locked, and had no window on it. I rattled the handle, but only succeeded in ripping it off its hinges. I thought of breaking the door down, but decided against it. I was not entirely sure exactly how strong I was; I doubted that I was superhuman, but I possibly could have done it, hadn't the door opened out from me at that moment. My eyes adjusted to the change of the brightness. It was brighter in the corridor in front of me than the cell was, and standing in front of me was someone covered head to toe in rags and leathers. I could not even tell if the guard was a man or a women. The was that he or she gestured with the makeshift cattle prod however, made me guess his intentions.
I was led down the corridor, along different cordoned off areas. This place possibly was a storeroom at some point. I could see some shelving scattered around the place, plants growing fruit; some makeshift weapons and assorted tools adorned the place. Finally, I was shoved into an office. At least this room kept some semblance of its original purpose, as I could see one desk and two chairs, the one at the far end occupied by someone I could not make out, due to the light being atrocious in this room. The door was locked behind me, and the shadow I could now just see in the other chair turned on the light.
My eyes again blinked as they readjusted to the change of light, and the light got worse as the figure walked closer to me. Standing in front of me was a familiar looking black man in his early forties, with a well-trimmed moustache, who had light glaring off the suit that he wore. It reflected the light around the room; the fabric was some kind of shiny purple material that shone all on its own, and Mr Rembrandt Brown smiled at me. This was not one of his glad-to-be-alive smiles however. He was the Cheshire Cat and I was one cornered mouse.
"Damn. I've not seen you for a long time."