Chapter 16 – From Simmer to Boil
After dinner, they were all talking. They were trying to get him to explain what he was thinking of doing. Danny stood up, and put his hand on Tucker's shoulder.
"Sorry Tuck. I really don't want to start a scientific debate; I know what I need to do."
Sam was getting worried, but outwardly, she crossed her arms and looked cross:
"Danny Fenton, WHAT are you up to?" He walked over to her.
"Sam" he put his hands on her shoulders "It is just a bit complicated, and I don't want to waste a lot of time going over details and…well I don't want you guys to worry over nothing." He smiled.
With force, she raised her arms and pushed his hands off of her shoulders, her brow furrowed in rising anger. Danny stopped smiling.
"No way Fenton. Even if you do, that answer won't fly. Tell me what's going on under that shaggy head of yours!"
"It will be like last time! Honest! You will see me go, and before you know it, I will be back." He lifted his hands up, pleading.
"But…in between, what are you going to be doing?" Tucker was helping Sam gang up on Danny, but Tucker's face was concerned, not angry.
"OK, that's it. No more talk!" Danny said as he grabbed Sam, and before she could push or even hit him, he leaned her back and kissed her.
"For good luck!" He became intangible and disappeared as she regained her balance. There was no use her getting mad at him now. Besides…she couldn't get mad at him…now.
"Good luck Danny!" She ran to the door, opened it and looked out at the evening sky.
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As Danny flew over his home town, he looked down at the view, not really watching, but thinking. Amity Park was a contrast of shadows in the last bit of setting sun. Bright orange lines of the buildings were accented by the darkness of the shadows.
It was a simple town, with its simple problems, and almost predictable day to day experiences. He was steeling himself for what he tried to convince his friends was a simple, nothing to worry over plan. If he succeeded, he would be changing something intangible, changing the spiritual world, a much more complicated world, a bizarre place so vastly differently from his home town. A last shred of resistance still echoed in his mind. Stay home. If I never went back to The Light, my human life here in Amity will go on, safe, and with the love of family, the love of friends. Sam's love. I don't need to do this.
But that was the rationalization of a coward. Danny knew it. The plan was…risky. If it worked, a catastrophic event would take place in The Light. But then…lives? Spirits. Spirits would be saved eternal purgatory. They would be at peace. What if it were him? What if it were…Sam or Tucker floating out there…forever?
But what might happen to him? Don't think about it. Don't give doubt a chance. Have faith in the future! He knew he had to do it. It was his mission to do, and his alone. Silently, with stealth, he flew back to his home, to his bedroom. He lay down on his bed to concentrate, and phased…
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…black, empty space, all around him, except for The White Mountain. It was as it had been for eternity, its white slopes towering in the distance. He put forth his will, his perspective, and the feeling of motion surrounded him.
Time went by. Or no time. The time it takes for a lifetime to flash by. The time for only a heartbeat. The Mountain suddenly loomed up at him.
The summit peak was lit with brilliance from The Light floating above it. Multicolored globes, shimmering with sparkles of thought, were in eternal orbit, bobbing and weaving in a drunken dance around The Light. There were so many, so many. There were vast numbers further away from summit too, but still tracing their unmistakable path around The Mountain in a slow and dedicated, but pointless journey. Going in circles.
Danny himself was shimmering, giving off sparkles of light. He had no form in his current phase. Now he approached The Light.
The Light was a bright pinpoint, but it flowed from the peak, the summit of The Mountain, like a photonic eruption, a great beam of light shooting from a supernatural volcano in the ghost dimension.
Danny concentrated. He began to alter his phasing, and as a result, he began to stretch.
He grew in two dimensions, expanding to a vast sheet of spiritual thought, without limit, without thickness, but impenetrable to any thing in this non-place. He may as well been miles thick.
He began to point the corners of his conceptual spirit towards The Light. He was a huge sheet, wrapping itself around the summit of The Mountain. He grew larger and larger.
He brought the edges down around the 'base' of the mighty peak. The Light and The Mountain were now completely covered by his thin, translucent expression of his form.
It was working! The Light began to grow brighter, still brighter than the sun, but now, it began to swell in size, to expand from a pinpoint into a globe, a glowing and growing, flaming sphere. It became irregular, flares and wisps of light leaping from the surface of the hellish (or heavenly) ball of light.
The multicolored spirits trapped in their eternal orbit that were closest to The Light were hit first. Here and there, the horizon of The Light reached them, and scenes of their lives began to play. At first, individual lifetimes could be made out in the flashing movie of death, of closure.
As The Light continued to expand, it reached the boundary of Danny's thought, the surface or layer of his 'sheet'. There were multicolored globes in orbit inside the sheet, and outside. The ones inside were being consumed by The Light, the scenes becoming a frenzy of chaotic images, blurring together so fast and in such quantity, Danny could no longer make out individual days, nights, lives.
The Light, confined by his mutant ghost spirit, unable to consume him, began to froth and bubble, almost in anger at this limit in a limitless plane of existence. New beams of intense light began to erupt from the slopes of The Mountain under this new 'pressure'. Where they struck a spirit, its life began flashing inside the bright column. Danny kept his concentration up. He began to think he might actually survive this!
The Light was now at full boil. All spirits that were inside his confining sheet were consumed by its demanding end. Only the millions outside his protective shield were left, still in their pointless orbits. Now!
Danny reduced himself back to a mindless form, in a fraction of time too small to measure.
The Light exploded in a brilliant fireball, expanding like steam released from a pot. The previously protected spirits were blasted like hapless planets in the path of a supernova. The Light's sphere even expanded to enclose Danny, but he was 'immune', his mutant ghost attributes protecting him.
The Light was now an utter chaos of flashing life scenes, here was a woman, there a man, here a child, all blending into a blur of faces, of events, of days and nights, a swirling movie in fast motion, revolving all around Danny's consciousness. He tried to withdraw, but he could not make out which way was out, which was the center of the huge fireball.
He dropped his phasing…
