#53

“Blast. They have access,” Doctor Kai was saying.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Jacob replied. He was examining how much darker this fresh circle was, so tiny amongst the rest of the marble step.

The elder man sighed. “This planet—this Earth—like most worlds roughly referred to as 'Earth' in the Multiverse—is a monitor station for the Ultra. The Gods, Universal Architects, whatever. Think of the most complex idea you know. Quantum physics. A being whose thoughts are made of suns. A number between four and five that's not a decimal. Warp that out of proportion, make it exponential to a power that's even more incomprehensibly huge than the idea, and that's almost what the Ultra are like.” He set his hand on Jacob's shoulder, and led him back inside the impossible House.

“When my...Master, established the colony within the Lost Stream—the non-canon zone, where stories that are too lame or too vicious or too unworkable to ever exist in real life—he had returned from death at the hands of the Administrator, who run a place not unlike this House. But meant for studying the weirdos of the cosmos. To refine something down to a core weapon, which he believes is called the Primeval Superhero. The living trigger for the Multiverse—and thus the most powerful being to ever live.” He paused. “Well, second most powerful. Possibly third.

“The Primeval Superhero is to be the Administrator's weapon against the Ultra. He's something of a crazy anarchist. He believes that total and complete freedom arises from the death of the people who maintain the Multiverse; the ones who did not create existence, but the ones who are responsible for the placement of that wonderful beacon of story-gardening, our mutual homeworld, the Earth. My Master didn't care much for these plans, so he escaped. Of course, my Master doesn't care much for Earth, either—though he is from one of them. I found him in my wandering. We had adventures. Then I went mad, killed a good number of people, and then died.”

He looked at Jacob, who had sat down on the steps.

“Of course, here I am, once again. The wonders of cloning. Old Kai Cripps, back to life.” He grinned. “Did you hear me?”

Jacob turned and looked at him. “What?”

“Ha.” Kai stretched out the single chuckle for a little while, before pacing arbitrarily. “I'm lowering us into the pit. We have to reach the World Snake before it wakes up.”

Jacob blinked, this blink significant to him, somehow.

“Um...hm.”

“Yes?”

“Can we...get windows on this thing?”

“I suppose that can be arranged.”

At the Doctor's mental request, an ordinary house window, with a frame of décor fitting the period that this Manor was supposedly from, appeared in the east wall. Jacob went and looked outside.

The House was moving down rapidly. He still couldn't get his head around the machinery he was seeing, but he figured that if the machinery was the Earth, in its “true form”, then it only really had to make sense to the people who built it. Somehow it was machinery and rock/magma/whatever at the same time. Which probably logical, in some sort of hilariously advanced scientific sense.

He barely seemed to notice as some wreckage at the outer boundaries of the campus lurched into the pit smashing loudly on the machinery below. As some pieces, like chunks of cars, plunged in, probes emerged from the walls to catch them, bathing them in light blue light—the same color as that which had washed over the area above and exposed this place. Jacob quietly assumed that data about these sorts of things—however insignificant they now seemed—must be of some value to the people who designed this system of gadgetry.

“The Beta-3 forces may have been shielded by our enemy's influence,” Doctor Kay was saying. “So it's likely they've already descended far below us. Likely to awaken the Serpent.”

“Can we get a view of things from the bottom?” Jacob asked. He glanced away for a second, barely noticing the bust of the shark/vulture-faced creature, whom he had once drawn in a dream. “Maybe we can see their craft in some way, if they have one.”

“Good idea.”

Jacob kept staring out the window as Kai made a screen appear on the floor. Below them, indeed, a small fleet of helicopter-like flying machines could be seen. The pit seemed to go on to the center of the Earth—and as ridiculous as it sounded, it did.

Kay considered how good it was that he foresaw that they would strike at this particular Soft Place. Maurice, or Morris, or Morh Rhys or whatever it could be called, was charged with very potent Small Town energy. The more power it had, the deeper down it went—therefore their foe wasn't running the risk of security devices, due to the sheer absolute depth of the shaft accessed here. He could have struck at New York or Paris but the human resistance there would have been stronger. Not as if it mattered much to someone like him.

That was when the Doctor remembered something that mattered more than he had considered. Behind him, the young man was still fixed to the window. The Doctor closed the image and walked over to him, trying to give off an aura of human warmth.

“If it's any comfort at all,” he said. “Your brother and your friends were not meant to die in this timeline.”

“Not meant to?” Jacob asked. “Does that mean that this timeline or whatever has gotten messed up?”

The older man realized at once that he had indeed revealed that; and Jacob had perceived at once that this was the truth. Amos Berkley and the Vecchio brothers had originally been meant to be at the end. But in his own way, the enemy had warped time here. Destinies had been altered. Perhaps even Kay's own survival wasn't guaranteed.

There was then an awkward silence.

Suddenly, The House stopped moving, shaking violently as it did so.

“What's going on?” Jacob asked.

“I don't know,” Kay said, in as cool of a manner as he could conjure. “This isn't supposed to be happening either.”

He looked out the window and saw a number of flickering blue particles suspended around the Manor. He frowned—it didn't look good.

That's when the voice came in.

“Virus scan result identified and verified.”

“Shit.”

“What is it?” Jacob didn't seem quite so worried. More...preparing. Cautious.

“I think he's sent a virus into the computers. He's making the machinery think that McGee Manor came up positive on one of their negative invasion probes. Simply put, the Earth thinks we're a virus.”

“Shit.”

There was a pause, and the sound of something moving down below. In the center of the room, an image of what was making the sound appeared before flickering out. “And they've gained control of my control of The House.”

“Shit.” Jacob bit his lip and frowned. “Well, what can they do to us?”

“Best case scenario, we're banished to the Lost Stream. Worst case scenario, sent to a corrupted universe, like Universe-Beta—which this universe is a Pseudo-Spawn of, incidentally, from a Syzygy—or we're completely destroyed. Vaporized down to the quantum foam, in essence.”

“Welp.” The younger man's face was indifferent.

Outside the window, which was now similarly glitching up, like the panel in the floor, a semi-circle was embracing The House. The particles continued to flash in the air.

“I was expecting us to get farther in the story than this,” Kay or Kai added.

There was more silence, interrupted only by the voice of the Ultra returning once more.

“You are in violation of continuity and related subroutines. Initiating teleportation.”

“Teleportation?” Jacob repeated.

There was another pause. In this, Jacob could sense emotion, of a sort, rising from these machines. Confusion, but very muted. There was little that could fool things this ancient now. Was Kai attempting to trick them? Or was it something else...?

“Banishment subroutines analyzed,” the machine said. “Universe-Beta-2 is part of Cascade phenomenon. Origin: Earth-Alpha and Earth-Gamma Syzygy, in progress. Banishment thus must be answered for in Cascade continuity furtherance.”

Jacob considered asking what this all meant, but Doctor Kai seemed confused as well. The semi-circle now began to move—slowly at first. It was orbiting The House.

“Hang onto something!” Kay shouted.

“Initializing teleportation in 3...2...”

The Doctor ran forward and draped Jacob in his cloak. Therefore, for the younger man, things went dark a little early.

Only Kai Cripps saw The House be filled with a brown light, wherein he saw lightning crackle, and strange things stare out.