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Part 1

She appeared with a flash of light, leaning against the pulsing pedestal. Smug. Rhianna, as ever. “Oh dear. How did I know it would be you, Adol?”

“You knew I would be here.”

“You were always so very clever, weren’t you? Oh yes. Now, let’s see…” She tapped her lips, as if thinking, her long white dress, a slip of silk, blowing gently in the breeze. “Your workshop is in a place called Georgetown, yes? And the one in London, Sri Lanka, Sydney, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, and that pesky, pesky one down in Antarctica. Don’t you find it cold, there?” She smiled, gently. “No matter, dearest Adol. They’re all gone. So none of that interfering insanity.”

I would later come to realize that she had spent nearly four centuries developing her plan. All to culminate in this single, surgical strike. “Why are you doing this? You have everything you want.”

“True,” she replied easily. “But what does one get for that discerning goddess who has, literally, everything she wants? Why, a whole world with its little wigglies all running around trying to stop me.” She took in a deep breath. “The fresh smell of the unconquered planet. Oh, Adol, it’s been millennia since I’ve had this much fun.”

“So you won’t stop this?” I asked, an icy chill running through me. The question was a weak stall, how does one confidently stall the destruction of a world-wide civilization? The only thing that she wanted was the one thing I could not bargain with.

“Oh no. I’ve been thinking about this for a very very long time, Adol. And I think this time, instead of turning all the humans into automatons, I’ll enslave them. That was, every few hundred years they’ll get it into their heads to revolt. I might even allow a few to succeed-”

“Those shadow creatures are appearing all over the Kennedy,” Michelle said, her voice taught in my ear. The sound of gunshots. “We can’t take them down.”

“Stop this!” I roared. The ground beneath me shook and the light breeze that had gently picked up dirt and dust became a gale. Rhianna laughed and reached up to push hair out of her eyes.

“And now… You’re going to love this: New Tokyo!” She gestured, then disappeared with a flash.

The air around me grew dark, thick with the shadow creatures, their un-light turning the moon’s illumination into something alien and sinister. I glanced upwards at the moon. It was as if it had been cut and separated hundreds of times. It was a blossom of stone, steel and that strange… Sense of not belonging.

“Valentine, they are launching.”

Structures. Terrible arching spires belching impossibly black, black ink into the sky. Blocking out the sky. The pinpoints of light. The silver wisps of cloud. Darkness. Darkness.

The ground shook again and Rhianna’s voice echoed from the other side. “Take the Mage. I want him to watch as I end his precious reality.”

“Not tonight,” I whispered, my gaze fixed on the terrible, terrible blossom that had once been the moon. As the shadows, packed so thickly that I could not tell where one began and one ended, moved towards me, there was a brilliant flash.

The blossom shuddered visibly, waves of white wafting from it as if it had begun leaking stars. The terrible arms of the moon broke off, drifting outwards and some, I knew, downward. The shadows all froze. A sound, like that of a tremendous electric whir filled the air, filled him, each breath touched his lungs, vibrating his insides like a drum.

I reached into one of my pockets and took out a smooth, three inch in diameter ball-bearing. Dull, as if left in flame too long. In the distance, I followed the trajectory of three points of light from the ocean.

And the sphere was away. There was another flash and the points of light were gone. But the explosion I averted happened anyway.

The moon exploded. The place that had once been called Tokyo exploded. The world was light and fire and howling. And I stood within it, inside the fury of extra-dimensional energy and the foolish, foolish arrogance of your military. I screamed and screamed and screamed. Fury. Such fury…

The Mage fell silent, eyes lowered, unfocused. “Excuse me,” he whispered and left the room. As the door opened, the Writer noticed two armed men that had not been there before. They stopped him. The spoke briefly.

When the door finally closed, the Writer frowned and scrolled the audio recording on the tablet back. He increased the volume. Beyond his own breathing and the sound of the air system he heard the Mage speaking.

“I’m going to the restroom.”

“We’ll accompany you,” a male.

“Sometimes I wish you’d just taken me to prison. At least then I wouldn’t have to ask every time I needed to relieve myself.”

Part 2

The Mage returned a short time later and settled down into his seat. He folded his hands together as he met the Writer’s gaze. “Not many people can say they survived a nuclear explosion. Do you have any questions?”

“No,” the Writer replied. Too quickly. He smiled weakly, “It’s that very little surprises me about you. And, you know, while this is compelling, we still haven’t reached the Event.”

“There was no news or military footage of what happened other than that which came from the device given me by Michelle. That footage, near as I can tell, is classified.” The Mage paused. “Though the public monitoring systems caught a great deal of the destruction of my workshops.”

He raised a hand as if to forestall a question, “Mind you, the military had a bit to say to me about the explosion.”

Michelle met up with me first as I neared the beach. She gazed at me, curious and, I imagine, unsure about what to make of me. It’s a look I’ve come to expect after anything astounding happens around me. “You’re naked,” she said as she and a number of military personnel stepped out of an embarking boat. In the distance, I saw the lights of the U.S.S. Kennedy glittering, almost invisible, against the night sky.

“So I am. Standing through an exotic matter and nuclear explosion will tend to do that.” I smiled then, but I was tired. I just needed a short rest. A time to quietly reflect on the past 24 hours’ events.

One of the military types said something and then the weapons came up, pointed at me. “Sir, you are under arrest-”

“Put your weapons down,” Michelle’s voice cut across the man’s word’s like a whip.

“Ma’am, this man is to be detained.”

“Under whose authority?”

“The Admiral’s, ma’am. Sir, you’re going to have to come with us.”

“Let it be, Michelle. I sure this is all a simple misunderstanding.” I waved her to silence. It wasn’t a battle we were going to win at that very moment, so there was no point in pressing the issue.

The ride back to the ship was tense and a little chilly, what with my being nude and all. Michelle was kind enough the give me her jacket. So chivalrous.

The Kennedy loomed on the sea, great, dark and massive, and soon enough we were aboard. The Admiral who had ordered my detainment was Admiral Rodderick Sheldon. I never liked the name Sheldon. It’s a bit too odd. Sheldon… Shell… don…

In any event, Sheldon was the Admiral who had also been a proponent of the so-called nuclear option. And, while I didn’t know for sure at the time, I suspected it was he who’d given the ultimate order to fire the warheads.

We met in his office. Which was difficult because it was so… Small. “Elijah Valentine,” he said with one of those gravelly voices. The sort that comes from long years of barking orders and smoking cigars. Grey hair cut short and severe. He seemed to fill the small room with his presence.

“That’s me. Now, let’s get to the bottom of this, shall we?”

“According to what I’ve been able to dig up, Mr. Valentine,” he said this with contempt. Valentine… To rhyme with scum. “You are not a citizen of the United States.”

“Well of course not. I was born before the States were formed.”

The Admiral — Sheldon, I can’t get over that name — eyed me with skepticism. As is wont for those military types to do. “So, I am holding you as a foreign combatant.”

“Oh, well that’s odd, given that I’m working with an office commissioned directly from the President.”

“Regardless, you are not a citizen and cannot be afforded-”

“Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why are you holding me?”

“Son,” the younger, mind you, man said. “There are two things that I know for certain in this world. First, is how to take and give orders.” He raised one finger, then a second. “The second is how to recognize a soldier when I see one.”

I regarded the man cautiously. Perhaps I’d judged the man too quickly. “Oh?”

“And no civilian I know walks out of a nuclear blast, blows up a moon and owns a super-sonic jet at that. You’re dangerous. And I do not like dangerous things.”

“You’re carrying weapons aboard this vessel. And If I’m not mistaken soldier A and B here are carrying a few.” I gestures to the two armed guards flanking the doorway.

“There is a distinct difference there,” the Admiral said, nodding to the two officers at the door. “I control those weapons.”

“And I am… A weapon you can’t control. Is that right? So. Where do we go from here, Admiral Sheldon?”

“I recognize what you’ve done for us, so I won’t throw you into the brig. But what I will do is confine you to quarters. I’ll transfer you to a secure facility and from there, we’ll see.”

I regarded the Admiral carefully, not certain how, specifically, stupid the man was. But he was afraid, and I understood that. “What about my plane? And Delores?”

“We’ll take care of that. You just stay out of trouble or I will reconsider your stay in the brig.” The Admiral waved slightly and the two guards stepped forward, each taking me by the arm.

I sat quietly, undisturbed as the two military men tried to lift me from my seat. They strained but I remained. The Admiral glanced up as the two men struggled to lift me, a man of seeming average height and weight. “Admiral Sheldon, I would like for you to understand something before I leave — and this is very, very important — if you harm Delores, Michelle or my plane, I will end your career and destroy everything you hold dear.” I reached forward to turn the flat computer screen on his desk towards me. He reached to hold my arm back, but he was having as much success as his soldiers were, which is to say, none.

“Oh, now I see,” I gazed over the screen that held a report of me, my history and my abilities. “That one’s wrong, by the way. I can’t actually read minds.” I relinquished the screen. “So, Admiral, if you want to have a pissing contest, rest assured that I will win. Every time. I will stay aboard only as long as it takes for Michelle to get me and the rest of the team released. After that, I sincerely hope I don’t see you again.

“Now,” I said, standing. “If you two will show me to my quarters, I would be much obliged.”

Part 3

“It’s just like she said,” Michelle said, her hands cupping her mug of coffee. As we sat in the mess-hall,  men and women moved about, sharing their own quiet conversations and not a few stole glances at us.

I paid them no mind as I read over the report Michelle brought in as she arrived to meet me for lunch. Two armed personnel stood nearby, presumably to keep me in line. “She got all of them…”

“There were reports of shadows nearly simultaneously in all of these locations. We’re still trying to confirm the Antarctica location, but from the other evidence, there’s very little chance that it was missed.”

I slid the folder away and pinched the bridge of my nose. I wasn’t exactly sure what the motion was supposed to do – something about relieving pressure, but it felt good to do something, anything. “She’s been planning this for centuries.”

“Centuries? How do you know that?”

“Because I haven’t been to the Argentina workshop for nearly three hundred years.” I looked at the barely touched food on my tray and sighed. “Get rid of the most dangerous component of a resistance and your job is that much easier.”

“And you’re the most dangerous component.”

“She’s figured out how to disable my wards on major cities and make Tokyo disappear. And I was wrong back in New Mexico, she has more of the devices.” I slammed a fist into the metal table and it bent. The guards at the door stepped forward but Michelle – bless her – waved them back.

“So what do we do?” Michelle asked.

“And now my weapon is somewhere up there on the moon.”

“Valentine. What do we do?” Michelle pressed firmly.

“She has these devices all over the world, ready to press in at any moment. With very little notice. And I cannot be everywhere at once.”

“Elijah.”

I looked up at Michelle’s hard, hard eyes. “What’s the next step?”

“Delores,” I said after a moment of thought. “She may be able to tell us where the next attack will take place.”

“Provided she can, how do we repel an attack?”

“I’ll have to develop resonance weapons for your military. Resonance,” he said firmly. “Which will merely send the creatures back to their own reality.”

“As you did back at the mage tower?” Michelle asked carefully. She reached into the pocket of the Navy fleece she’d been given and slid a portable media player across the table. “We had to slow it down to one-thirty second speed and even then it is a bit hard to make out.”

I didn’t look at it. “I can’t be everywhere. Dimensional resonance is the only way you can repel an attack.”

“And beyond attacks?” Michelle pressed. “As you said, they can be anywhere without notice. How can you expect us to simply repel? We cannot do that forever. Sooner or later, there will be another Tokyo, another beachhead and then they’ll come across.”

“You want to take the attack to them?”

“Is that possible?”

“You don’t understand what I mean when I say Rhianna has control over her reality. She, very literally, has control of the very physics of her world. If she wished it, she could make it so that the carbon bonds of any living creature simply ceased to function.” I shook my head. “That is not an option.”

“So we let her terrorize us?” Michelle replied quietly. Her tone said, clearly, that that too was not an option.

“I don’t know.”

“What is dimensional resonance?”

“What?”

“Dimensional resonance, you mentioned it just a moment ago.”

It was my turn to pause. She’d given me the report folder containing the images of my destroyed workshops and I took a moment to look through them. “Dimensional resonance… It is like a signature of each particular reality. It marks us as unique compared to another reality.” Seeing the expression on her face, one of annoyed acceptance, I continued. “Think of it as… The signature is like DNA. We can find out what cell belongs to what body from the DNA-”

“I get it,” Michelle replied. “Dimensional resonance.”

“Sometimes I can’t tell… You’re difficult to read.”

“So what about the Dimensional resonance?”

“Dimensional resonance seeks its own. Sort of like a reverse magnet. It’s a reason why it’s not easy to pass through realities easily. Like reverse magnets, Dimensional resonance resists other resonance. Its why extra-dimensional entities often don’t stay for long periods. The very fiber of this reality, from its people to quantum particles resist their presence.”

“It’s it painful?” Michelle asked. I could see the wheels turning in her head.

“Sometimes.”

“Then how do we use it?”

I shrugged, “I suppose I could come up with some sort of ray gun that shot pulses of resonance, like a sonic weapon. It should force anything not of this reality back into their own.”

Michelle paused, “Like the marble I used in the mountains against the bats.”

“Exactly. It would be the same technology.”

Michelle nodded, “Alright. How quickly can you develop the weapon?”

“A few weeks, perhaps. Without my workshops I’m not sure how long it will take.”

Michelle opened her mouth to ask something, but the stopped. “Right. Do what you can and keep me informed.” She stood. “And get some rest. You just saved the world.”

Part 4

“‘You just saved the world,’” the Writer quoted as he looked down at his tablet. He fixed the Mage with a gaze. “How many times have you heard someone say that to you?”

“Four or five times, perhaps, though only once in English.” The Mage leaned back in his chair and folded his hands. And studied the Writer carefully. “You do realize that I don’t do this for the accolades and adoration, don’t you?”

“The why are you now telling the entire story?” The Writer asked, leaning forward.

The Mage watched the young man, eyes searching his expression. Finally, he shrugged lightly. “Today is the age of information. If I don’t tell the entire story, speculation will continue.”

“Speculation has been going on for fourteen years. Why now?”

“Honestly, I feel the world is ready.”

“And now is different than before, how?”

“You’ve all matured. Skepticism, a healthy dose of realism and a strong measure of cynicism. All rolled into a set of minds possessing the capability to understand and comprehend the story, and to realize the true world implication of all we know.”

“Why is that important?”

“Do you remember the Orangio Assistants from several years ago?”

“Sure, the wristwatches with the holographic helpers. The company folded, right?”

“The company was dealing with extra-dimensional forces that it did not understand and sciences that it did not fully comprehend. I closed that company. But I know that there are dozens of other outfits riding the crest of a wave that will change what humanity currently understands as what it means to be human. The world needs to know what it is it is dealing with.” The Mage nodded slowly, as if agreeing with what he’d just outlined.

“The world needs to know.”

“We cannot let the world know,” Michelle said as we passed through the military port of Los Angeles. Here, we would connect to a flight that would return us to the east coast. “It would spread panic through the entirety of modern civilization.”

“If you feel that’s best. But I will need to let my engineers know what’s going on if they are going to be of any help.”

“Fine,” Michelle stopped me short as we walked through the terminal. “Valentine, you’re telling me everything, aren’t you?” When I hesitated, she continued. “This isn’t a homework assignment that you’ve forgotten to do, we are trying to protect the world. Any information you have might help us.”

I considered her words and, of course, there was wisdom. “I will share with you whatever I can. But I’m not going to have you looking over my shoulder every step.”

Michelle nodded and we began walking again. “How long do we have?”

“Not enough time.”

As I said before and as you probably already know, I am the owner of one of the most successful business empires in the history of this world. Why? Well, besides the freedom it gives me, it enables me to do two things: It helps me stay sane, what with keeping busy with the day-to-day, and it gives me the opportunity to look into highly classified science endeavors all over the world.

Decades ago, I was able to get away with simply monitoring these experiments utilizing unobtrusive, but invasive, digital methods. Hacking. But today, there is so much security that using the same methods oftentimes results in my being shut out more than anything else. Despite how powerful my systems are, human technology is very adaptive and, despite my best efforts, artificial intelligence is used very, very often. Especially in those places that need — require — maximum security.

So, I buy technology. All sorts, but especially weapons-grade technology. They remain in the mage towers, secure from those who would use them to make war. I picked up a ray-gun technology a while back. Now, I say ray-gun, but what I mean is a directional energy generator. Like a laser, but not nearly so dangerous.

My first stop, though, was my office.

Where I found Charles waiting for me, still in his tie-dye t-shirt and frayed jeans. “Oh good,” he said. “You’ve finally made it.”

I am still not entirely sure that Charles, or the rest of his species, experiences time as we do. “Hello, Charles. What can I do for you?” I crossed the large office to my comically large cherry wood monstrosity of a desk.

“There’s been talk,” Charles said, his voice barely modulated. I came to understand that Charles’ original language favored melodic tones. The monotone he gave me was either an indication of anger, which I doubt was the case at the time, or disapproval of the very language he was speaking. Arrogant demon.

“Many talk, Charles. What, in particular, has been the subject of conversation?”

“War.”

I looked up from the open drawers of my desk. This was a surprise, of course. Charles’ species, as far as I understand, have never had a war. Certainly there was conflict, but nothing that we would consider a good and proper war. “War?”

“There will be long-term conflict between two realities,” Charles said. “Obviously, this changes the environment and nature of this reality. And likely for a state less desirable than we can accommodate.”

I frowned at Charles’ words. “So… What does that mean?”

“It means that we may be leaving. And we will need your help to evacuate.”

“My help. Charles, your species has had reality shifting technology since before Latin was in vogue. Why would you need my help?”

Charles stared blankly at me, as if not certain what tone he should use. “The devices my ancestors built have been destroyed and we do not have the knowledge or resources to repair or build them.”

I sat in my chair, stunned. Not only had Rhianna destroyed my workshops, she’d crippled the resources of another species. “What about the other demons?”

“All of our gates have been destroyed. Even the secret pathways.”

“Stonehenge?”

“Stonehenge fell into disrepair over five centuries ago. No one will confess to building it and so we have no idea how to repair it,” Charles replied in his bland monotone. I suppose hearing all of this in an even tone made it a little easier to swallow.

“This reality is cut off from the others.”

“Yes.”

“And none of you here on the planet can get home.”

“Correct.”

“So, in addition to preventing the largest invasion in the history of this reality, I have to develop a device to repel the enemy, defeat Rhianna, retrieve a city, and evacuate several thousand demons from this reality to their own realities, each as unique as each individual.”

Charles paused. “I believe that is a correct assessment. Save for the fact that there are approximately one point two million demons in this reality. That does not include those missing from Tokyo.”

“Well,” I said, sighing. “I do not relish taking those sentient dogs away from their families.”

“I believe they wanted to stay.”