Chapter Forty-six
Homunculus Temporis
17 de Junio, 1952. 4:50 P.M. Ancient Era
Orange Groove Avenue. Pasadena, California. USK
The man heard some insults from the young boys, but paid no attention to them. He was satisfied that the brats had retreated and were finally out of sight around the corner. He had enough to take care of in the next few days. Things were not going as he had planned, due to a call to pick up some materials, but it was a few hiccups, nothing more.
He had planned a trip to Mexico for work and had gotten a good payday for a job doing pyrotechnic special effects. Money was money, he couldn't afford to say no.
In the last few years things had not been going well for him. Although he had had a promising future as a rocket engineer and chemist, some circumstances at the time had put the brakes on his promotion. His authorization for work related to the defense of the Kingdom had been withdrawn and one of his friends had swindled him and fled with his money. Haunted by ghosts, and afraid that someone might eliminate him because of all he knew, he had recently been thinking of leaving the country and seeking opportunity abroad. Somewhere else that would value his ideas more. Even if he didn't have authorization, his brain was more than enough for any country to welcome him with open arms.
But, although he was slowly trying to regain some of the prestige he had lost, the truth was that he had received some strange warnings and rumors. Some of them said that he might not be allowed to leave the country easily because of what he knew.
Whatever it was, he had to try.
The man finished putting the last box of chemicals into the garage and closed the door. That place inside was a home laboratory that he had set up himself to work with the material supplied to him by the gunpowder manufacturers who had contracts with movie studios to make explosives for special effects in films.
The place was full of chemicals and materials, but there was also other material.
In one corner, a wooden table was covered with ancient scrolls and books with worn bindings. Among jars of volatile liquids, there were writings and pages with strange symbols traced on them. The duality of the place was palpable: the scientific precision of a chemistry lab clashed with the mystical atmosphere emanating from the occult elements. It was closer to the laboratory of an alchemist than to the laboratory of someone specialized in rocket science.
His laboratory was a melting pot, where alchemy and chemistry coexisted in a strange and sometimes disturbing amalgam of knowledge. The boundaries between the scientific and the mystical were blurring, and the man moved between the two worlds with a dexterity that would baffle anyone who could discover his secrets.
On one of the walls were pictures of a ruined dream, when he was at the peak of his career, several years ago, before it all fell apart. Pictures of those who had been his friends in years past and one of the pictures had a group in which he was standing and holding a sign that read "The suicide squad", as some had called them because of the experiments they had conducted in the desert. There were also some pulp science fiction magazines and a book that was a compilation of H.G. Wells with the inscriptions Per Aspera, Ad Astra.
The man went to the desk and removed some papers he had left the night before. Those Enochian translations, based on John Dee's alphabet, would have to wait until he returned from his trip. Although he thought he had found something curious in a grimoire he had gotten in an antique book store, there was no time for the occult, now that he had a chance to find perhaps a new job. There would be time for all that later.
He put on some gloves and started to work. He had been asked to make a simple compound for a production and the truth was that he hoped to finish it in a few hours, so at least he could deliver it complete later and the next day head for the border.
"Where's the nitroglycerin?" he wondered, as he searched through the padded shipping crates. But, no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't find it among all the compounds.
He would have no choice but to use what he had. He didn't like to use his own compounds, considering that he didn't have enough money to spend on the materials for his own experiments. The bottle rested on a shelf and he carefully carried it to the table and then poured some of the contents into an empty coffee can to make the compound. He mixed everything carefully and left it on the work table to rest for a while.
He took off his gloves and rummaged through his pockets. "Damn." He had left his cigarettes in the truck. He was about to leave when he reached into another pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack. It was the pack of cigarettes he had taken from those boys.
"What a remedy," he said to himself looking at the almost crumpled package. Those weren't his brand but he didn't feel like going out. He turned one on and stared at the wall with the pictures. It was then that he noticed that on another of the desks there was something he didn't remember. It was a small mail box. Surely his wife must have received it and put it there, even though he didn't like her being in the office with all those compounds.
He reached over and took it. It was a small package, with no return address, but with postal service from the East of the Kingdom. He wondered and opened it. At first he thought it was a joke. Inside was a small box. No note or anything. He opened the box and thought it was empty. But it wasn't. In his hand fell a piece of old cloth. He took it and unwrapped it carefully. It was strange to him. Inside was a small black stone, could it be a precious stone? He didn't remember ordering anything. On the other hand, it was so tiny that it could easily have been lost if it wasn't in that piece of cloth.
Perhaps a member of one of the occult groups had sent it to him, but it had no sender. He took it between his fingers and went to the table where he had left the compound. He sat down in a chair, while he continued smoking and with the other hand he examined the strange stone.
It all happened so fast that he could not react quickly enough.
He took a puff from the cigarette and it exploded with a crack. It was an explosive cigarette.
The man gasped and that little shard flew out of his hand. But that wasn't the worst of it. When he had given that jump, his arm shook with fright. That arm swung the can over the desk and it flew off and then fell to the floor.
It happened slowly in his mind, as if he was already anticipating what was going to happen. The can with the compound hit the floor.
The calm of that afternoon came to an end. The neighbors in the vicinity heard the detonation coming from that home laboratory. Everyone knew the individual, an eccentric rocket scientist, and it was not the first time they had heard an explosion, but this was different.
The explosion had been much more violent than any of the previous ones. The garage doors came off their hinges and the windows exploded throwing glass in all directions.
Inside, amid smoke and burning paper, the man lay on the floor with a mangled body. He was too close when the explosion had occurred. His legs were blown off along with an arm and he had shrapnel all over his body. His right cheek had a hole in it. Never mind counting the wounds, he knew his fate. That had been taken care of in that bathtub where he sometimes used to combine chemicals. The bathtub had fallen on him and the ribs, when broken, had pierced his lung.
He could barely move a few fingers of the only arm he had left. With spasms that presaged the end, he thought he touched something among all that mess of glass, gunpowder, chemicals, books and papers that were still flying around.
It was that small piece of stone. How it was still there was a mystery. He couldn't see it, but he knew from its shape that it was that strange shipment.
The life was fading from his eyes but he thought he was seeing something strange. It could be a hallucination from all that combination of chemicals in the air entering his battered lungs. It was a bluish glow of particles floating near his hand.
That was the last thing those eyes saw.
Then darkness.
***
Unintelligible screams and sounds of despair came from everywhere. It was as if it was an endless ocean of suffering.
He could not see where they were coming from. It was all darkness, but the screams were there and they were so loud that they seemed to be screaming in his ears and the sound came and went in waves. But did he have ears? His body was in pieces, of that he was sure. He couldn't see his arms, he couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel his body, but there was no pain either. What was it?
Slowly the sounds faded and a blue glow came.
And then the pain.
Pain like he had never felt before in his life.
He couldn't place where it was coming from, because it was everywhere. What was going on with my body? He couldn't be sure because the pain was everywhere. It stung as if he was being burned raw.
But the pain gave way to a new sensation. It was as if something was crushing him, but there was something new too. He could see.
A stormy gray sky was pouring rain on him. But it didn't make sense. Why did the drops feel like lead was falling on him? He saw them as huge. But he still couldn't touch anything, but he felt as if his body was in something slimy.
Suddenly he saw something black with a red glow above him. No, it looked more like a huge head staring at him. But the shape of it was strange. It reminded him of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still from the previous year, more specifically Gort, but that thing had a vertical viewfinder instead of a horizontal one and had a more intricate design.
But if it was a dream, it felt more real than any other. There was something different about it. What were those screams he had heard? Where had they gone? Was that hell?
Then another one appeared, and another one of those robotic Gort. A group had formed around him, looking at him as if they were giants. They carried something that could have been weapons in their hands and looked at each other.
"So here it is."
Those robots turned around and made room for someone else. A man almost as tall as those robots stepped through and squatted down. It was a man dressed in black with some sort of suit that reminded him of special soldiers, but it was a design he had never seen in his life. The man didn't seem to be worried about the rain soaking his blond hair. In fact he seemed to be smiling.
"I finally found the missing piece. The homunculus."
Homunculus? He didn't understand that. Did he mean me?
"Get a hyperbaric container now!" ordered the man to the robots.
Soon he understood in part what was happening with that perspective disorientation.
It wasn't that those robots and the man were giants. It was he who had been dwarfed. But he couldn't see his limbs, what had happened to his body? He had been carefully placed with tweezers inside a kind of small box, he had made a slimy sound when he was deposited on the surface of that box. That was a relief in a way. He stopped feeling the heavy rain, but the bright lights of that box or cage where he had been placed hurt his eyes a little. He had both eyes? His eyesight also felt strange. But that box, or hyperbaric chamber as the man had called it, had glass walls so he could see out, although the movement made him feel dizzy. That thing was small considering he had been an athletic man. What had happened to its size?
He still could not feel his limbs and could not see his body. The blond man lifted the so-called hyperbaric chamber and placed it at the level of his drenched face. "I know this must all be very confusing for you, but I will now take you to a facility where you can begin to regenerate your body more comfortably. You will have to wait some time before you can speak, as you have no vocal cords yet. You will probably be able to see me even though you only have a developing retina."
What does that mean? Where am I?
The blond man lowered the chamber and started walking with the robots.
Through the glass he could see that he was being transported but he didn't know where. He thought he could see water and boats nearby, silhouettes cut out by some lightning in the sky, but had no idea what that might be.
The blond man spoke once again."My name is Janus, by the way. You are in the year 110 of the Singularity Era. Welcome to the Future."
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***
Thursday, March 22. 5AM. 125 S.A.
Meyrin. Geneva, Switzerland.
Griffin opened his eyes and woke up from that dream. No, memory and nightmare at the same time would be more accurate to say.
He had been sweating and could feel the bandages sticking together because he had been sweating, giving him an unpleasant sensation.
"They have arrived." A man with a gun and tactical uniform had approached and tapped him on the shoulder to wake him up.
"It's about time, I was getting worried." Griffin rose heavily from the bed of a makeshift medical wing.
"No, they got here about forty minutes ago."
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"Why didn't you wake me up?"
"Because apparently they weren't sure and were circling around that this was the right place and not a trap. We had to send a couple of men to intercept them. On the other hand the Director told me that you were to rest on the end."
Griffin nodded. "Well I don't blame you then. Let's go see them."
Griffin left the room followed by the mercenary. The subterranean collider site, abandoned until a little over a week ago, was now buzzing with activity. Support droids working on last minute fixes. Scientists going to and fro. That place was even more crowded than the facility where he had first been Annecy, on the French side.
That was the nerve center of the operation. A private facility, with an unpopulated surrounding area, that Janus had taken care of buying a long time ago.
It would all be over in the blink of an eye, so this was the final phase. And he had to prepare himself as well.
Fifteen long years had passed since the day Janus had found him in that lake. It had taken all that time for his body to recover. But now it would all be over.
He had spent the first ten years in different hyperbaric chambers that changed as he grew older. When they had found him, he was nothing more than a mass of a few centimeters. Almost an insect larva at first. And Later It was a self-developing fetus.
From what he had been understanding he was no longer that man who had been born in California. He was not that man even though he had his memories and experiences. That explosion had created a double of his consciousness and, thanks to that mysterious shard, he was transported to the future.
He was not a man, he was a homunculus.
The fact that he had a body was due to something that no one, not even he, could have foreseen. A homunculus temporis had named him Janus.
A kind of ancient chaos magic, which could only be activated by accident due to the accumulation of magical practices by someone who possessed no magical ability whatsoever. A common, ordinary human entering the realm of the occult and the arcane. Many of those magical practices were likely to gradually interconnect with Dark Events. That accumulation of practices created a vortex around the practitioner that could only generate one in two billion results. An absurd possibility, but it had occurred.
The existence of magic in the world was an alteration of reality carried out by individuals or collectively. In itself in the past it was very rare for real magic to occur, but over the centuries things had changed thanks to the proliferation of alterations in reality caused by the Dark Events. Little by little those factors had become visible on an evolutionary and biological scale, appearing areas of the brain that allowed many people to be sorcerers, or wizards.
He had practiced magic recreationally and as a path of self-discovery. Trying to find out if it was possible that there was something beyond the anodyne world that often surrounded him. There were many rumors in certain secret groups that there was a world full of incredible beings and magic out there. But, no matter how hard he had searched, he had never found it in the ritualistic practices of the groups he had frequented.
But, despite the disappointments, he had continued to study the occult. Something inside had always told him that there really was a world full of magic. Until that world he had sought so much had found him, though not in the way he had expected. It was a case of be careful what you wish for, because you might find it and not like what you get.
That explosion had gotten him to be created. But no matter how real those memories seemed, Janus assured him that he was a different being from the one who had died in that explosion. But that he had made it to the future was due to something else.
That mysterious stone was the one that had made it possible for him to reach the future. And according to Janus he was a fundamental piece for the future to exist. So it was, he would become a hero behind it all. But he didn't care about that. It was the other thing Janus had promised him.
He had no reason to distrust the man who had saved him and cared for him for so many years just for that moment. Janus had put him in a coma several times so that he would not feel the pain of his body regenerating. Because his body was different no matter what kind of medicine he wanted to use, it would not work and the body would have to grow and generate the bones, nerve tissue and muscles on its own until the process was complete.
After those ten years came the rehabilitation and bandages to finish the healing of his body. According to Janus that was due in part to the fault of the stone itself. He might be a homunculus, but the stone had altered parts of his recovery mechanism. The external parts would take a little longer and so he had had to live with medical care all those years and constantly changing bandages. But that was over now.
Once he arrived at his destination everything would change. He now knew the reality of the feys, the magic, and other factors that had always been there, although hidden to the naked eye. The world he had sought had always really been there.
Janus could not provide him with concrete information about the time and things that existed around him, because of what he would have to do at the end of his body's full recovery. During the last three years he had been learning a series of instructions that Janus told him it was important for him to memorize. It would save the world and it was all he needed to know.
Despite the restrictions of knowledge and movement, Janus had provided him with everything else he needed to live and he had certainly lived well. Now it would all end. The two targets were there. And so were those awaiting payment.
Griffin sighed calling the elevator and, together with the mercenary, they ascended to the surface.
***
Stan and Rum were outside and both glanced sideways at the man in bandages and dark glasses approaching them, escorted by three mercenaries. Stan still had his identity changed and Rum still had her hologram. Possibly the place already knew who they really was but, just in case, they did not stop wearing the false identities with which they had entered the perimeter of the lake.
And where did this guy come from? they thought in unison.
It had taken them about forty minutes to reach the place without attracting attention. The distance had been a little over seventy kilometers by the safest routes to cross to the Swiss lake and from there to Meyrin. Stan had circled around for a few minutes to make sure that they would not be ambushed although, given what had happened at Pyrene Station, they doubted it. Nevertheless, there was movement in the area. They couldn't tell the exact number but, from the Neurowire, they detected over eighty droids similar to the ones that had rescued them, as well as several mercenaries in the surrounding area. What worried them was that they had detected three huge combat mechas in the vicinity, although they had a camouflage to blend in with the environment of the ruined city.
Meyrin was a green place, through which hardly anyone passed by during the day, let alone at night. Nature had reclaimed that part of Geneva that barely saw human life, apart from a few intrepid urban explorers or groups of nomads that might pass through from time to time. Dilapidated buildings and forests were growing in the streets of what had once been one of the major centers of particle research.
The sky was gray with heavy clouds and a cold wind swayed the branches of the nearby trees, giving Stan a certain air of uneasiness. For some reason he had been feeling uneasy since he had left Lugrin with Rum and the two they were carrying in the vehicle. Nothing unusual had happened on the trip but, there was something that didn't feel right about the atmosphere that day.
"Welcome," the man with the bandages greeted.
"Mr. Griffin, I presume?" Stan asked.
The man nodded. "You have the order?"
Rum nodded and pointed to the vehicle behind them parked on the street. Griffin motioned for two of the mercenaries to go to the vehicle.
"What about ours?" Rum asked.
Griffin nodded again and reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small blue rectangle. That was the device that contained the money and could only be opened with the digital key that EVE had previously given Rum. Griffin held out his hand to hand it over, but quickly retracted it. "Aren't you forgetting something?"
Stan spoke up. "The cube for Mr. Janus is in lockbox 45 at the Dandolo Hotel, Trestevere."
"Send the address to him," Griffin pointed to the mercenary who was still with him and Rum did so, sending the exact coordinates over the Neurowire. Before they started their work in Rome they had both taken care to put that valuable cube in a special safe deposit box that only they knew about.
"Can you check it out?" Griffin asked to the mercenary.
"By sending a location to one of our teams, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes," the mercenary replied.
"Well, we can wait," Griffin admitted.
Stan and Rum watched as the two mercenaries walked past them, each carrying one of the ones they had kidnapped. They passed by without a word and went inside the facility. Rum swallowed hard, who knew what fate awaited those two. At least they had brought them back alive and in a way she hoped they would stay that way. The girl named Oxy was from Nevermore. Depending on what they were going to do to her, they could not rule out any retaliation. No, it was certain there would be. That's why both she and Stan were in a hurry to get out of that place once they got paid for the mission.
"Had it rough?" Griffin's voice snapped them out of their thoughts. "I mean getting them here."
Rum frowned. "The place was packed, don't you know that?"
Griffin scratched his chin. He almost seemed oblivious to that. "I'm sorry. We each have different roles, so I'm not informed on all sides. Did you have problems?"
"Apparently Nevermore was investigating an accident with a Dark Event. The place was a security hotbed."
"Well, but at least you guys played your part perfectly."
Stan arched his eyebrow. This guy doesn't know what happened at that Pyrene Station, does he?
He didn't need to look at Rum to know she was thinking something similar. From what Griffin had just said it seemed that each party involved only knew their part and nothing else. Although, well, that made sense on the other hand if it was a high caliber job. It wasn't at all uncommon to hire different groups and give each one specific tasks, without briefing the entire mission as a whole.
A few minutes passed in silence until finally the mercenary next to Griffin spoke. "All in order, we have the package."
"Well, all in order then." Finally Griffin again held out his hand with the rectangle which Rum hurried to take. She did a quick check and finally felt a sense of relief. They had what they had been looking for. They had nothing to do there.
"That's it then," Stan said and together with Rum turned around.
"You're leaving already? Since everything is in order I thought you were going to stay and watch the final part."
Rum turned around. For some reason she remembered the words of that man in the harbor "things are going to get bumpy around here" or something like that he had said.
"No, thanks, our part is done. We have nothing more to do here."
"I see," Griffin said with a shrug. "Well, good luck then."
Stan and Rum continued on their way until they got into the military vehicle they had arrived in and fired it up.
Griffin and the mercenary followed them with their eyes until they withdrew. Rum for her part had set up a perimeter to activate a program to hack into the functions of the mercenaries in the vicinity in case something happened, but that was not necessary.
They both sighed in relief when they finally pulled away. They would have to change vehicles somewhere to get rid of the armored transport. It was a pity but necessary. After that they could go anywhere and be sure to disappear forever.
***
Griffin climbed back down alone into the subterranean storage room and quickly made his way to the medical wing. That was where the girl and the man had been transported.
Janus had told Griffin that both were of vital importance to the whole thing, but had not explained in detail what their function was. That part was carried out by medical personnel on site, who were specially there for that part of the mission. It was not important for him to know that part. He only had his role to play.
He had only helped with some minor things in Annecy and then traveled in a ship to carry the disassembled parts of the mirror box. Janus had told him about them, but had never said where they had come from or what they were for. But he remembered that during his studies of magic they had appeared several times in various treatises and grimoires of the Middle Ages. Things like the mirrors of Lilith or the dark obsidian mirrors were familiar to him. Yet he had never seen anything like that. Just touching those mirrors had given him a feeling of fascination and extreme repulsion. It was something that even he could not explain.
It seemed that things were very different from his time. There was finally a future where magic and science coexisted, just as he had read in the fantasy and science fiction stories of that other self that had created him. And although he had a lot of his freedom for that restricted knowledge, he could not but feel happy about it in a way. He wondered what all those who had mocked him, for believing that there was an alchemy that could unite magic with the cutting-edge science of his time, would say.
Janus had taught him many things about his past that he was unaware of and that he would have to apply, one way or another.
What mattered was that those mirror boxes were also ready. Those had already been assembled by another team and put in their respective places. The mirror boxes were a vital part of the operation, as was he and everything else. That included the two new arrivals.
In the medical wing a team had gathered around that girl named Oxy who apparently belonged to an important organization called Nevermore. Griffin didn't know what kind of organization it was since Janus hadn't provided him with much information. He only knew that it was a kind of multi-planetary institute with different branches and that they even investigated Dark Events as a kind of police force with the ability to intervene in all kinds of strange cases.
Whatever it was, that girl was important to everything that was going on. In her mind she had information about a certain experiment that had been conducted over a century ago that could help with what they were trying to accomplish in the accelerator.
"How's it going?" asked Griffin as he approached one of the specialists.
"Perfect, she had many layers of security, but this girl has a really good memory and her memories are compartmentalized in an orderly fashion. It seems that when she was knocked unconscious she lowered her access defenses."
"I see," Griffin nodded, not understanding what exactly he was referring to. That was part of the science of the time that had been barred from his knowledge. It was not necessary for him to know unnecessary things.
"May I ask exactly what is needed from this girl's mind?"
"Even if we told you I don't think you would understand." The one who had approached was the operations director of that monitoring sector. There were four directors for each part, and while he didn't know the ones in the east and west section of the accelerator, the director of the Meyrin section was a rather serious-looking old man with a thick mustache and graying hair. He hadn't even given him his name and from what Griffin had learned since he had arrived everyone addressed him as the "Director."
"I was just curious," Griffin said.
"Janus told me enough about you to know that kind of thing isn't necessary for you. You should only know what you need to know to make the mission successful and nothing else. Any mistake could be a disaster."
"Well, excuse me," Griffin said with a shrug. If he didn't have to know it wasn't worth making trouble for what was beyond his control. He turned to the bed next to him and approached. There were five specialists there with their eyes closed as they ran their hands over the head of the man who had arrived with the fey girl.
The man's name was Lee Reubens. Griffin didn't know who he was or what he did, but he was also vital to the whole thing, even though the procedure was different. He knew these specialists, they were called mind-benders. And the reason he knew them was because Janus had sent them to him several times during his regeneration process.
In his case those mind-benders were in charge of analyzing the state of his psyche, to control that he was not suffering from stress levels due to being locked up in the hyperbaric chambers for so many years.
Then those specialists had also made sure that he memorized patterns and instructions that Janus gave him for his future mission.
But the case for the man named Lee Reubens was also an enigma to him. From what he had been told he was destined for the same mission but, there was something to do in his brain first. He felt bad about what he knew about the guy, but there was no other way.
The Director approached and looked at Griffin. "Are you ready for your procedure?"
Griffin looked at him and nodded. "I guess it's crunch time. Time to get these damn bandages off."
"I guess it'll be a relief to get your old identity back, won't it?"
"I'm not sure, I've made enough enemies in my time, people who didn't like me. "
"Well, primary medicine couldn't be applied in your case, because you had to wait for your body to heal sufficiently, but your face could at least be treated with a dermal culture cream. Your face is different from that of your time."
"I hope so... I hope so."
The director pointed to an empty gurney. "Let's start by first removing the complete bandages and then a check of your mind will be done for the last time."
"What a remedy," Griffin resigned, approaching the gurney and removing his jacket. "If I have to be honest with you, I was getting used to it."
"To the bandages?"
"Yeah. They really remind me of the invisible man."
"Who?"
"Don't you people read these days? The Invisible Man! H.G. Wells? The War of the Worlds? The Time Machine?"
The Director shrugged.
"I think I'm going to like going back to my own time," Griffin admitted, sitting up on the gurney.
Two specialists undressed him and began to slowly remove his bandages. First his arms and torso and then they removed his pants. His body was as good as new and more toned than he remembered. Finally it was the turn of his head. There was his face. While it was somewhat different, it bore some resemblance to his past self. Maybe the hair was a little lighter, but it didn't look bad.
"Well I may not have read this Wells guy, but at least I know who you were Mr. Griffin. You were one of the fathers of rocketry in the United States Kingdom."
The man named Griffin looked at the Director and sighed. "Thank you." At least in the future they had been able to appreciate some of the genius of the past. Although that would have been much better if his biography didn't say that he had died because of a stupid mistake and had blown himself up preparing a chemical compound in his home laboratory.