“Lots of money and work went into running the spirit phone, but they never met George Washington or Julius Caesar or anyone interesting. It’s not like there are switchboard operators in the afterlife. We were spending a million dollars a pop to make a call to some random somewhere, and most of the time nobody answered.”
“Must be busy in heaven.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t think we got heaven. When it did occasionally work, we weren’t getting happy people, and there sure weren’t any choirs of angels singing. After a bit, most people thought that Edison had built a phone line to hell.”
“Oh . . .” Sullivan scowled. “That could be awkward.”
“Try explaining that to the shareholders. We don’t know where we connected to, just that the spirits of some dead people end up there. The conversations were usually screaming gibberish, angry ranting in Chinese, that kind of thing. It didn’t help that a couple of researchers went crazy and there was a rash of suicides on the EGE team. Plus, it was sucking up too much of EGE’s capital to keep it running and it wasn’t like Edison could tell the board that calling hell was a sound investment. The Coolidge administration decided that it should be kept secret because news of the spirit phone could cause—what did he call it?—anxiety among the public.”
The theological implications of such a device were . . . troubling. “I can see how people might get a little upset. Might get some folks to behave nicer though, if they thought they really would go to hell.”
“Or have the public go ape-shit and bananas . . . Pardon my French. Coolidge played it safe. He asked that the project be shut down, so EGE powered down, quit making calls, and just gave it enough juice to keep the connection live in case we ever decided to fire it up again. They were worried that if we shut it down completely, we might not ever be able to reconnect.” She stopped at a large steel door labeled XIII and removed a ring of keys from her coat pocket. Another guard stepped aside so she could unlock it. “Three weeks of Power-fueled Cog madness from the greatest mind of our time and”— the heavy door swung open—“we got this.”
Sullivan stepped inside a room that was nearly as large as the warehouse above. A dozen men in laboratory coats were wandering about, checking panels of gauges and flashing lights, while in the very center of the room, cordoned off by protective railings and metal safety cages was a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot glass box filled with crackling lines of electricity and another, slower, blue energy that could only be the visible manifestation of raw magic. It was a thousand lightning strikes imprisoned in a big fish tank. The air hummed with violence as fat power cables fed the hungry box.
It was frankly awe-inspiring.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Hammer asked, already knowing the answer. “A one-minute conversation uses more electricity than Newark does in a week. The big partition was left over from the elephant electrocuting days back when he was trying to prove that direct current was safer than alternating current. The room is reinforced, because if that containment was to break, it could flash-fry Menlo Park.”
The last time he’d had anything to do with Cog superscience he’d nearly been vaporized by a Tesla weapon. He wasn’t exactly fond of this sort of thing. “You know, the way you were talking, I was kind of expecting”—Sullivan held his hands out about a foot apart—“a telephone.”
“The original hypothesis was that it needed to be sensitive. Turns out it just needed to be bigger. And it is like a phone; look closer.” Hammer pointed at the base of the massive, flashing death-box, where there was an older two-piece telephone unit, with separated microphone and earphone, sitting on a small metal cradle next to a folding chair.
“Somebody has to sit next to that thing?” The amount of energy running through the machine was staggering. “What’s in there?”
“All sorts of stuff.” Hammer waved her hand dismissively. “Half the periodic table, including some things that are theoretically supposed to annihilate each other on contact. I don’t know. It’s way over my head.”
“I thought you said that they’d barely kept it running?”
“It was on standby mode for years. This is not standby mode. After what happened a few days ago they restarted the project.”
“What happened?”
“The phone rang.”
Before Sullivan could digest that the crowd had seen them enter and was swarming. A man armed with a large clipboard reached them first. “Mr. Sullivan?”
“Yeah.” He could hardly take his eyes away from the spirit phone. “That’s me.”
“Oh, thank goodness. We’ve been looking all over for you. Come right this way. He should be calling very soon. The check-ins have been exactly every seven hundred and seventy-four minutes. I have no idea how he can tell such precise time without any physical instrumentation.”
Another man, this one in a uniform, pushed past the scientist and pumped Sullivan’s hand. “Captain Ellis, Naval Intelligence. Thank you for coming. I just need to confirm that you are in fact, Sergeant Jake Sullivan, formerly of the 1st Volunteer Active Brigade.” Sullivan nodded along. “Very well. If we had more time we’d conduct a proper security check, but as it stands the Navy appreciates your assistance in this matter. Your conversation will be recorded. Anything you can get him to say concerning the makeup of their forces would be greatly appreciated.”
“Since this is the first time the dead have ever endeavored to speak with the living in a scientific environment, I’d suggest asking more valuable questions,” interrupted another man in EGE coveralls. “This is a monumental occa—”
“That’ll be all, Doctor,” snapped the captain. “We’ve got no time for your frivolity. See if he’ll divulge their attack plans in the Pacific, Sergeant.”
The brain side of the group was eager. The military side of the group was nervous. There were four men that stood back a ways that didn’t seem to fit with either side. They smelled like enforcers, and the way that they kept looking nervously at the spirit phone told him that they were also new here.
“Right this way, Mr. Sullivan,” coaxed the first scientist as he glanced at his watch nervously. “We only have a few minutes. Please do hurry.” He reached out and took Sullivan by the sleeve.
Sullivan smacked the hand aside. The EGE scientist put his fingers to his mouth and slinked away, surprised. “Who’s calling?”
The crowd exchanged glances.
Hammer spoke. She seemed to be enjoying the general discomfort of the eggheads. “Three days ago the spirit phone rang and for the first time ever, the dead called us. The thing on the other end claimed to be the ghost of Baron Okubo Tokugawa, Chairman of the Imperial Japanese Council, and he asked to speak to you.”
Machine Man
Chapter 4
Finders have proven the existence of disembodied spirits. Thus, I’ve had to revise my opinions on the nature of such spiritualist matters. If we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.
—Thomas Edison,
New York Times, 1921
Menlo Park, New Jersey
SULLIVAN TOOK A SEAT next to the electrical monstrosity and waited to receive a call from hell. The chair rested on a rubber mat, as if that would somehow help protect him if the energy inside the box escaped. The glass wasn’t even warm, but that didn’t make him feel any safer. The phone itself looked normal. Nothing else was.
Several different audio recording devices had been set around the table. Two film cameras were rolling, one electrical and one hand crank, just in case. Judging from the sheer amount of fingernail biting this was a momentous occasion for the EGE scientists. The Naval Intelligence people were having conniption fits. Sullivan had been given a typed list of questions to ask the Chairman’s ghost. The connections did not usually hold for long. Time would be of the essence.
The longest that EGE had ever been able to keep a connection was five mi
nutes. A team of six men were sitting at one console, fiddling with dials, wearing headphones and concerned expressions. The scientist that Sullivan had mentally christened Clipboard Man was watching the clock on the wall. He interrupted his nervous sweat dabbing long enough to begin a countdown. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”
Briiiiiiiing.
The bell sounded like a perfectly normal telephone. It was sort of sad, that after all the labor of constructing this terrible abomination in the sight of God, Edison couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything more impressive for the ringer.
“He’s early!” Clipboard Man turned deathly pale. “Why is he early? Oh no. What do we do?”
Briiiiiiiing.
Sullivan simply answered the phone. He put the earpiece against his head and the connection made an unpleasant hum. He leaned in closer to the microphone. “Hello?”
“Mr. Sullivan.” The voice seemed to come from a billion miles away, and maybe it was. “It is I, Okubo Tokugawa.”
It sounded like him, but it could be a trick. “Prove it.”
“We spoke for the first time in the between place, where the dead go to dream, where the Power dwells. For you it is a haunted place of barbed wire and muddy bones.” The voice grew stronger. Closer. Steady and calm. “The last time we met was aboard my flagship. After you fed your own brother a sword, I asked you to stand with me to watch an old world die as a new one was born.”
“Chairman.”
“I was. Am. It is hard to know. Things are . . . sluggish in this place. So cold. So very dark . . . It is hard to see and harder to think. When are you?”
“It’s February sixteenth, nineteen thirty-three.”
“I have not been gone long then . . . Does the world miss me yet?”
Perhaps it wasn’t an odd question, coming from a dead man. “No.”
“They will soon enough.” The sound that came next might have been a sad chuckle.
“Your Imperium still thinks you’re alive.”
“Indeed? That is for the best. They will need to be strong for what is coming.”
The Chairman had not pierced the veil to make small talk. “What’s this about?”
“I cannot reach my followers, but a warning must be given. I can no longer find the dream of the Power. My sons can no longer hear my words. I despaired, for I saw what had come, yet had no one to give my message to. Until I found this light in the void. There is no marvelous device such as this in the Imperium. It is difficult, but in this cube, my words can be heard, even if only by my enemies.”
Sullivan looked over at the glass nervously. The pulsating energy was eerily quiet. Was the Chairman’s ghost actually inside?
“But we are no longer enemies. The dead have no enemies, only memories like fog and kingdoms are like dust. Japanese, American, it matters not. All will die if I cannot prepare them. Yet, who among you would heed my warning? And I knew . . . The strongest among my foes would understand.”
The Chairman’s entire doctrine had been based upon survival of the fittest, and Sullivan had been the one to defeat the Imperium’s finest Iron Guard, but it had been a crazy little Okie girl that had done the impossible and crippled the Chairman himself. “You want the strongest?” It was probably a sin to goad the restless dead, but he couldn’t resist. “I should go get Faye, then.”
“Perhaps she will be someday. The Power has blessed her with a bond beyond anything I have ever seen. I do not understand why it chose her, but she has her own part to play in the events to come. You will have to do, for you have seen the Power as it really is.”
“What do you want?”
“The Enemy has caught the scent of the Power. It will soon be on Earth.”
Sullivan exhaled slowly. He was one of the only people in the world who understood what magic really was. It had traveled from world to world for who knew how long, bonding magic to intelligent creatures, letting their magic grow, and consuming that magic when they died. The abilities that had appeared in the last century weren’t miracles, they were just manifestations of a being that could influence the natural world. It was a repetitive cycle.
Sadly, he’d also learned that the Power was not the top of its food chain. Something else fed on the Power, just as it fed on them. And the Power fleeing and leaving its hosts to be destroyed by its predator was just part of the cycle. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about the Enemy.”
“It will consume the Power until the Power has no choice but to flee. When that happens, the Enemy will wreck this world like it has done so many times before. You must defeat it before it takes hold.”
“How?”
“First there will come a scout. This is the Pathfinder. The enemy sends them ahead to many worlds, searching for prey, but the spaces between are vast and deep. The Pathfinder must gather enough energy to send a message back to the Enemy, and it must be destroyed before it can do that. I have done this myself, twice before.”
“Where is it?”
Clipboard Man shouted, “The signal is breaking up.”
The Chairman’s voice had grown distant again. “The coming of the Pathfinder woke me from my sleep, and already I can feel myself drifting away. It will arrive soon. The time is short. It is . . . confusing. I can no longer think clearly. My children, my Iron Guard . . . I taught them how to search, but you must warn them. They will know what to do.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Weeks, perhaps months. Certainly not years. Time is different here.” The Chairman kept talking, but it was too faint. Sullivan didn’t understand. The background noise was louder. It sounded like a crowd of thousands screaming, until it all coalesced into one hoarse buzz.
“We’re losing the connection.”
“Sullivan, ask the questions!” shouted the Navy captain, pointed madly at the papers on the table. “The questions!”
But the Navy questionnaire was forgotten. It was about things like who tried to assassinate the president and Imperium weapon systems. Those things meant nothing compared to this. “How do I kill the Pathfinder?”
“Each one is different, but each . . . So very powerful.”
“Better than you were?”
“Yes.” The word trailed off into a hiss. “I was the first of our kind. The Power learned on me, but there are others like me, almost as old . . . If you can find them, convince them, they can hel—”
The line was nothing but the empty wailing of the damned. “Get him back.”
“We’re trying,” said Clipboard.
Suddenly, the Chairman’s voice returned. “—d. I think it has found me. I do not know how. A piece of the Pathfinder is here to silence me. Listen carefully. You must warn my children, my Iron Guard. They will know what to do.”
“Why would they trust me?”
“There is no time now. It is upon me. I leave you with a gift. Prepare your mind.”
A terrible pain struck him in the temple. Sullivan flinched and dropped the phone. The lights flickered and the tank of Power flashed. Then just as quickly as the pain had come, it was gone. He picked up the earpiece.
The line was silent for a time. Sullivan could hear his own pulse.
“Dark Ocean is the key. You are on your own now, Mr. Sullivan. Farewell.”
A horrible screeching noise came from the phone. Sullivan jerked it away from his ear.
Clipboard was running back and forth watching needles bounce and lights flash on the console. “The connection’s back, but there’s something—” A warning buzzer sounded. “Surge! We’ve got a surge. Oh no. Shut it down! Shut it down, now!” The lights flickered.
Pop.
Everyone in the room turned to look at the glass cube and the spider web of cracks spreading across its face. Pop. Poppoppop. The break grew wider. The Power contained inside licked the edges and tasted freedom.
POP.
“Run for your lives!” Clipboard screamed.
Knocking over
the phone, Sullivan jumped from the table and followed the crowd toward the exit. An alarm Klaxon sounded. Red lights embedded in the ceiling began flashing. He had not noticed it before, but there was some sort of huge steel shield suspended over the door and it began to slide down on smooth hydraulics to seal the room.
He had been the closest to the cube and the furthest from safety. “Shit.” Sullivan sprinted for the rapidly shortening doorway. The others were going through, and the last few had to duck, but Hammer was waiting for him. “Hurry!” The blast door was closing behind her. She looked at it, then back at him, then went to her hands and knees and scurried through.
CRACK. Flakes of glass struck him in the back. The room shook. Sullivan had played a lot of baseball as a boy, and he slid like he was trying for home plate. He barely made it through on his side. The fat lip of descending steel nicked the side of his head. He rolled into the hallway, knocking down Hammer as the blast door sealed shut.
The red lights were flashing. Sullivan stood up, wincing at the bump on his forehead. “Will that hold?” Then he realized that was a dumb question, since all of the technical types who knew better were still running. He grabbed Hammer’s outstretched hand and pulled her up. “Come on!”
They had made it about twenty feet when the containment for the spirit phone failed. The release made a terrible WHUMP. The basement shook so hard that Sullivan and Hammer were knocked off their feet. Dust and concrete bits fell from the ceiling. The blast door had held, though it had been stretched and bowed like the edge of a steel bubble and the thick walls around it were cracked and steaming.