ONCE DJARD AND EX had joined Alice in Secta’s quarters, Alice continued with his questions, still confused. “Tell me in more detail how it happened?”
“Well,” said Secta, indifferently, “The last short-wave radio broadcast we received came from America. It was the week after the Sydney nuclear explosion, and it spoke of a catastrophic chain reaction worldwide.
“Within days of the explosion, nuclear missiles were launched by Russia, the United States, China, the UK, France, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, North Korea and others, all targeting their enemies. It was mayhem. The entire world erupted into an apocalyptic nuclear war.”
“So I assume they had nuclear weapons aboard the sub that collided with the ferry, and that’s why Sydney was blown away,” said Alice. “What about the people down here? How did they survive?”
“Are you talking about surface dwellers like these two Ex and…?” asked Secta.
“Djard.” Alice answered.
Secta Continued. “Hmm, Djard, they’re more than likely descendants of the biker gangs who had built fallout shelters in western Sydney. The diminishing resources after the holocaust would explain why they devolved over time into illiterate, primitive barbarians.”
Alice glanced at Ex, “We need to get them back to the surface.”
The mention of his friends reminded Alice of Zule, her pretty face looking back at him over the chasm of the Gash. But getting back, stopping that ferry, took precedence over returning to her. Alice knew he had to take the high moral ground. He had to save the world.
“After the first year or so down here, we were running out of food. We dispatched scouts to the upper levels to search for supplies. When they failed to return, we assumed they were dead, victims of predators or other perils.
“At that stage we were only twenty: twelve women and eight men. Two of the men had become reasonable hunters, so we were making do with eating rodents ... beggars can’t be choosers,” he added, at Alice’s look of disgust.
“The ladies foraged for insects as a secondary source of protein. In searching for a reliable source of pure water, we discovered a continuous seepage of groundwater through the bedrock, and a growth of green algae. We cultivated the algae — once harvested, it was a good source of additional vitamins.
“But being deprived of sunlight for so long caused a breakout of serious skin conditions that we found difficult to heal. We were forced to rely on those medicines I could synthesize with the limited resources in my laboratory. By the third year, only six women and four men, including myself, had survived. It was then we decided to send another expedition to find a safe passage to the surface.
“I set off with Doctor Carlisle Fox and Major Ann Church. We were armed but in reality, only Ann had any real experience with weapons. She was the former officer in charge of the Oceana arsenal. A tough cookie. Carl was a biologist — handy for our hunting and cultivation ventures, but not so for a high-risk adventure. Mind you, I’m no fearless explorer myself.
“We knew our journey would be riddled with pitfalls. It started with having to break through the blast-resistant doors on our level and Level Eight. Ann came up with a little shaped charge of plastic explosive. The next challenge was getting past the rubble and debris beyond those doors.
“After six hours we were about to give up, when Carl spotted the entrance to an elevator. Once we’d managed to prise open the elevator doors, Carl climbed the steel cable inside, and dropped us down a rope. In this fashion we scaled up a floor at a time, until we eventually made it to ground level. That was when things got really scary.
“It was so bright it was difficult for us to adjust our eyes — we hadn’t seen sunlight for three years. I’ll never forget what we saw when our vision finally adjusted … There were no buildings left to speak of, all that remained was the mangled, twisted, half-melted steel frames, masses of blackened concrete and areas the size of football fields transmuted into a black sea of obsidian molten glass. Scattered here and there were liquefied lumps of metal that we assumed were melted cars.
“In the distance, north, we could see the huge chasm that was once Sydney Harbour, and a twisted ornament of impressionist sculpture that was formerly the magnificent Bridge. There was no sign of the Opera House. In fact, it was impossible to discern anything that resembled the former. The city and the population had been totally obliterated. All the water in the harbour had been evaporated, leaving a huge crater. Debris and rubble had mounted up at the harbour entrance, preventing the ocean from refilling it. There was nothing but ruin as far as the eye could see, and not a single sign of life.
“We didn’t know until later that there were pockets of survivors out west, mainly biker gangs like your friends here. I only found out because, much later, I captured one of them on Level Seven … but that’s another story.
“The heat was so oppressive, the ground so hot that our feet were burning through the soles of our shoes. The sky had a strange, greenish hue. I suspect that was due to fallout, radioactive dust, a highly dangerous contamination. I was carrying a Geiger counter, and it immediately began to click at the max. I realized we had to get back down below or the radiation would kill us … little did we know that Ann and Carl had already been fatally contaminated. It turned out I was immune due to the serum.
“As we started back down below, Carl noticed a plant growing from the base of a lump of twisted metal, and went to investigate. While he was doing that, I tried to interpret the atomic blast pattern. It was obvious that the Harbour was the epicentre, but what interested me was why some areas were harder hit than others. The question that most nagged me was why the great fields of obsidian? Then I realised — the blast had liquefied the roads and sandstone bedrock, which spread with the atomic wind before solidifying into obsidian — black glass.
“That’s what would have caused the huge canopy that encloses the Hyde Park cavern!” Alice exclaimed — another question answered.
“Exactly,” nodded Secta, like a pleased schoolteacher. “Anyhow,” he went on, apparently unstoppable now he had someone to share his story with. “I heard a scream from Ann. A long tentacle, like an octopus arm, had grasped Carl around the waist and was dragging him along the ground. Ann aimed her gun but couldn’t fire without hitting Carl.”
Alice nodded glumly, recalling the similar story from Declan’s diary.
“The more Carl struggled with it, the tighter its grip,” Secta continued. “His face was red, he was struggling to breathe. Suddenly, a patch of sand ahead of him started to swirl, and a giant head appeared — like an octopus, but huge: the size of a small car. We could see now it had a lot more tentacles under the surface. Carl managed to draw a knife, hacking at the tentacle holding him. It squirted green blood and retracted, but as Carl hightailed over to us we noticed the ground moving all around us. Tentacles! More tentacles!
“As the head sank back down, more tendrils emerged, as though they had sensed our movement. I yelled to run, and we shot off like rockets, heading for the way back down. There were tentacles everywhere, jutting out of the ground like a field of snake tails.”
Alice couldn’t speak. He was dealing with the reality of the hazards he’d have to face to save the world.
Secta continued his story. “We headed back down, totally disheartened and very shaky,” he said. “It was obvious that it would be generations before any of us could again walk on the surface in the sunlight. I have no idea how your friends here have been able survive.”
“Maybe the radiation isn’t as bad now,” Alice suggested.
“That must be it,” Secta agreed.
“Ann died a terrible death from radiation poisoning six months later. Even in the horrible state of decay she was in, she managed to give birth before we lost her. She had twins. It was difficult to tell whether they were girl or boy, they were so seriously mutated by radiation. We managed to keep them alive for three years but they were far too mutated to live. Eventually, we left them in one of the tunnels to die.”
Secta’s account had left Alice speechless.
A few hours later, Alice was sitting alone in a room annexed to the armoury. From there they would launch their sortie to Secta’s lab. Secta had doled out some food. Alice hadn’t bothered to question what it was — he was far too hungry to ask.
He was taking a moment to ponder his predicament, searching for a reason, an explanation for the bizarre, life-threatening situations he’d been whirling through. For his own sanity, he needed to determine some pattern. Had he just hit a run of bad luck? No, he thought. Bad luck comes when you stop trying.
The world as he had known it had fallen apart. Was it because the city, the planet, the entire human race was winding down, ceasing to function in preparation for death? Was he experiencing the aftermath: an insignificant time of fragmentation and decay? What was he? The carrier of some kind of psychic plague? A courier, who had only to materialize for his world to be torn apart by violence? He felt like a cork in a stormy ocean of insanity. But he knew he had to ride the waves and damn the consequences … he had no choice. His only option was to return and correct his mistakes.
He recalled that JFK had once said: an error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. The correction would require him to change the timeline, to stop the ferry. He almost laughed at his train of thought: the possibility of the existence of multiple dimensions of time. He theorized: when you wake up in the morning, your brain organizes your accepted reality. It allows you to recognize your reality — everything you see, hear, smell, touch and taste is the result of your brain’s familiarization map. What if that map was changed or replaced? Would that alter your perception into something you wouldn’t know or couldn’t recognize? Was that what had happened to him? Was he, in fact, unconscious and locked away in an asylum, living a dream induced into his reality by Secta’s drug? “How can I find out?” he thought. “Was it real? Did I meet a tribe of barbarians and go adventuring with them? Did I find a relationship with Zule in the ruins of my world? Did I hunt and kill monsters? Did any of it really happen?” All of a sudden, he felt dizzy … the room was spinning. He braced himself … he’d been through this before … he just needed to survive the rollercoaster ride.
“Are you ready?” Secta’s voice broke into his thoughts, snapping him out of his spinning, dizzying reverie.
Alice looked up at him through narrowed eyes, and said, simply: “Prove to me all this is real.”
Secta held his chin and regarded Alice thoughtfully. “That’s a valid request, Alice, given the circumstances,” he said. “I guess by now you must be questioning everything. That’s quite understandable. The trouble is, our grasp of reality is subjective. What I perceive as reality may not be the same as you.”
“I get that,” said Alice. “But how do I know this is real, and not the result of what you injected me with?”
“Oh, but it is both, Alice,” said Secta, almost gleefully. “It is the result of what I injected you with, and to that end we are in the same predicament — because what I injected myself with led me to wind up at the same place in space and time as you.”
Alice pulled a face. “That still doesn’t answer my question, Secta.”
“Your proof will come when you arrive back … if you make it back.”
The answer was no answer at all. But in the face of what he could only accept as reality, and the alternative of staying here and self-destructing in a matter of hours, Alice knew what he had to do. He had only one more question.
“What happens to you, and everyone else in this reality, if I make back it and change time?” he said
“Another good question Alice,” said Secta, the pleased schoolteacher again. “I can only surmise that once the timeline is broken, we’d all cease to exist — it would be futures end.”
“You’ll die?” said Alice. “By helping me get back, you’re condemning yourself to death.”
“Well, there’s not much to live for down here is there?” answered Secta. “But before we do any more morbid waffling, you’ve got a job to do. Can’t do anything about sending you back otherwise. That’s our reality for now.”
Alice’s mind struggled to take in the fact that his friends — Ex, Djard, Zule, Kinks, the Vixen — would cease to exist if he changed time as Secta said it would be futures end. Secta, apparently understanding his struggle, sat down beside him.
“One day,” he said, “Time travellers will use my process to venture into different dimensions — different realities, if you like—”
“That’ll never happen,” Alice interrupted.
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because we’re over a hundred years in the future, and it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Yes, it has.”
“When?”
“Now, Alice. You’re here. That proves it.”
“Don’t confuse me, Secta,” groaned Alice. “I’m already spun out by the whole concept.”
Secta smiled. “That’s because you’re the first Alice,” he said. “The first time-traveller of many.”
“You know,” said Alice, leaning back. “I met someone like you in a bar once. A seedy little joint somewhere in Victoria, a town on the edge of nowhere, just this side of the black stump. It was a town where a bloke like me could walk into a pub and get a drink without being recognised and hassled. But somehow, this bloke did. He sat next to me at the bar and started talking. I normally don’t mind, I’m a good listener. But this guy talked shit. He kept repeating himself. I hate it when someone gets rhetorical about drivel … it’s an insult to intelligence. I told him so. He had a go at me for being half-cast and wanted to fight.”
“What did you do?” Secta asked, intrigued.
“I broke his damn nose,” Alice said. “Now, I guess you’re wondering about the moral to this story?”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
“Don’t talk shit to Alice. I hope that makes sense to you, Secta. It’s a safe way of steering clear of a broken nose.”