tiles hadn’t been replaced. Or cleaned. Had he become a lazy load on the new Third Earth? In some ways that was more disturbing than knowing the whole world had changed.
He stopped at the window, his nose inches from the closed blinds. He knew in his heart that when he opened them he would see a changed world. The question was, how changed would it be? He already knew that it smelled bad. Maybe that would be the only difference.
He didn’t believe that any more than he believed the vertical blinds would be the only change.
Patrick found the string that ran down the side of the window. He grasped it, ready to pull. He took a second to catch his breath. As much as things had already changed, he figured he could handle the differences he’d seen so far. He didn’t know if the same would be said after he’d seen what lay beyond. He savored the last few seconds of his old life. He knew that once he pulled those blinds, it would all begin. Or end.
He thought of letting go of the string, leaving the blinds closed, and contacting Pendragon to find out what had happened in the past. Yes. Good idea. It might help him prepare for what was out there. He looked at his hand as he was about to let go of the string. On his finger was his Traveler ring. He heard all the stories of what Pendragon had been through in the battle against Saint Dane. He knew the sacrifices the Travelers had to make. Many had died trying to stop the demon from controlling Halla. He knew that he had had a relatively easy time of it. He suddenly felt guilty and a little ashamed for being so uncertain. For being afraid. It was his turn now. It was time.
He pulled the string.
The blinds twisted open, revealing a sight that made Patrick stumble backward, as if being repulsed by the impossible vision before him. He screamed. He couldn’t help it. It just came out.
Staring back at him was an eye. A giant sideways eye. His brain couldn’t compute what he was seeing. Did giants now roam Earth? Or did he somehow pull an “Alice in Wonderland” and shrink to action-figure size? He couldn’t catch his breath. His heart raced. What was this giant going to do? Eat him? How did it get underground in the first place?
The eye didn’t move. It stared in at Patrick, unblinking. Patrick had to force himself to look back. His terror slowly gave way to confusion. The eye was green. Completely green. The white, the pupil, even the skin around it was the same dull green color. It took Patrick a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t a living creature and never had been. It was a sculpture. It was so immense that he couldn’t see it all, but it seemed to be a statue of a head lying on its side, staring in at him.
Patrick stood on shaky legs. Though he no longer feared being eaten by a gargantuan one-eyed monster, he was still left breathless at the idea that such an immense sculpture could be right outside his window in the atrium of Chelsea.
Unless…
A sickening thought hit. His mind had trouble accepting the idea, but it seemed like the only logical explanation. He knew how to find out for sure. He had to go outside. He had to face the face. It didn’t matter that he was still in bare feet and pajamas. He had to go outside because he couldn’t see it all through the windows. Patrick moved toward the front door. It was the portal that led out onto the balcony on the fifteenth level of the underground village of Chelsea beneath New York City in the year 5014. With every bit of courage he could conjure, Patrick reached for the doorknob and pulled. The white noise grew louder. The strange odor grew stronger. Being inside the apartment had kept the worst of it away. Patrick now understood why. He didn’t need his eyes to tell him what his nose and ears already understood.
He no longer lived underground. He was hearing sounds that he had only experienced before through the holographic images stored in the data drives of the computers in the library. He was smelling the smells of a city above the ground. A city that hadn’t solved the problems of pollution. Of housing. Of overpopulation. The scientific advances that the people of Earth had made in order to save their planet never happened. Patrick stood there stunned. This was the new Earth of 5014. He had only caught a small glimpse, but he knew what he would find. No, he feared what he would find. He would have to explore this city. He would have to try and figure out what went wrong. What had changed. What Saint Dane had done to win Third Earth without ever having set foot on the territory.
Afoul wind blew down the street, ruffling his hair and kicking up a cloud of filthy papers that swirled around him. He was standing on a fourth-floor balcony on the surface of a city that had been transformed. He understood that the foul odor wasn’t anything unusual in this new environment. It was simply what the city smelled like. Same with the white noise-this was the new, normal sound of the city. The tranquility was gone. The faint citrus aroma was gone. The grassy meadows were gone. The sky was gray. Was it cloudy? Or something more sinister? Maybe that looming gray ceiling was what he was sucking into his lungs as it tickled the back of his throat.
Almost nothing was familiar. Almost. Patrick could have convinced himself that he had been transported to an alien city anywhere in Halla, except for an undeniable reality that was staring him right in the face. It was the green sculpture. Now that he was outside he saw it for what it really was. He saw that he’d been right-the eye was actually sideways and the face was on its side. The sculpture was so huge that the uppermost eye was on the level of his fourth-floor balcony. The rest of the statue stretched down the cracked pavement of the wide street in front of his new home. He was almost close enough to reach out and touch its nose. He saw through the dull green patina that there were signs of rust and corrosion spread over its surface. This sculpture was made of metal.
Patrick was in shock. Maybe that was a good thing. If not, he surely would have crumbled under the weight of the reality he was faced with. Literally. He was having trouble breathing. He wasn’t sure if that was due to the foul air, or because the sight in front of him had taken his breath away. He felt weak. He had to lean against the building or he would have fallen down.
He tried to swallow. He couldn’t. His mouth was too dry.
“So?” he croaked hoarsely at the lifeless statue. “What happened?”
The statue didn’t answer, of course. It wasn’t alive. It had never been alive, though it could not have looked more dead. As much as Patrick wanted to deny it, he was definitely in a new New York City, staring into the eye of the Statue of Liberty.
FIRST EARTH
“You must realize this enterprise will makeyou and your partner quite wealthy,” the tall man with the large teeth said with a knowing smile.
“Andy Mitchell is nor my partner,” Mark Dimond shot back quickly. He wanted to leap out of the cushy leather chair and shake the guy to emphasize the point. He actually leaned forward, ready to pounce, but a strong hand held him back.
“Easy there, big fella,” Courtney Chetwynde said soothingly. For a change Courtney was the voice of reason, while Mark was the voice of butt kicking. “He gets it.”
“I am afraid I do not ‘get it’ at all,” the man corrected, lifting the corner of one lip. Mark wasn’t sure if it was a half smile, or a full sneer, or if he had just smelled something foul. The man held up a piece of paper that, unfortunately, Mark recognized. “This is your signature, is it not?”
Mark dropped back in his chair. Beaten.
“Yeah.”
“Then whatever unpleasantness has transpired between you and Mr. Mitchell is immaterial. You both signed this contract, therefore you are forever joined together as principals in the…” He looked at the paper through half- glasses. “What is it you call yourselves? Ah yes, the Dimond Alpha Digital Organization.” He looked up at Mark over the paper and continued, “I have no idea what that signifies, nor do I care. What I do know is that between having signed this letter of intent and receiving our advance payment, your company has given Keaton Electrical Marvels the sole right to develop the technology you have created and named ‘Forge.’”
Mark wanted to scream, but he knew it wouldn’t do anything more than make him look silly. He and Courtney were in the large London office of Mr. lain Paterson, president of KEM Limited. The company that was going to bring about the ruin of Halla. Of course, Mr. Paterson had no idea of that. As far as he knew, all he had done was license an impossible new technology from two teenage American kids that he hoped would revolutionize the electronics industry. He had no way of knowing that one of those kids was actually a demon who had manipulated Mark into
