The

  Midnight

  Shower

  Book 3: Beyond the Impossible

  Frank Kennedy

  Dedicated to all those who think sin is a necessary part of life.

  c. 2021 by Frank Kennedy

  All rights reserved

  ASIN: B09NCHPK5T

  To my amazing readers:

  Welcome to the third book in the series Beyond the Impossible. If you have not yet read the first two installments, I strongly recommend you reverse course. Purchase The Simmering Seas and The Splinter Alliance on Amazon.

  Exogenesis

  The Taron Estate, Pinchon

  Standard Year 5357

  Nine years before the wedding

  Y A-LI TARON’S LIFE BEGAN THE WEEK an empire died. Terrorists attacked the Chancellory’s Ark Carrier fleet across the Collectorate and annihilated three city-ships above Hokkaido. Fear and political uncertainty gripped the elite families of Haansu, but fourteen-year-old Ya-Li and his cadre of friends named the Druud Crew placed their entire focus on the physical mechanics of the attack, what manner of tech the terrorists possessed, and the theoretical implications for it. This topic was much more to their liking than the rampant questions about Hokkaido’s economic future.

  Ya-Li was the first Druud to propose the viability of a manufactured singularity, although Weeb Low and Park Doon said the most radical theories of quantum mechanics suggested these cosmic anomalies could be captured and repurposed as permanent energy sources.

  “Or weaponized,” Weeb added. “Hornfish_TL was ranting on the wakeboards. He thinks the Chancellors created these weapons then Salvation stole the cache. Theory goes, it was an inside job.”

  “Hornfish_TL is a paranoid coit,” Ya-Li said. “The Chancellors haven’t developed anything outboxed in generations. With what the three of us know about naked singularity draw fields, we could write the quant-alg script for a containment shell.”

  “Damned right,” Park said. “All we’d need was a deep-range Explorer Class, and I’d lay odds we could capture a naked sing inside a month.”

  Ya-Li smiled.

  “Wouldn’t cost more than what? Half a billion Dims?”

  They laughed at the absurdity.

  Of course, their parents had the resources. Between the legacy accounts and their corporate holdings, the Houses of Taron, Low, and Doon were worth tens of billions. Not that the Druud Crew was going to see any of it for years. Not until they finished their schooling and began their executive internships. These were seamaster families, and Ya-Li, Weeb, and Park were male heirs.

  For now, their honorable parents allowed these silly childhood diversions. They didn’t care if the boys had few friends who shared their interests so long as they maintained Academic Premier status. They seemed oblivious when their sons did not register a blip on the school’s social dynamism scale, or that druud was a dismissive term for science-obsessed kids. When the time came, all agreed, these boys would assume their scripted manhood. The trappings of prestige would take care of the rest.

  On this day, however, Ya-Li and his friends were excited about the greatest upheaval the Collectorate had known in a thousand years. They shared their joyous speculation across their personal plate holowindows. Ya-Li brought his device poolside to talk between intervals of his mandatory twenty-lap exercise regimen: Four laps butterfly, four backstroke, four breaststroke, eight freestyle. The regimen’s only requirement: Completion. Time was not recorded.

  He logged his backstrokes into the course input spool and threw open the holos with Weeb and Park. They were forwarding calculations and theories found on wakeboards of the Global Wave, where druuds gathered like so many gnats.

  “I like this one,” Ya-Li said, pointing to a working theory from the user Marshlands. “He says the weapon created a magnetic field that swung over the Carriers like a new skin. This made it easy for the sing core to absorb four kilometers of ship in less than five seconds.”

  “It tracks with the long-range sat vid from the L3 mining post,” Weeb added.

  Park frowned. “I don’t know. I’m seeing all kind of spec that the Chancellors manipulated the footage and leaked it to the Wave.”

  Ya-Li agreed. “They’ll do anything to push us off track. This is probably worst case for them, and they don’t want Hokkis getting ahead of their scientists.”

  “And the Admiralty? Can you imagine the color of their shit? I’m betting they know what this weapon is, and they let it slip right through their defenses.”

  They dove into the bottomless well of audacious theories and heated quant-alg debates that only druuds could propagate. Ya-Li loved it. He sometimes imagined Chancellor scientists reading the wakeboards in search of answers, albeit using off-book observation tools. Surely, they’d never want their superiors to know they were drawing inspiration from common indigos on the planet below.

  Between conversations, Ya-Li broke away to finish his regimen. Like Weeb and Park, he opted to complete the school’s PhysTrain course load at home. He preferred his pool and calisthenics bars, thank you, and never cared for the degrading experience of the gym’s changing rooms. Among the elite of Haansu, assholes reigned with impunity.

  “Can you imagine where it goes from here?” Ya-Li asked. “If we can capture singularities inside containment fields, what’s the next leap?”

  “Berserkers,” Weeb said without hesitation.

  “Explain.”

  “Build a network of mantle-buster missiles. Install a sing core inside each. I’d say a planet like ours, you wouldn’t need more than six fired at the equator. You’d make sure they’re equidistant. When they penetrate the mantle, set them off simultaneously. That cudfrucker would implode.”

  Weeb was always the darkest of the three, taking the edge of scientific knowledge and infusing it with an outlandish premise. Usually, he generated guffaws or outright bewilderment. This time, neither Ya-Li nor Park laughed.

  Somehow, it made sense.

  “Good thing it’s not official,” Park said. “About the singularities. I mean, we’re just speculating. Right?”

  “Sure,” Ya-Li said with limited confidence. “It’s spec until it isn’t.”

  “The Chancellors will never come clean,” Weeb added. “They have too much to lose.”

  “Makes me rethink these terrorists. What do we know about them?”

  “Bioengineered freaks of some kind. Immortals.”

  Like everyone else, Ya-Li knew little more than the propaganda vids distributed by Salvation after their terror campaigns. Yet there was a truth no one disputed.

  “Kids,” Ya-Li said. “No matter what else, they’re kids like us. They’ve hit the Chancellory like nobody has … maybe ever. Can you imagine what they could teach us?”

  “Yeah.” Park grinned. “What I’d give for a day inside their fleet.”

  “I’d love to know how they did it.”

  “We got nothing on them. We’re three druuds on a wakeboard, talking big. But they’re doing big. Changing the galaxy. Feel it?”

  Yes, I feel it, Ya-Li thought. He wasn’t another druud on a wakeboard. He had plans. He was smarter than a thousand Hokkis his age combined. They’d never understand this, of course. Not even Weeb and Park. Ya-Li could have applied for the Advanced Cycle years ago. He should have graduated from Year Twelve by the age of twelve. His Honorable Great Grandfather Ban-Ho suggested such a course, but Ya-Li rejected the idea out of hand.

  They’ll have me on the exec board of Hotai Counsel by fifteen. They’ll own me. I’ll become like Ban-Ho. I’ll reign. They’ll fear me. Then I’ll die an angry old man, and they’ll be happy I’m gone.

  His alternative strategy took hold by the age of ten: Show quality, not brilliance. Remind them you’re a Taron but never let them see you outside that box.

  Their discourse into theories about the terrorist group Salvation deepened as the evening wore on, but Weeb had to disconnect. The Lows were due at a charity concert for families of those who went down with the Sylvan Grace. It had been two months since that sinking in the south ocean. It wasn’t a Hotai ship, so the accident barely caused a ruffle in the Taron estate.

  “I have to go too,” Ya-Li told Park. “Have to log my freestyles.”

  “You should do it like me,” Park said. “Kill yourself twice a week to notch the whole regimen instead of day to day. Everything hurts afterward, but sneak a round of sanque, and you sleep like a baby.”

  Sanque was too hot a spirit for Ya-Li, and his parents thought it a low-class throwaway liquor. However, they overlooked the full bar hidden behind the cabinetry in the library. He spent enough hours alone in there. If he wanted to try it again, he wouldn’t be caught.

  Maybe after my freestyles.

  He closed the holos, restored his ear plugs, and launched into the first of eight laps.

  The sun sank toward the eastern horizon, its orange-pink glow casting long rays through the tall glass of the pool house. There was peace to be found in this routine. No one would bother him until the morning, his last family commitment ending with the evening dine. They allowed him the independence to work out, play with his friends, and end the night with a good book in the library.

  Around about the fourth lap, Ya-Li became irritated when he thought, for the six hundredth time, how unfair it was that girls did not have aquatic PhysTrain requirements. Most Haansu girls were destined for inconsequent
ial lives – social trophies and breeders – but they ought to know of sore muscles in the meantime.

  He was counting the minutes to conclusion when he flipped into the seventh lap and sensed another presence in the pool house. He looked up between strokes and saw nothing. Yet instinct spoke with a clarion call: He was being watched.

  The setting sun played tricks of light and shadow, and the flickering expressions of its dying rays bounced off the water. He looked to either side, expecting to see someone swimming laps. The feeling became so palpable, Ya-Li stopped at the end of lap seven.

  The figure he spotted at the opposite end arrived in a haze, as if captured within a halo. He rubbed his eyes, gave it a moment, and looked again. The visitor disappeared. Was probably never there.

  And yet …

  “I don’t wish to scare you,” a man said, the echo coming from nowhere. “I wondered what this moment would be like, but only for myself. I never contemplated how you might perceive me.”

  The halo returned alongside the pool. When Ya-Li narrowed his vision, the glow faded to a gentle haze. In the middle sat a man. He was barefoot and wore a floral robe, sash tied at the waist. His beard was full and black, his matching hair tied into a knotted ponytail which lay flopped over his shoulder like a reptilian pet.

  In one hand, he sported a pipe. In the other, a tall glass of red liquor with a straw.

  He was here. He was not here. He appeared to rest comfortably on a lounger, yet the haze suggested a poor hologram.

  “What is this?” Ya-Li asked. “Who are you?”

  “You’ll come to understand,” the man replied. “You’ll appreciate the quantum potential.”

  “Of what?”

  “I am you. Ya-Li Taron.”

  The man dropped his bombshell without a hint of irony, as if he practiced the line so often it no longer carried any of the requisite drama. He pulled hard on his pipe and blew smoke rings.

  Ya-Li knew this was a hologram. Who created it? Weeb? Park?

  “Neither of them,” the man said.

  “What?”

  “You’re wondering if your friends are playing games. I like those boys. They’re curious. Keep them close.”

  “OK. Enough already. Who are you?”

  “You. After a fashion. We are products of the same genetic event along a common path of causality. For the sake of confusion, call me Bonju. The nickname belonged to my father, but he’s twenty years gone now.”

  “You make no sense. How did you get in here?”

  “I’m not, and I never will. I enjoyed your convo earlier. The theories about manipulated singularities. It’s amazing. You’ve only begun to scratch the surface, but you’ll become me sooner than I ever did. I hope I live long enough to see it.”

  “I’m going to call security.” He climbed out of the pool, dripping.

  The man named Bonju reappeared on the opposite side in the same pose. He drew upon the straw; the red liquor decreased.

  “Please. Ya-Li. I understand the difficulty, but it will pass. Come over to me. Take a good look. That’s all you’ll need.”

  What kind of asshole was this? What did he mean by a “good look”? Was he a pervert waiting to flip open his robe and reveal his manhood? He might be a loon, but nothing about him cried danger. In fact, when Ya-Li took his first steps toward the interloper, his anxiety ebbed.

  As Ya-Li drew close, Bonju pulled on the pipe and released a brilliant cloud of white smoke. It should have been sweet, like the poltash that permeated his father’s study during receptions with business associates. Yet there was nothing.

  Neither sweet not foul.

  This was not a hologram. The construct was too immediate, the details in the man’s face too natural for digital manipulation. Ya-Li did not reach out when his eyes fell upon the lounger, which was unlike any style on the Taron estate.

  This wasn’t a transmission. He was here, but he was not.

  Ya-Li looked into Bonju’s eyes.

  They’re mine. Older, but mine.

  “There,” Bonju said. “You recognize me. Good. To answer the inevitable: No, I’m not you from the future. Time travel is not possible inside a linear framework. But like you, I asked questions about singularities and the deeper fabric of our universe at an early age. I allowed no one to take me off the path.”

  “What path? A deeper fabric?”

  “They never appreciated my discoveries. I doubt they’ll thank you, either. Who cares? We’re here now.”

  “Here? You’re not here.”

  “I do hope so. Otherwise, you’re conversing with a figment. Never let them think you’re mad.”

  It felt real, and yet … it had been a long day. Was this a waking dream? The plate was still there at the far end of the pool. Yes, the convo with Weeb and Park was real. The laps were real. The …

  “Tell me what this is. I want to believe you.”

  Ya-Li didn’t need to hear the words. He felt the connection. This man was Ya-Li Taron.

  “There are nine universes,” Bonju said with cool demeanor. “One is the primary product of creation. The other eight fractured from the primary. Spun off, if you will. Timelines do not match, but the line of causality is surprisingly similar given the differentiation in evolutionary development. My universe and yours are the closest cousins relative to technological growth. Only five have developed interstellar travel and colonization. However, all have the potential for similar lines of causality. In other words, firm genetic matches across the divide.”

  “And we are a match?”

  “Yes. We have two other genetic counterparts, although I have been reticent to introduce myself to them. One is old and fighting chronic disease. The other has yet to begin his schooling. It appears he is already a musical prodigy. I envy him.”

  Ya-Li’s beating heart caught up to the unreality of the moment.

  “If you live in another universe, how can you be here but not here? Ya-Li, I …”

  “The name is Bonju. You will not be able to sleep tonight without sedatives. I am not here through magic or a psychic connection across dimensions. I am here because of what I discovered at the Origin, and because I see in you what we need to finish our work.”

  “Our work. Who are you referring to?”

  “You and me.”

  “What is the Origin?”

  “A complex entity. The truth beneath reality. That which shapes, binds, and evolves all matter, starting at the black substrata invisible to the naked eye. The foundational glue to each universe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s too much for the first visit. I’ll scaffold your education. Fear not, Ya-Li. You might see the glory someday. But for that to occur, you must accept an important provision of our relationship.”

  His hands tingled. The tugging of his heart was undeniable.

  “Anything.”

  “Will you allow me inside? Our union will remain elusive as long as we cannot be together at all times.”

  “Inside? Like what … a possession?”

  “No. A restoration of what was lost in the fracturing of the universes. A greater human. After I am allowed inside you, likewise, will you become part of me. I will counsel you to become a greater man hiding in plain sight.”

  Tears fell as rivers.

  “Is this a miracle?” Ya-Li asked.

  “No. It’s the truth of existence. Do you wish to be at the forefront of these discoveries?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Allow me inside.”

  “I’m yours.”

  If there was supposed to be a sort of transition, Ya-Li did not feel it. Yet a smile of supreme satisfaction cut through Bonju’s beard.

  “Now we can begin, Ya-Li. Thank you. I’ve been watching you for a long while. I had to be sure. Now I am.”

  “I don’t feel any different.”

  “You will, but not tonight. Again, remember. Sedatives. I’ll parse my knowledge with care. It’s important your advancement be measured. Reckless steps forward will draw premature suspicion. But I can’t leave you with nothing. Here.”

  Bonju reached into his robe and opened his right hand.

  A translucent cube sat on his palm. In the center, a red beacon pulsed. Spikes of energy radiated from the core toward each of the eight corners.