Psychonaut



  Psychonaut

  Psychonaut

  Book 1 of The Nexus series

  Copyright © 2012 K.Z. Freeman, Cover by Justin Mezzell

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-3019-92000-3

  https://www.kzfreeman.blogspot.com

  Reality Within

  Master Eemos had always been a calm man. A stoic man. He had taken all the challenges and grief life had given him and accepted it with a mixture of detachment and strength. There weren’t many things that could unnerve a man living on his own anti-gravity plate the size of a small apartment block, high above the surface of Dubai. His inventions had made him rich enough to buy the world. But Master Eemos didn’t want the world. For despite the fact that he had two servants who catered to his every whim, a mistress whose beauty could melt most men on the spot, Master Eemos wasn’t happy. There was something vexing his waking moments and absorbing his thoughts of late to the point of madness.

  He paced around his workshop on the second floor of his villa. Gold shined through a wide spaced window, inviting him to take a look outside. But outside was the last place Master Eemos wished to look, dared to look. He knew he was out there. The man in black. The man no one else could see but him.

  He searched his mind to find something with which to occupy his thoughts, but found only his shaking knees at the thought of looking at the shape again.

  This day, sleep had eluded him. He had spent the night wandering his house, lost in contemplation. When dawn came, he had been awarded some clarity, his mind enjoying a bit of sought-after focus. But as soon as the elusive thing had come, Master Eemos became weak again, disoriented.

  His age was great. He had lived nearly two lifetimes and would live another should time be good to him.

  He stood looking at the window. For a moment his room felt alien to him, each of his works in progress in his shop alien to him, unfamiliar and distant in his vision. They were all a blur, like a city on a distant shore.

  “I truly am losing my mind,” he sighed. Even his own words sounded strange to him. He walked towards the widow, slowly, cautiously. The hum of machinery was drowned by his own footsteps. He looked at the curtain draping his view, its waving shape saturated with light. By all rights, he should have felt lifted. Elevated by the sight of the sun. Relaxed. But all he felt was fear, cloying and biting at his senses. A cold sweat drizzled down his forehead and made his fingers shake as he reached to part the translucent fabric. Air caught in his throat. He couldn’t breathe, then began to hyperventilate. The man was still there, like he had been for the last week, outside, standing in the middle of Eemos’ backyard.

  “Is he still out there, master?”

  The voice made him jump. It was one of his servants, Halid, looking like he had just got up, or rather crawled out of some grave. His black hair was messy, his face unshaven, features sunken.

  “He never left,” Eemos murmured. “Take a look.”

  Halid walked over and gazed out the window. There was a look on his servant’s face Eemos couldn’t quite discern. Recognition perhaps? Halid’s eyes bulged for a moment as though he was seeing something which by all rights no one should be able to see – a fluke in reality, a sight of something that couldn’t possibly exist in a logical, rational universe. Halid swallowed.

  “I’m sorry, master,” apologized the servant, “but I see nothing.”

  Lies.

  “Are you blind, man?! He’s right there, look at him! The bastard!”

  “Master I–“

  “You’re lying to me!” said Eemos, flailed his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Leave. Just… leave, please.”

  “But–“

  “I said leave me be!”

  Halid didn’t object and hurried out, closing the door and leaving Eemos alone, staring out the window. It was then that Eemos took a step back, for the man in black stirred, moved for the first time, began to walk towards the house. The Master froze in place, his feet cemented. He panicked but could not look away. The man in black moved in ways which made ideas of what may happen swish in Eeemos’ head. The man didn’t walk as much as shift between places. There, here, closer, closer. It was as though he jumped between moments, between the places in Eemos’ mind. He disappeared below the window and Eemos’ heard a knock on his door. He blinked, unable to move. He stared at the door.

  When he had ordered and approved the plans for his house, Eemos had intentionally selected one of an older design. He liked the screeching and crackling of wood in the night and below his feet as he walked the halls. The house felt like a thing living and breathing then, with its own stories to tell and places seen, memories hidden between the cracks. Each part became like a work of art. Master Eemos, however, was no artist. He was a maker, a builder and a collector. He could appreciate old things and their history. The greatest art for him was in the making of things. The building of parts and the shapes which formed and made empty space into something tangible. But now, while his door creaked and slowly drew open, he wished he had opted for a damn bloody proper house. A house with doors that didn't sound as though in the process of dying every time someone decided to open them.

  The shape in black stood at the brim. Eemos could not see the tall man’s face, it waited backlit, silent until the silhouette stepped inside. Its feet were heavy and the wood objected to every step. The man removed his wide brimmed hat and gave a polite bow, spoke with a voice both pleasant and unnerving.

  “Master Eemos,” he nodded. “I believe the time has come for us to become properly acquainted.”

  “Has it now?” Eemos managed, his voice a dry whiz. “I suppose it has, hasn't it?” he coughed. “How’d you get it?”

  “Come now, Master Eemos, you and I both know how easy it is to enter these houses.”

  “If by ‘enter’ you mean ‘break into’, then yes, it is remarkably easy. Now answer my question.”

  “I will be asking the questions today, Master Eemos.”

  “If you think you–“

  “First,” the man in black interrupted, “take a seat, would you please?”

  Eemos didn’t want to sit. In fact, the very last thing he wished to do was to sit down. But his legs, as often as his mind, had other plans for him. He waded to one of the desks and sat with a grunt, his back protesting, the man in black closely behind. The two stared at each other.

  “Get that stupid smirk off your face and start talking,” said Eemos.

  “There is no need for that, Master Eemos, I simply wish to–“

  “I’d rather not have you call me that.”

  “It is your name and title, is it not?”

  “Yes, but the way you say it,” Eemos made a face. “It’s just… ugh.”

  “What would you have me call you, then?” the man asked.

  “I would rather you just left.”

  “You know I cannot do that,” the man said.

  “What keeps you here?”

  “I have a business proposition for you.”

  “You stood outside my house for days. Is that how you initiate all your business deals?” Eemos asked, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair.

  “There is a certain kind of… necessity, required in my line of work. The sanity of my contractors is a crucial matter. I must test it.”

  “So I am sane then? Good, because all of my damn staff, both of them anyway, sure as hell can’t see you. So tell me. How is it in my head? Is it cozy in there?”

  “I assure you, Master Eemos, that I am not a figment of your imagination. I am quite real.”

  There seemed a pressing matter which Eemos felt the man was trying to tell him, yet couldn’t.

  “What is it that you want then, Mister Real? Please, if you will, enlighten me so I can
reject you and you’ll be on your way. Speak. Talk. Go.” He was saying it, felt confident, but had enough sense to know the power of this stranger. A coiled snake. His mind gave him pause and Eemos realized there was no way this man would even accept a rejection, let alone just leave. It would come as little surprise if the man revealed to be carrying an energy weapon beneath his coat. The thought made Eemos’ back stiffen. The wooden chair cracked under his subtle movement. Something told him this man doesn’t even need a weapon to kill him.

  “I require you to build a device for me,” said the man, his long-fingered hands finding their way on the table. He pushed a piece of folded paper over to Eemos’ side of the desk.

  “Regular paper, is it?” asked Eemos. He was hiding it, but he was impressed. “Intriguing,” he said despite himself, his favorite word. He rubbed the white sheet between his fingers, then removed his hand. In his profession it did well not to appear too eager.

  “Open it,” said the man in black.

  Eemos spread open the paper. After he had unfolded it once, the thing continued to do so by itself and spread to the full length and width of the wooden table. A small part of it hung down from its edges on each side.

  “What is this?” he asked, knew the man would answer the question with another question before he so much as uttered a word.

  “What do you think it is?” the man asked.

  He took a closer look, leaning over the table and examining the thing on paper. It was a schematic. Richly detailed with cross-section cuts and horizontal divisions, measurements, numbers and letters, notes, all of it so skillfully interwoven into a whole that Eemos nearly wept at the sheer beauty and complexity of its design.

  “Intriguing,” Eemos said again. “What is it?”

  “It is the work of my employer. You see, he has the know-how to conceptualize it, yet next to no means to make it. We need someone who can take our concept and craft it, transform it into something real.”

  Eemos blinked, lost in the ingenious machinations of the plans before him. “I see you are still a tad baffled by this, allow me,” said the man and waved a hand over the paper. The thing lit up blue. The lines on paper became distorted and strange – nonsingular. “I assume you have dimming systems in place? I require you to cut the lights, if you please, Master Eemos.”

  His name, when uttered by the mouth of this man, sounded laced with a certain kind of condescension that made Eemos want to lunge forward and strangle him. His interest had peaked, however, and strangling would have to wait. With a thought-reactive system he had invented himself, he willed the computer to recognize his mental command and closed the shutter. The room darkened. A tree dimensional projection of the schematic swam in the air before Eemos, with each blue line of the specific cut in the material folding and unfolding for a better view of the resources required and the alloys needed and their shape.

  “This is… perfection,” Eemos gasped. “Who designed this?”

  “Such matters are not important, what is important is what this is and whether not you can make it.”

  “I can make anything,” said Eemos. He stood up and walked around the table, looking intently at the hologram.

  “A bold claim,” said the man. “But there is a problem, a transgression, if you will.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Eemos.

  “You see, this object has already been built, and what it revealed upon usage is something a normal man might frown upon.”

  “In what way?”

  “It seems to break the laws of reality in ways that, I assure you, one cannot possibly imagine at this very moment. Whatever you are thinking happens, even should it be so extraordinary as to defy anything you have ever seen or witnessed, it will not do justice to what actually occurs upon usage of this device.”

  To contain his excitement had been difficult before, it had now become near