"Eve of Destruction" Chapter Three

Eve of Destruction ©
Chapter Three
By Fiction Writer #13
(nosex, sci-fi, paranormal, implied: M/g, incest, preteen, grandfather, granddaughter)

Dr. Reed spent the hour before his meeting with Malcolm sifting through a ton of paperwork that had piled up on his desk since the morning animal fiasco had begun. He would have preferred pouring his time into the newly unlocked files on his computer. He wanted to have a leg up on his subordinates when he finally did inform them of all he had just learned.

'It's real... all real. Every stupid horror story I've ever heard. It's all real.' He still couldn't wrap his mind around the whole startling truth of it. It didn't feel right; it felt like some practical joke was being played on him. It felt like he was back in high school and the jocks were having one over on him.

'He could have at least told me something before now. Something so that the little show he put on didn't take me completely by surprise.'

Before he knew it the time had come for him to head down to Malcolm's labs, not too far from his own, but the new security checks would slow him down. After calling an impromptu meeting between his project leaders to inform them of the security lock down and new protocols, he casually exited his lab. What he wanted to do was run at a mad dash, kick in Mal's door, and demand to know what the fuck was going on, but that would have drawn too much attention. So he walked.

Surprisingly, Mal had passed on the fact that Dr. Reed would be joining him, to all of the security officers now stationed on the route to his labs. A few flashes of his ID card, two palm scans, and one retinal scan, was all that was required of him as he made his way to Mal's office door. He actually arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule and was going to wait outside side until the proper time, but since he found Mal's door open, he walked right in.

"Mal, I hope you don't mind me just coming in like this, but..." Allen stopped when he realized that he was speaking to an empty room.

Mal's office was as it always was, a perfect example of order. Everything was neatly stacked, filed, or shelved. Even his waste basket looked orderly. Allen gave a little chuckle; his office was the exact opposite of Mal's at the moment.

Pulling one of the two leather chairs out from Mal's desk, Allen took a seat and decided to wait for Mal to come back. The time off his feet and away from the chaos of his own department would do wonders for his spirits. He'd been working so hard to prove to everyone that he could be a Project Head that he had almost forgotten why he’d been drawn to Project Phoenix to begin with.

'The pursuit of knowledge without restriction or persecution, for the betterment and protection of the United States of America and, ultimately, the entire world.'

Allen knew that line by heart. It had been the first line of the charter Malcolm had presented to him on his graduation day from Harvard Medical School. That day changed his life, and in a way, the young man who left that commencement ceremony was never seen again in the scientific community.

His disappearance went largely unnoticed. Allen had no living family, at least none that he knew of. His parents passed away in a plane crash just before he had gone off to school. It was at the funeral that he first met Malcolm Whelan.

Mal had taken him aside and promised him that he would be taken care of, that his tuition to Harvard had already been paid in full, as well as any other required materials for his education. When Allen had asked him who he was, Mal replied that he was simply a friend of his parents, and that he was keeping a promise that he made to them a long time ago.

Malcolm never gave any more details than that, and Allen hadn't pressed the issue any further. Harvard had been Allen's dream school, but his parents had no way of paying his tuition. Malcolm had stepped up and saved his dream from dying.

For that reason, when Mal brought up Project Phoenix and it's many sacrifices that had to be made, Allen had accepted without a second thought. Malcolm may have been Allen's senior by only ten years, but to him Mal was the closest thing to a father that he had left.

Today wasn't the only time he had been shocked while working in the labs. The first time he had been given a tour of the old facility he nearly fainted. All he'd been told of Malcolm's project was that he was working on a study of human sexuality and bio-chemical releases during heightened stimulus.

It sounded very straightforward and basic on paper, but what Allen witnessed those first few days both sickened and excited him in ways he never thought possible. It took the better part of a decade before Allen could honestly say that he had seen it all and was no longer fazed by Malcolm's experiments.

The stuff involving children still made his blood run cold, though. He could take the incest, bestiality, sado/masochists, homo, bi, and hetero sex so long as it involved adults, but kids still didn't sit right with him.

The first time he witnessed an act of sexual union between an adult male and a female child he nearly broke through the observation room glass and beat the shit out of the man involved. Mal had stopped him and took him aside to try and explain why it was necessary, but Allen had been in no mood to listen. For two years Allen avoided all but the most basic of conversations with Mal, and rarely involved himself with anything in the lab that required documenting living experiments.

It was during that period that Allen had become interested in the MERI device. MERI stood for Memory Erasure Recovery Implantation and was considered a failed project until Dr. Reed began to tinker around with it. Now it was considered one of Project Phoenix’s shining achievements.

No one was really sure who approached whom to talk first, but it wasn't long after the MERI device went online that Allen and Mal had put aside their differences. Mal brought Allen in on his own little pet project, one Mal's father had begun years before but had been cut from the budget. Allen worked on that project up until last year when Malcolm declared that phase one was completed and shut down the old labs for good.

Even though Allen worked side by side with Mal for close to two decades on the RBC Factor, he still had no idea of what it actually was. All he currently knew was that it involved genetic markers in DNA and an odd chemical that was released in the subject's blood stream during times of stress or heightened emotions.

Allen still had no clue as to what it all meant, but he was pretty sure he got a taste of it this morning when Mal's grand-daughter passed through a clear steel wall and then disappeared before his very eyes, not to mention how she seemed to be able to control those giant bugs. Still, there was more to this story than Mal had told him, and now he wanted some answers.

Mal's office had three doors. The first led back to the corridor down which Allen had just traveled. The second led directly into Mal's labs, a sprawling maze of observation rooms, passageways, computer banks, specialized equipment, medical tables and labs, chemical analyzers, and more. The third and final door led to Mal's living quarters on the base. Allen had never been invited back there, but he assumed that his own private space was identical in layout.

Much of the building had a cookie-cutter feel to it, it was part of its security system. If you didn't know exactly where you were heading when you set out, you could easily get lost, since everything looked the same. Some of the scientist jokingly referred to this design as the "suburban New Jersey style of disorientation", an ingenious way to keep residents of that state trapped within their own borders. Having grown up in Voorhees New Jersey, Allen got the joke, but didn't think it was that funny.

Allen peered at his watch just as the minute hand moved to point at the Roman numeral for twelve. As if on cue, the door to Mal's room slid open and little Eve came running out.

"Uncle Allen! Uncle Allen!" The naked child jumped up into his lap and gave him a peck on his cheek. "Did I do good today? Were ya scared?"

Reed smiled down at the little bundle of energy wiggling on his thigh. Eve had only been here a year but the eleven year old had stolen his heart.

"I know! I saw your eyes get real big like they was gonna pop out!" she beamed her beautiful smile at him.

At first Allen was uncomfortable around Eve, especially with her being nude all the time. But as the months passed he grew to accept that she wanted to be this way. She couldn't stand being restricted by clothing, and was comfortable with her just developing body.

"Could you always do those things, sweetie?" Allen asked as she nuzzled against his shoulder.

"Nuh-uh." She shook her head, sending her hair whipping back and forth. "Only since a few months ago. Grampa took me to see some special teachers and they taught me real good. Now I can do lotsa stuff."

"Really?" Allen moved his hand to her exposed tummy aiming for her belly button and began tickling her. "Like what?"

"Ha! HA! Stop It! Stop It! Ha! Donnn... Don't tickle! Me! HA! HEE! Stop... stop... stop... Hee!" She writhed and squirmed as his hand assaulted her most ticklish spots. Even after he relented she still continued to giggle and squirm while trying to avoid his hand which she was convinced was going to attack again at any moment.

Mal stepped up to the two of them and plucked the little girl off of Allen's lap. "Why don't you go and show Uncle Allen all of your teddy bears?"

"Really." Mal set her down and gave Allen a wink and a small smile. "I'm sure he would love to meet them."

"I'd be honored." Allen stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of his khaki pants. When his hand felt a wet spot where Eve had been sitting just moments before, he shook his head. He knew that Mal and Eve had been sharing a bed since she had been brought here, but Mal had been pretty good at not throwing it up in Allen's face. He'd remembered how Allen felt about such couplings and didn't want to do anything to jeopardize their friendship.

Now, with his hand sticky with Mal's cum and Eve's juices, Allen was surprised to find that it didn't bother him. He simply wiped his hand dry on his other pant leg, smirked at Mal, and then followed as Eve led him by his hand into her and Mal's home.

On his way past his friend, Mal put a hand on his shoulder and spoke quietly, "We have a lot to talk about, but not here."

"Come on, Uncle Allen! I want to show you all of them! Come on! Come on!" she ordered as she dragged him through the door way.

Allen didn't even get a chance to check out how Mal decorated his space. Little Eve pulled him with such force that if he had stopped to look around, he was sure that he'd be yanked off of his feet. After passing through a narrow hallway flanked on both sides with closed doors, he found himself standing in a room that could have been in any home in the United States in which a young girl lived.

Allen was taken aback by the surprising contrast of decor. Passing from the starkness of the base into this candy colored bedroom made his head spin. Flowers, butterflies, ponies, dolls, lace and frilly things, covered every inch from the pink carpet up to the rainbow adorned ceiling. In the middle of the room sat a four poster bed draped with gauzy fabric and a multitude of pillows. Amongst those pillows lounged a dozen or so teddy bears, each completely different from the other.

"Come and see! Come and see!" Eve released her grip and dashed for the bed, pausing only to part the flimsy fabric before leaping upon her covers.

"You have a very pretty room, Eve." Allen complimented her sugary sweet abode as he moved to join her. Before he had time to sink into the softness of her mattress she had thrust a dark brown bear into his arms.

"This one's named Roberto, and this one's..." a polar bear landed in his lap, "... named Rob, and this one's named..." a black bear, "... Bob, and this one's..." light brown, "... Robert, and this one's..." long fur and tan, "... Robbie... and Bobby... and Robinson... and Roberta... and Bobbi..."

"Didn't you already have one named that?" Allen asked, holding up the purple furred bear wearing a hat.

"No, this one's a girl bear. Her name ends with an 'i'," she smiled, taking the pile of teddies away one at a time and putting them back from where she had plucked them.

Allen looked up to find Mal standing in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. Allen gave him a confused look and Mal came over and spoke. "We'll talk about that in a minute. Eve, could you give Uncle Allen and me a moment alone, please?"

"Sure Grampa, I gotta take a shower anyway." Eve bounced off the bed and padded out of her room, closing the door behind her.

"Every single one." Mal shook his head. "Every damn one of 'em she names Rob or some derivative of it."

"How long has this been going on for?" Allen pointed at the pile of soft cuddly animals.

"Ever since Reynolds brought her the first one over a year ago. At first I thought it was just a random coincidence so I didn't bother to react, but then the second one, the third, fourth... all of them for that matter."

"I don't think so, she hasn't said anything to me, and she would have no reason to hide something like that from me. I think it might just be an anomaly. A little hiccup in the system maybe." Mal scratched his head.

"The MERI device was never meant to erase an entire lifetime of memories." Allen stood up and faced his friend. "It's possible that something might have eluded the process, but it doesn't seem like this will develop into a problem if it hasn't happened already."

"That was my prognosis as well. In fact, I think it has actually helped her some."

"That's good. I was afraid that maybe we had erased too much from her mind, and the nightmares were a side-effect of that."

"So long as she doesn't remember her old self, everything should continue to go smoothly. Speaking of which, I'm sure you have a lot of questions, I can answer them now if you'd like?"

"No, not in here. I've placed wards against any unwanted eyes and ears in this room. It's safe to talk freely." Mal smiled, ignoring the sarcasm in Allen's question.

Allen sat back down on the puffy bed, batting away the netting that wrapped around him. "Where should I begin?"

Mal pulled Eve's chair from her desk littered with various crafts and took a seat. "I'll tell you what, let me tell you what my father told me when first brought me into this mess."

Allen smiled to himself as Mal settled into a comfortable position on the much lower seat before him. Mal still felt like a father figure to him, even after all these years, and now he was going to pass on a tale that his own father had once told to him. Father to son.

"How about I start with some theoretical science that isn't a theory any longer? That will make this easier for you to understand, I think. At least it helped me, but I have to warn you, some of what I'm about to tell you is highly contested around here. It's the reason the council doesn't see eye to eye with me, but it's the truth, and I owe you that much after everything you've done for me."

"Good. Here it goes, forgive me if I ramble a bit, it's been a while since I've had to explain everything. You're familiar with the Big Bang, correct?"

"Boy, when you say the beginning you mean it," Allen chuckled. "Yeah, I know about it."

"Everything, the entire universe, was once compressed into a single point, a singularity. Something happened and all of that energy was released, creating everything that we know. The universe has been expanding outward from that point ever since. What you may not know, is that the universe will some day reach a point where it will no longer continue to expand. In fact, once the energy of the expansion becomes weaker than the force trying to draw it back, it will collapse in on itself and become a single point once again."

"Think of our reality like a balloon. You blow air in and it expands, but once the latex stretches as far as it can go you only have two options. Continue adding air until it bursts, or release the air and let it deflate. That's what's going to happen with our universe, it is going to deflate."

"But, gravity is such a weak force. How could it possibly overcome the velocity of the entire universe?"

"Good question. That leads me to the next part of this tale. The strength of gravity is directly proportional to the density of an object. More mass equals stronger gravity. Now, imagine just how much mass our universe contains. Imagine all of that mass squeezed down to a single point in space. How much gravity do you think that would produce?"

Allen stroked his chin. "You're speaking of the time before the big bang again, aren't you?"

"In that case I would guess it would be an incredible amount of force, but with no universe around to affect, it wouldn't matter."

"Not to the single point universe..." Mal grinned, "... but to the expanding universe parallel to that one I would imagine it would be quite difficult to fight against."

"Yes, like two sides of the same piece of paper. Us on one side, them on the other. When one side is expanding the other is contracting. Once one reaches a point where it can no longer fight the force of shared gravity, it collapses and the process is repeated. We call it Universal Oscillation, or Cosmic Wobble as some of the physics guys like to joke.

"Okay, time for one of my great analogies," Mal grinned. "Back to the balloon again, only this time picture two balloons connected end to end with just enough air inside to fill one of them completely. Squeeze balloon 'A' and the air fills balloon 'B', squeeze balloon 'B' and the air rushes into balloon 'A'. That's the model we've been using to describe how they interact with one another, only of course they don't exist in the same space so it only works if you neglect everything you know about dimensions.

"We believe that the junction between the two balloons, er, Universes, is a super-massive black hole. The biggest black hole ever imagined. Think about it. Smack dab in the center of our Universe is the most powerful force known to man, just waiting for us to slow down so that it can suck us all back in."

Mal held out his two hands, one he clenched the other he opened. "Back and forth, over and over again. Creation and destruction. Birth and death. It's almost like a beating heart." Mal closed his other hand while opening his fist before reversing his motions.

"It begs so many questions that we just don't have answers for yet. If this black hole opens into another Universe, what about all of the other black holes? Do they open into other planes? Are they strong enough to bridge the gap? The center of every galaxy, even our own, contains a super black hole. Are they strong enough to affect some other reality? The more we learn, the more we need to learn.

"Okay, sorry about that tangent. I just get so excited about all of the possibilities that I tend to jump around. You should really hear this from someone in the Physics Department. Then again, they'd just go off on a tangent about String Theory or bore you with the mathematics of it all, so you're probably better off hearing it from me and my balloons." Mal laughed and pumped his hands open and closed a few more times before continuing.

"The negative space around the balloons, we call that the Void. It's literally nothing. No time, no space, nothing at all. A complete absence of everything. Remember that, it will come up again later."

"Now, okay, um..." Malcolm looked excited as he shared his knowledge with Allen, like he had been waiting for this very moment for years with the eager anticipation of a child on Christmas Eve. "Think about the surface of the balloons as they expand. The latex stretches so far that little holes actually appear and a minute amount of air escapes. Our universe does the same thing.

"As we reach the point of critical expansion, tiny openings appear in the fabric of our reality. These openings, or rifts as we call them, can allow objects from one universe to pass into the other. We call these natural rifts, and for the most part they are stable and bypass the Void completely. However, there are other ways to reach the other side.

"You remember that film, the one from this morning? The German's didn't know it, but they managed to open one of these rifts. These are called un-natural rifts and are highly unstable. They come in two varieties, complete, which bypass the Void, and incomplete, which opens a way into the Void. Unfortunately it was an incomplete rift that they opened, and it allowed something from the Void to pass through into our universe."

"Wait Mal," Allen interrupted. "You said the Void was the absence of everything. If that's true, then how could something come out of it?"

Mal waved him off. "Sorry, I'm coming to that, but for now just ignore it. I'm about to get to the really interesting part of all of this." Mal rubbed his hands together like he was trying to wring the excitement out of them. "You're gonna love this."

The sound of water spattering against steel echoed in the tiny bathroom. Steam filled the small space, fogging the mirror and obscuring the clear reflection in a mist of water droplets. The shower stall was empty, but the room was not.

Eve sat on the floor, her body dripping with the remains of her very brief cleaning. Her legs were crossed over themselves in the so called "Indian style" of sitting. Her hands rested on her knees, her eyes closed, her breathing slow and steady. She remained perfectly still in this position, save for one minor movement. Her lips moved as near silent words passed between them.

The words continued as her eyes danced behind her closed lids. A slight tremor ran through her body, the only sign that the spell she had worked earlier had successfully been activated. Suddenly her head was filled with two additional voices, male voices.

The two men were in the middle of their conversation which they believed was private, but Eve had to know what they were talking about. She was sure they were talking about her, and her curiosity wouldn't allow her to just let them talk in secret.

The spell was easy enough to work. Eve's teachers had praised her about her growing skills manipulating the Ether. Her grandfather had left his cream inside of her, her juices had mixed with them, and then she had spilled them upon Allen's thigh. All that was left to do was concentrate on the Ether, and say the words, and then she could listen in as if she were in the room with them.

'No secrets, Grampa," she thought to herself as she listened to his story, one that she had never heard before. "You promised. No secrets."