Members of the Phoenix Organization went on swirling eternally around us, the reality burning and twisting in as bizarre a design as one could imagine. However, after that, I solely existed for this one person, The Architect, who sat down directly in front of me. The question about Lucy still lingered in my mind, but I nailed the feeling that whatever tale he was about to share, was going to reveal what I needed to know about Lucy-and perhaps about myself.
“You demanded that I take my time, you asked for time to think, to process,” The Architect started, his ethereal eyes locked on me. “But sometimes, Brianne, knowledge is not within the self, rather it is in examining the self. From experiencing the world – the multiverse – as it is perceived by another person.
I closed my throat, preparing myself for whatever lie was coming. Whose eyes will I be peeping through soon?
He looked sadly and humored at the corners of his lips. “That’s for you to determine. Listen and, in all probability, you shall identify more than which is expected of you.
He took the time to clear his throat before beginning his story.
The Architect spoke, and slowly the mesmerizing lull of his voice drew us in as he started, “There was a boy…” He is a child like any other, with dreams of a future, anxieties of the present and nightmares of a past which should never have happened. He enjoyed a fairly tender and affectionate childhood and both of his parents were fascinated with his curiosity.
Lips still moving, images appeared on the projector, gray and blurred as if they existed simply to mimic his words. And glimpses of a boy, growing up in a small town, head buried in textbooks, trying out chemical experiments in a messy garage.
The boy was especially interested in reality, as such,” The Architect went on. Yet from his early childhood, he realized that there were things beyond plain sight. Those parents were both scientists, and they encouraged this curiosity. They went on telling him about quantum mechanics; about parallel worlds.
He remembered them talking to him of quantum mechanics, of the existence of parallel worlds, of the number of opportunities that could be out there waiting for us but beyond our reality.
These changed, displaying the boy a bit older now, excitedly arguing with two people I presumed to be his parents. Their faces were out of focus, hardly recognizable, but the way they stood, sat, gestured was full of eagerness and elation.
Though the multiverse, The Architect emphasized, can be a rather kind place at times. To every identical existence, to every life being alive, there exist so many more where disaster lurks. Sometimes those tragedies only cut across the two worlds.
This scene in the Projector is altered dramatically. He had changed from a warm, crowded, Bohemian home to a sterile, clinical room. The boy was a young teenager, yet he sat in a chair looking distraught, the signs of clear shock and anguish on his face. Before him were two more serious-faced police officers.
Onwards, The Architect said: ‘It happened on a night like any other.’ The boy’s parents were in their late hours of work in their lab, right on the precipice of an invention that they expected to revolutionize human perception of reality. However, the people themselves did not remain the only ones who considered their work significant.
As he read the story, I immediately knew what was coming next and my heart was tight. The Projector brought glimpses of violence-a set of unknown individuals disguised in black clothes and masks and using firearms, glimpses of explosions in the lab, people getting down. I wished to turn my head, but realized my eyes could not be torn from the rising drama of the tragedy.
“The boy’s parents were murdered,” The Architect stated rather somberly. All their research gone, their lives taken by those who wanted to use their findings for whatever purpose they wanted. And the boy… oh, the boy was all alone with no one in the world for his own.”
I could have found myself crying, I felt so much sympathy towards this little child I never knew. “Who?” I managed to choke out. “Who killed them?
I felt like The Architect was staring right through me with his eyes. That was the question that preoccupied the boy for years. There were no suspicions, no investigations by the authorities. However, the boy wanted the matter closed down and would not let it go. She stood up, comprehending that he invested all of his waking hours obsessively seeking the truth, seeking culpable parties.
The Projector changed again, displaying the boy-now a young man-embroiled in papers, computers, a tangled web of diagrams sketched on any surface possible. His eyes were hollow with a hellish fire deep within them along with such determination.
The words abruptly ceased as The Architect suddenly resumed his story: “It took years, but eventually the boy found his answer.” It upset him with his boot straps, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.
I hunkered down, and braced myself for the next bit, expecting to hear the worst but desperate to understand. “What did he find?”
“It is the truth” The Architect replied almost nonchalantly. That the people who had killed his parents were not of his kind but from an utterly different dimension. These were interdimensional thieves who had come to steal research material pertaining to revolutions across the multiverse. And they were led… by the parents of a girl in a neighboring reality. A girl who in her world was possibly the only person who held the multiverse together in some capacity.
I held my breath. It was amazing how the story made me feel troubled and how I exist in the universe, how my importance came as too dull and turbulent to explain. I held my tongue and let The Architect keep speaking.
‘This knowledge engulfs the boy’, he continued on. To know that out there in another world, the daughter of her parents’ killers rejoiced in ignorance of the fact. He vowed to the Gods, on the spot, that he would get even. It is not only put on those individuals who failed, but on their entire line.
The images on the projector became sorrowful and enraged with both emotions originating from the young man in the center of the projections. I could almost taste the vengeance he craved, the cough of fire that tore through him to fuel his desire.
“But vengeance,” The Architect said, “is never a linear course of action.” The boy realized that he cannot just jump from one reality and punish that man there. The girl the daughter of those he hated was too valuable, too safe. He would have to be smart, also wise, as careful as a fox, to plot every action in minute detail.
I got to watch the young man, poised over papers, calibrating every muscle and nerve, for a deed that would be his life’s work.
“He joined her school,” The Architect said. He used his great intellect as well as the bits and pieces of his parents’ work to discover how to breach the dimensional divide. He took time to blend into her life, becoming part of her friends’ circle. He befriended everyone he knew who could hinder his progress, wining their hearts, twisting their minds, making sure that when the time came, no person would be able to stop him.
This time a shiver went down my spine seeing the young man; who could have been any other teenager going about, laughing with a group of students. His lips stretched into a smile, but it never came close to his eyes. They were as icy and as calculating as ever.
“He waited patiently,” The Architect resumed, “For years. Sulking, plotting for the appropriate time to attack. But there was one thing he never expected- there was a girl, who turned out to be the closest to his goal to anyone he knew. A best friend, a confidante, a man who was unquestionably very close with the girl in jeopardy of being ruined by the boy..
Loved ones, female and male, speechlessly and expectantly waited, a name on the edge of my lips. But before I could speak it, I overheard The Architect going on again.
This was the last barrier. The boy understood he should get rid of it. And so, on a particular day of celebration, he deliberately caused a very bad accident. Making sure the victim never saw his face as she stood on the edge of a cliff and… he shoved.