14: Subliminal Messages
Separating from the party, Philip walked casually into the airport café to sit on the chair next to his dad, his luggage by his heel. As he’d suspected, his father asked him how his school trip had been, and he answered with the carefully chosen words:
“It was definitely eye-opening.”
At least the first day and a half had been. Anything that happened after taking out Gryal’s facility under CERN, though informative, had not been to the same adrenaline-fuelled standard. He had read up on some of the ‘must see’ locations within Meyrin, so not all of the facts he heard on that day were big news to him. But the whole learning about the Mancynn and everything else which was apparently conspiring to plunge this world into an alien war they weren’t even part of, that had put his holiday above those most people had experienced.
“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
Samuel put down his cup of tea, folded up the newspaper he’d been reading and got steadily to his feet. There was an awkward moment when his father fiddled with the extendable handle on Philip’s suitcase while preventing his newspaper from slipping out from under his arm. Having finally succeeded in his not-so-extensive task, Samuel led his son out of the building and round to his car.
Philip went home.
Not much was said on the car journey. They had listened to the radio, some homage to everyday heroes, accompanied by ‘heroic’ music played intermittently between interviews. The first of his full sentences came when Beth, like his father, began interrogating him on his school excursion. Similar answers were given, but unlike with Samuel, Philip didn’t get the impression that she was satisfied with what he gave her. Yet still she allowed him to go up to his room, change into cleaner clothes and freshen up for the lunch she had been preparing for his return.
Like a regular boy he opened his door by touch, rather than walking through it. Once within his familiar surroundings, he flopped down upon the bed, sinking his head in between the velvety pillows. Above him, as he looked at his ceiling, the light emitting through his open window caused the ripples of artex to cast tiny shadows in multiple directions. From outside the house, the sound of summer birds tweeting intermittently flowed through the air. Drifting up the stairs and under his door was the succulent smell of beef stew and dumplings.
He was home.
Downstairs, when Philip had had time to gather his thoughts, the Quint family ate their meal listening to Beth’s second wave of questions directed at their son, to which he answered valiantly, while lying predominantly to avoid mentioning anything out of the ordinary (basically over half of the trip). When they’d finally finished, the beef and dumplings were long gone. Philip only wished they could have come to a close any time earlier, before the meal was over, perhaps. But no, he’d had to waffle on about how he’d learnt this and that in these places they surely hadn’t heard of. There was of course no mention of a teaching assistant called Noah or the fact that the young girl they’d met in Venezuela had been there also, but they were minor details.
After tea Philip moved his place of rest from his bed to the living room, where he sat in front of the TV watching the programmes he’d recorded during his time away. He hadn’t been gone that long, but Philip had a number of shows to watch and if he didn’t view these episodes soon, there’d be a backlog of programmes building up that he probably wouldn’t be able to watch before the end of the holidays without it having an effect on the quality of his school work. As his parents were with him, he put on something they watched as a family, not something he alone was interested in.
It was in the advert break of a crime investigation show from across the pond, when Beth had gone to see to her new cat while Samuel went...to his ‘office’, and Philip was fast forwarding through commercials. At the greatest speed the TV would allow the adverts flew in front of his eyes. There was a white flash on the screen, something that was too short to have been an ad. He didn’t know what it had been, maybe a word or two. But it probably didn’t matter. He lounged back against a plumped-up cushion, the remote for the TV lolling in his hand. There it was again, a white flash with perhaps a word in the middle. Philip sighed. He paused the recording, rewound and played it at normal speed. He frowned. Upon reviewing the footage, there appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary, nothing which would have been seen as a white flash.
His parents came back into the room, and he finished flicking through to the second part of the programme.
By now he was a number of weeks into the summer holidays, he’d been away to two different countries and his Egypt project was going great, right on track. It was three o’clock in the afternoon on what was for Britain a hot Monday. Philip was sitting on his bed with a powered-up laptop by his crossed legs.
Open on his computer were the internet and the document which he was using to compile any information he was finding. The web page he was currently looking at was of a site like many others he’d viewed this holiday: full of information about ancient civilisations that he mostly knew already, but this one seemed to be hiding those last few facts he needed for his chapter on the arrangement of buildings in your average Egyptian city.
Scrolling down the page, a hyperlink caught Philip’s eye. Later, he wouldn’t be able to explain what is was about the button that drew him to it, but at that time it never occurred to him not to see where it led. With one swipe on the touch pad he moved the curser over the icon and clicked on it.
He was brought to a fresh page, not that much different from the last. Looking at the title, he knew the following paragraphs were about lost Egyptian cities. It wasn’t exactly the information he was after, but if he wanted those extra marks, he might as well use what he had found. After all, he hadn’t done a chapter on lost cities yet.
At first glance, most of the page appeared devoted to one city in particular. On further reading, Philip learned that according to hieroglyphs found in other excavations, there was a thriving metropolis in the southwest of Egypt, which had over time become the centre of ancient Egyptian trade and religion. According to legend, when Akhenaten (Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty) abolished the polytheism of the time, the Gods caused the city to be lost to the sands of the desert, ridding the Egyptian people of their greatest place of worship and produce, saying it would only be returned to them once they themselves were able to return and be accepted as the almighty beings they were.
Of course, the website put it in more words than that, using facts and figures along with the occasional photo or drawing to give a back-story to these tales the hieroglyphs told.
Although Philip found the information interesting, there wasn’t enough here to fill a chapter of his project. Slightly disheartened, Philip made to return to the previous page. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a series of pop-up ads flashed over his screen. They were appearing faster than his eyes could process them. He only saw snippets of what the colourful images showed before they were covered up by the next indiscernible square: there were blue shapes; red shapes; faces of numerous men and women he didn’t know, one which looked a lot like Noah; and there were words; SALE! on...; You’ve won a...; don’t trust him!; Need to treat...; he is the dark one; Take just a few pills to...; trust your Gods; Buy now!...; pain follows in his wake. Then there was the face like Noah’s again, before a window with nothing on it, just whiteness. No more came after it. Philip shook his head to focus on the now still screen. Now the seemingly infinite line of ads had come to a halt, he proceeded to close them all, one by one, and maybe look at those which appeared to be familiar faces, or messages that you wouldn’t think of as belonging to adverts. Yet when he closed the white window, all those beneath it disappeared as well, meaning he couldn’t view them again. Oh well, it’s not like they mattered.
There was a knock at his bedroom door, and before he answered his mother was making her way in.
“Okay, I’m just popping out into town,” Beth told him. “Is there anything you need?”
“Yeah,” Philip looked up from where the pop-up ads had been, “Um, if you could get me some audio discs about ancient Egypt from the library, that would be helpful.”
“Come with me; you can pick them out yourself,” Beth suggested, leaving to pick up her handbag from the kitchen.
Philip looked back down at his computer, figured that this could wait until later, and that he really shouldn’t leave it up to his mother to pick the CDs. He saved his document and closed down the laptop, before snatching his jacket from his chair and meeting his mother at the foot of the stairs. She was all ready to go, so she left through the front door while Philip speedily put his shoes on.
In the car, the mother and son set off down the road leading out of the village and joined the dual carriageway. As they drove past fields of lush green grass while surrounded by other vehicles heading in either direction, they listened to an audio-book version of one of the countless novels Philip owned. Listening to the familiar words read out by a well-spoken-actor, he watched the world fly by, looking at the vehicles on the opposite side of the road. Ahead, coming towards them, was a line of long lorries, each with a different picture on the side. He watched them pass, fast enough that they were almost a blur. Philip tried to look at what they were. As far as he could tell, the first was of books, and the second a shot from science fiction, both things he enjoyed. The next couple he didn’t quite catch, it may have been a man on horseback, or possibly a red face. There was a break in the line as the road bent around a hill, and then a lorry with a spider on the side went by, followed by a bearded face.
Abruptly Beth brought the car to a halt, and Philip was flung forwards against his seat belt, which dug into the skin of his neck.
“Sorry, dear,” he heard his mother apologise.
Philip looked forward out of the windscreen to see a traffic jam reaching to the next junction, which had not at first been visible due to the hill.
The soreness in his neck subsiding, Philip leant back in his seat, listening to the CD once more.
*
In the room he saw a computer. There were in fact thousands, maybe millions, of computers lining the inconceivably wide ring high above the cavern at the base of the Tower, but he only saw the one ahead of him.
Warren strode over to the terminal, and the Braknagh sitting in the seat before it. The little creature gave a pathetic yelp when it looked up into the fiery eyes of the Lord, and cowered appropriately under Warren’s gaze. Despite the fact that Warren enjoyed watching those under him writhe in fear, he needed it to stop.
“Get up you miserable wimp,” he ordered, and at once the thing obeyed. “How are the manipulations coming along?”
“All according to plan, right on schedule,” the minion squeaked with a maybe too optimistic cheer.
“Let me see.”
The Braknagh brought up a file full of short sentences and pictures pertaining to Chaos and the Brethren Lords. Warren scanned the work his minion had been doing for him, and smiled with satisfaction.
“What state is he in?”
“The boy?” his minion replied, “Nothing drastic yet, though there are definitely the signs that it has had some effect upon him.”
“Good,” Warren turned from the screen, “Inform me of any changes.”
*
Philip was once again in his bedroom with his laptop resting on his legs, but this time he had the TV on as well. He had given up on trying to listen to the first CD; all he had heard were low-level snippets of sound which he couldn’t fully comprehend. The CDs themselves had been fairly easy to find. He had been pleasantly surprised by this. He’d known that there were CDs on ancient Egypt there, he’d found that out on their website, but he just found it odd that they were in the first place he looked.
Now he was half working on his project and half watching whatever happened to be on daytime television. It was currently some pretentious drivel which he cared little about, but he had found nothing better, so had stuck with this channel.
It was ten past, and the program went to an advert break. Philip was about to redirect his full attention to the computer screen, when he noticed a flashing on the TV. He continued to look at it, and he saw that there was only a regular advert being played by the machine. It was for a cleaning agent claiming to ‘kill 99.9% of all bacteria’. That advert ended, and another took its place. It was of a skeletal figure on a dark, stormy background, walking across a field of the dead. It was probably an advert for a new film of something. Flash. A message, less than half a second long, had appeared over the advert: Good. A few seconds later, another message appeared, for the same, short time: He can help you escape the pain bringer. And suddenly, completely out of the blue, the screen began flickering out of control, innumerable messages and pictures bursting out at him so fast it was like strobe lighting. Philip’s head was burning, white lights popping in his eyes. He couldn’t scream, he was in too much pain. He screwed his eyes up and held his head in his hands trying to shut out the stabbing pains, but it was no use. Those messages were in his head, continually flickering under his eyelids in a white haze. It felt like his head was about to split open.
“Philip, are you okay?” an American’s voice slithered through the mayhem.
Philip opened his eyes once more. The TV was off, blackness replacing the white bombardment. He tilted his still-throbbing head to look at the speaker, and when he caught sight of Noah, a new wave of pain surged through him, forcing him to curl back up on the bed.
“Philip!” Noah exclaimed, quietly.
The man scooted around a mound of discarded books and to Philip’s bedside. Philip tried to open his eyes again, looking at Noah. He winced as the lightning in his head struck again, but the overall pain was lessening now, and he managed not to curl up in agony.
“What was that about?” Noah asked in a hushed voice.
“I don’t know...I’m fine now.”
Noah didn’t look convinced, “You don’t look it.”
Not wanting to continue this line of conversation, Philip changed the subject, “Why are you here?”
Noah remained kneeling, keeping a close eye on Philip, “I’ve been thinking about what to do next concerning Gryal and the other Lords, and I needed to speak to you about some things.”
Philip tried to sit himself up on the bed, pushing the laptop off of his legs, “What is it?”
Noah glanced at the bedroom door, “I’m not sure if we should speak here. Your mother could walk in at any time. I’ve got a car parked down the road, and a safe house where I’ve set up camp. If you’re up to it, you should come to the car, ask permission to go out if you must, and I’ll take you there where we can talk in privacy without risk of being disturbed.”
The pain had mostly cleared from his head now, and Philip did feel that he could get up and move about, “Sure, I’ll meet you there.”
Philip found his mother sitting with her latest read in the living room, flicking the pages casually, and as evident by her expression, not happy with the quality of the writing.
He leant around the doorframe and knocked twice upon the wood. Beth looked up, and shot her son a smile.
“Mum, I just got a call from a friend; he’s invited me over to his house now. Can I go?”
Beth sighed, putting her book aside, “I do wish you would give me more notice...Who is this friend?”
“His name’s Noah.”
“I don’t recognise the name, is he a new friend? Did you meet him on the school trip?”
Philip shrugged, “Something like that.”
“Well, okay, you can go. But keep your phone on you at all times, so I know when you’ll be coming home.”
The pair exchanged smiles, and Philip walked out the front door. It was probably best he left then, for a dark feeling of impatience had been growing inside of him as his mother carried on speaking.
A short distance down the road, around the corner and in front of one of his neighbour’s houses Noah was waiting by a new blue convertible. Philip made sure there was no way his mother could see him, then he got into the man’s car.
Noah began to drive. Philip made to turn the radio on, but Noah took a hand off the wheel to stop him.
“Can’t stand the presenters these days,” Noah muttered.
Consigned to an awkward silence, Philip looked out the window. They weren’t going far from the village, just into the next town. This wasn’t the same town as Philip had gone to earlier, that had been further away. Philip had often travelled through these streets, so felt comfortable amongst the independent shops and the friendly looking terraced housing, not nervous as many people would be alone in a car driven by a man they knew very little about.
Noah steered the car right, passed the fish and chip shop and down another road. Philip leant back in his seat, his head nestling in the gap between the headrest and the door. As the Mancynns curved around the kerb of the bookstore’s road, Philip saw something unexpected out of the corner of his eye. Ambling out of the shop doors with a small number of plastic bags in her hands was Cary Cole. And just as he saw her, she looked up and locked eyes with him. The car had moved mostly out of sight before she reacted. Cary dropped the bags at her feet and began to run, not after them, but over the street to one of the terraced houses. The next moment Noah had entered the cul-de-sac and Philip couldn’t see what the girl was doing any longer. Dread began to spawn in the pit of his stomach, for when had Cary ever made a situation better or more enjoyable?
Noah pulled the car over in front of a medium-sized house with a small garden and no vehicle outside the garage. There were full wheelie bins though, and through the large window in the front of the house he could see furniture, so either the family who lived here were on holiday, or something terrible had happened to them, for Philip wouldn’t have thought that Noah would take him to a house with people currently living in it.
Philip got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Noah acted similarly, joining him in front of the house. Philip looked sideways at him as Noah took a key from his pocket.
“You have a key?” Philip commented, quizzically.
“There’s no need to transit everywhere. We can use the conventional means from time to time.”
Philip eyes combed over the pristine building, “Nice place. How long do you have here?”
“As far as I know, just over a week,” Noah answered, departing from the teen’s side and heading up the path to the front door. Philip kept close behind him.
At the door, as the key clicked in the lock, Philip looked over his shoulder back down the road towards the main road running through the town, back towards the fish and chip shop. In the distance, he could make out the outline of a person standing outside a house, insisting to another person standing on the threshold to come out. Philip realised who the first figure was when he remembered that that was the house Cary had run to. Not wishing her to see him again (though the car parked outside may be a bit of a giveaway), Philip slipped into the hallway of the house after Noah.
The only thing on the walls of the hall, besides a lone coat hook, was a mirror at Noah’s eye level. There was a door on each wall, and an ascending staircase at the end. Before Noah could lead Philip through the left-hand door, a girl a year or so younger than Philip came through it to meet them.
“You’re back. Hey Philip,” Eve greeted the pair.
She squeezed around them to go into the right-hand room, the kitchen, to get herself a drink. Philip continued looking at her, stunned by her unexpected appearance.
“Didn’t Noah take you back to Venezuela?” Philip asked the back of her head, once again finding himself beyond astonished at seeing her away from her home country.
“Nope,” she said over the sound of the fruit juice splashing against the sides of the glass.
“Eve decided at the last minute that her home was too boring,” Noah muttered with a possible hint of resentment, as he guided Philip into the living room with a hand on his back.
Philip slumped down on the leather sofa, opposite the armchair in which Noah chose to sit. Eve joined them a moment later with a tall glass of juice clasped between her hands, perching on the arm of Philip’s sofa, the other end to him.
After several seconds of silence only broken by the slurping of Eve drinking, Philip spoke, “So what...”
But at that very moment someone tapped four times upon the door, stopping Philip in his tracks.
The three of them went still. Nothing in the room moved. Even the rumbling of cars from the nearby road seemed to hold its breath, hush descending inside the room and outside it.
With slow caution Philip got off the sofa, and, phasing out of sight, slunk over to the window. Philip stuck his head through the glass out into the fresh air, twisting to face the uninvited couple. As he had suspected, one of the number was Cary. And what could make his heart sink further? Well, there was the fact that she had with her the little boy, Jimmy Authors. What were the chances that Jimmy lived down the road to where Noah had chosen to stay?
Philip returned to the middle of the room, coming back into phase.
“It’s Cary and Jimmy,” he said in the faintest of breaths.
To his surprise, Noah jumped to his feet and stormed to the door. Philip and Eve heard the American wrench the door open and drag Cary in, pinning her to the wall, pressing on her throat.
“What do you think you’re doing, following us here?” Noah growled.
Jimmy pressed himself against the wall and slipped into the living room. He turned, and faced the raised eyebrows of the two other teens.
“I didn’t want to come,” he managed to squeak. “She made me.”
“Sure,” Eve sarcastically agreed, nodding slowly.
Jimmy tried to make himself smaller, making another squeaking sound as he did, and when he still saw that they were looking at him, he shuffled over to the armchair.
Relieving him of the room’s attention, Noah re-entered the room dragging Cary by the shoulder.
“Well Philip, since you can’t control your friend...”
“Oh, she’s my friend now?” Philip scoffed.
“...she might as well stay here, where I can keep her under surveillance,” Noah finished.
Indignantly, Cary freed herself from the man’s grip and found a spot to sit on a vacant chair.
“Who’s missing?” Philip asked, looking around the room, suddenly feeling as though one of their group was absent.
“We’re the only ones, no one else knows about any of this,” Cary told him, looking quizzical.
Trying to put his confusion to one side, figuring he must have been mistaken, Philip finished the question he had begun, “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
“There’re a couple of things,” Noah started, forcing Jimmy onto the floor so he could retake the armchair. “First of all, with your memory returning, is there anything the Brethren Lords may have said or done to you that may give any indication as to what they may be planning or what they will be planning?”
Philip racked his brains, though he highly doubted he would think of anything, “Nope.”
“Okay,” Noah said, sounding only slightly disheartened, “then now you need to listen to me. With no idea as to what the Brethren Lords are planning to do, we need to find a way of learning it, and how to ensure that it can’t come to pass. The Lords operate within a network of Towers...”
“What are you on about?” Cary interrupted, snidely.
“Our enemy,” Noah turned to her, “use a vast web of enormous space stations known as Towers as a base of operations. These Towers orbit the bubbles that are our universe throughout time, and they use them to observe as well as interact with our worlds, constantly updating their knowledge of the multiverse via data bursts on a subspace level.”
“And what is it about them that you felt I had to come here to hear it?” Philip asked.
Noah returned his gaze to the boy, “I already told you here was a better place to talk as we are less likely to be found...though I now see that didn’t work so well. But anyways, the Towers are a treasure trove of information, from which we can gain valuable intel giving us an advantage over them. There is also the possibility that we could damage the Tower, maybe even the network, if we have enough time.”
There was a moment’s pause before Philip understood what was being suggested, “Are you thinking of getting on board the Towers?”
“Indeed.”
“Okay, here’s my next question: how?”
“Although Gryal won’t expect it of you, it is totally within your power to summon him. In this event, Gryal would use one of their rather weak Hexagons to appear before you, or at least where you were when he was summoned, then leave via an artificial subspace tunnel connecting that location to the appropriate Tower.”
“What’s a Hexagon again?” Eve questioned him, and before Cary could make a sarcastic comment, added, “Besides a shape, of course.”
“A Hexagon is a device generated by six power modules that is mainly used by those who inhabit the Outer Region, the space outside of our universes, to create an artificial pocket of space within the Alpha Realm, in which they can exist, their physiologies preventing them from directly co-inhabiting the universe with us. The reason the ones belonging to the Brethren Lords are weaker than those belonging to other races is that they have redirected most of the power usually meant for the Hexagons to something I have only heard in reference to as the Watch. Don’t ask me what it is, I’m not entirely sure, other than it can produce pockets of Outer Region and that it was built by the Entities for their initial incursions into our realm.” Explanation over, Noah returned the focus of the conversation to what he had to say to Philip. “If you were up to it, I would like you to summon Gryal under controlled conditions, so that we could travel via transit into the matter stream, hide on board the Tower and do what has to be done, with the appropriate equipment of course.”
Philip leant forward in the sofa, “What equipment? Where would you get it?”
“Where would you get an ounce of sanity?” Cary chipped in.
Ignoring the annoying girl, Noah answered Philip, “Where I get the necessary tools is not important. What needs to happen now is I will take you home; Cary and Jimmy, you need to go home; and Eve...you can stay at home, I mean here.”
“What about the rest?” Philip wondered aloud.
Again, everyone stared at him.
“Who else is there?” Cary smiled, though her eyes showed an inner fear.
Philip couldn’t think of an answer, “...I just thought...there was another friend...I don’t know.”
Noah stood, and Philip followed him out to the car, an inexplicable feeling of unease concerning Noah’s plan swelling in the back of his mind.
Just as he was thinking about this distrust, Philip took a hold of the door handle, and a sharp shock shot up his arm. Instinctively, he jumped back, shaking his hand. Noah hadn’t noticed, and the teen found his negative sense towards the man had grown.
Philip saw Cary and Jimmy at the front door as he joined Noah in the car. They buckled up, and Noah started the engine. As they pulled away from the house Eve was currently calling home, Philip voiced what he had subconsciously been thinking.
“Will anyone get hurt during this?”
“Don’t worry, as long as you stick to my instructions, you’ll be fine,” Noah reassured him.
“Other than me though.”
“The Braknaghs’, the workers’, lives aren’t worth anything...Philip, please don’t tell me you’re talking about Gryal and the other Lords,” Noah said, slowly and warily.
“It’s just, how do we know that they would deserve it?”
Noah almost swerved them into another car at this sentence, “What do you mean, ‘do they deserve it?’ They are evil, Philip!”
“Do we know that for sure though?” Philip pressed on, to Noah’s alarm.
“Philip,” Noah said, through gritted teeth, valiantly trying to keep a level voice, “they would use you for their own gain with no concern for your wellbeing.”
“Yet their cause may be just.”
“That’s it!”
Noah careered the car onto the kerb and slammed on the brakes. Luckily they were both wearing seat belts; else they would have been flung through the windscreen. Twice in one day, what were the chances?
“Listen here,” Noah almost roared, “No intent of theirs is good or just, they only want to abuse their power over the Alpha Realm to overthrow the Entities and control the entire multiverse, becoming the most powerful creatures in creation.”
“But what if they end up being better than the Entities?”
Noah grabbed Philip’s head with both hands, his palms pressing on his ears, “Trust me, they’re not! They’re the bad guys in this.”