Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

“You have a job to do Gordon, just like Trevor has a job. You think he wanted all this? No. But he’s done it, because it’s been his responsibility.”

“Ashley, I serve Trevor from here.”

“And I could have served him as nanny to his son. But what have I done for the past decade, Gordon? I’ve been his figurehead wife. The smiling face for all The Empire to see. I’ve been on his arm for every official reception, for every press conference. Look! There is Ashley Stone. How beautiful a first lady she is! How devoted to her family!”

Ashley’s breath grew rapid. She shook a finger at him saying, “But you know the truth, Gordon. It is has been a lonely, miserable life for me. I have no husband. There has been no love between us for years. He has his duty, I have mine. I could have sat around crying day in and day out or hid away in the attic of the mansion but I didn’t. I did what I had to do!”

He did not respond, but the color drained from his face. In his expression she saw something she rarely saw from anyone: empathy.

“Do you think I’m going to let you shirk your responsibility to Trevor because you’re embarrassed to be in a wheelchair? Do you think when the others see you they think you’re weaker because of it? Don’t be an ass, Gordon. They know how you got in that chair. Of all the friends Trevor ever had you were one of the few to put it all on the line for him.”

He hung his head.

“If you don’t see it that way, that’s your problem. I know you hate it. But right now you have to set all of that aside. Right now you have a job to do. After all these years my responsibility to Trevor is over. But you still have more to do. Now you get your ass over to that meeting and be there for your friend. He needs you.”

She walked closer to him, knelt in front, and said, “We’re all counting on you, Gordon. And if you’re there for Trevor this last time, then maybe we just might have a fighting chance.”

Did the key really exist? Trevor could not be sure. Of course he could not be sure what ‘real’ was, either. Regardless, twice in his life Voggoth’s minions took him prisoner and twice they failed to discover the key. Perhaps more telling, during his trip to a parallel Earth the key had disappeared from his neck.

He wondered if, perhaps, the key the Old Man had given him was actually a product of his mind. Then again, Nina had seen it when he had shown her his secret. Of course, she only saw it after he produced it. Maybe the thought of the key made it real; or, rather, it became real when he needed it. Or…

Trevor shook his head and gave up the idea of solving that particular riddle.

Regardless, the secret key opened an equally secret door hidden behind a cabinet inside the utility closet in the mansion’s basement. That tiny door opened to a tight staircase descending into darkness. The modern feel of the finished basement disappeared replaced with earthen walls. The stairs ended at a small, damp room. A gentle hum radiated in the darkness.

Trevor moved through the lightless chamber aided by memory and habit until he found and ignited a small lamp atop an ancient wooden table. An oily burning smell added to the aroma of damp rot.

The soft glow of the lamp illuminated the room’s only other object: a decaying wood and iron chest that could have come straight from the set of a pirate movie.

He walked to the chest, stooped, and opened the lid. A blue and gray glow radiated out, filling the chamber in light.

Trevor retreated a step from the chest and waited. A sphere floated up, hovering above the chest like a buoy floating on water. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light Trevor saw-through the orb’s clear membrane skin-the image of a double helix-of DNA.

“One more time, I suppose,” and as he spoke he stopped to think. He had visited the orb on his first night in the mansion. It imparted knowledge and skills from a library of genetic memories. In the years since, he periodically returned to recharge from the data bank by standing within a few paces of the object as it delivered bursts of knowledge. Sort of like warming his hands near an open fire.

The glowing sphere taught Trevor how to shoot like a soldier, how to fly an Apache helicopter, how to repair electrical wiring, plumbing, and drive a main battle tank. All skills taken from dead human souls whose memories had been stored by the floating sphere.

“That’s not exactly true, now is it?” Trevor spoke to the sphere. It did not react. The humming continued. It glowed with the same intensity. “A collection of human memories, sure. But a few alien ones, too.”

Indeed, Trevor knew how to fly Centurian shuttles and understood the workings of the Witiko device, certainly due to this sphere’s library of knowledge. He had also found that Fromm-the Chaktaw leader on that parallel Earth-knew how to fly Geryon dirigibles, no doubt a gift from his bank of genetic memories, albeit Chaktaw ones with-apparently-some Geryon sprinkled in.

“A collection of human memories-and alien,” he repeated aloud to fully grasp the idea.

Those memories-or the people who had bequeathed those memories to him-were a tremendous weight of responsibility that nearly drown his humanity, leaving no room for anything other than the mission; an end that justified any means.

The Old Man had said at their first meeting that Trevor was a link in a chain. It appears that chain was, in fact, a chain of DNA stretching back to the dawn of man on one end and his son on the other. In fact…

“The conception of my son started all this; started Armageddon,” Trevor reasoned in the glowing sphere. “Sort of like the starter pistol to get things going, right? At the same time, you enter the picture. A coincidence? Somehow I doubt it.”

Of course Trevor had not known of JB’s conception at the time of the invasion. Ashley disappeared before she could tell him. His son’s birth had been delayed by more than a year due to his mother ‘riding the ark.’

“But that didn’t matter, did it? JB was the right genetic code. The reunion of an original strand of DNA the Old Man and his pals slipped into the primordial soup here on Earth. From there it dissipated and worked its way through the human race from the cave man days until me and Ashley conceived JB. Some kind of pure line of the genetic code. So being the father of the reincarnated original son earned me the privilege of becoming my race’s champion? What then does that make Jorgie?” He pointed at the humming ball of light and suggested, “What if you come from JB, too? You’re a ball of DNA, right? Maybe all that time that his genetic code was floating around the gene pool it started soaking up all those memories and knowledge and whatever. Then the Old Man and his buddies sort of pulled out a little bit of JB when he was conceived and made you? What about that? Could that be the truth?”

The ball hummed and hovered. Trevor could feel the energy radiating from it. He could sense the ideas and thoughts and power trying to seep into his mind. It wanted to teach. That, after all, was its purpose. It’s only purpose. Much like Trevor’s single-minded purpose demanding he survive, fight, and sacrifice.

“So where did it all start?”

Trevor remembered fragments from the conversation between Gods he overheard when plugged into The Order’s machine. They had discussed a ‘root cosmos’. No doubt an original universe in which the original versions of the Duass, the Feranites, the Geryons, the Hivvans and the rest-as well as humanity-had sprung. After all, Trevor had learned more than four years ago that humanity truly belonged on Sirius, if not for the powers behind Armageddon who had transplanted mankind to this Earth, just as they had transplanted each of the other races to other Earths across a series of parallel universes.