Neil Gaiman - Eternity’s Wheel

“Binary world?”

“Binary are like HEX: bad guys. They’re two different factions who both want the same thing, though the Binary are what they sound like: machines, mostly, run by a sentient computer who calls itself zero-one-one-zero-one, or ‘the Professor.’ They’re the science; HEX is the magic.”

He glanced up at me over his glasses. “Magic?”

I couldn’t help giving a small grin. “Yeah. I had the same reaction, but I’ve seen it. Magic. I could go into how it works and what it is and all that, but it doesn’t really matter. It works and it is , and HEX has the monopoly on it—except for the fringe worlds closer to the high end of the Arc, but—”

“You’re losing me,” he said, tying off the end of the tape now wrapped firmly around my torso.

“I’m losing myself, I think,” I said, trying to concentrate on breathing. I was starting to get tunnel vision.

“Sit back for a minute,” he advised, looking me over. “And drink more water.”

I nodded, following his advice. At least the pills were kicking in, and I could feel my headache starting to ebb. They weren’t doing too much for the rest of me, though.

“What’s this?” he asked suddenly. I turned my head; he’d found the small bruise and little puncture wound of an injection site on my arm.

“Ah, that. I got injected with a tracer for safety reasons, after the rockslide. It’s advanced technology, it’ll dissolve harmlessly within another week or so.”

“Nothing that needs my attention?” I shook my head. “All right. What’s a fringe world?” he asked, once I started to feel less like I was going to pass out.

“It’s … it was explained to me like this: the Multiverse is everything. Think of it kind of like the moon: a giant circle, partly in shadow. The shadowed part is the Altiverse. The bright part, like a crescent moon, is the Arc. The Arc has all the main versions of our universe, with our Earth, and they vary from high magic to high science, depending on where they are in the Arc. That’s mostly because HEX and Binary each rule over opposite sides, but they’re trying to rule over ALL of it. We call those worlds, closer to one side or the other, fringe worlds. Make sense?”

He was nodding, though he looked a bit dazed. I suppose I couldn’t blame him; I’d essentially just given him hard facts about our much-speculated cosmology. I’d probably rocked his world a bit. “Go on,” he said.

“Okay. Um …” I paused. I’d been explaining about fringe worlds, but why …? “Right, magic versus science, or HEX versus Binary. The Professor is the leader of the Binary; HEX’s leader is a … kind of like a demonic dog. They call him Lord Dogknife. He’s the one who did most of this damage.” I held up my wrist and indicated my ribs. “And sent me back here.”

“Okay. So, you said you were sent to retrieve some data from a Binary world?” He started to wrap the Ace bandage around my wrist.

“Right, yes. We weren’t able to get the data; there were too many rutabagas—that’s what we call Binary soldiers; they’re basically unintelligent clones—and it was looking like things were about to get bad. Then this girl appeared. Dark hair, violet eyes. I’d never seen her before, but she rescued us. Her name was—is—Acacia Jones. She’s a … an agent for another organization.” It occurred to me, sort of all at once, that perhaps telling him about TimeWatch wasn’t the best idea. I knew next to nothing about it, aside from the fact that it was called TimeWatch, they’d once sent me thousands of years into the future, and Acacia was something called a Time Agent. It seemed like the sort of thing that might be pretty classified.

Mr. Dimas looked like he might be about to ask a question, but I kept talking. “I showed her around InterWorld a bit, but then I had to go out on another mission. Another Walker—that’s what I am, a Walker—was found on the same Binary world we’d just been trying to get the information from. The Old Man sent us back to get the info and the Walker.” I remembered all of that quite vividly. Crawling through the air vents in the shut-down office building, finding the other version of me held captive, feeling an instant connection … “His name was Joaquim,” I said, feeling my stomach churn. There was a sour taste in my mouth, though whether from the remembered betrayal or the lingering pain of my injuries, I couldn’t be sure. I sat still for a moment, just breathing. Just remembering.

“Joseph?” Mr. Dimas asked, pausing as he reached over to pick up the wrist brace.

“I’m fine,” I lied, taking another drink of water. “Long story short, we thought Joaquim was one of us, but he wasn’t. He was a clone, like the rutabagas Binary makes, but infused with souls and powered by HEX’s magic. That was when we discovered HEX and Binary were working together.” I shook my head, the weight of it all descending upon me once again. The only thing that had given InterWorld a fighting chance was HEX and Binary’s war with each other. Now that they’d called a truce, however temporary it might be, they’d be turning all their focus on us.

“Infused with souls?” Mr. Dimas repeated, looking at me seriously.

“Yeah,” I said bleakly. “HEX and Binary keep the souls of any Walker they catch. Apparently, that’s the source of our power, the very essence of what we are. They use us to power their ships, so they can travel between dimensions as well.”

“So they made a clone of you.”

“Using Jay’s blood from where he’d died.”

“And powered him with …”

“The souls of dead Walkers.”

“Okay,” he said, looking grim. He shook his head. “So he wasn’t really one of you.”

“No. He was sabotaging InterWorld from within. He caused a rockslide during a training mission that injured a bunch of us”—I gestured to my shoulder—“and killed a friend of mine. His name was Jerzy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Dimas. I nodded.

“Hex and Binary were using Joaquim to try and power a … HEX called it FrostNight. It … was basically created to restart the universe. So they could make it into whatever they wanted.”

Mr. Dimas looked like he was having trouble grasping this. I didn’t blame him. “Restart the universe ?”

“Or the Multiverse, depending on how far they got. I … Acacia and I tried to stop it, but …”

“Did you?”

“I—I can’t assume we did.”

“I imagine we’d know if you hadn’t. Or, perhaps we wouldn’t know, but we also wouldn’t be here?”

“Maybe. I don’t know how fast it moves, or … It’s a soliton, which means it will maintain a continuous speed without losing momentum or energy … or, that’s what they told me. So it would still take a while to erase everything .”

“I see. How did you try to stop it, or is that too complicated?”

“They were trying to use Joaquim and me ,” I admitted, holding up my other hand. The skin around my wrist was still chafed raw from where I’d gotten out of the restraints. “I got out, with Acacia’s help,” I added quickly, seeing he was about to ask. I didn’t want to tell him the truth: that while Acacia had helped me, it hadn’t been her who’d broken the machine. It had been me. Thousands of me, scattered through the air like fireflies …

I’d used the souls. I’d called them to me, added their power to mine, and directed them to do as I wished. I still wasn’t sure if the ends had justified the means, or if it made me just like the monsters I fought against.

“So you think, without you, it may not have been powered completely?”

“Maybe, but like I said, I can’t assume that.”