The Starweb Journey

The

Starweb

Journey

(Myths and Dreams)

Book1

(Myths and Dreams)

Author's note:

Open your door and see the world. Open your mind and see the universe…

(Myths and Dreams)

Starweb

Book 1

Smashwords Edition 02

Copyright 2015

Published by Order House Ink.

An MichaelHenderson Jr product

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof including all drawings and photos, in any form.

Table of Contents

Chapter1

Chapter2

Chapter3

Chapter4

Chapter5

Chapter6

Chapter7

Chapter8

Chapter9

Chapter10

Chapter11

Chapter12

Chapter13

Chapter14

Chapter15

Chapter16

Chapter17

Chapter18

Chapter19

Chapter20

Chapter21

1 Aughra

U3.11

September/7/2035

8:00am

John awoke to the sound of his own screams as he kicked the covers off the bed. His cry joined a trillion screams echoing in his mind. He wiped sweat from his brow as the ominous warning faded into the dark spaces of his memory, but the shock stayed with him until he shook his head and took several deep breaths.

Is this a message?

He shook his head again and thought,

Nonsense, dreams are dreams…

For the last two weeks he awoke with the same sick feeling, this time his stomach turned and his head spun. As his heartbeat settled, he stared at the blank ceiling thinking this must be déjà vu.

Déjà vu doesn’t fit, he thought, because these dreams never are the same.

There were several dreams he remembered but the ones he wanted to recall always slipped away just as he awoke. Most of the dreams were horrific. Many were about whole populations turning into zombies. The one dream like that, which he remembered most was about a boy that had super intelligence or— extra memories… skills beyond his years and he used them to save his friends. In another dream, he was a young woman in the military. She was a top-secret spy using advanced quantum computers, like the ones he used, to send coded messages to her superiors. In the dreams, she was constantly thinking of her son and secretly longing for the day when she would be with her little boy again…

But the most vivid dreams over the last couple of weeks were about the same two people, Joshua and his wife Rana. Both looked just like him and his ex-wife. Over the weeks, Joshua had been dreaming about him and he found himself involved in their choices and now he was considering ending the Aughra experiment. He wondered,

What word is close to déjà vu, what word means almost the same?

These were complicated feelings, and he wasn’t good with feelings, but it was the only word that best described this experience. Joshua would've called it a gut feeling. He did not like gut feelings, they didn’t feel good and he couldn’t understand or control them.

Pure scientist used their brains and not their guts to solve scientific problems.

He sat up in his small bed and the feeling increased. The last dream flashed just outside his mind's reach. It was something about today, something dreadful that affected the lives of countless people but he couldn’t bring the memory back. That bothered him a little but the more he tried to recall his dreams the further they slipped away.

The dream he remembered most continued not much later than last night's dream. It was like watching a new episode of his favorite show. It was as if he and his ex-wife were still in love and together, but his name in the dream was Joshua and his ex-wife’s name was Rana. For the first time in his life, he found himself eager for sleep, just to see what they would do next.

Joshua was a very different person than anyone he had ever met and his simple life reflected it. He was a laid off contractor who's search for a job hadn't gotten him very far until now. He was not formally educated, and he did not have the whole world depending on his next choice. Although his other-self had made little of his career, he admitted Joshua had made a life. In that life, he was simply happy.

A wave of nausea came over him as he felt doom growing in his stomach. He had to place his mind on a task or he would drink again. Today's important test on Aughra forced the memory of his dreams to fade in a wash of anticipation.

It’s time to get up.

His bed was comfortable but small. He had had it built into the wall; in the back of his office, years ago after his wife left with the kids and it was clear he would spend a lot of time here alone.

He stood, took the covers off the floor, rolled them across the bed and tucked the sheets. Then he smoothed out all the stubborn wrinkles. After fluffing the pillows, he waved his hand and the section of the wall that held his bed closed, concealing it behind the decorative paneling. His bedroom was now his office.

Everything he needed was in his office. In the back of the room was a small kitchen he never used. However, the bathroom, his private smoking room and the bar was a different story. For those restless souls on his team, who were like him, his smoking room had become a public rest area. It was necessary because now that Aughra was turning, there was no time to walk down endless hallways, through security and outside for a smoke. In light of the threats they had gotten, the city had given him a special permit for that smoking room.

The bar was his refuge when long workdays turned into long work nights. Two weeks ago after Aughra's superconducting magnets turned on, Kayla told him he didn’t need any distractions, so the bar closed.

That day Phase One began. They placed the S-matter in her pods and then Aughra lifted millimeters above the ground. At the end of that test, he single-handedly pushed on one of her curved black arms— putting her seven and a half ton body into a slow motion spin. His touch was the only energy, to this day, that had transferred into her and she was still spinning from it. Without the near zero friction she hovered on, she never would reach the extremely high RPMs required for the experiment to work. It was a testament to the genius of his electromagnetic engineers.

That was the night that the dreams had started and he began waking up each morning with this strange feeling in his chest and stomach. He tried to ignore the dreams at first, but they weren't the problem. The problem was he had spent so much time living in these other lives, in his dreams and it was making him become aware of his own feelings.

He had always ignored his feelings. This other person, Joshua, had a way of following his feelings, and his reason. John hated feelings. They were useless, non-quantifiable, and confusing. Reason was simple, straightforward and it always led to greater knowledge.

He put his clothes on, walked into the bathroom and placed the plaque-neutralizer between his teeth and his thoughts drifted back to his dreams. Joshua and he looked the same, but their minds were very different from each other's minds. Nevertheless, he felt that at heart, they were the same person.

His plaque-neutralizer beeped, and he placed it on the shelf then pressed the self-clean program. He checked his hair; there were a few more gray hairs growing on the sides. Then he took another long look at the person in the mirror. That person seemed to say, You lost too much to stop now.

He looked away and waved a hand in front of the door. The door opened automatically and the bathroom's sensor turned off the light for him.

There was a mix of excitement and dread about today's experiment. He didn’t want to think about how he had spent the past years of his life; today he would take the next big step to achieve his greatest dream.

He took a deep breath to clear his mind then opened the office door and walked into the main lab. His office and lab were dark and quiet but for Aughra's humming. It felt like the calm before the storm. The pressure on his insides always peaked as he came close to Aughra first thing in the mornings. Behind him, he faintly registered the door close with a click and he stared up at her magnificence.

Aughra was a true marvel. She was composed of five basic technologies: At her center sat a perfectly round sphere larger than a dump truck, made of the purest titanium alloy ever forged. Aughra was exactly 42.842 feet tall from the base. Her huge body spun hypnotically slow in the center of the room. The lab's tall arching walls extended through several floors in the center of a high-rise building, enveloping her like a pearl in an ornate shell.

Projecting out from the sphere's center were two scimitar arms. The first black arm spread out reaching halfway around her circumference, ending at a blunted point. On the opposite side was another white arm of equal width and length giving her the balance and stability she would need when turning at maximum spin.

The S-matter was contained in magnetically sealed pods placed within the arms widest areas. It was the only known substance capable of unlocking the secrets of their quantum entanglement, which was the goal of his life's work.

The Antimatter Engine looked like a long semitransparent purple and blue tube made of soft Nano, Engineered Glass. It began as a bulge a quarter the way up from the sphere's midway point, wrapped down and around her in a shrinking spiral ending a quarter of the way up from her base. That special glass was another breakthrough that had made him rich and Aughra possible. The engine was a type of Chinese finger puzzle. Its surface felt like gel to the touch, but when they applied force, it grew harder than titanium. The more force applied, the stronger it became. It was strong enough to force a small antimatter explosion in the direction he wanted it to go.

Below her base, designed to reduce the friction from the extreme spinning were a group of nine huge ball bearings made of a steel alloy, which lifted her 3mm above the ground. Below the ground, a group of superconducting pulse magnets held it all together.

With this experiment Aughra was about to show everyone the entanglement force. John imagined the full process at work. Tomorrow night, at peak gravitational alignment with Nebula311, special magnetic fields around the antimatter will release. Free from its restraint the antimatter will hit the ordinary matter inside the chamber at the top of the glass tube, resulting in a controlled explosion. The incredible force will send raw energy down the spiraling tube and into the ball bearings causing Aughra to spin like a top, faster than any other machine.

As she spins, the two entangled particles of S-matter will expose the force that links them. For now though, she was silent except for the vibration he felt deep inside his chest as she slowly turned.

After this morning, he believed something was wrong but he didn’t know what it could be. He had devoted the past 15 years of his life to the creation of this machine but all he could do now is hope this feeling would soon pass.

It has to do with this experiment and the mysteries surrounding the S-matter.

He rolled his eyes despite himself as he thought of the official story. A space probe supposedly discovered the S-matter after a rogue asteroid passed close to the Earth 17 years ago, and then conveniently crashed into the sun,

But there is more to it than that…

Chapter 2 The Lab

John tried to clear his mind but the same feeling kept building in his guts and it wouldn’t go away. He wondered,

In all my life, I never felt like this. Is this what intuition feels like?

He stared at Aughra for a while feeling helpless to his emotions. He believed that those who expressed such emotions were weak, so he suppressed everything but now he realized,

I’m unprepared to deal with this crisis. What would Joshua do? Joshua feels so much but he is always in command of his emotions.

John grit his teeth, inhaled deeply a few times, as he had seen Joshua do and took in the lab with a glance and then exhaled. In the mornings, he always stayed near his office door and walked along a marked path to keep out of view. He was aware that the whole world was watching her too, through the live feeds near the lounge; but there was nothing like standing in Aughra’s presence.

On every webpage and news outlet, the image of Aughra reigned; though the stone fireplace Kayla designed came in a close second for global attention. It was a heartening reminder of how technology has evolved, and how something as dangerous as fire, when under the right circumstances, is a great benefit to all humanity.

Kayla had made a third competitor for attention, named the Real Time Sky Dream a large, high-resolution computer flexscreen that covered the ceiling. It kept track of the outside conditions by exterior cameras and reproduced the wanted sounds and images in clear splendor. The technicians and those watching at home or from school on web cameras, saw artificial sunlight by day and the beauty of the stars and moon at night.

He remembered when Kayla suggested the changes to the lab. He hired the best interior designer to help her make the place look more comfortable. But the big surprise was when the military had approved the huge expense and paid for everything, believing her idea would be perfect for calming the public. The new look made the project more human and earthy rather than as if it were being built by heartless robots on a far off moon. It accomplished Kayla's desired effect.

The public was distracted.

But his favorite addition was the fireplace. Its inlaid stones ran the full length of the wall and disappeared into the ceiling, looking like it should be part of an enormous old world castle. There was never an actual fire in the hearth. The electric heat burned nothing as it projected the perfect image of a blazing fire. The whole thing was a great illusion that even made him feel relaxed.

Others loved the high domed ceiling. He looked up and saw the glowing image of a beautiful morning that matched the outside's perfect weather. Tonight, an image of Nebula311 will look down on Aughra and the guest as he flipped the Phase Two Switch.

If everything goes as planned, this should be an uneventful evening…

The majority of religious people believed Aughra was the beast from the Book of Revelations that, when the Phase Two Switch turned on tonight, would end the world. That was why Kayla had designed the huge, stone fireplace and motion ceiling as a P.R. stunt, and it worked. Debates about which color slate he should have used and the beauty of the fireplace rather than end-of-the-world prophecies involving Aughra filled the blogs. Overall, he didn't care about the look of the lab.

Give me simple white walls and my work will continue.

But, the changes in scenery had reduced the pressure on him as attention shifted to how much people loved or hated the look of the lab and that meant more time for science and less time spent on nonsense.

He walked over to the elegant refreshment stand Kayla had installed against the far wall. Scientist, engineers and public observers would soon surround it, all waiting for him to serve them their favorite morning drinks and foods. He opened the small refrigerator and pulled out the milk, half-and-half and a few other items then assembled the antique espresso machine.

He was always the first one here each morning because he slept in his office each night. Making breakfast was the least he could do to show how much he appreciated their hard work and creativity. His team's wellbeing was another key to the success of this project.

With a smile, he flipped the espresso machine on and it made a whooshing sound! Then he started a simple pot of coffee, pausing for a moment to pour himself a cup, before heating up rolls, bagels and cakes. After a few minutes, he had everything laid out on the table next to the stand.

He looked up as the main doors opened on the far end of the large room. Kayla, followed by a stream of young and old, came in with the noise of their dying conversations. She gave him a quick smile. Then she took in the room as if it was the first time she had seen the large mahogany wooden trim, full-length hardwood floor and accenting warm colors that tied the room to the fireplace. He guessed today's experiment was affecting her too.

Her gaze paused on Aughra's slowly turning body. It was her idea it be the most out of place thing sitting in a room like this. Everyone who saw her for the first time held their breath as their jaw dropped; contemplating the same question,

What effect will such a thing have on this world?

John was no artist. He never intended Aughra to be so eye popping; it just worked out that way due to the specific needs for the experiment to work.

Kayla let the small group walk before her to the refreshment stand. When they arrived, he exchanged greetings and listened as everyone remarked on how excited they were about this evening's test. Then they took their cups of juice or espresso and headed to their desk or over to the observation lounge.

When he and Kayla were alone he said, Hi beautiful, then handed her a cup of espresso.

Good morning doctor, how is Aughra behaving? she replied with a warm smile.

His mood turned noticeably darker, and she leaned in a little closer, She seems normal today, he answered.

Kayla arched an eyebrow and looked him in the eyes, Normal? She frowned as she took another drink and then sat her empty cup down on the table, Did you get any sleep last night? You have those dark circles around your eyes again. You weren't,—she looked back at Aughra, up drinking all night again, were you?

He clenched his teeth as he spoke, I'm tired of you saying that. You make it sound like I’m drunk every night. I haven't drunk alcohol since we turned the magnets on two weeks ago. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her and lowered his voice, I slept in my bed. John bit his lower lip as he tried to put his feelings into words but the skill eluded him. He lowered his voice, You remember that dream I tried to tell you about the other night?

Sorry, but I barely paid attention, we've been so busy lately. What dreams? She asked as her eyebrows drew down.

He went on, I never remember my dreams, but I can't forget these dreams. There're vivid, gritty, and they keep that element of reality normal dreams lose when I wake up. It's as if I've seen into another world.

Maybe it's your subconscious mind working out repressed emotions, she offered with a smirk.

He ignored her, Early last week Joshua, he’s the guy I keep telling you about, applied to a prestigious company and now has an interview with the owner. He's been preparing for the interview where I— I mean he, will be a consultant. It's a strange job for him but… somehow… I inspired him to apply for it. I think it started when he saw my life as a scientist, he paused and raised his eyebrows, he's even aware of my team. In my dream last night, he was talking with his wife about Aughra and me, as if he was a real person. He even knew about the speech I plan to give in an hour. It's as if he's changing ideas about himself because of me.

Kayla pursed her lips and said, So, you didn’t drink, but you smoked something?

Kayla, John spat.

Okay, but if he’s in your dreams, someone from your head, then of course he knows what’s going on with you.

John started to speak but he paused. Yes but it’s not like that. His mind retraced all that had happened. He bit his lower lip and said, The dreams began two weeks ago. When Aughra started spinning, the dreams started spinning in my head too!

Kayla’s eyes narrowed but she said nothing.

He pushed on. The first time I awoke I thought these dreams were real, I even wondered if I should tell Joshua, warn him somehow, of the mistakes I’ve made on the way to becoming— successful… He looked from Kayla to Aughra and he realized how weird that sounded,

And Joshua understands all this… Damn this is crazy! Dreams are dreams and— damn, I need a drink!

What intrigued him most about these dreams was how Joshua and his wife Rana had somehow stayed in love. Their love had grown over the hard years. They were happy together. It was that last idea about being happy again, which started him down the mental road of, What if.

What if...I had taken on a different course of study in college? What if, I had given Elizabeth and the kids the time they begged me for? What if, they never found that damn S-matter? He told himself, I have Kayla now.

But, compared to the relationship Joshua was having with Rana, his life with Kayla seemed superficial at best.

He rubbed his forehead as he said to himself,

It's all finally getting to me. These dreams are just an escape from the building pressure as I prepare for today's second test. They are extraordinary, but I need to stop thinking about them. He took a deep breath; the real world is bringing me to the breaking point. I need to keep it together for a few more weeks. After the experiment has run its course and the core data is in, my equations confirmed, then I will take a long break.

He noticed that he had been staring off in thought, as Kayla watched. She was staring at him and he began chewing on the inside of his lower lip. This woman saw right through him and it was both sexy as hell and annoying.

He couldn't hide his feelings from her. Only when Elizabeth left him two years ago compared to how much stress he felt now.

Kayla had an intolerant look in her eyes. She raised her eyebrows, and he asked her, Dreams can seem weird but this tops everything. Have you ever had a dream where a person in your dream became aware of you watching them and then they made changes to their behavior?

Kayla looked dumbfounded as she cocked her head, What's happening to you? What are you talking about John? Never mind, I can tell you're beyond stressed. It's the new threats the FBI warned us about yesterday. You look terrible. The entire world will be watching today.

He muttered, They’re watching every day. As a new wave of scientists came inside, he turned and gave another round of semi-pleasant smiles and, Hellos. They greeted him excitedly, took