On the Edge of Forever: Everything. Everywhere. Forever. by JD Beedle

Author:JD Beedle [Beedle, JD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Why has our transport not returned? And why couldn’t it just have waited where it was? We’d be in the warm now. Safe. How the hell do I summon a transport?

Jed is laid flat on the snow. One of the cloaked, sandal-footed Devotees is staring at him. The others stand in a loose semi-circle around us.

“Thank you,” I tell them. “Does anyone know how to summon a transport?”

They stand quiet amidst the dark.

Eventually, the woman who spoke to me at the pool talks, but before her peers, she is nervous, as though talking is a real issue for these people.

“You are not connected to the city?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No, I’m an outsider. Can you summon a transport?”

She in turn dips her head. “We choose to remain unconnected to the surface detail.”

Of course, you do. “Jed,”—I bend down—”this has got to stop. Get up. I need you to summon the transport back.”

The Devotees have wrapped him in a spare cloak, so he has two, and they gave me one also, but his feet are still exposed, and the wet clothes must be sapping the heat from his core.

“Can you help me take off his wet clothes?” I ask.

This is obviously an action too far because they begin backing away. “Wait,” I plead as she and the others retreat.

Ignoring me they slink into the dark mist. “Everything. Everywhere. Forever,” they chant disappearing into the clouded, eerie forest.

When I look again, me and Jed are alone.

What was just an issue with his will power is now a physical issue with his body. He’s stopped shivering, and his lips are blue.

I tear open his shirt, popping the buttons. The fabric is iced and stiff.

His exposed chest is clammy, the stray chest hairs matted tight against his skin.

I wrap him in the spare cloak, lie myself by his side, and wrap my cloak as best I can over us both, covering his toes.

This is Core then—a soulless, heartless machine that can leave its child to die, simply freeze to death in the night. My shivering bones sap the heat of my anger, and then my forehead starts throbbing—a pulsing, searing pain.

Don’t panic.

I jump up and scream.

I said don’t panic.

“Get out of my head!”

Can’t.

I grip my temples, covering my ears, eyes clenched, but the voice is inside my head. I can’t escape it, and it’s more than a voice. I feel him. From my toes to my top, it’s like his form, a half-known outline of his bulk, is overlaid on my insides.

I will conceal myself from your consciousness as soon as I’m able. Right after we’ve stopped me from freezing to death.

I want to tear my hair off, scalp myself, and pluck him from the matter that is me. But that is not possible, so I will calm down and work out what to do. “What must I do to get him—I mean, you—somewhere warm?”

Some force inside me wants to nod my head, but that is his gesture, not mine.

Kyla, I am going to take control of your endocrine system… You are getting too stressed.

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