The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(144)
When at last they came to a deserted alleyway, the stranger flattened him against a wall. Wells scarcely had time to rub his arm, which felt as if it had been clamped in a pair of blacksmith’s tongs, when the figure seized his neck with a gloved hand, immobilizing him. Realizing with horror that a team of oxen couldn’t drag him away from that powerful grip, Wells made no attempt to struggle free. He simply confronted the stranger’s face, half-obscured by his huge, wide-brimmed hat. Swathed in shadows, barely illuminated by the strange bluish light seeping from his cane, the stranger’s pale features resembled those of a beautiful, terrible deity. All at once, his lips seemed to vibrate faintly, and Wells heard a voice, distant and metallic, as if it were traveling through a long tube.
“I am Executioner 2087V and I’ve come to kill you. I feel pity for you, but I’m powerless to prevent your fate. Although if you want to know why you must die, you can find the answer by looking deep into my eyes.” Half-dazed, Wells instinctively sought out the stranger’s gaze. “Look deep into my eyes! Don’t stop looking, even if you feel fear or despair, even if you want to surrender. Keep looking into my eyes, until the last moment of your life in this world is over.”
Wells did as he was told, and while chaos reigned beyond the alleyway, he submerged himself in his executioner’s eyes, where two eight-pointed stars shone with an increasingly blinding light before they finally exploded, shooting past him, expanding into infinity and breaking up into the millions of galaxies in a universe. Wells saw all the stars die, and he saw the most absolute darkness envelop the world. He saw a vanishing civilization curled up around the frozen embers of a black hole, waiting to escape its deadly fate, and he saw the face of Chaos and understood why his death was justified and necessary. He discovered that the Executioner felt guilt, and although he was unable to utter a word, Wells tried to tell him he forgave him, and he knew that his killer had heard him, and that in that instant of absolute communication each belonged to the other, and they were both overwhelmed by the ecstasy of the Supreme Knowledge. Despite the intensity of that final thought, Wells managed to keep staring into the eyes of his executioner until the last moment of his life in this world came to an end.
At the precise moment in which Observer Wells saw his twin expire, he opened his eyes and desperately gulped air into his lungs. His heart was hammering so hard against his chest he thought it would bore a hole through it, and his back was bathed in a cold sweat. Glancing about, wild-eyed, he discovered Jane kneeling beside him with a worried look on her face.
“They succeeded, my dear.” His voice was a faint whisper. She looked at him, confused. “They are here, they are here . . .”
“Who?”
Wells slumped back into his chair.
“The twin I connected with this evening . . . he met someone from our world.”
“Someone from our world is here!” exclaimed Jane.
“Well, actually, not so much as someone—something . . . I mean, not a human, but not an automaton either. And . . . it killed my twin.”
Jane looked at him, aghast.
“Good Lord, Bertie. But . . . why?”
“Because that is his job,” sighed Wells. “Because that is why the Scientists from the Other Side created him: to exterminate all those infected with the virus. There are hundreds like him throughout the different worlds. They call themselves Executioners, and their mission is to detect the molecular trails left by cronotemics, hunt them down, and kill them.”
Jane raised her hands to her mouth to stifle a cry. Wells waited a few seconds for her to absorb the information before continuing.
“They classify cronotemics according to how infectious they are, and they call them Destructors: level 1 Destructors, level 2 Destructors, and so on . . . Destructors, Jane! Do you realize what that means? Cronotemics are destroying the universe!”
Jane nodded, increasingly pale. Her husband ran a trembling hand over his face as he tried to order the jumble of images the Executioner had transmitted to him through his dying twin, but it wasn’t easy to express in words the thoughts of a creature that wasn’t human. How could he begin to describe that madness? Begin at the beginning, then carry on until you reach the end, he told himself, harking back to the words of his old friend Dodgson all those years ago. And so he began at the beginning . . .
After the Wellses’ mysterious disappearance, scientists of that and subsequent generations had continued to do research. But it would be hundreds of years before they achieved any notable results. And perhaps hundreds of years too late. Just as the Wellses had always suspected, their old world was moving at a faster pace than their adopted world, and the stars on the Other Side had already started to die, heralding the Dark Era. Time was running out, and in the distant future in which their world found itself, Chaos was imminent. That was why, when the Scientists succeeded in opening and stabilizing a magic hole, everyone understood that this was their final hope: they had used up their last reserves of strength on that achievement; they were exhausted, dying, and hadn’t the energy needed to open another. And so they were relieved and delighted to find out that the tunnel led them straight into a young world during the Stelliferous Age, a world made up of infinite parallel worlds, many of which were capable of accommodating a homeless civilization. The same multiverse, the same theater with its infinite stages, that they, the Wellses, had ended up in. But, alas, when the Scientists began to scrutinize that multiverse in preparation for the Great Exodus, to their horror they discovered that it was desperately ill.