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Authors: Robert Kroese
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nevertheless completely true. And that wasn’t all. Cody believed that she had discovered the true purpose of the tunnels.
According to her notes, the tunnels were part of something called a Chrono-Collider Device, which had been built by an occult organization known as the Order of the Pillars of Babylon. The OPB—spearheaded by billionaire Horace Finch—had intended to use the CCD to unearth the most profound mysteries of the cosmos, thereby asserting their dominance over time and space. The OPB had been founded thousands of years ago in the wake of Tiamat’s own failed attempts to exert control over the time-space continuum. It was unclear from Cody’s notes what Tiamat’s current relationship to the OPB was. Was she now its leader?
Besides the Sumerian scrawlings and Cody’s ramblings, there was one other file on the drive, modestly titled “Supplemental Information.” Eddie opened it and was stunned at what he found. The document was an encyclopedic accounting of virtually everything that had happened over the past three days, from Eddie’s encounter with Wanda Kwan in Cork to the implosion of the moon. It was hundreds of pages long. Eddie spent the next six hours poring through the document, barely taking time to blink.
“Unbelievable,” he gasped as he read of the existence of a second Chrono-Collider Device underneath Eden II, Horace Finch’s vanity project in Kenya. That lunatic Finch had nearly destroyed the world with his scheme to use the CCD to trap mysterious subatomic particles called chrotons. The receptacle he was planning to use to store the chrotons was an anti-bomb—a millennia-old glass apple that Christine Temetri had found hidden in a cave. The anti-bomb would have killed everyone on Earth if he had succeeded. Fortunately, Jacob Slater had sabotaged the CCD and stolen the apple, and Mercury flew it to the moon before it went off.
Eddie got to the end of the document and cursed under his breath. “Damn it,” he muttered. “Where’s the ending? What happened to Mercury after the implosion?” There was nothing worse than a cliff-hanger.
But then Eddie realized the reason for the cliff-hanger: the ending hadn’t happened yet. As Cain said, the levels of reality were converging on each other. Cain had told Eddie that it was Eddie’s job to write the story, but as the ending approached, events were occurring almost as fast as they could be recorded. And when Eddie got to the very end, that would mean the end in real life as well. The Sumerian myth, the fictional story of Charlie Nyx, and the story of reality itself would all collapse into a sort of chronological and narrative singularity.
It wasn’t completely clear to him whether his writing the story would cause the world to end, or if the impending end of the world was causing him to write it. Cain/Culain had laughed at the very notion of causality. To him, time was just a series of random events occurring in succession. And yet, he had insisted that Eddie
had
to write the story; that it was his
destiny
. Was his insistence due to a belief that Eddie’s book would bring about the endof the world? Or was Cain, too, simply playing a part in a drama that had already been written? In that case, Cain’s actions became a self-fulfilling prophecy: he was telling Eddie to write the story because it was Cain’s destiny to tell Eddie to write the story.
But what if Eddie didn’t write the story? What if he didn’t feel like being part of the end of everything? After all, it was his life. Didn’t he have any say in the matter? What right did that jerk Cain have to tell him what to do?
But it wasn’t just Cain. He could feel that there was more to this than the ravings of a man driven mad by the inexorable succession of days. Even Cody had known it.
It comes down to you, Eddie! You’re the author of the seventh book!
Eddie had gotten her killed. She died because she had tried to tell him something. Something about Wormwood.
Eddie
According to her notes, the tunnels were part of something called a Chrono-Collider Device, which had been built by an occult organization known as the Order of the Pillars of Babylon. The OPB—spearheaded by billionaire Horace Finch—had intended to use the CCD to unearth the most profound mysteries of the cosmos, thereby asserting their dominance over time and space. The OPB had been founded thousands of years ago in the wake of Tiamat’s own failed attempts to exert control over the time-space continuum. It was unclear from Cody’s notes what Tiamat’s current relationship to the OPB was. Was she now its leader?
Besides the Sumerian scrawlings and Cody’s ramblings, there was one other file on the drive, modestly titled “Supplemental Information.” Eddie opened it and was stunned at what he found. The document was an encyclopedic accounting of virtually everything that had happened over the past three days, from Eddie’s encounter with Wanda Kwan in Cork to the implosion of the moon. It was hundreds of pages long. Eddie spent the next six hours poring through the document, barely taking time to blink.
“Unbelievable,” he gasped as he read of the existence of a second Chrono-Collider Device underneath Eden II, Horace Finch’s vanity project in Kenya. That lunatic Finch had nearly destroyed the world with his scheme to use the CCD to trap mysterious subatomic particles called chrotons. The receptacle he was planning to use to store the chrotons was an anti-bomb—a millennia-old glass apple that Christine Temetri had found hidden in a cave. The anti-bomb would have killed everyone on Earth if he had succeeded. Fortunately, Jacob Slater had sabotaged the CCD and stolen the apple, and Mercury flew it to the moon before it went off.
Eddie got to the end of the document and cursed under his breath. “Damn it,” he muttered. “Where’s the ending? What happened to Mercury after the implosion?” There was nothing worse than a cliff-hanger.
But then Eddie realized the reason for the cliff-hanger: the ending hadn’t happened yet. As Cain said, the levels of reality were converging on each other. Cain had told Eddie that it was Eddie’s job to write the story, but as the ending approached, events were occurring almost as fast as they could be recorded. And when Eddie got to the very end, that would mean the end in real life as well. The Sumerian myth, the fictional story of Charlie Nyx, and the story of reality itself would all collapse into a sort of chronological and narrative singularity.
It wasn’t completely clear to him whether his writing the story would cause the world to end, or if the impending end of the world was causing him to write it. Cain/Culain had laughed at the very notion of causality. To him, time was just a series of random events occurring in succession. And yet, he had insisted that Eddie
had
to write the story; that it was his
destiny
. Was his insistence due to a belief that Eddie’s book would bring about the endof the world? Or was Cain, too, simply playing a part in a drama that had already been written? In that case, Cain’s actions became a self-fulfilling prophecy: he was telling Eddie to write the story because it was Cain’s destiny to tell Eddie to write the story.
But what if Eddie didn’t write the story? What if he didn’t feel like being part of the end of everything? After all, it was his life. Didn’t he have any say in the matter? What right did that jerk Cain have to tell him what to do?
But it wasn’t just Cain. He could feel that there was more to this than the ravings of a man driven mad by the inexorable succession of days. Even Cody had known it.
It comes down to you, Eddie! You’re the author of the seventh book!
Eddie had gotten her killed. She died because she had tried to tell him something. Something about Wormwood.
Eddie
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