The Man From Taured (35 page)

Whitten eventually set up shop in another town. Things fell into a routine after that. He would find a remote spot, get his equipment set up, try new experiments, hear sounds from other dimensions and almost get a stable portal open, but then it would all fall apart. He rode across the United States and back again and Ezekiel and his people always found him. Humanity advanced, so did the equipment, but the power source was always a problem. He could never find enough power to keep the portal steady.

In that time Whitten discovered that he had stopped aging. His strength and vitality remained as it was. His face grew no more wrinkles and he did not find any more white hairs.

His taste in clothes, meanwhile, rarely changed.

When he felt that he was unable to get anywhere else in the United States he looked toward Europe. It was not a great place to be at that point, with World War I raging and destroying almost an entire generation. However, Whitten soon found passage and places to set up there. It was easier once he got there than he could have imagined. People were too preoccupied with the war to worry about the eccentric man in the barn with the strange noises and blasts of electricity.

Ezekiel tracked him there, too. IDEA had expanded, gone beyond just a group put together by the President. There were too many other people out there in the world making advancements in technology and more and more people were trying to find ways to enter alternate dimensions. So, they turned up even in war torn countries. Their own private war continuing despite politics and world events.

Over time, Whitten's experiments went by the wayside. The Void began seeking out others who might have made more advancements than Whitten. He began seeking them out, offering them advice, giving them tips and suggestions and even help building their equipment. He still spoke to the mirror, but as the Void took greater hold over him mentally, he was able to communicate with it directly just by thinking.

The First World War came and went. Europe rebuilt. Whitten was still running. He spent a couple of years in Asia. He moved through the Middle East. Then, as the 1930s rolled on, a new global superpower began to form and this superpower had an interest in scientific advances. They were in Germany, the same people who had caused so much trouble the first time around.

Whitten made his way to Germany, insinuated himself with top Nazi officials, and began making his way up the chain of command. This time he was going to get the funding and the power he needed. He would have the backing of one of the strongest governments on the planet. He would have unlimited resources and when the war ended, that government would be taken over by the Void and that would lead to the rest of the world.

***

It was a cold November day and Whitten sat in an elaborate office with high-backed leather chairs, a large wooden desk, dark red carpeting and books lining the walls. Walking to this office he had also passed many, many works of art that would have made any museum jealous. He was waiting for the man who used this office almost daily. A strange man that Whitten had watched with alarm in newsreels.

The Void, however, was intrigued. The Void had been talking to him about creating more permanent avatars here in this dimension. It was more and more certain that the Light was favoring this dimension for some reason. It wanted to create offspring, those who would be born part Void and part human. Whitten was hurt because he thought that he was already that kind of hybrid, but the Void wanted someone who would be born that way, raised with those powers and abilities. Pure. Purity seemed to matter a lot to the man he was going to meet.

Void was intrigued by this strange man. This odd man who looked as if he were constantly trying to fight his way out of his own body. This man with the odd mannerisms, crazy look in his eyes, and strange hair. This man with so much charisma and power at his fingertips. This man who wanted to conquer the entire world and bend it to his will.

The Void wanted that man on its side.

The door to the office opened and the strange man walked in. He was accompanied by five advisers and cast a glance toward Whitten as he entered, but then dismissed him. The other men chattered away beside this man in German, talking fast, the strange man nodding, catching all of the words and information flooding him.

Whitten stood there, not wanting to sit until he was told to. Behind him was the mirror covered with a blanket.

The odd-man held up his hand and the advisers stopped talking as if a switch had been thrown. He spoke to them in a soft voice that was completely unlike the shouting-speaking voice the world knew. He spoke with authority, his eyes burning with madness and power. When he was done the advisers all saluted, clicking their heels, and turned and marched back out the door.

The strange man turned toward Whitten and smiled.

Whitten was taken aback. He had never seen the man smile. The strange little mustache twitched. The man put a hand to his head and swept his hair back away from his forehead.

"Hello, Dr. Whitten," the man said in German.

Whitten found that he could not only understand German, but speak it. This had been the case in every country he had been in. He knew the languages instantly. Just one of the benefits of having the Void inside of him.

"Heil, Hitler!" Whitten said and saluted.

The Fuhrer waved his hand. "We are alone, Doctor. I do not wish to be saluted right now. I have heard good things about you. I have heard that you are a man of science and did work with the Americans quite some time ago. I hear you can make weapons and other advancements. I have quite a few plans for the expansion of Germany. I have quite a few plans for cleaning up the people in this country and throughout the world. I would have someone like you working for me."

"I appreciate that my reputation precedes me," Whitten said, with as much humility as he could muster. He even gave a slight bow of his head. "I brought some of my work with me."

Whitten extended his arm to indicate the blanket-covered mirror. The Fuhrer cocked his head to the side and a look of confusion crossed his face. Then that odd smile returned.

"Is this a joke, Dr. Whitten?" Hitler asked. "Surely that is just a mirror."

Whitten laughed. "Well, it may seem that way, but my recent work has shown me that there are many things in this world, in this universe, that are not as they appear. Far from it. Let me show you."

Whitten and the Void had worked this out in advance. The Void would listen in and present the Fuhrer with what it felt was the thing that would get the man's attention. Whitten had no idea what that was or what it meant, but he had long ago learned to trust the Void.

The man who had wanted to be a painter, whose father had died when he was young, who had been raised by a domineering woman, stared at the mirror. That lock of hair fell down over his eye, but this time he did not push it back. His face softened in a strange way. It was if he became younger before Whitten's eyes. Hitler's eyes locked on the mirror and he tilted his head first to one side and then the other. A large smile crossed his face and he even laughed. Then his brow grew furrowed and worried.

"What is this?" the Fuhrer whispered.

Whitten felt the pull himself. The Void had that ability to capture anyone or anything in its orbit. The portal within the mirror had grown more solid, more certain over the years. He had come to think of the oblong thing as a kind of sideways eye, or perhaps a cat's eye. It peered constantly, sometimes weeping black tears, but often just staring.

The Fuhrer crept around the desk, his hands folded strangely and awkwardly in front of him. Whitten felt that this was the Hitler his mother had seen when he was a child. This was the chastened young man that his mother had yelled at, kept locked away, protected from the world.

"This is amazing," Hitler said, his voice hushed.

He was now in front of the mirror, just a few small inches separating them. Whitten looked into the reflection. He saw nothing but the room and Hitler himself, reaching for the reflection. However, he knew that Hitler was seeing something much more.

Hitler was still smiling, hypnotized. He reached his hand out to the reflection, unsure, unsteady, and then his fingertips vanished beyond the surface of the mirror. He gasped and then he laughed again.

Then the blackness came.

It rushed out fast. With the dimensional wall breached, the Void rushed forward, quickly, up Hitler's arm and into his ear. Hitler's eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open, and he looked like a man who had received a nasty electrical shock.

There was a moment when the Fuhrer appeared to be completely gone, his stare was so blank. His hand was still past the surface of the mirror, perhaps touching the air of the Void itself.

Then Hitler shook his head as if clearing out cobwebs. His eyes cleared and refocused. He removed his hand, unconsciously cradling the hand that had been in the mirror with the other. He turned and stared at Whitten.

"Yes," Hitler said. "Yes, you have my full support. We need more of this. We must have this for the Reich. It must be ours. You have as much funding as you need and whatever facilities you need, I will make sure it is provided."

Whitten nodded and bowed again. "Thank you, Mein Fuhrer. Thank you so much!"

Hitler nodded and returned to behind his desk. He kept sneaking furtive and unsure glances back at the mirror. His lips twitched, as if fighting the urge to start laughing uncontrollably. He nodded at Whitten again and then saluted in that strange way of his. Whitten returned it.

"Heil Hitler," Whitten said, this time with less conviction, almost mocking.

He covered the mirror with the blanket. Hitler almost looked disappointed. Whitten saluted again and then grabbed the mirror and walked briskly out of the office.

What had the Void shown Hitler? He had no way of knowing. Perhaps it had filled the Fuhrer's mind with the idea of using the Void as some kind of weapon. Perhaps Hitler's mind had been infused with the idea of a vast portal opening and swallowing entire enemy armies whole. Perhaps he envisioned some kind of gun that would fire beams of black Void substance at the enemy.

Whatever it was, it had been a lie.

The Void lied. It always lied.

It didn't matter. Whitten now had the funding and would soon have a lab that would allow him to continue his experiments. It mattered not whose side he was on because the Void would consume Axis and Allies.

There was this troubling idea of the Void desiring an offspring, though. That would have to come first. He would need to find out if such a thing was possible and what would happen if it were possible. What would these children become?

He would need test subjects. Yes, he would need to expose people directly to the Void to see what happened.

Fortunately, he was in a place that currently had a virtually limitless supply of test subjects.

Whitten moved fast. He was almost giddy by the time he left the building. All around him life went on. Overhead the sky had brightened and was becoming a brilliant blue.

Life was good, even during war time. Soon, the world would tremble, but not from bombs. Not from soldiers and bullets. It would tremble from the Void and then the walls would fall.

***

Years later Whitten stood in his lab. He had been working here for over a year. The place was a camp, a concentration camp, although he often found it hard to concentrate here. However, he had a lot of potential test subjects, so he had learned to live with it. Lots of experiments were done here on live test subjects. Just across the camp was a madman by the name of Mengele, who was obsessed with things like conjoined twins and such.

Whitten had not seen Ezekiel or anyone from IDEA in some time. He guessed it was the war. He was buried so far behind enemy lines that even IDEA couldn't find him. The list of bodies he was leaving behind was rather impressive even by Nazi standards.

Hitler had never been quite the same after the incident with the mirror. He had made many strange decisions that others in the country questioned. Not to the man's face, of course, but there were now doubts. Hitler had invaded Russia, expanding the war to two fronts and violating a treaty he had helped put together. The country was in a dire financial situation to fight a war on two fronts. There had also been an attempt on Hitler's life and many said he was never going to fully recover.

Whitten had not heard from the man again after the day in his office. However, he had been given nearly unlimited funds and plenty of space and no one in Nazi high command had bothered him. It was as if the Void had planted something in their brains that made him almost invisible.

Whitten stood in his lab with a black apron across his torso. He wore goggles over his glasses and rubber gloves over his hands. Beneath that was his white shirt and dapper clothes. A new test subject was due soon. He had little interest about who the subject was or from where. They all came in fearful and then they screamed and then they usually died.

The woman came along, dressed in her shabby camp clothing, guarded on two sides by German guards. She moved slowly, looking from left to right, up and down, unsure of anything and everything and utterly terrified. Whitten always put a smile on his face, and he did so now.