Touched - Order of Odium: Book One

Michelle - 7

The experiments continued like that for a few months. Aleksander and Michelle worked to further the distance she could summon from. Steven was oddly absent during these times, Aleksander only stating that Steven was "working on other experiments" and could not tell her more. Eventually, Michelle was able to summon things from anywhere in the world.

They had also worked on developing her ability to summon a specific item from a specific spot. In one experiment Aleksander had someone put a bunch of papers in a room with various words or sayings on each of them and had Michelle summon the one piece of paper that had the saying "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" printed on it. After a few tries, she was able to complete the experiment.

She had even summoned some gold coins and other items from various historical shipwrecks more than once. One thing that Michelle found strange was that after a while Aleksander began to increasingly ask her to summon various types of weapons. She had assumed that with the technology and the artifacts the Order had stored throughout the Warehouse there would be no need for more weapons, especially human-made ones, when there was surely some sort of artifact that was much more dangerous and better suited for the Order's plans (whatever they were) inside of the Warehouse.

As time passed Michelle thought of John less and less, although she did keep up with her running and weight lifting. What started as a distraction had become something she looked forward to every day. She began to leave her room more to get the various things she wanted or needed, rather than having Andrew, her concierge, get them for her. She was feeling better than she had in a long time, and was even talking to a few guys romantically rather than strictly platonic as she had done for a long time.

Aleksander was scheduled to come to her suite around 0900 to talk about the next steps of their experiments. Like clockwork, he showed up at 0930. The man was always late it seemed.

'Just one more quirk for a man with too many to count'

Michelle opened her door to the ever-smiling Aleksander and invited him inside. They walked to the living room and she sat down on the couch while Aleksander grabbed a chair and place it where he could look at her.

He seemed apprehensive about something, but she was unsure about what. She had never seen him like this. It was a little unnerving.

"Alek, what's up? You don't seem like your usual self."

Aleksander sighed, "You are correct, I am wondering about my higher up plans for our future experiments together. I'm not sure if it is the right time for this kind of thing yet."

"What do you mean 'this kind of thing'? What experiments do they want to do now?"

"Before we get into that, I must explain some things about the who we work for, and what their purpose is. You know that we, 'deal with', so to speak, very rare and strange artifacts here at the Warehouse as the Order calls it. Do you have any idea how they come across these objects?"

Michelle shook her head. "No, I haven't been told much of anything other than what I needed to know about the artifact that I was guarding at the time, and what you have told me during experiments with the box, I mean C-116."

Aleksander sighed, "Okay, well my superiors want to start more extensive experiments, and that requires that you have knowledge not previously given to someone with your security clearance. Due to this, the Order has raised your clearance level based on your time with us and the trustworthiness you have shown."

"Okay..."

"This all may seem hard to grasp at first, or maybe not given the circumstances of the various artifacts that you have seen, but I am not a psychologist so I do not know. To put it simply, there is a multitude of worlds, or dimensions, where the Order acquires these artifacts. Sometimes they appear in our dimension on their own, whether from an experiment with another artifact or through means unknown to us. When an object with anomalous qualities is found somewhere in our world, the Order sends operatives to retrieve it. Other times operatives are sent to other dimensions to look for artifacts that could prove useful to the Order, as well as to gain intelligence about those dimensions."

Michelle was dumbfounded. Although in a small part of her mind she assumed that something like this was possible, to hear it confirmed that there were other dimensions, was staggering. She trusted Alek to tell her the truth, or at least as much truth as he was allowed to, so she believed what he was saying.

"So... How many dimensions are there? How does the Order get there, and how do some artifacts get to our dimension?

"Well," Aleksander said, pausing to think. "It is very difficult to explain without having very advanced knowledge of physics, and a lot of what we currently think we know is purely speculation. We believe there may be an infinite number of dimensions and alternate universes, with the alternate universes very much like ours, and take place in what we know of as "our universe". There are different forms to this, such as parallel universes where some believe that for each decision a person makes, there is a parallel universe where that person choose a different decision, but everything other than that decision and the results of that decision is the same as our world; up until that decision was made. As you know, we all make decisions every day, so if true, there would be countless paralegal universes based around just that one person. If you think of the millions of people alive right now, each one of those people and their multitude of decisions cause a "new" parallel universe to be created with each decision made. Are you understanding so far Michelle?"

"Kinda. I've heard some of those theories before. Are you saying that they're true?"

"Yes and no. We do know that it is extremely probable that is the case, but we have no way of proving the theory is right or wrong. Along with the theory of alternate and parallel universes, there are also theories of an infinite number of alternate dimensions, meaning worlds or universes that are completely unlike ours. Through experimentation, the Order has found out that these theories are very likely true, and we have successfully visited alternate universes and dimensions already. That much we know is true."

"I don't know what to say. This is, sorry for the language, just a little fucking mind-blowing. It's one thing to think of these things as possible, especially given the weird stuff we deal with every day, but to have you say that it's true? That's different." Michelle let her weight fall back against the couch, trying to wrap her head around what she was being told.

Aleksander smiled, "I have told you before Michelle, don't apologize for your language. I will be fine if I hear the word 'fuck', 'shit' or other words, okay?"

"Sorry, you're my superior so it's a habit to try not to cuss around you."

"It is fine. Let's 'get back to business'," Aleksander made air quotes with his fingers. Not knowing when to correctly use "air quotes" was another quirk of his. Michelle smiled to herself.

Aleksander spoke again, "The reason I am telling you this is because we are going to start doing experiments involving someone elsewhere we will have you both go to one of these alternate universes or dimensions."

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