The Universe Wide Web: Getting Started

By Simon J. Morley

Having discovered the secret code that his father had been the keeper of, Jack finds himself fraught with peril. Threatened by those who would use the code for evil, Jack is forced to make allies in an unlikely place and defend himself, and the code in a battle that could very well be his last.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writer's Edge Publishing
• Release date: Jul 16, 2015

Book preview

The Universe Wide Web

Getting Started

By: Simon J. Morley

Edited, Produced, and Published by Writer’s Edge Publishing 2015

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

© 2015 by Simon J Morley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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Prologue

On the far side of the universe, millions of light years from Earth, a pilot manoeuvred a heavily armoured, single-seat spacecraft into position. The craft was at the head of a small squadron of similar fighting vessels and was leading them on a mission that would affect civilisations across the universe. If they succeeded, the major civilisations could carry on living in relative peace. If they failed… the pilot didn't know the full consequences, only that they would be bad—very bad, indeed.

But he didn't want to dwell on failure. Instead, he let his mind wander briefly over the astonishing adventure that had led him, thirteen-year-old Jack Smart of Epsom, planet Earth, to be leading such a vital mission. He remembered how it had all started….

Chapter 1

Jack, please stop that whistling and go do something useful for once. Try creating some space in that back room for me; it's full of junk. Jack's mum’s voice cracked as she said junk.

Jack stopped whistling and looked up from his iPhone. His mum’s outburst was sudden, though not particularly unusual. Jack knew his absent-minded whistling was annoying; it was an unfortunate habit he’d shared with his late father.

I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't mean ‘junk.’ His mum corrected herself and blushed slightly, knowing she was being prickly again. It’s Dad’s old stuff, I know. Please, just go and tidy it up.

It was Thursday evening in the last week before the half-term break, and both Jack and his mum—like everyone at the end of term—were feeling a little tired and irritable. There was nothing on television that Jack wanted to watch, and he had done all his homework. The incessant rain, which had been constant for the last week, didn’t help, and worst of all, Jack’s X-box wasn't working. All in all, he decided he may as well do as his mother asked and tidy up his father’s belongings.

Jack felt for his mum. She hadn’t been coping well since his father’s accident. She hadn't been able to set foot in his father’s study since his funeral. Jack guessed she hoped he would tidy up the study and sort out his father’s things before she was forced to confront the difficult task of deciding what to do with it all.

He briefly dwelt on the thought that, as the wife of an astrophysics professor, his mum’s use of the phrase make some space seemed a little ironic, but under the circumstances, he could forgive her.

As he headed off down the hall to his father’s old study, he wondered how different it would be if his father were still here. Then he recalled how little he saw of his father even when he was alive; he had always been engrossed in his work, even through the summer holidays. Every evening and most weekends, he would lock himself away from the family, occupying himself in what he called important work.

It’s not so important now, is it? Jack said to himself, surprised at his own bitterness. He would have liked to have spent more time with his father. He felt a lump in his throat and pursed his lips to keep back the tears. He’d often had to fight his tears in the six months since the accident and had gotten quite good at it by now.

He concluded that it was time to do a proper clear out of his father’s study. It would help his mum and might do him some good too.

The study room used to be quite pleasant but over the last few months had become musty, full of dust, cobwebs and stale air. It had a large window at one end overlooking the back garden. By this window was the old desk where his father had spent hours working on those special projects of his.

On the desk was a photograph of them all on their last holiday together, nearly two years ago. Jack picked it up. He’d always seen himself as being a slight oddity in the family; his father and sister were both tall and dark, and his mother was small and mousey. He, on the other hand, was of medium height for his age with striking white-blonde curly hair. It was a legacy from his grandfather, his mother always claimed, though his grandfather had been bald for as long as Jack could remember. Whatever the reason for it, Jack was very proud of his distinctive hair. People always knew and remembered him by it.

Next to the family photograph was his father’s most prized possession: a photograph of Arsenal Football Club’s Cup Final winning team from 1998—the one and only time his father had been to Wembley—and his father’s ticket from the game. Jack hadn't been born when that game was played, yet he felt he knew it better than anyone after the number of times his father had talked him through how we did it. He loved hearing the story, though it was a good few years since his father had bothered telling it.

By one wall was a scruffy old sofa in which his father had loved to sit and read. By the other wall were a set of cupboards, a bookcase, and his great-aunt’s grandfather clock, which his father had been fond of since he'd inherited it a few years back. The clock had stopped some time ago; no one had bothered with it since his father had gone. Jack decided to wind it up and get it going again. He liked the way it brought the room back to life, the steady tick and occasional chime. He’d once said to his father that it sounded like Big Ben; his father had laughed and nicknamed it Small Ben.

The desk, complete with matching swivel chair, had been rescued from that same great-aunt. Both desk and chair were faded, worn and scruffy, but he knew how much his father had loved working at them. He sat in the chair and spun around slowly, contemplating the room and his task of clearing it up. Without thinking, he started to whistle quietly to himself again. He could almost feel his father’s presence as he slowly turned and surveyed the room.

He stopped as he caught sight of the computer; there were a couple of wires leading out the back of it, but something about them seemed odd. He leant over the top of the screen and looked. There was a lead to the printer and the internet connection to the broadband point in the wall, but what were the two red wires for? He reached over and followed them with his fingers. They led down the back of the desk, across the floor and into a closed cupboard. Jack had never looked in that cupboard before. He'd never thought to; it was just a cupboard where his father kept his work.

He tried the door; it was locked. Strange, he thought, why would Dad lock the cupboard? There isn’t anything valuable here, is there? He looked around the desk to see if there was a key. He looked in the penholder and the pull-out pen tray, but there were only old paperclips and chewed biros in there. He opened the top drawer and shuffled through the papers and files to see if there was anything in there but found nothing useful there either. He felt slightly annoyed. Why would his father lock the cupboard? He kept anything valuable for his work at university, and anything valuable for home he locked away in a little safe-box under his bed. What had he locked away here?

Jack ran his fingers along the underside of the desktop. Nothing there either. Maybe his father had kept the key somewhere else, and it had gotten lost amongst his other things.

As he sat back to contemplate where his father might have put the key, his hand fell to the side of the chair where the leather and wood met and there was a slight slit in the join. He idly ran his fingers along it. Suddenly, he felt something under the leather. He sat up and started to feel properly. He poked his finger into the slit and felt something with his fingertip. He pushed his finger in further and hooked it around whatever it was. Slowly he eased it out of the slit and held it up – a key! The key, he guessed. He smiled to himself. Well, well, here it is. Let's see what's hidden in the cupboard.

He went to the cupboard, put the key in the lock and turned it. He pulled the door back. The cupboard was full of papers—neat, tidy files. His father had never been that neat and tidy normally, but here in this cupboard, he had kept everything organized and labelled. Jack looked at the labels: Resonance, Duality, Uni-web. He had no idea what they meant.

There was a small ornamental box with about a dozen coloured, metallic beads in it. He picked up a few and found them surprisingly heavy, as if made of lead or a similar metal, all highly decorated in intricate patterns and colours.

Even more interesting was a collection of objects, half-hidden at the back of the middle shelf and neatly laid out on a metal tray. There was some kind of clock, an old watch and a curious metal ring about the size of a wristband. There were wires connecting these objects, and the two red wires from the computer were attached to the wristband. Lying next to them, but not connected, was a small earpiece.

As he pulled the tray out of the cupboard, he recognised the watch. It was an old luminous sports watch he had bought at a local car boot fair. He was amazed to find it here as he thought he’d lost it a couple of years ago. It had meant a lot to him. They didn't make them like that anymore; his father said that was because of the radioactive chemicals they used to make them luminous. He had been very proud of it and particularly liked wearing it under the bed clothes at night, seeing the face light up. For some reason, his father had removed the glass cover from the watch face and attached two wires to the luminous dial with putty, which was odd.

He couldn't believe his father had taken it. Why on earth would he do that? He bit his trembling lip. Had his father really stolen one of his favourite items? Why would he do that and not tell him? A tear came into Jack's eye; he wiped it away quickly and scolded himself.

Jack picked up the metal ring carefully so that the wires attached to the end didn't come away. Despite being made of metal, the ring was much lighter than he’d expected—and warmer, too. He was sure it was humming slightly. He uncurled it and realised that, by giving it a twist, he could lock it into a straight position, almost like a weapon or handle. He twisted it back, unlocking it from the straight position, and noticed that each end had clips that clicked together, just like a wristband.

He also recognised the clock. It was an old quartz clock his father had brought back from his office one day. He remembered it because, as his father had carried it into the hall, Jack had sped down the stairs too fast and bumped into him, knocking the clock to the floor. It hadn't broken, landing on a soft rug, but his father had gotten very angry with him, calling him a little hooligan, which had seemed very unfair to Jack at the time.

So why were these curious objects wired together and connected to the computer? Jack reached across and flicked the computer on. It dawned on him that they hadn't used this computer since the accident. He and his sister Stella had their own, which they used upstairs, and his mum hated computers. His father had most of his work files on a laptop supplied by his university; this was just the computer his father used for his special project.

Jack sat up and started to look more closely at the computer. Why hadn't it occurred to him before? He knew his father had been working on some research project of his own, not a university project, and nobody had thought to look into it.

Jack was bright for a thirteen-year-old and had a natural enthusiasm for some of the basic elements of his father’s work. Having an astronomer for a father, he knew more than most kids his age about planets, the solar system and stars. But he also knew that much of what his father worked on was theoretical and involved very complex maths, and he hadn't really been much interested in that—at least not yet. So he didn't know what to expect on the computer, but he guessed a lot of it would be beyond him.

The computer finished starting up. He looked at the desktop screen; there were various icons, some of which he recognised. He started at the My Documents folder.

His father was methodical, even if the state of his study didn't necessarily suggest it, and this was borne out by the vast number of folders and sub-folders he used to file everything. There was one particular folder marked Private Projects that caught Jack’s attention. He clicked it open. Inside were another ten or so sub-folders with titles such as Curving Time, Intra-space Jump, Code Decipher, Red and Big Blue. He idly glanced down these various folders until he got to the bottom of the list, where there was a folder entitled Uni-web, just like the file in the cupboard. He clicked through.

There was nothing in there except a programme called UW hyper-link. Jack clicked on it. Nothing happened. He clicked a few more times, and again, nothing happened. He moved the cursor away to look into other folders.

He wasn't sure what he expected to find on the computer, but he didn't have the heart to spend hours trying to make sense of it right now. He turned back to the wired-up objects. He looked at his watch and suddenly felt angry that his father had stolen it. He picked it up; the glass watch face was lying next to it. He pulled out the wires, scraped off the putty and put the glass face back on. Whatever his father had thought he needed it for, he certainly didn't need it now. Jack put the watch back on his wrist, reset the time and wound it up.

It was nagging him, though. Why were these objects wired together? As he sat contemplating what his father had been doing here, he picked up the earpiece and put it in his ear. There was no sound; he didn't really expect there would be. He picked up the metal wristband again; it too had wires attached by putty. He pulled them out and scraped off the putty. While thinking things through, he idly put the wristband on.

Immediately, Jack sensed strange images forming in his mind. He shook his head, as if he was shaking away a fly. But the images were still there. They weren’t quite visual, more like a sensation or feeling, and there were dozens of them, flitting across his mind. He felt like he could move from image to image as if flicking through the photo album on his iPhone.

He stopped at one particular image that seemed to grab his attention. As he focused on it, he had a feeling of energy, of people, of vibrancy and excitement. He concentrated hard, trying to make some sense of it, and became intensely aware of a huge room or hall full of colour and noise.

Something clicked in his mind. He became aware that a swirling disc of multi-coloured lights had formed in front of him, here in his father’s study, fully two metres in height. Jack stood up and stepped towards the disc. As he did so, transfixed by the lights, his foot caught on one of the spokes of the swivel chair base, and he fell forward towards the disc. He instinctively put his hand out in front of himself to prevent crashing into it, but his hand merely went straight through the disc, and he lost his balance completely. To his astonishment, he fell through the disc. Momentarily, everything went dark.

Jack crashed onto his outstretched hand as he landed on the floor, his wrist jarred by the fall. As he rolled over, he was aware of being in bright light. He lay on his side, rubbing his injured wrist around the metal wristband he was wearing.

You alright, friend? a voice spoke.

Jack jumped to his feet. Who had come into the room?

Jack’s heart missed a beat. Not only was he no longer in his father’s study at home, but a wasp-like creature, fully a metre across, was hovering nearby, looking at him.

Jack’s instinct was to run, but he heard the voice again, and it was clearly coming from the wasp.

You alright? the wasp repeated, its tone one of genuine concern.

S...s...sure, Jack stammered in reply, his heart beating like a drum.

Okay, well, take care, the wasp said and turned and flew slowly away.

Jack stood, open-mouthed, looking around. He was in a vast, brightly lit hall. All around him, he could see dozens if not hundreds of creatures of every type and description, all milling around.

Something brushed his arm.

Sorry, my friend. A large bird, like a kiwi but standing two metres tall, had accidentally bumped Jack’s arm as it walked past and had turned and apologised before moving off.

Jack didn’t reply; he just stared around in astonishment, frozen to the spot, transfixed by the sights in front of him. From where he stood, which seemed to be some central lobby, Jack could see hallways heading off in all directions, each one disappearing into the distance, crammed with a multitude of creatures—it looked to Jack like everyone was buying or selling things.

He looked upwards; the building must have had perhaps a dozen or more storeys, each one with a balcony overlooking the central lobby, and he could see yet more traders on the storeys above. Each storey was separated by a translucent floor. It was like standing under a huge kaleidoscope.

The noise was astonishing! All around him, Jack could hear every type of grunt, squeak, click, whistle, chirrup and growl that he had ever heard at a zoo—and many more besides—blended into a constant commotion, booming around the hall.

He noticed a mixture of aromas in the air. All the creatures that walked past Jack—none of which took any notice of him—had distinctive smells and distinctive noises, he realised. Yet somehow he could understand what each was saying. He remembered the earpiece he had put in whilst sitting at his father’s desk—the voices were actually coming through it.

Who are you? You're not Rich, hissed a voice behind him.

Jack spun around, startled. Somebody or something had come up behind him without him noticing. He turned to see a tall, dark, hooded figure looking down at him. He couldn't make out the creature’s face under the hood. A surge of adrenalin swept through Jack's body.

I’m sorry? he said uncertainly, his voice quivering as he tried to be polite, though he actually felt quite scared.

Where's Rich? asked the creature. Its voice seemed to have a strange guttural echo with it.

You mean my father, Richard? He was alarmed that this stranger should know his father's name.

Your father? The creature sounded surprised at this. We've been trying to make contact for months. Where is he? The voice changed from urgent to almost menacing.

Who are you? Jack asked, his mind spinning.

I need to talk to Rich. It's urgent; his life may be in danger. The creature moved towards Jack.

Danger from what? Who are you? Jack stepped backwards and banged against an entrance wall of one of the corridors. He thought about running but didn’t know where he would run to.

The stranger asked again. Please. Where is Rich? It is vital I speak to him. The menace in its voice had subsided to more of a plea.

He's had an accident. You can't see him, Jack replied, trying to cover his growing fear.

What sort of accident? Is he hurt? The stranger was now standing right in front of him, towering over him. I need to know, Son of Rich; it is very important. And with that, he pulled his hood back.

Underneath the hood, the stranger’s head was that of a reptile, like a lizard, or more specifically a chameleon. He had silver-green scales, piercing white eyes and a most peculiar odour. His tongue was blue and flashed out of his mouth constantly, and his eyes moved independently of each other. Jack’s mouth went dry.

I see you're scared, said the creature, stepping back from him. I am sorry. Don't be frightened; I am a friend of your father’s. We met on the web.

Jack was even more perturbed by this, that his father met strangers on the web. No wonder he spent so much time on his own in his room.

I think I should go and get my mum. She'll want to speak to you if you were a friend of my dad’s. Jack couldn’t think what else to say.

Why do you use your past tense? Has something happened to Rich?

I told you, he had an accident a few months ago. He's dead. Jack felt a tremble on his lips as he said this.

The creature rocked slightly and then settled onto his haunches in a sort of seated position on the floor, clearly deep in thought.

"This is bad. This is very bad, indeed," it said, more to itself than to Jack.

Then it stood up and stepped towards him. Jack tensed.

The creature, towering over him, spoke in a low voice. What about the code?

Jack couldn’t tell from the translation whether this was said with menace or fear. Either way, it was unnerving.

I don’t know about any code. Jack looked around; a few passing creatures were beginning to notice Jack and this being.

The creature stared at him for what seemed like ages and then also looked around, as if suddenly realising they were in a very public place.

It turned away from Jack, and, as it did so, one of the swirling discs of multi-coloured lights, like the one Jack had fallen through a moment ago, appeared in front of it. The creature moved towards the disc, stepped into it and disappeared. A second later, the disc collapsed into itself and vanished.

Jack was scared now. Where was he? How did he get here? How would he get home, and why did that weird creature find him and ask about his father? He sat down by the wall for a moment, trying to get his senses back. As he did, he became aware of the images in his mind, the ones he had first noticed just before the swirling disc had appeared in his father’s study.

As he focused on these images, one drew his attention more than the others. He concentrated on it. A wonderful sensation of home flooded through him—a wave of safety and comfort—and he focused hard on it. Then something went click, and another swirling disc appeared in front of him. Jack looked around. He noticed that swirling discs appeared quite often in this hall. He also saw creatures stepping into or out of the discs all the time, quite casually, just as the lizard creature had done.

There was nothing else Jack could think of to do than step through this disc, so he held his breath and did so, his eyes shut tight.

The noises of the hall suddenly went quiet. Jack was in total silence except for a familiar sound—that of his father’s clock ticking away. He opened his eyes and, to his massive relief, found himself back in his father’s study.

Chapter 2

Jack stood, looking around in a state of some confusion. What had just happened? Somehow, he had just been into a room full of huge, weird creatures, and he’d spoken to some of them. One of them even knew his father!

He thought about running to tell his mum, but he knew that wouldn't be any use; she was in no fit state to handle normal things at the moment, never mind the bizarre.

The multi-coloured disc had gone now; Jack studied the ground where it had been, hoping for a clue.

Jack, what in god's name are you doing?

He spun around at the sound of his sister's voice. Stella, fifteen and very grown up, was standing by the door, staring at him with a face as stern as any adult’s.

How long have you been here?

Long enough. Where did you go? Stella replied in her most uncompromising voice. Stella didn't take too kindly to people fooling around.

I honestly have no idea what just happened. I swear, Stella. I was looking through Dad’s things—Mum asked me to tidy up in here—and suddenly that disc thing appeared from nowhere. Then I fell through it.

I know, I saw. Then you just disappeared for ten minutes. Where did you go?

I don’t know. It was some weird place, full of strange creatures. One of them spoke to me about Dad.

Stella looked at him. You need to sit down; I think you must have got a bump on your head.

A bump on the head wouldn’t have made me disappear for ten minutes, Jack said, annoyed by Stella’s insinuation that he was making this up.

Stella walked into the room and looked at the floor where the spinning disc had been. Let's not get Mum worried about this yet. We'll keep it to ourselves. Show me what was on Dad’s computer.

Before you look at the computer, Sis, what do you make of this? Jack showed Stella the clock and the wristband and explained how they were wired up to his old watch and the computer. He remembered the earpiece too.

What's it all about?

I've no idea. Stella didn't admit to having no idea very often. She gave