The Pocket and the Pendant: Summary - What Has Gone Before by Mark Jeffrey

In the THE POCKET AND THE PENDANT, we meet young Max Quick, an orphan with no idea of his parentage. After a bizarre encounter with a dark, pock-marked man and an old woman named Petunia who says Max ‘saved her’ in 1912, he finds himself suddenly alone in a world where time has stopped – except for himself. But he quickly discovers shy and withdrawn Casey Cole, a girl who, like himself, is unaffected. Together, they discover the rules of this ‘time pocket’: movements are amplified, giving them a kind of super speed and strength – but without invulnerability. Everyday objects can be coaxed into their timeframe; yet people cannot.

Seeing that their hometown of Starland, CA is utterly lost to this strangeness, the pair heads east. It isn’t long before they encounter a town with eerie signs of others free in stopped time: a man painted green from head to toe; people with wigs on, etc. Without warning, they are chased by a gang of kids in motocross gear. Max and Casey struggle to master the terrific speeds at which they can now run; but their pursuers zip up and down the sides of buildings with ease. Max and Casey turn a corner into a large flock of birds, time-frozen taking off. They desperately struggle up and over the flock, only to enter a thick patch of time-sluggish fog, which leaves a tunnel in their wake. They attempt to circle back, but are caught.

The duo is brought to a bonfire ‘court’ headed by Ace, the leader of the ‘Serpents and Mermaids’ gang, and his girlfriend, Sasha Fwa. There, they learn that a whole year has passed for these two-hundred odd kids. When Max suggests they ought to be searching for the cause of the Pocket rather than partying, Ace has them thrown in the town jail.

Later that night, Ian Keating, a brainy British kid sneaks a visit. Ian shows them video of strange craft in the sky. These craft, always coming from the east, are causing the Pocket, he theorizes. This also explains why ‘time is slower’ the further east one goes: it is emanating from that direction. Fed up with Ace’s reckless bonfires, Ian wants to leave with Max and Casey. He proposes doing so with an ancient ‘quantum Book’ he has discovered in his exploration of surrounding towns. Not only does this Book depict the sky crafts accurately – calling the Sky Chambers – but it allows transport to other Books like it spread out all over the world. The Book, the Sky Chambers and the Pocket are somehow all linked. Trusting now in Ian, the three enter the Book and exit in study.

They examine several Books. In one, there is a well; Casey recklessly tosses a penny into it through the page itself. Then, Ian inadvertently gets trapped inside one of the Books. Max and Casey see in the pages that he will be devoured by wolves; it is Casey who finally breaks through her inner shell to discover how to save him. But they learn that ‘the tyranny of the page is absolute’: anything shown in the pages, must indeed come to pass. Thus, even though Ian escaped for now, it seems he is eventually destined to return to meet his fate.

Traveling now through another Book, the trio arrives in Texas. There, they find a deserted farmhouse containing pictures of Max stretching back to the 1930’s. Max ‘remembers’ the house dimly, and for the first time gets an inkling that he is far older then he thought – and that his true memory has been hidden from him. Likewise, Max finds a diary chronicling his quest in the 1960’s for a certain ‘Mr. E.’ who can reveal his secrets to him. But a Sky Chamber suddenly approaches; the trio hides and witnesses the same pock-marked man Max saw in Starland emerge. Finding nothing, the craft departs, leaving Max shaken and wondering who he really is.

The trio makes their way to New York City, ground zero of the Pocket. There they learn that time has indeed been stopped by denizens of the Sky Chambers littering Central Park – human-looking ‘aliens’ from a hidden planet called Nibiru located at the far reaches of the solar system. Led by a madwoman named Jadeth, they have stopped time to search for the Pendant, a periapt hidden on earth in antiquity. Furthermore, the Serpents and Mermaids have now all been captured.

In their panic, the trio is likewise spotted and apprehended. The pock-marked man – now revealed as Jonathan Roseblood Cyranus – tries to probe Max’s mind with a powerful jewel, seeking the location of the Pendant. But Max’s amnesia protects him and Cyranus is foiled. Yet they learn that Cyranus is playing Jadeth, trying to acquire the Pendant himself and ransom it to Jadeth for immortality.

Locked up now inside a Sky Chamber, the trio is confronted by Ace and Sasha, who have escaped. Ace knocks Ian around for his ‘treachery’ and shows him the Book, which he has stolen back from Cyranus. Ian frantically warns Ace not to enter the Book to escape; Ace does anyway (Sasha refuses to come with him), and thus Ace fulfils the destiny of someone being eaten by the wolves.

Then Sasha reveals that she overheard Cyranus describe the secret of finding Mr. E via ‘the last page in the Book’. The foursome enter the last page, and meet the wily and eccentric Mr. E at the eldritch ‘Isle of the Dreamtime’. There, Mr. E reveals to Max that he is not human: he is Niburian, and he is thus thousands of years old. Furthermore, Max’s amnesia functions to hide a great secret: every time his mind is opened, Max himself demands his amnesia be re-imposed. (Even Mr. E does not know what this secret is.)

The other children are likewise special, sharing genetic heritage with this Niburian race, which is remembered by humans as the gods of antiquity. This is why they are unaffected by the Pocket. Mr. E reveals that he himself is a merely a hologram left behind by ‘the real Enki’ and cannot leave the Isle or ‘the realm of Books’.

He explains that Jadeth is on earth to recover the Pendant: a device created by Enki to nullify free will. She hopes to enslave humanity with it and conquer Nibiru. Enki was forced to create this device: it appeared to be ‘the only way out of a jam’. But Enki wishes now that he hadn’t: denying the free will of others is the ultimate evil, a point Mr. E drives home.

To the consternation of Jadeth, Enki has hidden the Pendant ‘perfectly’ and Mr. E reveals to Max that he must now recover it before Jadeth as he was ‘meant to’. The location, beneath a Loch in Scotland, is revealed to Ian, and bracelets given to the foursome to enter a ‘Pocket within the Pocket’. Then, strange enemies of Mr. E he names ‘the Archons’ attack the Isle as a giant murder of ‘crows’; the foursome quickly departs while Mr. E endures a siege and his fate is unknown.

They emerge from the Book, and thanks to their bracelets, the Niburians are now the ones trapped in stopped time. After an incident where Sasha loses her bracelet, the foursome steals a Sky Chamber and head for the depths of the Loch.

Entering an ancient underwater pyramid, the foursome finds a sort of Book engraved on the wall, showing Max recovering the Pendant – and handing it to Jadeth! Casey is struck with despair, Max with disbelief. They continue and find Arches leading to different times and places. Then, the real Enki appears in one from thousands of years ago, handing the Pendant directly to Max across Time, thus safeguarding it perfectly in the intervening years. But then Cyranus shows up, wearing Sasha’s lost bracelet; holding a knife to Casey’s throat and demanding the Pendant.

At that moment, Max and the old woman, Petunia, as a young girl from 1912 appear and deliver a past-Cyranus drugged with absinthe through another Arch. Ian quickly puts a dagger at past-Cyranus’ throat. But Cyranus reveals that he is actually Casey’s father and thus killing his past self – if it were possible – would simply kill her as well.

Yet Jadeth has followed Cyranus. She and her centurions now fill the pyramid, surrounding them all. She takes Casey from Cyranus and appeals to her in a way that speaks to her; Casey despairs and sides with Jadeth. Cyranus, seeing this and his old self, is at last ashamed of his obsession with immortality and how his daughter is becoming like him. He defies Jadeth and is killed. Casey, seeing this sacrifice, snaps out of her despair and rejoins the foursome.

Holding the Pendant, Max is faced with the choice of wielding it himself or handing it over. Remembering what Mr. E said about evil, even if it appears the only way out of a jam, Max decides it is actually better to hand it over. Everyone gasps; Jadeth accepts the Pendant and madly begins her takeover: people around the world obey summons to enter Sky Chambers; her victory is complete. Now that the children are unimportant, she has them thrown in a cell.

Hopeless and defeated, they sag, though Max knows he did the right thing. At that moment, Mr. E appears in the cell, jubilant. The foursome are perplexed; then Ian suddenly realizes that Mr. E cannot ‘leave the realm of Books’ – and figures it out: they have been in a Book the entire time! They entered it unknowingly at the Pyramid itself, and lured Cyranus and Jadeth in behind them. Mr. E then reveals that the Pendant is actually a trap designed by Enki, a safeguard against someone who has already lost their own free will to obsession. Anyone who lusts for the Pendant is sucked into this trap. He needed Max’s help to lure Jadeth the rest of the way into the trap; and besides, Max was ‘fated’ to receive the Pendant as Enki had known since antiquity (since he handed to Pendant through the Arch on his end long ago).

A ‘cleanup’ of earth ensues: Mr. E has summoned allies from Nibiru to assist and set the mess aright; Max, Casey, Ian and Sasha are returned to their normal lives, a bit more grown-up and confident now. Time is re-started and the world returns to normal, none the wiser. Max learns via a real-world ‘assistant’ of Mr. E’s (Domitian Crux) of a fortune he has amassed over hundreds of years, and it is made available to him. But Max still doesn’t know his secret, what has become of the ‘real Enki’, or who the mysterious ‘Archons’ are who attacked Mr. E…

The story is continued in Max Quick Book Two: The Two Travelers