“Here,” Adras spoke in a language Bolt couldn’t recognize, but understood through the mind of the alien. “I have some liquid left. It should be enough to get you out of here.”
The man coughed as his skin absorbed a portion of the hydrating concoction and his lazy–eyes drifted to the people walking past them. “Please don’t,” said the dehydrated man. “Keep what you have, there is not enough strength in this body of mine to continue.”
“Then borrow some of mine,” Adras said and offered a hand to the heavily breathing man.
In a wave of subtle connection, Bolt could sense the relief Adras felt as the person grabbed hold of the hand given in aid.
“No one should die so broken,” Adras said, helping the man to his feet. “We’ll all face what’s out there together, our last stand.”
Invigorated, the man nodded and the two rejoined the march – their escape from the core of the planet.
“Not very wise,” Logos said to him after the man Adras had aided had fallen behind again. “He’ll never make it to the surface. And now neither will you. You need all the liquid you can get, and you cannot get more. How can you be so careless?”
“I don’t need liquid,” Adras said. “We’re almost at the top, he’ll make it. We’ll make it.”
“Bah… you don’t need liquid… my ass you don’t need liquid,” Logos insisted.
“I’ve got you, don’t I? Your dour company alone can keep me alive for weeks,” Adras smiled.
Logos grimaced. “How you can find streaks of humor at a time like this I’ll never know. I’m not sure I even want to,” Logos admitted, the sound of his voice almost going unheard between all the marching boots ahead and behind the two.
“It’s not humor, it’s acceptance, we’ll die on this planet, like our ancestors before us, blown away in the wind like the primordial soup from which they crawled.” Adras found himself not liking the idea despite what he claimed. “I don’t know. Perhaps the thought of helping someone has imbued me with a measure of good cheer. Or perhaps it’s the thought that this nightmare will finally end. Either of the two is fine with me.”
“Bah,” Logos rasped, “I don’t much care for the method of the ending. And I can foresee only one outcome. A violent death. At least here the poor sap you gave your liquid too would have died in peace, maybe even just gone to sleep never to reawaken, instead, you insured he shall die by being slaughtered like the rest of us, good job.”
“And so what?” Adras protested. “He’ll go down fighting, and the consciousness of his ancestors will imbue him with strength. He didn’t want to die, I saw it in his eyes, none of us do. Whatever the skies above are like now, however raw, they shall carry him after he perishes, and he will rejoin the cosmic essence, he will die fighting and free. That’s what I had done, now shut up and walk.”
But Logos never shuts up, that much even Bolt had come to realize by now. “You know I care little for the old beliefs, consciousness, unconsciousness, these are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is the brain. When the brain gets pounded into dust, nothing is left, it’s all just dust.”
“Believe what you want,” Adras sighed. “My mind is set, and look,” he pointed at the faint light emanating from atop the tunnel, with the shapes of countless others milling about and racing towards it ahead. “We’ll see what our planet has become soon enough.”
Trapped within the maelstrom of the dream, Bolt felt his own mind detach from that of Adras. He now looked at the motley company with eyes seeing in all–encompassing directions. Hundreds of thousands of them were still alive, perhaps millions, heading towards the opening.
Realizing he was dreaming, he wished he could see what had been done to the planet, but realized he already has. The more he realized the place he witnessed was an illusion, the more the dream dissolved, until finally, he opened his eyes.
CHAPTER 24
The Plunge
Greeted by a steady drone in his head, he found it impossible to rest. He never heard the sound before, and it took him a moment to realize the noise was of the ship – an emergency pulse of imminent danger. Bolt crawled out of bed, his head heavy and unrested, his eyelids half–glued.
“Fucking hell,” he mumbled under his breath, slowly comprehending the droning consisted of words and instructions. The voice sounded mechanical and not at all pleasant, like parts of a machine scraping against a rusted cog.
“Premature Null–space exit. All hands report to your designated sections.”
It kept repeating this over and over, and despite the warnings, all Bolt could think about instead of ‘reporting to his section’ was how to make the voice shut up.
What ultimately snapped him to full awareness was the floating image on his holo–display situated on top a desk by the side of the sealed bulkhead–door. It came granulose and distorted, the speech of Ia upon it scrambled and uneven.
“We’ll exit Null in a few minutes, Akram. Your presence was requested on the main deck.”
“By?” he asked.
“Spyros,” Ia answered.
“Fine,” he sighed, “I’m on my way.” It wasn’t so much that he had no desire to find out just what the hell was going on, it was simply that – in the moments after a premature awakening – dispelling his own disinterest in everything wasn’t easy.
And then there was the ship’s voice, droning and never–ceasing.
Damn you and your designated sections!
Ia bowed her head almost unnoticeably, and the holographic image vanished.
Their exit from Null came sooner than any of them had expected. But Bolt was sure they couldn’t have arrived at their destination already. For reasons quite unknown to him in his current, tired state, he felt embarrassed that he had to be summoned, he should have been there, he should have already had a handle on the situation
In these mind–trips of his, not only his memories had returned, but also the responsibilities. Bolt learned his transfer to the ship came with a position of being second in command. He still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. There were things happening on the ship, and it perplexed both him and everyone on board that, for weeks now, the technicians and engineers were utterly baffled to explain the subtle changes occurring in the very fabric of the vessel. It was almost as if the Null itself had become restless by the long intrusion of the Administrator’s Will, and now wished to expel its foul material existence from its confines. Although everything on board the vessel still worked – even if not crisply – Bolt could not easily forget the resulting incident on the edges of the event horizon, where the Null–space relinquished its grip on the vessel and the natural state of matter resumed its hold.
It had caused been the first permanent death they were forced to deal with on the ship. A technician had been working on a slab near the event horizon, his mind focused on the task at hand to a point where he didn’t even hear the warnings going off in his suit. Supposedly, he was listening to music, and his work had taken on a mechanical tedium –the result of pre–learned movements required in order clean the removed slab. The inner workings of the panel had reported some kind of malfunction, a baffling technical issue no one understood, at least not fully. The official explanation stated that the curled Null–space, seeping into reality at the very quantum level, altered the slab in some higher–dimensional way. It seemed to want to spread, too.
In an instant, matter around the boy had warped as the Null–space extended and claimed his flesh, intermixing his body with the shifting madness in between reality and Null. He didn’t even have time to scream.
Some hypothesized the added collection of atoms was the reason why they were experiencing problems now, although they couldn’t find any real connections between this and what was going on, or why a prolonged stay inside Null would cause it to claim more and more of the thick outer layers.
They had all conveniently forgotten, or chose to dismiss the problems occurring, even before the boy had been shredded. Bol
t wanted to yell at them for this, but what would that accomplish?
They tried to revive the man, copy his memories onto his clone, but he never awakened. No matter what they tried, he didn’t rise, nor gave any indication that he ever would. They since referred to him as the haunted. Most didn’t want to admit it, but, on a regular basis, reports seeped in about people seeing him inside their dreamscapes, walking around in bewilderment, utterly lost. They reported seeing him in the corners of their eyes, as if within their heads. He would disappear inside walls, rocks, and was reported walking behind the trees. An old man hooded and hunched.
A cold sweat ran down Bolt’s back. The boy’s fate was one he had no desire to greet.
He exited his chambers and descended down into the depths of the ship. The main deck, as it was called, was located at the very center of the vessel, above the Essentium, protected by a maze of halls, living quarters, labs, engineering decks and recreational arenas. It was the place where a lot of people could gather. As a result, it served as an extended Exploratorium and general ship–operations deck. A bridge.
On his trek to it, cacophonies of sound made their way inside the main passage each time Bolt passed a room or a hall. He frequently ran into people he knew or recognized vaguely. Wheezing past him were scientist, technician, engineers and even small, three wheeled cleaner–bots. Most of the men and women gave greetings or polite bows while moving on. Bolt greeted each, most of them on their way to the main deck as well and, as result, a large group had gathered around him before he reached the tall archway.
The noise of movement and conversation from inside the bridge hit him like a torrent. The scent of the working men and women lingered in his nostrils for a while still. After a few moments, however, his brain began to filter out the smell. The group that had gathered around him dispersed as each of them hurried to their stations within the bridge. Having never actually taken the time to visit the place, Bolt stood a while longer, marveling at the sheer scale of it. Its enormous frontal display projected a foggy and largely unclear image upon the main wall, opposite the main entrance. The image’s discord made it impossible to foresee or even assume where the Administrator’s Will would surface from Null. Everything else, however, appeared ready for Null–brake and the voices inside softened as the grand hall started to bristle with the tensions of everyone present.
Bolt walked to the central podium stationed below the big wall–screen. He surveyed quickly the numerous platforms comprising the many levels of the bridge, its vaulted ceiling so high above his head he couldn’t quite make it out, it was simply a white haze of light. He ascended a set of stairs where the augmented eyes of Dyekart, Ia and the engineer he knew as Marius eagerly awaited.
“Just in time, Akram,” Dyekart smiled, his heavy robes rustling as he turned to meet and follow Bolt’s gaze.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“A slight deviation in our path,’ Marius answered, his voice crisp and natural, but deep. “We’re about to arrive within a satisfactory distance in relation to the planet.”
“Already?” Bolt asked.
“It would appear thus,” Marius nodded.
“How? We haven’t been traveling for five years, hell, we haven’t been traveling for more than one third of that time.”
Marius simply shrugged.
“As far as we can tell, Akram,” Ia said, “the ship’s found a faster way of travel through Null.”
“Indeed,” Dyekart nodded. “It would account for the increasing thickness of the layer between Null and reality.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Bolt asked no one in particular. “How long until–” he was cut short by the vessel itself. Its entire frame began to rumble and quake. The giant display flashed and fizzled, assembling an image none of them had expected. Staring in horror, they realized the ship had been thrust out from Null and thrown into the planet.
The hooks of gravity reestablished their hold on the vessel and threw it into atmospheric entry.
CHAPTER 25
The Eye And The Fall
No–one on board had time to wonder why none of the navigational commands were working, or why, at this crucial stage, the ship itself seemed to do what it otherwise never did – dream. The consciousness of Sol who sat trapped in her life–support throne, had fused utterly and completely with her surroundings. The event had been a long time coming. She had been anticipating it, hoping for it, craving it even. But she had never expected its coming to be at a time when she least needed it. She felt something on the planet, an influence which propelled her into her new sense of even heightened circuit–activity, a field where every brain inside her became a part of her, a collective unconscious transcending into consciousness. She fought it for a time. Expelling her every imagining and every thought which jumped into her mind. She twisted on her throne, as if a pain had struck her stomach and every muscle wanted her to rub her belly in hopes of relief, but she could not. Her movements were rigid, half–performed, they spread the pain of them to everyone within her. Through her mind, onto the collective mind of everyone on board, the pain warped and wafted. Receptors grasped it all until the pain the vision became a sole reality. Each forgot they were falling, the soil that would splatter them a distant thought as they screamed with pain that wasn’t theirs. Flames and fire enveloped them. The air resisted her intrusion, her fall, coloring the atmosphere with hellish thunder. She saw lights in the distance, in the darkness of the world below – a world that ceased to turn on its axis and stood quiescent with the shock of hurt that had been inflicted upon it. She saw its last moments, through the sight of another, as the eyelid of the world opened.
***
When the time came for him to watch his world die, Adras realized nothing could have prepared him for the spectacle of it. Flakes of churning ash battered his eyes as the residue of his species raked across the points of the compass, the sharp reek of it latching itself on his every breath.
His brother, Logos, stood beside him as the two overlooked a massive crater, its far edge beyond the distant horizon, its surface littered with slabs raised into mountains. A rumble of war raged below them, choking the air with all the vapors of its chaos.
The last of their kind rushed towards open fire.
Each soldier was a speck of silver in the distance, their forms disappearing in waves under the enemy’s suppressive onslaught – the fallen constantly replaced by ranks from behind.
Enemy numbers were boundless, their ship an ominous mass above the crater. In its shadow, the homeworld army cleaved everything in its path, yet kept dying with an undisturbed frequency. Their hands were instruments of vengeance, their weapons a means to deliver molten death. Yet to stem the tide of battle with tools such as these was impossible. Troops of the fallen foe would simply reanimate, torn limbs regrow, shattered skulls rebuild, while each of the invader’s handheld cannons spewed beams of electric fire in wild arcs, each impact nullifying an area around it.
Even from afar, Adras could feel the explosions. They carried a reek of burned plastic. He could taste the richness of it as he spoke with a voice low enough to almost shake the soil, “Everything is dying.”
“Even memories…” Logos added, seemingly unaffected by the carnage below.
“Was it worth it?” Adras asked. “To resist?”
Logos didn’t turn to face him, his words came laced with a rage only Adras could detect. “Against tyranny, even death is a sacrifice worth taking.”
Adras knew they had made a mistake to resist, and the sheer magnitude of the event before him only now managed to strike true. He began to shake, his feet threatened to give in, they cried for release. He had been running for too long, Adras realized, and wished more than anything he were somewhere else. But his thoughts and feelings were irrelevant to reality. He was to watch his civilization die, yet would never truly know why. The thought perplexed him even as he watched it all unfold.
He knew the Construct onl
y as an alien species, their origin shrouded by the vastness of space. They had never introduced themselves, and still, somehow, he knew their name.
I will never see the sun again. I will never hear my brother laugh again. I will never…The thoughts struck him like lighting, each as sobering and finite as the last. He wondered how many had thought the very same thoughts before him. What did they find in these thoughts? Did they imbue those before me with strength? Sorrow? Courage to face the enemy and spit in their face perhaps? Adras felt nothing of the kind. He felt only remorse, its depth that of space itself – devouring in its magnitude and strength.
“A glorious death, brother,” Logos suddenly said. Adras could barely bring himself to look at him. He knew their climb to the top of the crater had been utterly pointless. An act of defiance. Of that, at least, Adras was proud. For they had done it together. Just as they had lived, just as they had bled, just as they will die.
Logos turned his head to look into Adras’ eyes, his fractured jawbone protruding out of his chin as he clenched his teeth and waited for his brother’s words.
The sounds of death filled their senses as the air shook.
Once, there had been so much to say between them, but now…
Time had made all words seem pointless, time and the mayhem which wailed matter about them in a form of ash and dark fumes. But more than even this, more even than the death of an entire race, it saddened him that Logos chose these words before inevitable death. There was no glory in their end. It certainly didn’t feel like an end befitting the potency of their lives, their potential. But even this disappointment was trumped by what Adras felt in himself, for he had nothing else to add. Nothing to say. All the things he had hoped, the things he knew he should, got lost in the moment, as if it were all nothing more than a dream. No, not a dream, a nightmare.