“There! Another,” Bolt pointed out, until they realized these passages were opening and closing all over the bastion. Thick, dark crystal grew and twisted all over its surface, constantly falling off, shattering at the feet of the fortress or hitting some other spire which didn’t manage to slither away like something moving underwater, while other times splintering, the falling segments braking apart before they even hit the ground. The broken shards dissipated into smoke, drifted back onto the fortress. The sound of each massive chunk as it shattered resonated through their bodies. They sounded somewhat like braking mirrors.
The structure itself was the word impossible made real. Its edges were difficult to trace, although it reminded of an enormous mountain flipped on its head. Spires grew out of spires, doors sprung inside already closing doors and gates sprouted in places that could never be reached, all of them opening and closing in a vertical fashion like jaws.
For all the darkness around it, the building’s walls glowed with an inner light. A dark hue of every color imaginable could be seen within, the light shifting endlessly like the structure itself.
“This…” Bolt said, taking a breath, “this is impossible.”
“No shit.”
They stood there for who knows how long, until from one of the gaping maws, a giant came thundering. It moved unlike anything they had seen before. Its legs were the ground, black and steaming, with only a semblance of shape as only a shifting of shadows became visible each time the creature took a step. Backlit and terrible, every move of its form was a tumultuous tremor. Its torso and head trailed behind thick plumes of phantasmal dust which the structure’s gateways sucked in and devoured. Its head was as thick as its neck, its torso wide and angular, black. Hands without joints, yet looking strangely skeletal, reached wide, they seemed too long. Smaller ones grew below them, each limb segmented like a spine. The head was a monolith without eyes or any features the two men could discern.
They felt afraid for the first time. This fear, such as it was, was a sweaty and rancid beast, pouring out of them as though all of the fear they were supposed to feel before had suddenly been granted life.
The monstrosity stopped and hulked over them, easily as tall as a twelve–story building. Max felt eyes he couldn’t see looking down at him. A cyclopean eye opened in the center of the giant’s head, lidless and staring. The eye of the world. With its gaze, something changed within each of the two men. An ambition for power and knowledge surfaced and grew from the smallest of interest and expanded into an all encompassing thirst for understanding. What had once been a fascination of the unknown was cultivated into a subconscious obsession by the mere stare of the shape before them. In Max’s mind, the struggles of the Administrator suddenly became a trifle task compared to the grand scheming of what nestled in the depths of the galaxy.
He wanted to be a part of it. A part of the grand plan he couldn’t understand but felt – one which he knew had been in motion even before the birth of his first ancestor. Within him, deep in his neuron constellations, the seed of vengeance and a hatred which he had denied himself for all these years rose to purpose like a seedling reaching for the sun.
CHAPTER 6
“Shape Clay Into A Vessel; It Is The Space Within That Makes It Useful.”
Inside an intangible moment, Bolt felt like he could grab hold of his lost memories. He saw images fading before his mind’s eye, feelings and thoughts he had once possessed. Memories of events he could not place onto a timeline. He tried to hold on to them, the recollections, to cling onto their conceptual reality. They proved elusive and none–lasting.
Bolt heard a distant sound of laughter. The expressions of joy he had shared with his wife and his best friend. He could hear the words the three of them had spoken while eating together, and he wanted nothing more but to hold on to those memories. He tried. He tried more than he had with anything his entire life. It was like trying to grasp the water of an ocean. For a time it even seemed like he could, but really, he could not. The images slipped through his mental fingers like liquid.
The portal he didn’t remember stepping out off vanished behind him in filaments of smoke. The moon’s windless atmosphere played with the weight of the ashen residue for a moment, then allowed it to drop onto the rough texture of the metal platform. The way in which the dust moved filled Bolt with a feeling of timelessness, and at no instance before then – as far as he could remember, at least – had he felt time as more of a human construct than at that very moment. He knew that if no–one would ever brush those particles of dust away or caused them to move, they would stay in that exact same spot forever. This feeling, this thought, escaped him as Max’s voice crackled over the intercom in Bolt’s helm.
“Did you see it? Tell me I’m not the only one who saw it. Tell me!”
“I saw it,” Bolt nodded. “Every bitter detail of it. The palace. The monster. The pain. Everything.”
“What did it tell you?” Max asked. “Did it speak to you? What did it say?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Bolt said. “It didn’t actually say anything. Why? Did it speak to you?”
“I…no,” Max answered.
“Then what? You felt something, didn’t you?”
Bolt turned and walked ahead, turning towards Max to see his face. The Earth reflected in his friend’s visor and the half–a–kilometer wide platform seemed to grow even stiller in their silence. Below his feet, Bolt noticed the scorch marks which must have perpetuated from the center of the spin when the portal had engaged. It stretched even beyond the stage itself. It colored the surface of the moon around the platform in black ash, like charcoal.
“Within me,” Max said, his eyes milky behind the blue helm–visor, “within you… somewhere around here, there is power. But I know not who wields more of it. I know he who we have named pretends to wield it. But there’s more to it. I know this now, and know I must find him.”
“It was different for me, I think” Bolt said. “I think the thing we saw inside wanted me to free someone.”
“Who?”
“It said it will come to me in a dream sequence.”
“You’ll dream about it?” Max asked. “Why didn’t it just tell you? And just how will you know what dream will be the right dream?”
“No idea,” Bolt admitted.
Bolt turned, lost in thought as the two began to walk towards a tower a few kilometers distant. A trail of smoke rode towards them. The object on tip of the smolder soon became apparent as it closed in on them at a good speed. It was a bulky, six–wheeled rover, moving to intercept. The comm in both of their helmets buzzed. Their visual displays recognized the voice. It came from the man driving the rover, his identity flashing inside their retinas in dark–red curtains of data. “What are you guys blabbering about? Are you–”
Another voice interrupted the transmission, its tone roughened by the distance it had to travel. It was the voice of Zack, his tone humorous “’Ey you bastards. Good to see you in one piece. Time for a celebration, eh? Some rum maybe?”
“How long have we been gone? What went wrong?” Max immediately questioned.
“What do you mean what went wrong? Everything went exactly as planned. You went in, you came out. Why? What do you think happened?”
The two men shared a look. A trick question? Max seemed to pick up on his questioning somehow, and Bolt watched his friend’s head move from side to side almost unnoticeably. Bolt nodded his understanding.
“Nothing happened,” Bolt lied over the comm. “As you said, all went according to plan.”
“Then what was all that talk about?” Zack asked. “Talk to me guys, we’re on a secure channel for now.”
The two knew there was no such thing. They remained silent, determined to do so until the three men got a chance to meet face to face.
In Bolt’s mind, doubts began to surface. Could he had shared an experience with Max? One which was hallucinogenic in nature and so profound he couldn’t put
it into words now that it had passed? Could experiences like that even be shared? Had they really seen what they had seen? Could it even be possible? Questions kept piling up, and he possessed an answer to neither of them. He knew time to be a wholly human concept in its basis, one constructed to give meaning to certain cycles and provide a grounding of an experience or object in four dimensions, a concept Bolt always figured held little sway in the universe as a whole. An idea so easily bent and it’s ‘rules’ so effortlessly collapsed it took no more than a dream to do so. What then had their experience been? A dream induced by an entry through the portal? An event outside of space–time as they know it?
“Guys!” Zack said in a half–shout. “Talk to me! Tell me I’m not the only one who saw it!”
“You said we were the first one to go thought the wormhole,” Max immediately said.
“Officially, you were,” Zack answered. “It’s my research. I had to test it for myself! I had to see it first, I had to–“
“I understand,” Max sighed. “You don’t have to explain.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Bolt. “You’ll have to tell me why you didn’t at least tell us. But for now, yes, we saw it,” Bolt admitted. “Whatever it was, we saw it.”
The rover speeding towards them pulled up next to the platform’s edge, the smoke of its heavy wheels settling in the low gravity.“Seriously,” said the driver, “The fuck you guys talking about?”
Secure channel indeed, thought Bolt.
***
On the lifeless surface of the Moon, everything looked the same. Hills rolled by outside the rover with grey familiarity and the distant and tall buildings seemed to mold with the dirt in ways scarcely found on Earth. The domes of industry and metallurgic reactors were each a mountaintop in itself, all of them laced with smoothness beyond the apparent capabilities of nature, at least nature as it was known to humankind.
The rover’s suspension and near silent engine dispelled the sense of travel and made the experience a wholly sound–based one. Gravel and rock were crushed beneath the bulky six–wheeler, producing a consistent mix of popping sounds and grinding noises.
The first time they heard the engine purr was also the first time either of them spoke since entering the vehicle. A half–C turn plastered them to the side of the seat.
“Some nice suspension on this bitch,” Bolt commented.
“Aye,” the driver nodded.
“Where we headed?” Bolt asked.
“Enable your Links, you should have already gotten the message,” said the driver, a pale–faced man with greasy brown hair and features which told of a life filled with tedium. It took a single thought for Bolt to engage the network and then mentally work his way through a barrage of messages and random imprints left there by whoever had attempted to contact him while his connection to the Link–network had been lost. Out the corner of his eye, Bolt thought he could see Max rubbing his forehead for a second. He distinctly remembered him doing something like that before, but couldn’t recall the context or why he had done it.
In his mind’s eye, Bolt observed more than ten inquiries from his wife, he chose not to open any them.
“Why don’t you open her letters?” Max asked him.
“Not now,” Bolt sighed. “Not yet.” He didn’t want anything to do with the woman who claimed to carry his child. The last time he saw her, which might as well have been the first time as far as he could tell, Bolt felt like everything he said hurt her in some way. Every word uttered made her face grow progressively sadder and her eyes wetter. He couldn’t do that to her. Not to someone who felt like a complete stranger.
“I saw it in her eyes, she wanted to shake me until I’d remember, slap me, anything that would work,” he told Max. “Honestly, for a moment I wanted to do it to myself. What I feel, however, is… nothing. Nothing connects me to anything I can feel towards, no memory, no recollection, not even a glimpse of a smile.”
He did feel a pang, however. Remorse perhaps? Remorse for the people who cared for him? The fact that he couldn’t do anything about it or make himself care as well only made it worse.
“I think the best thing would be to try and give myself some time, to give my brain a chance to reboot itself, if possible,” he told Max.
“She’ll be happy to hear you’re alright, at least,” Max said. “Give her that comfort. You may not remember how much you loved her, but she still does.”
“Shut up,” Bolt spat, “Why can’t I remember her? At least her?”
“You know why,” Max replied. “Now send her a message, tell her you’re fine, or I’ll do it for you, and I’m the last one she wants to hear from right now.”
“Fine,” Bolt said, and send her a short, two–lined blurt. He then shuffled through more of the messages and thought projections, stumbling upon the inquiry the driver had spoken of. It came heavily encoded.
“You seeing this?” he asked Max.
“Already on it.”
Bolt ran a series of pre–learned algorithms and applied them to each nonsensical pattern of letters. Zack had thought him the cipher himself so they could communicate secretly and leave each other messages, messages which most would dismiss as residual data, even if they somehow happened to stumble upon them.
Word by deciphered word, the wall of text transformed into a small paragraph and floated inside Bolt’s vision with perfect clarity. The blue letters read: were continuing the research on alpha station. ive arranged a landing platform for you both. well go over the results and try to send a larger team through the gateway again to see if we can collect any more data. youre scheduled to leave the moon at 18:05.
Currently, the clock read 18:02.
Bolt didn’t like the idea of going into a portal again one single bit.
“No way,” Max said, mirroring Bolt’s own thoughts. He felt like he had grown old in his head while inside the portal, or wherever he and Max had been. Yet now that he was out, he found it hard to remember most of it. He tried connecting some of the feelings which came with the visions in his mind, things he could still remember. The images kept becoming increasingly vague the more time passed. As if the whole experience had been a dream.
He looked over to Max sitting beside him. “Tell me again you saw it too,” he said to him.
“Yes,” Max nodded. “It wasn’t a dream,” Max confirmed. The fact brought Bolt zero comfort, however, and he regretted even asking.
In the frontal view, a structure resembling a ziggurat began to grow. It was the first time Bolt noticed they were pushing a speed of almost three hundred kilometers per hour. Yet the red letters of the speedometer kept climbing.
“Will we reach it in time?” he asked the driver.
“Don’t you worry about that,” the man said.
The building ahead automatically noted the speeding six–wheeler and matched its serial number with a reserved mag–lane. As the driver mentally confirmed which tunnel at the base of the structure they would enter, the system programmed the inner lanes to make sure no collisions would take place and that they would be safely propelled to their destination. Easing on the throttle, the driver stirred them into a wide tunnel, then sat back. At first, a deep hum shook the vehicle as the entire chassis of the car began to resonate. Lights attached to the side of the tunnel began to roll by outside with incredible speed. The magnetic forces within the tunnel continued to accelerate the car, all to a point where inertia–dampening systems began to struggle and the force glued them to their seats. Out the side window, lines of light which had only moments before flown by one at a time converged into a white lance. The hum became louder still, until at the point where it threatened to spill into the realm of the unbearable, the vehicle spat out of the tunnel and cut through the gravitational sphere of the Moon in an instant. In zero gravity conditions, it continued on its path towards its destination with steady speed. Minute by minute, the small dot circling the Earth began to expand.
The Alpha St
ation, the only space–bulk built in orbit which claimed permanent residents. Getting to it would take a while.
At that point, Bolt wasn’t too keen on making idle conversation, at least not verbally. He undressed his suit and sat back, relaxed, and accessed the Link.
***
Looking upon the Earth where billions of people projected their energies and thoughts out into space at any given moment left Max speechless. The very space around the blue globe shimmered and pulsed. Golden lines wrapped themselves onto one another, some speeding outward into the vast stretches of time. The Earth itself seemed to be in possession of a torus–shaped aura, a disturbance all about it which transmorphed the uncertainty of space into something Max could see, even hear. Gilded ribbons formed a web of subconscious intent around the planet, intent which Max could not read, but realized that perhaps with enough training and understanding, he might. For now it seemed enough to simply watch as the Earth released its grip on these intangibilities the further they escaped from it. Each string reached out and lost itself in the ocean of darkness like a headlamp pointing up into the night sky.
Max tried not to focus on the station in orbit, which was easy enough, since something quite more active had drawn his gaze. Upon the North American continent, on the East coast, he could see a heavy concentration of thoughts, like a hotspot where things were being drawn into and expelled at an even greater speed. The expulsions bent all other things away from its path, dominating the quantum field and collapsing everything it touched into nonexistence. Lights which may have been someone’s introspective musings or an energy field projected by joy vibrated and was held in place by this larger stream for a moment as the two met, as though the heavier field was considering the validity of what it came across and its usefulness in the grand scheme of things. But in the end, nothing it touched remained, everything disappeared in less time than it took to draw a breath. Still, there was too much of everything for the stronger beam to be effective, and Max guessed it had some other purpose or destination. A destination hidden by the curvature of the Earth. Was its origin the site where I would find the Administrator? The sight looked like something the Admin would be capable of. Perhaps this had been what he had been missing all along? Perhaps he needed to look upon the Earth from space and search for the Admin while in space, since otherwise the man’s will got lost in all of the confusion and chaos. He didn’t need to guess what the two implants were doing anymore. Somehow, someone had implanted him with technology which allowed him to see what he was seeing. But the answers to who and why weren’t as obvious.