Spaces Between

The travel between shards was difficult to explain to someone who had not witnessed it first hand. One moment, you were walking towards your own reflection, as if to a mirror, then you were submerged into what could only be described as static wind. A gentle cool pressure all around your body. First there was blackness, then a sense of motion and a growing notion of becoming near to something, then an excruciating pain which felt like the space between each atom of your body was widening, and then it was finished.

The Two had many-a-time explained just what this sphere looked like to them, but each individual from a lower sphere saw things differently. The general impossibility of the aetheric scene was always the same, but the details within the swirling clouds of less-condensed being, and shooting streams of intent and will, took on as many shapes as those who viewed them.

To Wolf, everything looked like different shades of red. Shady pleasures of crimsons and mysterious maroons curved in with candy apple pops of joy and hibiscus idea-whorls. Faces of mahogany disappeared into lakes of burgundy, where transient paradise-islands of salmon and brick blinked in and out of perception. Iotas of cardinal fantasies speckled dreams of carnelian, and winding roads of coral led to towering floating spires of cinnabar.

For Wolf, it was hard to believe that this was just the lowest level of the Lunar astral world. He had, and still did to some extent, expected it to be a realm of silver and white, of fay creatures and strange beings. Each time he thought this, his surroundings flickered between his personal projection and the fleeting expectation.

The Two had told him he could make the space something he wished, but Wolf didn’t mind the abstractness. His senses instinctively shut out anything too strange to comprehend, which made it easier to focus on the things he could. Those being the others, and the plan of the Two.

Summoned by his thought of them, they arrived.

They came in their native forms, something This at least had the decency to try and veil, whereas That tended to forget that their angelic guise was something quite difficult for a terrestrial to understand, much less look upon. Wolf and a select others of the Two’s chosen were some such beings that had no trouble looking upon the entities of layered wings, eyes, limbs, faces and architecture. When they had first appeared to Wolf and his counterpart, their forms were far more condensed, but even then Brennan had nearly died.

Yet, Wolf couldn’t look upon them for too long. They weren’t three dimensional in the traditional way of speaking. When he gazed too long into their abyssal forms, the staring back gave him a heady vertigo which, if prolonged, would lead to death. Every detail in their forms was a fractal which, if followed, continued to eternity. One shouldn’t gaze into eternity for too long.

“Ah, Six-Two-Second! You have arrived,” This annunciated with trumpets blaring in the background.

“Please. I am Wolf. You know this.”

“Oh, I apologize. Did you warn the second of that shard as we instructed?” That asked, violas punctuating every word.

Wolf nodded. That went on, bassoons of irritation honking in the distance. “Well, is there anything else? Did the second come to you afterwards? Did the girl die again? I’ve so many questions.”

Wolf puffed in annoyance. “Can’t you look into the shards whenever you wish? You know she’s alive unlike the others. Why ask me?”

“Free will is a necessary factor—” This began.

“—and to encroach on that is to risk exposure to the One.—” That continued.

“—also, there yet remain other shards. Our attentions have been diverted,” This finished.

Wolf sighed. “Will you elaborate as to these distractions?”

“No,” the two angels said in unison.

“Of course you won’t. Well, the girl is dying. Whatever they do in that shard to the human brain is quite terrifying. The device inside her is disintegrating into her brain, and her regenerative capabilities will one day short and it will take her.

“The second, Hound, did not come to me. I waited until the crack opened, but he never showed. I don’t think he had the chance either. After they arrested the Atlantean something happened with the girl, and no, she’s not dead,” Wolf looked pointedly at That. “A severe seizure in front of everyone. The Herbalist was dealing with the sphinx the last I saw him, and the Hunter and the Hierophant took the Youth back to their quarters with Hound and the Lay.

“So the Herbalist and the pseudo-herald are alive as well?” This asked.

“They are.”

“How very curious,” mused That to the sound of oboes, “no one has died yet.”

Wolf frowned. “Shouldn’t we count ourselves lucky? Back in my shard, before it was erased, by this point our Lay, Hierophant, Weapon and Youth were dead. These ones actually have a chance to get to the Stone.”

“I know,” said This, “hence why we’re allocating more resources, more motives, to this shard. It is closest to the original linear-progression than any other. And—”

“—we’re running out of time. The One Mind’s focus is narrowing. Fewer shards remain than ever, and it is only by Luck’s aid that we have gone unnoticed for so long. Thus we—”

“—are sending you with One. You two are, as of now, our best assets.”

Wolf sat down. “You don’t mean One-First?”

“We do.”

“Hasn’t he failed each time?”

“He has, but the failures are not of his doing,” That argued before This could chime in. “Rather, we do tend to send him into impossible situations. This time, we believe his experience with impossibilities will aid in the finding of the Stone and in wakening the Sleeper.”

“What about Brennan?”

“He is off in another shard presently,” That lamented, a sonata reverberating from each consonant.

“And the new ones? I do not sense them. Have you sent them somewhere as well?”

That and This shared an eternal gaze across the vastness between them. “Fret not, Wolf, we know what we’re doing. She is where she must be. Only thrice before in all these millennia have we come to this stage with so many survivors. This time we are not leaving the Warrior’s fate up to chance.”

“You don’t mean…” Wolf got up on all fours and bristled as chills ran up his spine. In this sphere the emotion took on a visual form, as flakes of frost on his black fur.

“Fret not. He will not harm her.”

Wolf ground his teeth. To send a child and a fully biological dog into the clutches of that thing was like throwing bloody flesh to piranhas. But Wolf didn’t protest, he knew the Two, no matter how strange they were, knew what they were doing. If they said this Bee and Hildi were going to be safe, then he trusted them.

But then again, they weren’t infallible, no matter how celestial.

- - -

The Europan wastes competed with the Afric badlands and deserts for the most inhospitable place on Dead Earth. Since all the organics had dried up and died so many ages ago, what was left of rolling hills and spacious valleys with quaint lakes were empty and ashy vistas of desolation. White on gray, gray on white. Groves of vitrified trees, dead too quick to decompose, changed by strange means in to stone, loomed cracked and leafless, casting jagged shadows on earth that was nothing but soft sand and dust.

Winds that neither moaned nor wailed cut screeching through branches that never rustled, and never would again. Here and there was some lucky foundation of a building long lost to memory, and sometimes a patch of a road revealed itself from beneath the dunes, only to be swallowed up again come the wind.

Unit Five-One trudged along the emptiness, Meridia trailing behind him. Since the encounter with the Mucoleth at the bridge, they had fought off others of its kind, though smaller in scale.

Not counting the pests, cresting the Alps had been trivial to Five-One, who had carried the useless Wraith on his back as he scuttled along the mountainsides and down and up ravines with his six powerful limbs. Now they were at the wastes proper, with nowhere to go but forward.

The assassin’s connection to his master had been shoddy in the Alps, and now it was nonexistent. No more dockets, no more orders. He would have to continue on his current parameters until the job was finished. Sadly, there was scarce a thing to kill in the wastes, for the mucoleths that resided here were nothing but ravenous whelps easy to dispatch. If they even dared to attack. Five-One had hung up palm-sized dead ones on a cord around his waist. They went for good snacks.

“This body is hungry,” Meridia whined. She was lagging behind the lumbering assassin, dragging her feet through the ash and sand.

Unit Five-One tugged off one of the pup mucoleths and tossed it over his shoulders. “Eat,” he hissed.

Meridia grimaced as she picked the thing up. She looked pointedly at the enormous assassin draped in his green-and-white striped cloak. “How am I supposed to eat this?”

“With your teeth,” Five-One snarled. “It is born from a brood, thus it is yet mostly organic. Crack its chitin. It’s musculature should hold enough calories for the day.”

Meridia hurried after Five-One, vainly trying to snap the porcelain-steel plating with her less-than appropriate replacement hands. She moaned, then cursed loudly. At this the assassin finally stopped.

“What?”

“I can’t… fffffucking get it OPEN!” she screamed and chucked the thing down. It landed into the dead earth with a thud. A cloud of dust rose, and instantly vanished along windy currents. “God fucking damn it!”

Unit Five-One scanned his surroundings, then Meridia herself. The body she had hijacked was dangerously close to a critical level of dehydration, and her fat stores were burned up. Why she had chosen a mostly organic body was a mystery to the killer, but there was nothing to do unless she wanted to hop back in the cage within his circuitry.

Five-One picked up the mucoleth roach and walked to the roots of a large stone tree. He released the mag-latch on his back, letting the turret he had stolen from the hunter’s wagon fall to the ground. Then, looking dead at Meridia, he squeezed the roach with his stolen gladiator arm. A loud crack resounded, and silvery liquid poured from between his fingers. He offered it to her.

Meridia smoothed loose hairs from her face. Recomposed, she came to sit on one of the gnarled roots that curved up from the sand. “Thank you,” she said, and took the roach.

Five-One squatted by his gun and looked out into the grove of trees. Their sharp shadows cut black streaks across the white-gray waste, and occasionally he could see a small spiral of sand jump up as a gust blew through.

Though burning hatred and a will to kill roiled within his complex internal structure, Unit Five-One made to speak, with the sole intention of comforting Meridia. He wasn’t being selfless, rather he knew that her mental state was akin to that of a normal human, and thus needed to be kept stable if she were to continue to be a useful asset.

He opened his fanged maw to speak, but in that moment, without warning, a column of dust shot up towards the sterile sky some distance off, and a wave of pressure smacked against him a second later.

Instantly Five-One was up, the turret held ready in his two right hands, while the left side brandished their native knives and drills. Meridia crouched low and cowered behind the assassin.

“What the hell was that?” she asked through a mouthful of roach.

Five-One donned his hood. “I detect two organic markers in that direction.”

“Food?”

Five-One stalked through the stony woods, keeping to the jagged shadows, moving so low that the hem of his striped cloak swept the sand underneath. Bad camouflage, but enough to conceal his true form. In no time he was at the crest of a hill, looking down into a clearing. There, a cloud of dust was settling, and he could see two glowing forms with his infra-vision. What was this? They had no machinery…

“What do you see?” Meridia asked, coming up from behind. In answer Unit Five-One took hold of her machine arm and connected his visual feed to hers. “Is that a canid bioform? And a girl… here of all places.”

“They seem unconscious. We could kill them…”

“Is that all you think about? Don’t you think it weird a child and a dog are wandering alone in the desert? Perhaps she’s a Grower. You never know how old they are by appearance alone.”

“All the more reason—”

“By GOD if you say ‘to kill them’ I will explode.” Unit Five-One ground his metal teeth. “Think,” Meridia went on, “just think for a second.”

Unit Five-One did. It was quite difficult to consciously think of things that didn’t end in death. Everyone he had killed so far served a purpose of leading him to the Grower. But now they were dead, and he had no new information. Some software inside him bucked and kicked in protest, but he mastered it.

“If she’s a Grower, she might have information on the one we seek.”

“Good job. What else?”

“Food.”

“I have limits, Five-One. I’m not going to eat a child.”

“The dog.”

Meridia pumped her eyebrows and tilted her head. “Sure.”

Five-One latched the turret to his back and picked up Meridia, then, like some feral cyber-simian, he slid down the steep slope, hopping and swinging down the petrified trees until they had come to the bottom.

The girl wore strange clothes, and the dog was a flat-faced thing with pointy ears and short fur. They were breathing and their hearts beat, and soon, both opened their eyes.

The girl looked up at the hulking cloaked figure and the woman beside it and asked, “who are you?”

Meridia crouched so that her eyes were level with the girl’s. “My name is Meridia, and this is my… friend. Who are you?”

“I’m Bee.”

The dog shook itself, sand pluming from its fur, then said, “I am Hildi.”

Meridia looked up into the shadows of Five-One’s cowl.

“Well, bee and Hildi, I take it you two are Growers? Whatever might you be doing here in the wastes?”

The girl, Bee, looked confused. “What’s a Grower?”

Meridia frowned. “Then what or who are you?”

The girl shrunk back and the dog took a step forward, partially filling the space between the Wraith and the child. “We have introduced ourselves, and would much like to answer your question, but might we first ask one ourselves?”

“Meridia…” Five-One hissed.

Meridia raised a hand to forestall the burgeoning murderous impulse that was building inside the kill-bot. “Ask away,” she said.

“Where are we?”

“In the Europan wastes, of course. Surely you know that much?”

“How far are we from Colchis?” the girl asked.

Meridia tried her best to look warm and inviting. “I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve never heard of Colchis before.”

Fluids gathered in the child’s eyes, and her face went red. Soon she was producing a sound quite familiar to Five-One’s auditory sensors, though it lacked the note of horror he was used to. She was crying.

Thoroughly done with the affair, Unit Five-One made to bring out his clawed hand to end the two organics. They were no Growers, so their further existence was futile, though they would be useful in serving to slake his blood lust. But as his bladed fingers were inches away from the cloak’s hem, he stopped.

His blood lust was gone. The software that built his rage into an almost uncontrollable will to kill and a thirst for organic blood and other bodily fluids found on Dead Earth was entirely gone. All other stimulant protocols and combat subroutines, hell, even his derivative emotive enhancer with its base three-emotion programming were there, but the blood lust was missing. The sole means of his entertainment, the sole drive of his existence, was gone. He did a systems analysis, then another, and another, in the span it took one to blink. The software, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist.

As he dug through the countless lines of code that made up his cognitive being, there was only one line that suggested that something like it had once existed. It was an override protocol under the title of ‘empathetic_drive’. It’s origin was the black gladiator arm he’d stolen from the desert outpost. It seemed the integration of it had clashed with his native drivers, and the opposing software had battled in his background processes for dominance since then, and right at this moment, the foreign entity had won.

Five-One looked down at the crying child, and something in him moved. Then a thought came to him. He shouldn’t remove his hood. His stolen nose and ears, affixed to his face with its lidless eyes and lipless mouth, would frighten her further.

Five-One took a violent step backwards, as thought that intangible thing, that nascent pang of a burgeoning conscious had punched him in the face. He shook his head, and without another word, continued deeper into the Europan wastes, oblivious of Meridia’s questions. He had a vague notion that she was following him, and the two strange organics were following her, but his attentions were focused on his present task.

He must connect with the Master. The Master would fix this. He had to.

 

 <Prev                        Next>