by Paul Harm
As could be expected from a subway museum, after the archway it did go straight downwards. The museum was fun to see, there were pictures of subway stations, timetables starting from the early twentieth century until the subway got replaced during the twenty-first century. On the timetables you could see how and where the city grew since every couple of years a new station or a new line had been added. After the first room they entered an actual subway station and in there was a subway with open doors. They got in and took a look around. It was fascinating to watch a public transportation system that did not separate the individuals. “Must have been crowded in here.” Joseph noticed while his look wandered through the wagon. “I guess, but I think it wasn’t that bad.” “No, no, not bad, just not very efficient. They had to stop at every stop and people were entering and leaving all the time which made the actual travel time a lot longer for the individual.” “The cascade system is more advanced, I agree, especially in that your pod belongs only to you.”
The other visitors around them were also talking and taking pictures as all of a sudden a man with some sort of uniform entered the subway. “Welcome on board.” He greeted them and looked slowly around the filled subway. “We depart in about one minute. So, if you want to ride along, I suggest you take a seat as long as there are any left.” People in the subway looked at each other and the operators of the museum have always been very proud to give their visitors a little ride. Nothing profound just a little tour. “Shall we do this?” Joseph looked at Claire. “If you want to, we can do it.” “Yes, let’s do it. Sounds fun if you ask me.” The tour lasted for just a few minutes. It was interesting but unspectacular. It was a ride in a dark tunnel after all, not too much to see. It was nice to feel history, though, they both thought. In difference to Salera which was founded in 2389, London just had these Millenniums of history, something you could not find in Salera, which was designed from scratch. When they first planned the city Salera for about half a billion people they designed it in a way that could be expanded constantly. The ever just temporary solution, the leading philosophy in a lot of endeavors. Basically, what they did is making sure that the city had the potential to change. Buildings should be easy to de- and reconstruct, all the transportation systems for humans, supplies and machinery should be changeable and adaptable. The motto of the century was really a lesson learned from history. If you want to be on top of technological and social development, you have to adapt to change fast.
After riding the subway Claire sat aside an old bench opening the map she had in her backpack. She started to stare at it intensely. “You alright, Claire?” “Look at it and tell me what you see.” Joseph took the map and looked over it in detail. “Nothing out of the ordinary, I suppose, what did you see?” Claire looked, and it was still there. “Don’t you see that?” “See what Claire?” “The green glowing X, marking something behind the machine shop.” “Nope, I don’t see anything like that at all. Maybe it’s another feature from your experience with the memory crystal?” “Maybe you’re right, maybe that thing is still somehow active and helps us find the door.” She pulled out the cubic lock pick. “Well, we’re about to find out if that barkeeper just gave me drugs in my tea or if there’s some reality to this daydream of mine.” Joseph surprised himself when he found himself laughing hard. “Let’s go, let’s see what we find honey.” He grabbed her hand vigorously and started off into the other room. “Calm down Joseph, don’t draw any attention to us.” Joseph slowed down and looked at her for a moment. “Sorry, you’re right.”
They went through another room full of subway pictures of route openings, new subway machines, station openings and other subway related topics. When they arrived at the marked spot on the map, they stood in front of a huge oil painting of a classic subway scenery. There were people standing in line for the subway to arrive, a big white clock and benches and the pillars. The painting was about four meters long and two meters in height. Claire and Joseph were searching every inch of it but could not find anything that looked like a door or an entry. As Claire took a close look through the room she noticed the green glowing again. This time it came from what seemed to be a ticket vending machine. Of course, Claire and Joseph were not familiar with such a concept.
“Look Joseph, the thing there, it’s glowing!” “Really? Well, we better check it out then.” “Wait until we’re alone.” They sat down opposite to the huge painting and watched until all the visitors had passed by. They jumped up and started to check if they could find anything. “It has a tiny slot here.” Claire pointed where you were supposed to put the coins in. “Hmm...” Joseph started to massage his chin with two fingers. “Give me the cube, please.” She handed it to him and as he put it on the slot the cube transformed into a coin and vanished into the machine. A clicking sound indicated the coin landed somewhere inside the belly of the machine. “Now what?” Joseph looked in disbelief at the strange thing while pounding the top of it. “Maybe...” Claire grabbed the hand gear at the side of the machine and pulled it down. After some mechanical sounds from the machine a ticket popped out of it. It was blank, and Joseph looked at Claire. “No, nothing glowing on it. I don’t know maybe it’s...” The oil painting had a door wide hole all of a sudden as Claire held the ticket and looked at it. “Joseph, look at the painting do you see that?” “See what?” She gave him the ticket. “Wow, this is the weirdest weird day so far.” They both held on to the ticket, looked left and right to see if someone was coming their way and vanished through the mysterious barrier.
When they passed the gate into what laid behind the oil painting, they could not believe their eyes. Glowing monitors, keyboards, ancient desktop computers, a couple of what seemed to be fish tanks, electric wires all over the place seemingly drawing power from the city’s grid. Even though the light was dim they could see the layout of this huge room. On one of the monitors, a command line, blinked white at the black screen. Water was dripping from the ceiling and formed a flowstone on one of the desks. Laboratory equipment was all over the place and it had a strange smell in there, not really moldy but sweet and kind of like vanilla. All the technical equipment was idle except one monitor. The fish tanks had monitors of their own and one of them looked like it had been used just recently. The other tanks were empty but one of them had some fluid in it and bubbles occasionally burst from the bottom to the top. In the blue twilight of the room you could see the bubbles reflect the blue light gently. An endless amount of cables connected seemingly everything in this room. Most of the cables though ran into the Computer with the last running monitor. “What the hell is this?” Joseph asked more himself than anyone else really. “How should I know?” Claire answered shortly. “Wait, there’s something. Something from my dream.” “Your name, we have to type in your name.” “What?” While Joseph was asking the question, Claire had already typed it in the console and stopped. The white line jumped one row down and blinked happily. Claire channeled herself and her eyebrows gathered above her nose wrinkling the skin while she did it. She finally slapped her forehead and typed another line. Grey. “There’s no dust on this keyboard, Joseph.” The monitor’s light made a little cone of light in the blue glooming rest of the laboratory. If somebody would have been sitting silently in the corner of it, they would not have been able to spot him. “Better we do it fast, then.” As Claire hit the enter key the console wrote lines after lines of code until it went black. “I guess that was the wrong command than.” Claire noted, but as she did the old hard drive gave a hissing sound and a bearded man with bright white hair in a lab coat appeared on the screen. He looked paranoid and stared into the camera.
“This is Doctor Ali van Ost entering the laboratory’s daily log on Friday, 2nd February 2085. Today is a great day for humanity, we finally isolated all genes and are able to run our first full recalibration. The first data look promising and I think we can start to make this a cure for everyone on the planet. This is the beginning of a new era.” Sweat ran down his forehead as he f
earfully looked left and right before facing the camera again. “This is the first time we succeeded in forcing the cells for recalibration. If this works out, the implications for humanity are unimaginable. We will take our rightful place among the gods.” Again, he took a look around, and then he grabbed the camera and pointed it at the tanks focusing one in particular. There was a woman’s silhouette in all of them. The one in focus looked a bit sharper. It was an old woman and her skin was wrinkly as she floated in the bubbling water. “Lilith will be our first testing object.”
The screen went black again as Joseph and Claire looked at each other in disbelief. The little white line on the monitor returned and slowly blinked its way from the left side of the monitor towards the right as it suddenly stopped. Dr. Ali van Ost stared at them tired, exhausted and sleep deprived.
“This is Doctor Ali van Ost entering the laboratory’s daily log on Saturday March 24th, 2085. We discovered a rogue gene in the recalibration process of test subject Lilith. It did not kick in until we were almost through with our run, we almost made it.” He took the camera and pointed it towards the tanks again. The old woman was a black and grey mass still resembling something like a human silhouette. As the bubbles emerged from the bottom and rose through her the deformed body slowly dissolved bubble by bubble the old lady vanished into water. “Fortunately, we have two more chances to succeed in our attempts to lift humanity into the realm of gods. Proceeding on to next subject Yuki-onna as soon as the rogue gene is isolated and dealt with.”
Again, the little white line made its way across the monitor while the couple at this point stared at each other in a horrified manner. Dr. Ali van Ost appeared again in front of them. He looked relieved and almost happy this time.
“This is Doctor Ali van Ost entering the laboratory’s daily log on Friday 13th December 2086. After initializing the rerun of recalibration, we made it. The recalibration is stable and even though cellular failure has been measured it’s within the limits of regular degeneration. We started the process on our last subject, Grey, she looks promising too.” He showed the two tanks, each one with a young woman in it curled up into a fetal position. One of them had snow white skin and dark hair. The other one had lighter hair and light skin as well. The camera returned to Dr. Ali van Ost. “We’re on the brink of eternity here.”
The monitor’s white line jumped, one step at a time, into the right corner. As Dr. Ali van Ost reappeared he looked like a beaten dog.
“This is Dr. Ali van Ost. I don’t know what day it is. We took out Yuki-onna from the tank, she isn’t conscious yet. Since we took her out, we’ve been experiencing horrible headaches and since we’re in quarantine I asked for evacuation.” He looked like he was in pain. “We extracted the data and sent it to the other three facilities.” He turned the camera towards Yuki-onna, a young beautiful Asian woman. She laid there unconscious. Van Ost pointed the camera towards the tank now where another young woman was still floating in the water. “We’re extracting her in another week, but we have to get her out of here fast, something isn’t right. I feel like someone or something is driving a needle into my brain and moving it around.”
The monitor went dark, but no white line appeared this time. When the picture returned the laboratory was dark. Occasionally an electric discharge shot on the ceiling. None of the scientists moved as they all stood in a corner and faced the wall. Something rushed across the screen. It reappeared slowly from the right side, just a silhouette of a woman. The four scientists turned towards her and fell on their knees in front of her. She reached out for one of them and gently stroked his head. They rose and formed a square around her as they vanished out of the room.
The monitor went dark again and did not return. “Holy shit. What the fuck was that?” Joseph obviously lost his cool. “I have no idea. Seriously, I think someone might be playing a horrifying joke on us here.” The white line reappeared in the top left corner of the monitor. “We have to get out of here, joke or not.” “I agree, honey.” They started to walk towards the gate, but Claire stopped. “There are three other facilities he mentioned.” “What?” “He said they extracted the data and transferred it to the other facilities.” “Yes?” Joseph answered unable to hide his unwillingness to have this conversation here. “Where are the other facilities?” “I have no idea, Claire; can we go now?” Claire’s look swooped around the room and stopped at a pin board. “There.” She pointed at it and made haste getting there. “Here are three photos of the night sky. I don’t know why but I guess I need those.” She explained as the photos glowed in a strange green only she could see. “Alright, but let’s go now.” “I agree, let’s get out of here.” The gate was still open, and they were able to look outside when holding the ticket, so they waited until it was safe to leave. All of a sudden the guy who gave them the map came into the corridor outside. He walked slowly, passed the corridor and when he reached their gate he stopped. They both took a step back. When he moved on they inhaled again. “God damn it.” Claire whispered into the twilight of the laboratory. “Ok, I think it’s clear now, go go go!” They stepped through and the door behind them vanished as the ticket turned into ash.
Claire and Joseph left the building fast and did not look back. They walked for almost an hour before they dared to stop. Finally, they reached a park where they sank onto a bench and took some deep breaths. Claire reached into her pocket as she pulled out the three photos. She gave them to Joseph who inspected them closely. Just a high definition picture of the night sky and on the backside a time and date. “What do you think?” Joseph took one of the pictures and looked at it. “I’ve got no idea, Claire. What am I looking at?” “I think you’re looking at a window of stars seen from the other three facilities.” Joseph’s chin dropped. What an unbelievably smart wife he had there, he felt both proud to call her his wife and stupid for having so little sense for riddles. “The other three facilities then.” “Yes, we have to go there.” Claire stated putting the pictures back in her pocket. “But we have to find them first.” “I know an astrophysicist, she might be able to help.” “But you hate the moon.” “Hate is a strong word, Claire, it isn’t my favorite place to be, I agree, and it’s my least favorite way of getting somewhere too. It’s just a bad combination of things, really.”
XIX. Sapphire
Under the clear blue sky there was endless ice. The light reflected on its surface. The horizon seemed to be much closer than the horizon on Earth, which was the only horizon reference the space marines had. In the east an ice crystal wall, nieves penitentes as the scientists were calling them, climbed for about ten meters straight up into the sky. It was Europa’s only spot where the endless icy surface occasionally melted just to form this wall spanning the whole moon on its equator. It was a wall of upwards pointing icicles, not very broad, maybe a couple of meters at its thickest. The rest of Europa was the smoothest surface ever seen on any planet or moon so far. This made Europa good for two things, testing weapons in low G scenarios and what was much more fun for the space marines: hockey. Well, it wasn’t exactly hockey in the classic sense it was a territory claiming game with a king of the hill like adaption. First there were thirteen territories to claim, one of which was the starting and respawn point of the game. When all the territories were claimed, the team with the most territories had to hold on to a particular point on the wall. The hill in this case. If they managed to hold them for ten minutes, the game was theirs. If they did not lose territories to give the other team the chance to claim them again and become the hill defending team themselves. Easy principle. Just like in every other competitive human endeavor, rules were easy to understand, execution is where it became tricky. It was not like this game existed in this particular form anywhere already, it was more like the marines on Sapphire got bored and asked for combat training on the surface of Sapphire. Which indeed was a good training ground since no one was there, you could wreck the place and you never ran out of fresh moon surface in your lifetime. Today was an
important day to the grunts from platoon Charly-Echo and the platoon Beta-Cancri it was the finals. Among all the competing teams those two had collected the most points in this season.
Sapphire was the twin station of Ruby and while Ruby was circling the red planet, Sapphire was assigned to study Jupiter and one moon Europa in particular. Its main mission was to exploit Jupiter’s resources for the human endeavor. While the habitation rings of Sapphire turned around the same fusion reactor as the rings on Ruby, there was a hangar on the outer ring. A dozen space marines were already standing there facing their commanding officer. “Hell, who’re the sorry bastards whose asses we’re going to kick today?”, a man with his helmet back screamed, standing on a supply box. No one dared to speak while the commanding officer took a little walk on his box. “The poor bastards who’ve been unlucky enough to collect as almost as many points as we did this season”, he yelled in a low voice. “Hell yeah”, the marine chorus greeted his commanding officer. As he turned towards his platoon, he stared at them with a burning desire to dominate everything within his eyes’ reach. “So, what’re we going to do with them today?” Again, a long silence followed as the platoon stared back at him getting pumped with electrifying energy every second he stared them down. “We’re going to crush those poor excuses for space marines! And that’s a fucking order.” “Fuck yeah!” The platoon chorused back at him. “Now go, go, go!” As he yelled, his helmet and the helmets of his platoon closed. At the same time the red light from the hangar doors started to blink.
“Decompression process starting in 10... 9... 8...” The helmets closed with the rest of their Advanced Combat Armor, or as they called it, ACA. “7.. 6... 5...” The hangar doors sealing mechanism started to spin and the giant doors were about to open up. “4.. 3... 2...” EVA counted down. “1” With a high-pitched hiss, the hangar doors retreated, and the platoon moved towards the hangar’s edge. In their helmets vectors and flying paths appeared as the commanding officer established radio contact. “Wait for the moon and then go! The other team was already on the ground.” And there it came as the ring spun the moon came into sight from the left side and with it all the lights went on green. They jumped into the vacuum of space without hesitation. The beauty of the ACA was not only its sophisticated design but its incredible features. It was both a space suit as there were regular spacesuits, but it required an ACA pilot to fully unleash its potential. It had also never been used in a war since the destructive potential was too much for a planet like Earth to take. Every single one of those powerhouses could create a blast similar to the asteroid which made the dinosaurs become extinct. Naturally, there was not a single one on Earth since that was widely considered a bad idea. Even the construction was happening entirely in space since space, or tiny moons, were the only places in the solar system where you could train pilots and give them a bit of freedom to test the suits.
