The Star Gate

by Dean C. Moore

  Corin dropped the rifle and ran a handheld scanner over Thor. She searched and searched along any number of wavelengths, zoomed and zoomed, but no sign of the nanites. Not only was her son cured, but the weapon worked. He was back in business for round two of his madness.

  She gave Thor a big, stifling hug. He did not respond, sleeping soundly. That was good enough for her.

  Finally, she could get back to her vacuuming. Life was so much better with OCD compulsions to clean everything in sight when surrounded with bozos tunneling their way to hell with their latest toys, all while thinking they were paving a path to heaven with their good intentions.

  ***

  Thor awoke on his bed and the first thing his sore eyes and aching body took in was the assault rifle mounted on the shelf in his room. “Outstanding!” he shouted, jumping out of bed and reaching for the gun, forgetting all about being sick as a dog two seconds ago. He grabbed hold of the weapon and tried to get a feel for it. “What does this do?”

  “It’s for when the whole thunder god-thing starts wearing thin, and you realize you’re not the most powerful person in the room, you zap your opponent with it,” his frog doll said, crawling down from the shelf with all the other dolls where he was stored inconspicuously.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Thor said, throwing the rifle over his shoulder with the aid of its strap. “So I guess we really don’t need this thing until Superman gets hit with kryptonite. Personally I prefer the Thor mythology which posits no such weakness, but I can’t deny your logic after the last encounter. How did I come back from the dead, anyway? I presume I was dead, being as I still don’t feel entirely alive.”

  “Very long, very boring story. The only thing that really matters is you sign on the dotted line here, relinquishing me of all responsibility.” The frog doll shoved the documents into Thor’s hands.

  Thor sighed. “Fine,” he said, dashing off his signature. “May as well get used to signing autographs if I’m going to be constantly saving the day. Let’s get on with saving it, shall we?”

  Thor, trusty hammer in hand, was already headed for the door. The hammer’s nanite composition was responsible for the hammer’s magic, explaining why it was light as a feather in Thor’s hand, but impossible to move in anyone else’s; the nanites merely shape-shifted, changing their nature, in response to the hand that touched it. “On that note, if you could please sign this one other form.”

  Thor turned around to find a print out, folded neatly in connected sheets, stacked nearly as high as the ceiling. The frog doll leaped up to the crest, grabbed the top sheet, jumped back down, and holding it in his hand, motioned with the pen to Thor. “You’re taking this disclaimer thing a bit seriously, aren’t you?” Thor muttered.

  The frog doll snorted. “Um, we are headed out on safari into that—” The frog doll pointed dramatically at the viewport.

  Thor, out of respect, gave it a courtesy glance. “Yeah, so?”

  “I’m guessing there are trillions, maybe even quadrillions of bacteria out there—the smallest suckers on the food chain, any of which are more than a match for us. Let’s not even talk about the things higher up the food chain.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you have a point.” Thor dashed off another autograph. “Still, there’s such a thing as being too security conscious.” Thor resumed his march toward the sliding doors.

  The frog doll mumbled, “Said the blithering, adrenaline-addled idiot,” marching after him.

  ***

  DeWitt entered his and Corin’s flat, saw the wife vacuuming; he was so used to her OCD, he no longer questioned it. “Where’s Ivan?”

  “Ivan goes by Thor now. You’d know that if you were around enough to keep up with his growth spurts.”

  “Well, I figured now’s the time to take Thor out. Say one thing for Theta Team, they’ve got the region around the ship locked down and secured. The local petting zoo is probably more hazardous, and not nearly as much fun.”

  “He’s in his room sleeping off his last superhero stunt.”

  “I feel his pain.” DeWitt marched toward his son’s bedroom. Seconds later, Corin heard the shout, “He’s gone, Corin!”

  Corin shut off the vacuum and ran inside the room. She glanced at where the assault rifle was poised, and then looked up at where the frog doll should be. “Oh no! He’s gone outside without you.”

  “Relax. It might actually be more fun without his dad as chaperone. I doubt he’s seen most of the Theta Team operatives from up close. Trust me, they’re even wilder looking than the native critters. It’ll just be more like a haunted Halloween hayride for him than a day at the petting zoo, I guess.”

  The room lights went out briefly before their entire chambers was being illuminated under a flashing red strobe light. “Theta Team is being recalled to the ship. Omega Forces and Alpha Unit are now mission critical.”

  Corin realized in that moment that the Red Alert was no match for her screaming. “Find our son!”

  He kissed her on top of her head. “Will do, dear.”

  ***

  Leon beheld Theseus marching toward him. The sight of that guy closing in didn’t look any less daunting than the first time Theseus stepped up to him.

  Theseus arrested his march a respectful distance from Leon. Crumley, still using a tree as a back rest, in spitting distance from Leon, regarded their exchange, pretending to be more engaged in his ongoing food studies.

  Leon didn’t care for the look on Theseus’s face—it was more foreboding than usual. “You have something to report, soldier?”

  Theseus hesitated and made a strange sound—was that a sigh? “I beg to report, sir, that Theta Team has been effectively neutralized.”

  Leon saw Crumley’s hand stutter with his food sorting. “Natty is pursuing the idea that this entire planet and everything on it may all be one elaborate simulation, designed like a video game, meant to challenge and engage us, even enthrall us. The more right with the place we feel the better the honey trap. The only way to really know the mind of the enemy is to play the game. Based on that, sir, I suggest Alpha Unit take the lead on this one. Those teens live for their virtual reality games.”

  “They’re kids, Leon,” Crumley said, interjecting himself into their conversation. “Bad enough my ego has to suffer the assault of Theta Team relegating us to superfluous status, but at least they look all that. I wouldn’t want to mix it up with this guy,” he said, pointing to Theseus. “Would you?”

  In any other circumstance, Theseus might have smiled or even thanked him for the compliment, but he was taking it hard that much of the work he and his team were still doing might well be for naught.

  Leon brought his eyes back into focus after considering the matter. Addressing Theseus, he said, “Tell Patent he and a small team of his people will back us up; but we’ll take the lead.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Theseus said.

  “And, Theseus…”

  If there was hesitation and uncertainty in Theseus’s voice, Leon suspected it had to do with the whole “make war, not peace” ethos of Omega Force that they’d been branded with. Leon fought his own impulses to be no more condescending with this guy, inclined to think of Theta Team as the eco-tourists of the three special forces units. He figured if the guy could swallow his pride, so could he.

  “I have additional news from the Nautilus, Sir.”

  “Solo says…”

  “He doesn’t know how long he can hold Cassandra at bay.” Leon could fill in the missing pieces of that communiqué for himself. “If Natty’s right, he won’t have to much longer. Can’t see us getting past much more than the lower levels of this video game without her. Download all of Theta Team’s intel to her; her mind can take the data dump.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Theseus replied.

  “Dismissed.” Leon watched Theseus depart to carry out his assignments. “I swear, you’d think the guy would be slightly less terrifying walking away from you.”

  “Does Natty have anything to ba
se this cockamamie idea on?” Crumley asked. “Before we put Alpha Unit in harm’s way—considering they could barely handle what we had to deal with in the Amazon far less…”

  “I don’t know; I thought they handled themselves well. As for Natty, I don’t think even he understands why he gives so much credence to his gut instincts. But he’s hardly alone on that score, is he? Any soldier in the field working with me alive today has come to rely on that just as much.”

  Crumley snorted. “True that.”

  “Where the hell is the rest of Omega Force?” Leon’s tone was more harsh than impatient; he’d flared up for no good reason, suggesting he was more stressed than he realized.

  “They’re, um…”

  “Crumley!”

  “They’re out helping DeWitt find his kid.”

  Leon rubbernecked Crumley’s direction, his eyes going wide. “Corin brought him back from the dead?”

  “He got himself killed before he stepped off the ship?” Crumley started choking on the seed of a small fruit he was sampling, before hacking and spitting it out. “Maybe we could keep that little known fact from DeWitt; can’t imagine it’ll make for a less anxious search.”

  “Well, if Thor’s anywhere in the perimeter where Theta Team is deployed, can’t see him getting into too much trouble.” Leon regarded Theta Team spread thin over the landscape; most of the operatives had already beamed back to the Nautilus. The last of the bunch beamed back to the ship before his eyes.

  “Shit!” Leon exclaimed.

  “Guess we should have seen that coming.” Crumley spat out a seed. “The damn ‘make peace, not war’ pacifists. You did explain to them this is not the fucking peace corps?”

  “Theseus!”

  Theseus materialized out of nowhere—right in front of Leon’s eyes. The guy just walked through a portal. So that’s what the organ over his third eye is for! Guess it explained how he could run communications between the Nautilus and the troops on the ground.

  “Yes, Sir!”

  “We could use your help rounding up the boy. That is precisely why I didn’t give any order for Theta Team to retreat to the ship—to assist with the unforeseen.”

  “I gave the order, sir, for the last of us to beam up. It’s all hands on deck now. Theta team is switching focus to bringing the Nautilus’s ecosystems back on line at a hundred-percent capacity. You do realize you’re taking on a supersentience—and you’ve already ruled out diplomacy—which I guess makes sense? If Natty’s right, we’re already at war and the game itself is an ultimatum, accept it as a prison, or rebel. If your efforts fail—and I calculate they will, sir—the Nautilus will be needed to serve as a fortress to buy us time for your last stand. I only hope that Natty manages to bring her supersentience back on line quickly enough that we can get to hell out of Dodge before the fortress is broached.”

  Leon craned his head at Crumley and glared at him; Crumley managed to only thinly restrain a smile.

  “And what if I told you to belay that order?” Leon said, craning his head back to Theseus.

  “No can do, sir. You need to think of the three teams sort of like the three branches of government; the judiciary, the executive branch, and the legislature. Without that balance of power we run the risk of group think.”

  Leon’s face was flushing red because he could feel the blood pressure rising and Crumley could obviously see the change in him as he picked then to speak up. “Makes a kind of sense, Leon. I’m guessing they’re the legislature, going by their sheer numbers. I like us as the executive branch. Alpha Unit might make a good judiciary, deciding how best to enact the directives coming from both groups—especially against the enemy in the form of the breakthrough tech needed to forge the path to the greater good for all.”

  Leon massaged his forehead, glaring at Theseus. “Carry on, soldier.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Theseus disappeared again, right before his eyes. At least he respected the fact that no one had any time to lose.

  “Grab your weapons, Crumley. Let’s go find this kid.”

  Crumley pulled himself up and strapped on his weapons. “I think it only fair to tell you I might be compromised.”

  “What?”

  “Natty has been able to open a COMM link between the nanites in his mind and the ones in my mind. He hasn’t been able to do that with anybody else. He believes it’s because I’ve imbibed more of the local foods. He suggests the supersentience is rewarding us the more we allow its microbes to get inside our bodies, where it can more easily reprogram us; it’s another baited trap. The other Omega Force and Alpha Unit operatives, yourself included, have been put on a strict food and water fast to prevent that from happening. Anyone without the nanites necessary to produce their own food and water has been issued the injections by Theta Team—who already gave them the brief.”

  “Lovely. So the guy whispering in my ear this whole time is the enemy.”

  “No need to be melodramatic, Leon. Save the meltdowns for when they seem far more justified. I suspect there will be no shortage of genuine rationales for that behavior.”

  Leon swallowed his temper welling up from undefined sources and took the lead.

  “You think you could slow your pace there, buddy? I was kind of hoping to finish digesting this meal before you triggered Armageddon. Excuse me, Armageddon—Level One style. Can’t wait to see what it looks like on levels 2, 3, 4, and 5.”

  “You’re getting as bad as Ajax, Crumley, with not knowing when to shut up.” The twigs crunching beneath his feet were a good stand-in analogy for Leon’s over-stretched nerves. “I suggest we find that kid before he triggers Armageddon.” Another snap of a twig. “It’s not like he’s been briefed on how no decision should be made without first being run through the three branches of government!”

  “See, now I can tell from your tone, you’re taking that blow to the psyche hard. That’s okay. The first mortar shell you take to the head will free you of any lingering resentment.”

  ***

  “Where is everybody?” Thor asked, materializing alongside his frog doll some distance from the Nautilus.

  “They must be waiting for you to secure the area before disembarking.”

  “Duh!” Thor thwacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Clearly I need to get some blood pumping to my brain with some action.”

  “Try hitting yourself in the head again to see if you can activate the sarcasm centers. Or I’ll be out here beside you entirely defenseless.”

  Thor was already racing ahead blindly. “I’m coming for you! There’s no point hiding!” he screamed to his enemies.

  The frog doll leaped behind Thor with the frog-like bounding for which his legs were made. “Why don’t we save the wild leaps of imagination for me, huh? Jumping into the unknown is more my thing than yours. I say we go with our strengths. That means me out in front, you hanging back, playing dumb. It’s what you do best.”

  Thor was either out of earshot or deafened by his beating heart rushing too much blood to his brain to stay ahead of the adrenaline. Thor might also be ignoring him, per the usual. When news of his whereabouts finally came, it was carried on the wind in the form of a “Whoa!”

  That “Whoa!” was a bit too vague for Frog Doll’s purposes, so he picked up the pace, even as his own heart started pounding.

  He arrived over the crest of the hill and pulled up by Thor’s side before Thor had managed to take any more foolhardy actions. “Whoa!” the Frog Doll exclaimed.

  “What do you think? Beginner’s luck.”

  “You got a strange notion of luck, kid.”

  “It’s guarding that hole at the base of the tree. It must be the entrance to level 2 of this video game,” Thor said, pointing.

  “Wait? You think none of this is real? You’re not scheduled for a psychotic break for…” Frog Doll checked his watch. “No, wait, you’re about due.”

  “Weren’t you listening when Natty was briefing Crumley? You’re supposed to be the better s
py. A lot easier for you to go unnoticed, but no, you’re too busy all the time writing up your disclaimers.”

  The strange eye the size of a cement mixer on two kangaroo legs flicked its iris, which doubled as teeth surrounding the black hole of his pupil, then took a small hop toward Thor.

  “Stand back,” Thor said, pushing Frog Doll back with his hand.

  “Like you need to tell me. You should try listening to your own advice.”

  “Don’t make me hurt you, little fella,” Thor said to the giant eye.

  The eye emitted this ear-piercing scream that sounded suspiciously like a battle cry before lunging at Thor chomping away with the teeth rimming the inside of its iris.

  Thor flung his hammer and with Thor-like accuracy smashed the eye against a tree. The whole scene was kind of gross, actually. What Thor’s hammer did to a big-ass eye was not pretty. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Thor said.

  But the eye reconstituted as soon as Thor retrieved the hammer from where it had planted itself in the tree. And it came at him as if it just couldn’t take a hint.

  Thor whipped his newly minted assault rifle around and fired off a shot. The shell was more of a proton torpedo—some energy orb that pretty much fried the eye. Thor waited to see if it would come back to life; it didn’t. “Well, guess now I know what the rifle’s for, so I don’t have time to get bored with any of the bit characters in this drama. I mean that thing thinking it could come at me again and again with the result being any different.”

  Thor marched toward the hole in the tree, only to find Frog Doll holding on to his arm and digging into the ground with his heels. “Hold up, genius.”

  “What are you going on about now?”

  “Could we talk about this? That could be the portal to hell.”

  “You worry too much.”

  Thor broke free of the hold, charged ahead, and disappeared into the hole. Frog Doll sighed. “That’s it. I’m done with this whole kid gig. Way too exhausting. I’m going to find me an old lady who needs help getting her dentures in once a day. The rest of the time I can get lost in my own escapist fantasies.” He stomped toward the hole, chomping at the proverbial bit the entire time; at this rate, any more teeth-grinding and even his shark’s teeth wouldn’t scare anyone.