by Amy Field
With that O went silent and the two of them headed into the deep labyrinthine streets of lower Manhattan. She knew someone that they could see who would be able to hack Vanda’s chip.
Down there in the lower levels, most of the telescreens were cracked or broken, but the odd one worked and as they passed them they saw the news of the chancellor’s death and those suspected of it. Vanda paused as he saw his face up there on the telescreens. He too was now a wanted fugitive.
Soon he and O were in a bustling collection of tight alleyways encrusted with little shops selling cheap goods. The place was a huge marketplace, and the two of them had to squeeze their ways through the walkways tightly packed with scruffy looking people of all kind. The smell of rotting meat seemed to permeate out of everything and the sun’s rays never made it this far down into the city depths, so the place was lit up with miles and miles of neon lights that hung from every ceiling and ordained every wall. Vanda began to worry that they’d be recognised, but no one seemed to batter an eyelid at them. That was because down at the bottom of the city nobody cared for the fugitives of a government whose jurisdiction doesn’t spread this low.
Finally, O found the place she was looking for. They ducked into a small shop, whose door was only four feet tall. Vanda had to stoop down low as they went through.
Inside the cramped shop, there was an ocean of cables strewn all over the floor and across every surface. They walked steadily to the back of the shop and then continued down a cramped corridor, O leading, before finally arrived at a small metal hatch that sat on the floor of the far end of the hallway.
O bent down and knocked on the hatch. A light beam came out of the hatch and scanned O. The hatch instantly unlocked, and O opened it up. She began to climb down through the hatch but stopped as her head was about to disappear and looked up at Vanda.
“Don’t…” she pronounced.
“I won’t mention that I worked for the government,” Vanda answered before she had a chance to finish.
“Okay,” she said and carried on going down.
Vanda followed her down into a little cave full of pieces of tech and cables. Vanda saw O walk up to a huge pile of cables, and then the cables move suddenly as she approached. Someone was underneath it, or within it all. The pile of cables stretched out a little hand from within it, which O took. It then turned around, and Vanda saw a little oriental face poking out from within all the cables. The cables appeared to be plugged into some kind of suit that the little man was wearing. The weight of it all hunched him down, and when he moved, he looked like a giant hunchback.
“Sit,” the little cable covered man entreated Vanda.
But Vanda could see nowhere to sit, so he just sat on the floor. Vanda then allowed O to do all the talking; he didn’t want to give away the fact that he was a shifter. O explained to the man, whose name was Zilo, that Vanda needed a government chip hacked and that he was a Cause member who had escaped from a government camp. Zilo gave him a curious look. O then explained that Vanda was a mute. The old man seemed reassured by this and came over to Vanda, dragging the deluge of cables with him as he did so.
He came up to Vanda and grabbed the latter’s head roughly, pulling it forward and examining the back of Vanda’s neck. He placed two fingers there and sat musing for a while. Vanda noticed that the old man’s eyes turned a light neon-blue as he did so. He was a neurolian— a networker; that is, someone who has adapted their genetic makeup so that they can plug themselves into whole computer networks and change its programming with their minds. The suit was an entire network of databases continuously plugging him into everything. Vanda had heard of such people but had never seen them in the flesh. They were illegal and mostly worked for the Cause. But then the government had captured a few of them, drugged and then forced to combat other neurolians for them.
A few moments later and the old man became animated, and his eyes returned to their former dull color.
“It’s done,” he muttered.
Suddenly he grabbed a screwdriver that sat next to him and flung it directly at Vanda. Vanda instantly caught it, having a three-second advantage.
“Huh!” the old man cried out. “I knew it— he’s a shifter.”
O stood behind him with a worried look upon her face.
“I knew it the moment he walked down here,” Zilo continued and then addressing O, he added. “Do you know?”
“Yes,” she gently pronounced.
Zilo then grabbed hold of Vanda’s arm and began inspecting it carefully.
Looking up at Vanda, he asked, “When did you take the last of your medication?”
“What?” Vanda replied.
When he had left for his ride, Vanda had forgotten to grab his meds. He had only consciously expected to be out for a couple of hours max.
“Your withdrawal is coming on,” Zilo informed him. “Look— your skin is fading. You’re nearly completely colourless.”
Vanda looked at his hands. They had gone even paler than they usually were. His exposure to the spice hadn’t just affected his temporal awareness; it had also affected the pigmentation of his skin and bleached almost all the color out of his body. When the effects of his meds wore off, the color of his skin would immediately fade until it was almost transparent. They called it ‘ghosting’ at the Institute. He was supposed to take a pill every three hours and couldn’t afford a break. It had now been three and a half hours since his last.
Vanda felt the sure signs of a temporal seizure about to kick in. He began to sweat. He felt the room start to shrink around him, and the ceiling began to push down on him. He felt like the very air of the room and his vision was squeezing him began to whir. The sounds in the room began to blur, and he felt himself shrinking. His time-lapse began to spread out: five seconds, and then ten, followed by twenty seconds, the room becoming more and more confusing as the seconds passed. He reached his hand out into the room to see if he were still in it, but his hand hit something solid about a foot in front of him, which he couldn’t see. Suddenly he no longer saw the room, its walls dissolving around him, but being carried along a long corridor. He was having a temporal seizure.
It was common for shifters who regularly take government meds to have fits when they don’t take them for too long a period. Their bodies grew a dependency to the drugs and going without them causes catastrophic damage to their temporal field. Vanda needed to get to medication quickly.
Within the fit, he attempted to cool his mind, to focus it back into its present moment. But every time he opened his eyes he was in a different place, causing him to become more confused. Now and then he would feel someone stroking his hand, but when he opened his eyes to look, he saw no one there. Sometimes he would catch the face of O looking down at him, a worried expression on her freckled face, but when he reached out to touch her, he felt nothing there.
Eventually, he slipped into unconsciousness.
Unfortunately, Vanda found no respite in sleep. He found himself in a great hall made of glass. Outside he saw an expanse of blue, cloud-filled sky, the likes of which he had only ever seen from the window of an interplanetary shuttle whenever he was flying in or out of Earth’s atmosphere, but never from the ground. Outside the hall stood hundreds of people all dressed in white, the cut of their outfits different but always white. They looked so clean and beautiful. They were all rejoicing something and service droids hovered about them giving out drinks and refreshments.
Everyone stood on the most beautiful sky top balcony that had been carved from white ivory taken from the gigantic whale-like creatures of V’ranasi 6. The balcony was huge, around a hundred meters in width and spreading out the side of an enormous tower that adorned the sky tops of a huge city. The ground was covered with perfectly manicured grass, and an orchid of peach trees bordered the whole thing. Vanda looked across the sky top and saw across a large expanse of city rooftop communities that looked like small islands placed on top of mountain-sized skyscrapers. It was beautiful, and each island was cove
red in little suburbs and lakeside communities. It was heaven on Earth and something that Vanda could hardly believe possible.
All of a sudden the sky filled with hundreds of television screens and everyone looked up, parents pointing the screens out to their children. Other people, such as those close to the edge of the ivory balcony, ignored the screens and began looking down over the edge with electro binoculars. Vanda looked up into the air at the screens and saw that they were displaying images of the bottom levels of the city. In fact, they were showing the subterranean levels of every city on Earth, going from one city to the next. The lower level city streets were full of people, all looking very scared, crying, hugging one another, holding up placards that Vanda couldn’t make out.
There suddenly came a flash of light, both on the screens and down below, and the people up on the balcony began to cheer, as did all the other people on the upper levels, including children. Vanda ran outside and looked over the edge of the huge balcony. An enormous bright light with lightening bolts careering out of it was covering the whole of the lower level. He looked back up at the screens and saw the light begin to fade.
When it had, all the people were gone, naught but ash being blown along on an atomic wind.
Vanda suddenly awoke. He was surrounded by people he didn’t recognise and in a strange room. His vision was blurred. He saw the face of O come into view, but he didn’t reach out for it as he was sure that his lapse was still too far-gone. He flinched as she reached out to him and he felt her touch his arm only ten seconds later. “They must have gotten some meds inside me,” Vanda thought.
“It’s okay,” O reassured him. “You’re with the Cause now— they’re my friends.”
Vanda waited for the ten seconds to pass and then he solemnly pronounced to O, “Then I have to tell your leader that the government plan to incinerate everyone on the lower levels of every city on Earth.”
Part Two
Deep inside the Cause’s secret base, Vanda spent several days in and out of temporal seizures.
The team of doctors that constantly surrounded him did all they could to help. But, no matter what, they couldn’t get his seizures under control. During this period, Vanda felt so alone, trapped in a world between worlds and O did her best to keep him company, regularly sitting by his side. However, he could never see her in the present moment and therefore was unable communicate with her.
Several times he was presented with her panicked face, tears streaming down her cheeks, and realised that something was about to happen in that room that would move her to such emotions. It filled him with trepidation; for he fully expected that she was crying over him.
Once he was sitting up in his bed when he suddenly realised that there was someone next to him and that they were talking to him; informing him of something. He quickly realised that it was Zilo, but that the little man was no longer wearing his network suit. Vanda hadn’t realised how old the man was when he had seen him before and also how tiny. He was now sitting in a chair, hunched forward and leaning on a long black cane; his hands rested upon it.
“I’m not sure exactly where you are at the moment, Vanda,” the old man informed him, “but I must relate certain information to you. You needn’t reply, as I probably won’t be there when you speak. Firstly, I must tell you that we are doing everything that we can to stabilise your current condition. We can synthesise your medication, but your condition is far worse than we first thought. It appears to be mutating and. Therefore, your treatment is continuously evolved for the purpose of keeping it under control. The government has placed several devices within you that are, we believe, designed for the purpose of monitoring your condition. However, we are unable to access the devices because their government encryption is too strong. Instead, we must remove them.
“Now some further bad news: your medication is designed not just to keep your condition under control, but also to keep you, yourself, under control. The meds inhibit several of your brain receptors that could themselves take control of your condition, allowing you to use your full physical abilities with autonomy. They also make you physically dependent on them. We must first remove the devices and then wean you off your meds. This process will be an extremely trying period for you as you will be falling around the temporal plane for what may seem like an eternity. You are not the first person that we have had to get off of this type of medication and I’m not going to lie to you; it could kill you, make you insane or worse: we could lose you forever within some other temporal plane far off into the future. Our success rate is not good. Of the several hundred people that we have gotten off of government meds, only ten were able to function afterwards. But I’m afraid it’s the only way.”
At this point, the old man struck out his bony little hand and took Vanda’s hand within it. Vanda felt nothing, clearly seeing the future, but the old man’s solemn expression and the gesture touched Vanda deep inside. Zilo had seen many people go through withdrawal and had seen the fight in which their souls took part. One man had explained it to Zilo as being lost deep in space where a single second can represent an infinite number of lifetimes.
“When you slip into the temporal field,” Zilo continued solemnly, “you must remove yourself of your ego, Vanda. Your mind must be untethered from all your egoistic concerns and be allowed to float freely into the expanse of time and space. You will see all time and will lose yourself within it. You will be but a child floating in time; alone and afraid. Do not fear the darkness, but enfold it. For we can only fully appreciate and experience the wonder of the light from the bleakness of the dark. I hope that this helps you, my friend, and I wish you all the luck in the world for your fight. For it will be the greatest fight that your soul has ever been through.”
With that, the old man slowly disappeared like a sand statue in the wind and was replaced by empty space. Vanda looked around and realised that he was now standing. He looked to his side and saw O. She had a terribly pained expression on her face that made Vanda shudder. He looked down and noticed that she had taken hold of his hand and had led him to a corner of the room. Together they stood in front of an elongated mirror. Vanda peered into the mirror and was shocked to see his emaciated body. Its skin was a ghostly white and upon its surface stood several large, fresh scars. There was one each on his forearms; a large crescent shaped one on his abdomen and, when he turned around, he noticed a long horrific pink scar that ran from his coccyx all the way up his spine and finished upon the crown of his head. He turned his head and looked at O, who stood beside him. She shed a single tear that fell from the corner of her eye and slid down her cheek. She smiled a crooked smile at him and Vanda realised that she meant to console him with her look. But it filled Vanda with pity. Not for himself, but for O. He hated the fact that he was to blame for her tears. She looked so child-like in her expression. Her pity for him touched his heart.
Of course, Vanda was only the witness to this; it was yet actually to happen, and he felt intensely frustrated at not being able to reach out and touch her. He so wanted to caress her face and wipe away her tears; console her pain.
He attempted to break free and control the body of his future self; urging it on through his mind; willing it to reach out to her. He felt his whole body well up and then scream out for this, like an ancient volcano that has spent centuries waiting to explode and then finally gets its chance.
Suddenly, his arm jolted out and he realised that he had willed it to do so. But before he had an opportunity to control it further, it once again returned to its limp former position. He looked around and saw that the walls of the room were beginning to disappear, just as Zilo had earlier, like sand in the wind. Vanda looked to O by his side and saw that she too was in the process of being swept away. Seconds later there was nothing left of her but cosmic dust swirling away into a vast expanse of blackness.
Everything went dark for Vanda then and he couldn’t tell where he was. In the present, his body could feel nothing around it, as if he wer
e floating in the air. He felt himself completely still; no wind or anything appeared to attack his senses. In a word, Vanda was lost; both physically and spiritually.
To explain everything that happened to Vanda at this time would take more volumes of books than have ever been written, and it would take an eternity to write; because that’s what he experienced: eternity. So for this episode, it is better just to report several sentient moments within this almost endless realm of which our hero and heroine was cast.
In the beginning, Vanda floated amongst the great cities of Earth and watched their entire history played out. He watched as humanity tore itself apart. Wars broke out everywhere, and he watched as whole cities were decimated; he saw great floods of blue flame enveloping them and sweeping away whole civilisations. He watched as fleets of ships left the ruins of Earth behind and fled to the colonies. He then travelled with them and watched as the colonies became unstable themselves, as humankind’s bitterness followed the survivors there. He watched the colonies begin to disintegrate with uprisings and then humanity started to consume itself once again, just as it had on Earth. He then spent thousands of years watching the ruins of humanity slowly become swallowed by nature and then crumble into dust, until even the flimsiest signs of this once fertile civilisation disappeared from the face of the universe. His heart sank at this sight and he fled into the vast expanse of the unknown universe.
His spirit flowed along with the universal slipstream, pulled through wormholes and emerging in strange solar systems. He watched as full suns imploded into themselves in giant supernovas and sucked their surrounding planets into them. He watched as whole galaxies collapsed in on themselves and became giant nebulas of pink and green gases. He entered entire stars as they moved through the universe and absorbed other solar systems into their great being. He discovered other life forms of different complex natures; a species of amphibious humanoids that lived a primitive life until destroyed by a great planet-wide famine that decimated their numbers until their primitive civilisation was swept away by the natural forces of the universe. He witnessed a species of gaseous beings that evolved beyond their physical form and were able to move through the galaxy, inhabiting planets and infecting other species. They would be breathed in by a physical organism, and then consume it from the inside out. Vanda watched as whole galaxies were depleted of their sentient life forms by these gaseous parasites until the surrounding galaxies were no more than vast wastelands and the gaseous life forms were the size of whole nebulas. These were then themselves consumed by an imploding star whose supernova spanned across an entire galaxy.
