Diffusion Box Set

by Stan C. Smith

  “All I know is this feels right. Besides, mutualism is the rule in nature, not the exception. And you know not all of those relationships took that long. Some of them happened overnight, by accident.”

  “Lindsey, that thing’s not even a real animal!” He sighed. The last thing he’d intended was to start an argument. He looked to Samuel, hoping for some help.

  Samuel nodded. “When I departed England, the word ‘mutualism’ was rather new, although the idea of symbiosis had been well known for centuries. It is my understanding that mutualism requires that both organisms in the relationship derive some benefit from it. Perhaps a question worthy of attention is, what benefit is the mbolop deriving from you, Lindsey?”

  This was followed by silence.

  Finally Lindsey said, “I don’t know. But as you said yourself, for now the benefits may be unforeseeable.”

  Samuel looked at Quentin and shrugged.

  They sat in silence for some minutes, each of them perhaps lost in their own thoughts.

  “I have bad news and good news,” Lindsey said abruptly. “Rusty didn’t find any fruits we can eat. But he found something else on the bank of the river. Apparently the rain has driven the earthworms there to the surface. They’re big ones—longer than Rusty’s body.” She held a hand up and formed a one-inch circle, apparently showing the girth of the earthworms.

  “Excellent!” Samuel said. He turned to Sinanie and spoke to him in the Papuan’s language.

  Sinanie had been quiet since they had settled in under the shelter, but now he flashed a broad grin and said, “Génggémop. Sikh!” He got up and took off toward the river.

  Samuel turned back to them. “Sinanie is particularly fond of the giant earthworms that inhabit the soil near the Méanmaél. They come above ground only occasionally, I suppose when precise conditions of moisture and temperature align.” He gestured toward the sky. “This rain will not allow us to make a fire, but the giant earthworm is still quite palatable in its raw state.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ashley broke the silence. “Puerto Rico?”

  “How did we get to Puerto Rico?” Bobby asked.

  Sofia and the other woman glanced at each other. Sofia said, “It wasn’t us who brought you here. We were simply told you were on your way and to get ready.” She grimaced and got to her feet. She was half a foot shorter than the other woman. “If you don’t remember, then you were probably brought here unconscious.” She looked around on the ground. “Where’s my tablet?”

  “You dropped it,” the taller woman said. “It’s still inside.”

  “Then I have to go back in.” She groped at her neck and chest. “Where’s my key?”

  “Sofia,” the taller woman said, “you can’t trigger 4:44. Some of our people are still inside.”

  “Dr. Helmich gave me the codes because he trusted me to do the right thing if circumstances required it. I need to get to my tablet!” She turned to Bobby. “That key is definitely not yours. Give it to me.”

  Bobby closed his fist around Helmich's key. “Our friends are in there. Besides, some of those things are already out.”

  She lunged at him. “Give me the key!”

  Ashley stepped next to Bobby, ready to help push her away, but the taller woman grabbed Sofia’s arm and held her back.

  “Sofia, please! If Dr. Helmich wanted you to do it, he would have contacted you. He hasn’t given the order.”

  “Are you blind?” Sofia cried. “Obviously something went wrong!”

  Bobby decided this was not a good time to mention that Helmich was dead.

  “Let go!” Sofia said, shaking off the other woman’s grip. Then she froze for a split second. She rushed toward the parking lot, picked up something that had a spiral cord on it, and immediately turned back. Before Bobby registered that she had her missing key, she went straight for the door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.

  She didn’t even have to step all the way inside to pick up her tablet.

  “No, you can’t!” the other woman said.

  But it was too late. Sofia tapped her screen several times. Seconds later an alarm went off inside the building, followed by more alarms from the outside, above the doorway.

  “Five-minute warning,” Sofia said, barely audible above the alarms. She then turned her back to them and threw her tablet through the open door and it clattered down the hallway.

  Bobby glimpsed something large and dark beyond the doorway, and it was quickly getting larger. Sofia must have seen it, too. She stepped back and pulled the door shut. But before she could even turn around, the door exploded outward. It flew off the hinges, knocked Sofia to the ground, and landed on top of her. The creature that had demolished the door came barreling out with frightening speed, but then it grunted and its head snapped forward, flinging a string of snot into the air. Its shoulders couldn’t fit through the door.

  The creature was terrifying. Its head looked something like a black bear’s, but the neck was hairless and as long as Bobby was tall. The portion of the body he could see was also hairless, and it seemed like there were more legs than should be possible. The thing didn’t growl or screech—it just panted and grunted, barely audible above the alarms, struggling to push through the doorway.

  “Sofia!” The taller woman rushed forward to help. Sofia was beneath the broken door, but the creature’s gnashing head was in the way.

  It was working its way through the opening, inch by inch. Puddles of dark blood formed at its feet as the rough edges of the broken door frame gouged its flesh.

  The woman went to the top end of the fallen door. From there she was close enough to reach under it. She grabbed Sofia’s collar and pulled, but Sofia wasn’t moving—she was just dead weight.

  Ashley grabbed Bobby’s arm. “We have to go!”

  Bobby’s feet wouldn’t move. Things were happening too fast for his mind to keep up. Five minute warning, she had said. How many of those minutes had already passed? How far away did they need to get? He stared at the struggling creature. It’s head was changing, and it no longer resembled a bear. Now it was more like a dragon or dinosaur, with only patches of black fur remaining. Its shoulders slid forward again, and it started struggling even harder, as if sensing it was almost free.

  Ashley punched his arm. “Bobby!”

  “Yeah, okay! But we have to help them.”

  “Damn it, Bobby!” Ashley rushed to the woman’s side and grabbed her shoulder. “Come on, we’re getting out of here!”

  The woman was still pulling on Sofia’s collar. “I can’t just leave her—”

  With a sickening grinding of flesh the creature came loose from the doorway. It stumbled forward from the momentum and collapsed right on top of the door, crushing Sofia beneath it. Ashley and the woman fell back on their butts and scrambled backward.

  The creature was larger than it had appeared when stuck in the door frame. Its back end was the size of a hippo and looked like nothing Bobby had ever seen. It squirmed, trying to right itself, but was unable to because arms and legs stuck out in every direction. Bobby couldn’t even tell which side of it was the top or bottom. To his horror, he saw at least two legs wearing green elastic pants and running shoes.

  The thing floundered for a few more seconds and then managed to stand up, still on top of the door and Sofia. It shook itself off and looked around like it had no idea what to do now that it was out of the building. Its head was still changing, becoming thinner, and the neck had grown even longer.

  “Get up slowly,” Bobby said, just loud enough to be heard over the alarms.

  Ashley and the woman got to their feet. The creature saw the movement and stared. It straightened its neck, extending its head closer to them.

  The alarms stopped.

  “Oh no,” whispered the woman next to Ashley.

  The explosion started deep within the compound, a low whump that shook the ground, and a split second later it got louder. Bobby briefly saw an orange glow through the
doorway behind the creature, and then he was knocked off his feet by a blast of hot air. But the creature caught the worst of it. Fire erupted from the building and then immediately receded. The entire back half of the creature was ablaze, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air. The creature panicked and took off, a fireball running through the open field, igniting the weeds.

  Bobby was dazed and sitting on his butt, but he realized Ashley and the woman were in worse shape. He jumped up to help. The woman was trying to put out her hair. “Take it easy, I’ve got it,” he said. He patted out the flames between his palms. He then looked at Ashley. The bottom seam of her shirt was burning. “Your shirt!”

  Ashley slapped it, snuffing out the fire, and then blew on her hands to cool them. Bobby helped them both get to their feet, and they stood there for a moment, staring up at the compound. Its white, gently curving wall stretched out to the left and right. Other than the demolished door, the structure appeared to be intact.

  He grabbed the heavy metal door and flipped it off of Sofia. She was dead—beyond dead. He approached the open doorway, but the heat coming from inside was so intense he had to move back.

  “The 4:44 protocol was designed to sterilize the entire compound without destroying the structure,” said the woman behind him. “There’s nothing alive in there right now, not even bacteria or viruses. It will cook for at least a week, and then it will be another week before the place cools down enough for anyone to go in.”

  Bobby turned and looked at Ashley. She stared back at him. She blinked away some tears but didn’t wipe them off. Bobby looked where the burning creature had run off. Some of the flames on its trail through the weeds had gone out, but others were spreading into larger fires. Beyond the field, smoke was rising from the trees. Either the creature had died and was burning up, or it had ignited some of the trees as it ran through.

  “I have a car here,” the woman said. “I’m going to drive to San Juan. I don’t know what else to do. I’ll get a flight back to the States. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to go home and no one will know I was involved in this whole mess.”

  Ashley said, “But you’ll know, won’t you?”

  The woman nodded slightly and looked at the ground. “You can ride with me if you want.” She turned and headed to the parking area.

  Bobby was still holding Helmich’s key card, but he had dropped Addison’s arm—maybe the only remaining portion of the Lamotelokhai—in the scuffle. He draped the card’s lanyard around his neck and picked up the arm. He and Ashley exchanged glances, but they didn’t speak.

  They followed the woman to her car.

  Bobby was surprised the compound wasn’t more isolated. Within a minute of pulling out of the gravel parking area, they were on a paved road driving by a cluster of short, blocky houses on the edge of a small town. A few minutes after that they were on a bustling four-lane highway.

  No one in the car was talking, so Bobby stared out the window at the rugged hills covered in dense but low tropical forest as he thought about Peter and Robert. Had they suffered very long, or had the heat killed them instantly? Maybe somehow they were still alive. Maybe they’d escaped the compound before Bobby and Ashley had gotten out. Or maybe they’d found an insulated room or closet. Bobby thought about the key card hanging from his neck, and he considered telling the woman to drive back to the compound. He could figure out a way to go back in and open every door to see if Peter and Robert had somehow survived the heat. He wanted so badly for that to be possible. But of course it wasn’t.

  Bobby expected to have tears, but his eyes were dry. Why wasn’t he crying? Maybe because he had seen so many traumatizing things. Maybe seeing so many people die in horrible ways had broken him, made him unable to care about anything.

  “My name is Tiffany,” the woman in the driver seat said. “Tiffany Travers.”

  “Ashley,” Ashley said. She was sitting in the front passenger seat while Bobby was in the back with Addison’s arm.

  “Bobby,” he said, although he figured she already knew his name.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes.

  Ashley turned to Tiffany. “Did it bother you that they kidnapped us and brought us here?”

  Bobby watched Tiffany’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She just stared at the road.

  “I wasn’t actually told that’s what happened,” she said.

  “But you must have known. Did it bother you?”

  “Yes it did. But it’s not as simple as that. All of us came here because we believed it was important. I knew it was possible you’d be brought to the compound that way, but I was convinced our purpose was important enough to make that an acceptable transgression. I would have preferred you to come because you wanted to, because you agreed with us.”

  Bobby just shook his head and looked back out at the passing hills. He didn’t have the energy to get mad at anyone. Ashley must have felt the same way, because she let it go.

  “What were those things?” Tiffany said after a few minutes. “Those animals, or whatever they were. Where did they come from?”

  Bobby said, “It’s all because of what you guys did. The Lamotelokhai is dangerous, but everyone always wants to play god.”

  She glanced at him in the mirror. “But what were they?”

  “They were your friends,” he replied. “Dr. Helmich and the others. That’s what they were turned into. You shouldn’t have done what you did to the Lamotelokhai.” Bobby watched her eyes. She was fighting back tears, and he actually felt sorry for her.

  Ashley said, “They weren’t all burned up. Some got out.”

  Until now Bobby had avoided thinking about that. He was the one who had allowed the creatures to escape the lower level. And he was the one who had opened the outer door of the compound. Now those things were running around the countryside. What if they went into the nearby town? His stomach churned at the thought of what might happen.

  The Lamotelokhai was the only thing that could stop the consequences Bobby was envisioning. But the Lamotelokhai was probably gone—at least nine tenths of it. He looked at the remaining portion on the seat next to him. The Lamotelokhai had told him that if he ever needed to do so, he could access and recombine the twenty-four packets of information. Apparently, the packets were a way of making a backup of its own consciousness, or operating system. Things had been pretty chaotic at the time, and Bobby hadn’t paid much attention, but now his perfect memory made every detail accessible, including who the Lamotelokhai had put those packets into. Bobby himself was one of them. And so was Ashley.

  He pulled Addison’s arm onto his lap. The Lamotelokhai had intended to tell him how to access the information packets, but then things had gone to hell, and there had been no time for it. He rested his palms on the arm. He was afraid of what might happen if he tried to communicate with the Lamotelokhai, but they needed its help to stop the death and destruction.

  The Lamotelokhai had told him it would try to configure this arm so that it wouldn’t be dangerous. It had stopped him from transforming into a monster after the Helmich-bat had attacked him, so maybe the arm was safe. He had no idea if it would work, but he started talking to the arm with his thoughts. “I know there’s a packet of your information inside me. I want to download it from my body into yours. Can you do that? If you can do that, I’ll find all the other packets and download them, too.”

  Bobby didn’t have to wait long. His head began to tingle. It didn’t hurt—in fact it almost tickled, and he felt a smile forming on his face. Soon the tingling feeling was on the move. It went from his head into his neck. It worked its way into his shoulders, down his arms, and into his hands. The last place he felt it was on his palms where they were touching Addison’s arm.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Bobby looked up and realized Ashley was watching. Before he could answer he felt Addison's arm move against his palms. Startled, he shoved it from his lap onto the seat beside him. The arm and shoulder began shortening
and thickening. The fingers became little stubs and then disappeared. The torn shred of t-shirt melted into the shoulder until it was gone. The skin transformed into a rough brown surface as the entire object became an amorphous lump.

  Bobby felt trapped. The car only had two doors, so it wouldn't be easy if he had to make a quick escape. He watched the lump, ready to yell at Tiffany to stop the car if it turned into any kind of creature. But it had stopped changing. It looked like nothing more than a lump of clay the size of a soccer ball. It was a miniature version of the Lamotelokhai’s original form.

  “What did you do?” Ashley said.

  “I’m not sure yet.” Bobby cautiously put his hand on the lump of clay. Images appeared before his eyes. He jerked his hand back. But some of the brief flashes had included symbols from Kembalimo. How was this possible? He put his hand on it again. The images flew by. They seemed random and too fast to make any sense. Bobby knew Kembalimo, perhaps better than anyone, because he was one of the few people who had used it to talk to the Lamotelokhai. But these flashes were nonsensical.

  Of course they were. He hadn’t downloaded the other packets of information yet.

  “Put your hand on it,” he said to Ashley.

  She frowned at him. Tiffany eyed him in the mirror.

  “You need to trust me. It won’t hurt, I swear. I just did it myself. Just put your hand on it.”

  She twisted around far enough to extend her hand back between the two seats. Bobby held the lump of clay out so she could reach it.

  She quickly pulled her hand back. “What is all that?”

  “Kembalimo symbols. Just ignore what you see and leave your hand on it for a minute. You might feel something, but it won’t hurt.”

  “You want to tell me what I’m trying to do?”

  “If it works I’ll explain the whole thing.” He waited until her hand was firmly on the clay. Then he spoke with his thoughts. “Ashley has a packet of your information in her, too. I want to download it from her body into yours. Can you do that?”