by Gentry Race
Hastings shook her head. “There’s no way to get in there. Our specialists are the best programmers—”
SCREEECH!
The large bay doors across the room made a howling sound as they opened, revealing a row of planted corn that extended across an entire acre.
"Wrong one. We need this one open," Hastings said, pointing to the other door.
Switch joined Richter and plugged in another dreadlock plug, retyping the code. “I’m all ears.”
The Disaster Room doors opened, and Nathan could see strange types of materials all around the room, ranging from red brick to iron steel. He was quick to understand that this was a training room of some sort. He scanned for the injured man but didn’t see him.
"You guys sure do some weird shit down here," Switch said, consumed by the visual data he was receiving in his head.
“Get back!” Hastings called out.
Nathan couldn’t help but sense an eerie feeling of déjà vu. He’d seen Hastings in action before, and he didn’t want her to end up hurt like she’d been in his time loop. Nathan fired his gun.
“Get back, Sasha” Nathan yelled. “I’m slowing him down so I can see him.”
Hastings ignored the comment as she nanoprinted two batteries of missile rockets that extended from her arms. Her helmet closed over her head again and Nathan could see the portholes on her suit glowing hot with fire.
A shadow ran past at two o’clock from Hastings’ position, and she opened fire as the form zigzagged past the shots. With a hard lunge downward, it pushed off the ground, delivering a swift blow to Hastings.
She tumbled back, and the injured man hit the ground, landing on all fours. Nathan watched intently. He raised the gun, about to fire, but his white eye narrowed as he looked down the makeshift scope. The infected man was charging at Richter full speed, his wide-open mouth spilling saliva as he ran. Nathan looked back at the side of his laser gun and saw that the last two lights still had to charge. Looking back into the scope, he saw that the infected man was only twenty feet away from his brother.
The man jumped on Richter, latching onto his skull. Richter hit the ground hard, pulling his lucky knife from his boot.
“No!” Nathan screamed and fired his weapon. The infected man exploded into light, but it was too late. Richter lay lifelessly on the ground.
THUMP!
Nathan felt pain from the back of his head, and his thoughts and vision went hazy. Just before he fell to the ground, he recognized a face—a man he hadn't seen in years—and that man was holding a large grenade launcher.
Blackness.
9
Nathan felt like shit—not the normal kind of shit he was used to like when he had a tussle with a swarm of bugs. This was the kind of shit he felt when he was sucker-punched from the back, which he had been, and the thought irritated him.
He was horizontal on a table of some sort, but he couldn’t tell much beyond that fact because the lights were so dim. The room seemed abnormally large, and if he had to guess, he’d say it was another interrogation room tricking his mind into thinking it was oversized. Wall-to-wall mirrors were on each side of him, and he could catch the faintest hint of several realities while looking at the myriad reflections of himself. The universe was infinite, he thought.
He had to get up.
Nathan tried to move but couldn’t. His arms and legs felt more confined the more he moved, like one of those Chinese finger traps.
What the hell?!
He arched his head up and looked down at his body, but there wasn’t one there—only a black, gelatinous mass; a dark, anthropomorphic liquid of some kind.
Suddenly, radiant lights illuminated the room, nearly blinding Nathan’s one “good” eye. Hastings walked in, her attire now back to the standard medical fatigues. Her hair was pulled tight in a red ponytail, and Nathan noticed small sapphire pendants that sparkled in the light.
“They dropped it, Collins,” Hastings said. “I didn’t think they would, but they did it. The topside ice crust was melted and frozen back over. We’re stuck down here.”
She’d only called him Collins when he served under her, which told Nathan she wanted to approach this situation from a professional angle.
“Dropped what?” Nathan said, shaking his head and trying to make out the events that had led him there. And then he remembered. “They dropped the nuke topside?”
“Yes,” Hastings said, “which is why you’re in this amorphous liquid now. These suits will save us from any fallout that may leach down to where we are.”
Nathan couldn’t believe her words. Nuclear fallout could last for years.
“Why were you down here, Nathan?” she asked.
“To save you,” he said.
“We’re not together anymore, and I can take care of myself!” Hastings said, slamming her fist onto the table for emphasis. “We’re stuck down here now, and it’s very likely because of you!”
Nathan was silent and more respectful now.
“Now, tell me,” Hastings said, “were you a part of it?”
“Of course not.” Her words hurt, but he decided to answer her questions and hope for the best.
“An ex-Ætheria user makes his way down here, and I’m expected to believe you didn’t have the slightest interest?” Hastings sputtered.
“Richter got me this gig,” Nathan said. “I was on bunker duty when all hell broke loose. I could see them. Their true form.”
“Go on,” Hastings said, intrigued.
“My eye,” Nathan continued. “Ever since the Syndicate Event, it does strange things. I can see a shine.”
“Okay,” she said with a curious tone in her voice.
They both fell silent.
She looked at one of the two-way mirrors and nodded. The door opened, and a small man who looked familiar to Nathan entered the room. His face was clean shaven, and his hair was tied back into a ridiculous man-bun. Nathan took in his almond eyes and dark skin, and then it hit him.
Edward Tang.
“Well, looks like One-Eye got himself a promotion and then decided to blow up his work facility,” Tang said, walking in and placing his arm around Hastings.
Nathan tried not to process the memories. Tang had been in his time loop when he was a POW and had gone mad. If that timeline could be real, then Tang was capable of anything, anywhere, even though the loop was an alternate reality. Nathan wasn’t sure he could trust Tang, and he wondered why Hastings was with him.
“Thought I recognized that pussy-ass punch,” Nathan said.
“Pussy?” Tang said. “You know, I heard some rumors you were spouting off at the mouth about me going crazy on some time ship.”
Nathan looked back at Hastings. “That was a long time ago.”
“Well, One-Eye, if you try that shit here, I’m gonna knock you upside your head quicker than you can say ‘cyclops,’” Tang said. “You got that?”
“That’s enough,” Hastings said. “Listen, Nathan, General Graham and I were trying to achieve something great, but now we’re stuck down here.”
Nathan wrestled with the black goo surrounding his body.
“For how long?”
“Months,” Tang said with a sneer.
“Is that why I’m covered in this black goo?” Nathan asked.
“As you saw, we’re able to create some advanced abilities with the human psyche,” Hastings said, “and it just so happens that it takes… the right mind to do that.”
Nathan didn’t know what she was getting at. “What kind of ‘right mind’?”
“Ex-users of Ætheria,” Hastings said. “But I remember your psychological report. I need to know you have a clear head.”
“Yeah, that psychoanalyst clown reported ‘imaginatively disruptive behavior,’ but I’ll tell you what—I did experience a time loop, and I was on that fucking ship.”
“Uh oh, looks like One-Eye’s about to pop,” said Tang with a smile.
“Listen, we aren’t here to
debate what happened. The world has changed since the Syndicate Event. Now, we must understand our place in the universe. Thrive.”
“And you’re doing that with black goo?” Nathan said.
“Cut the shit, Nathan. Do you want to be saved or not? It’s either this or the chance of nuclear fallout exposure,” Tang said.
Nathan thought for a moment. His fears were gone, and a deeper feeling piqued his interest. He wondered where his brother was.
“I’ll do it as long as Richter gets goo’d too.”
Tang looked at Hastings.
“He didn't make it.”
"What?" Nathan said, trying to sit up. "What do you mean he didn't make it?"
"That thing got him, remember?" Tang said.
Nathan was quiet for a moment as he remembered and then tried to justify Richter’s death, but he couldn't. His brother had always looked out for him, and now he was truly alone.
"Listen, Nathan, everyone plays their part. Richter’s was short but necessary," Tang said.
"Fuck necessary!” Nathan yelled. “If I hadn't brought him down here, he’d still be alive.”
Hastings got up and leaned over Nathan. She raised her hands above his chest and closed her eyes. "If you suit up, I can promise revenge."
“Show me his body! I don’t believe you!” Nathan yelled.
“His body has been submitted to facility processing, Nathan. Standard protocol with the dead down here,” Sasha said. “Listen to me, the only way to pay back those sons of bitches that took him from you is to suit up.”
Nathan’s countenance became stern, and he gave a nod.
Hastings leaned over and injected a metallic-colored substance into Nathan’s neck.
“What the hell is that?” Nathan asked, now tasting the metallic substance.
“These nanocytes will fold the new grey matter that allows you to control the exosuit.”
Nathan felt the exosuit begin to tighten. The anamorphous liquid began to harden into angled surfaces, and he could now see his human anatomical form.
The suit tightened more, and he felt pain in his lower neck. He growled, feeling a pinching sensation that was unbearable, like having his head in a vice. Nathan’s vision began to blur, and he wondered if this was normal or if it was some symptom of his wounded eye.
The room faded to black, and the pain was no more.
Nathan awoke in a large room that looked like the Disaster Room he’d seen earlier; however, this time the walls and ceiling were a drab color. A milky white stained his eyes, and he couldn’t make out the distinct contours as before.
He wondered what they’d done to him, noting that he felt somewhat reminiscent of his days in the psych ward after his time-ship experience in the Syndicate Event. Boy, he’d thought he felt like shit then.
As he raised himself, he felt the blocky, greyish-black exosuit still attached to his body. Despite feeling constricting at first, the suit soon began to move fluidly with his body like a second skin. He looked closer at the once goo-like substance that was now hard-shelled around him. This thing was fantastic, but how were they doing it? He’d seen a similar type of technology with the Syndicate, and Nathan couldn’t help but wonder if Hastings had contacted those super-soldier humans from his time loop, creating this exosuit.
“A few days,” Hastings said, walking up from behind him. “You’ve been sleeping for a few days.”
“Great to hear,” Nathan said. “What about the others?”
“They’ve been suited and have taken up the psychonautics rather well,” Hastings said. “Most have achieved Level Two.”
Nathan was unfamiliar with the term. “Wait, psychonautics?”
“Navigation of the soul… like sailors,” Hastings said. “It’s what we call the ones who can control the Voxel suits—a Psychonaut.”
Nathan wasn’t familiar with the term, and his silence showed it.
“It’s the exploration of the psyche by means of techniques such as lucid dreaming, brainwave entrainment, sensory deprivation, and the use of hallucinogenic and designer drugs, etc.”
Nathan thought back to her asking about his psych file and previous Ætheria use.
Hastings continued, “Astronauts explore the vastness of space, while psychonautz explore the vastness of the mind. Synapses flash like lightning within the folds of the neocortical grey matter we form inside you, and we seek the ensuing thunder.”
“What is this black goo?” Nathan asked.
“It’s composed of voxels.”
The word stuck in Nathan’s mind like a dull splinter. He had heard it before but couldn’t remember where or when.
“Voxels? I thought the suits were nanotechnology.”
“They are. Volumetric pixels, or voxels. It’s what we call the small nanites that are printing around your body as they form the Voxel suit.”
“Printing what?” Nathan asked as he stood. The pads of his feet felt soft as he took a step.
While she’d been talking about the tech, Nathan couldn’t help noticing her sporty red hair in a high ponytail, swishing slowly about. He looked deep into her eyes when she spoke to see if she might feel the way he hoped she would.
“Æther?” he asked, snapping out of his trance. “But Æther was from medieval times. Scientists of old used to theorize that space was a medium, the quintessence.”
“That’s right, but this Æther is something else,” Hastings said. Blind to his meaningful gaze, she walked past Nathan, dialing into her forearm. The overall ambient light dimmed, and a bright, circular light shone down onto the floor. “Something from far away. It turns out that after the Syndicate Event, the universe is a stranger place than we thought.”
Nathan walked up beside her, knowing he didn’t need convincing of that. He’d seen some shit in his day, but what kind of shit was she talking about?
Hastings raised her arms and minuscule grey bots began to assemble on the molecular level. Nathan was fascinated to see this act of “printing.” The bots moved efficiently, mechanically, link after link, until it was evident to Nathan that he was watching a model of a plant seed.
“A seed?” he asked.
“More like a gift,” she replied, not taking her eyes off the small seed. "Yes, and we’ve grown entire groves of it here.”
Hastings motioned her arms again and the seed opened to reveal a small, white, glowing center. “Our team found something special inside the core. This is the Æther, Nathan.”
He liked it when she used his first name.
“You hacked its kernel?” Nathan asked alarmingly.
He’d seen rogue science experiments gone wrong before. It was the burden of scientists acting in haste to produce quick results, but that haste led to mistakes, and it was the soldiers who paid for those mistakes.
“Is it safe?”
Hastings was hesitant. “We’re still testing all the possibilities, but for now we know you can level up with it. Level One equates to stabbing weapons, and Level Two means complex moving parts.”
She stepped back, turning her hand over and assembling a small rocket from a printer port on her suit.
“The Æther allows us to print whatever material we want. Rocket propellent? Check. Complex moving parts? You got it. Those exosuits in the Cluster Feed Armada ain’t got nothin’ on us,” Hastings said with a smile.
“Is there a Level Three?” Nathan asked.
“We’re not sure,” Hastings said.
Nathan studied his arms, looking at variously sized ports that ran up and down his body. His gaze then once again turned to the seed.
“This is going to sound a bit alchemical, but how are you creating more Æther? Equivalent exchange requires you to give something in return.”
“Before we came to terraform Oyria, we found an alien species that was capable of consuming hordes of resources in their path, and we discovered that they were sending the resources away via quantum entanglement,” Hastings said. “So, we sent a ‘hello’ and they sent a gift
back.”
Nathan thought back for a moment, remembering the puppet-like strings that had shot into the night sky. Out of all the scientific theories he’d studied, one stood out from quantum mechanics…
“Entanglement?”
“Precisely. Quantum entanglement allows for one particle to be controlled by another, even if it’s from the other side of the galaxy. In this case, we’re receiving the Æther this way.”
Nathan had never imagined a theory so crazy.
“Wait, so you’re telling me alien bugs were sent here by something from across the universe to consume this planet’s resources, and then they sent this gift? What caused the creature manifestations?”
Hastings motioned with her arms again, and the seed grew into a wheat stalk.
“The gift is the perfect fertilizer and yet the perfect pesticide. We believe the alien bugs were just the first phase of an attack. You saw the manifestations. They received a high dose of Æther and overdosed, essentially. The question now is how we can use it against them.”
“And phase two is having the suits turn into holograms of creatures’ fears?” Nathan asked.
“Perhaps,” she said with a gentle shrug.
Nathan stepped back for a moment. It was his team that had gotten everyone to this point. He felt proud and yet terrified of what was to come. What kinds of things could they achieve if they had access to that technology?
Hastings dialed into her forearm again, and the lights around the room changed to a deep crimson.
“Alright, hotshot, try to think of a weapon that you could extend from your forearm,” she instructed.
Nathan stepped back, looking at both blocky arms of his suit. He popped each arm out in a sudden jerk, but nothing happened.
“Nice one. Looks like someone is having performance issues,” Hastings said amusingly. “Humans are a rare thing, Nathan. Imagination and creativity.”
