Fallen World

by Ben van Eijk

  The men below Seth were holding their weapons at the ready. Seth could not see Oxford. He was about to propel himself skywards to get a better vantage point to find him but a hole burst open in the shield next to him as an extension of the building punched its way free of its metal prison. This looked similar to the spike, but it was pointing back towards the building and the end facing outwards was open. It reminded Seth of the strange contraptions on poles he had seen scattered through Chos Garren. From this particular device came a sound — almost inaudible, but it became louder and louder. Men below Seth were falling unconscious. His vision started to tremble. Seth’s ears hurt although he could barely hear a noise, but it felt like it was getting louder. The grass came closer and closer to Seth as he fell unconscious.

  ***

  The interior of the large room had bright white lights in the colour and there was an ambient green glow from a multitude of lines tracing the walls, floor and ceiling. The green lights lead in paths across almost every surface in the room and seemed to be connecting a multitude of mysterious devices. Many images displayed across the room, made up from thin sharp lines of light. Some appeared to be floating, while some images were moving and changing every few seconds. There was a huge multi-tiered table in the centre of the room. Seth had been exposed to very little light recently and he had been unconscious for who knew how long, so it took a long time for his eyes to adjust. Frames displaying strange images were poking from the table-top, some too bright to even look at. Seth saw pictures of the elementals popping up every now and then; he must be inside the Reference Centre.

  Seth was being held up in a standing position with some kind of restraints. Although his arms were pinned to the wall he saw no evidence of any kind of binding. He tried pulling his arm away but experienced total resistance; whatever was holding him was extremely effective. On the table lay many rolled up sheets of paper. Some had fallen onto the floor but were never picked up. The labyrinth of luminescent green lines covering the walls had many small cube-shaped cavities spread over it sporadically. Other square metal panels could be found dotting the walls, each protruding slightly. Some were made from a material Seth could not identify at all.

  “Young man! Where are you from?” came a nasal voice from somewhere in the room. Seth looked around to find the source but could not pinpoint it.

  “Release me!” He answered.

  An older man appeared by the table, wearing a long white coat. The top of his head was bald and had a thin wreath of grey hear beneath the shiny dome. He had a thin pointed nose and thin lips. His skin was almost pure white — only its contrast to his white coat gave any shade of pink to his skin. His chin held his mouth up against his nose, forcing his lips into a constant pout and making him seem constantly disappointed. The Inquirer rubbed his eye with one hand and sighed as he asked again:

  “Where are you from?”

  Seth looked to his left and saw one of the resistance members hanging in the same position as he found himself, but his head was hanging limp, still unconscious. Seth saw that his own hand had been completely stripped of its rings. Free only to bend his wrist, he pointed to one of the flickering images on the table, now showing an elemental. The Inquirer turned his head to follow.

  The Inquirer laughed condescendingly.

  “Yes, you are from Estever, we are all from Estever, but where in Estever boy? How mir you make those bizarre metal roots grow from your hands?”

  Seth responded with a croaky voice,

  “No, I am not from Estever. I’m from the same place as that thing, the elemental,” and he pointed once again at the picture behind the Inquirer. The Inquirer raised one eyebrow as he looked at Seth.

  “You are from the atom? That’s pure nonsense. Where are you really from? And don’t try blasting me with your white fire either, or I will put you straight back to sleep with another sonic blast, like your friend here.”

  Seth looked at the unconscious trooper next to him again. He was ready to tell the Inquirer to go straight to the abyss, but had to acknowledge that his situation was actually quite dire. He decided that for now, cooperation would bring the best results.

  “I am from Swevender, but you wouldn’t have heard of it. I am telling you I have been to the same place as those elementals; one of them almost knocked me over,” Seth said, a little irritated.

  “And where is Oxford?”

  The Inquirer ignored Seth’s question and began thinking out loud.

  “Fascinating, the boy thinks he has met an elemental, but that would make him tens of thousands of kilometres tall — are you some kind of giant, boy?” He poked his head atop an unusually long neck towards Seth. Seth sneered a little at the patronising man.

  “What? No!”

  The Inquirer remained frozen in his position, staring at Seth for another five seconds before spinning around to consult one of the many machines on the table.

  Without looking up from the image displayer, he said to Seth:

  “Well, it says here you are telling the truth, about both things! You have encountered an elemental, and you are, in fact, regular sized.” The man’s face was eerily lit by the light coming from the device. He stared straight into it as it provided him with information about Seth’s candour. Seth scrunched his eyebrows as his expression turned to one of irritated confusion.

  “Yes, why are you talking about my size? Listen, I believe I teleported here. The last place I was before I came to Estever was filled with these creatures, these elementals, and they were all living on giant blue spheres — hundreds of blue spheres with strange lightning between them!”

  The Inquirer stopped looking at his screen and looked thoughtfully at Seth, then back to his device. He started talking again, no longer looking at Seth.

  “Again, it says you are telling the truth, but then you must have been thousands of kilometres tall, which you say you are not. I believe you have had some sort of hallucination young man. You see, Aress, the elemental on which we live, is actually made from nine planets, and each planet has an approximate diameter of ten thousand kilometres. One of those planets is Estever — the planet on which we are now standing — so I find it very hard to accept that you are actually tall enough to be knocked over by one of them. To be squished flat is another matter; that I could believe, but then you would not be here to tell me about it.” As he spoke, a detailed image of the elemental was projected onto an unseen surface above the table.

  Now it was Seth’s turn to stare silently at the Inquirer, thinking about what he had just heard.

  He inhaled sharply.

  “So... we are actually standing on that planet person? You’re saying we are on that green and blue planet there?” He pointed towards the arm of the elemental containing two planets, one of which was apparently Estever. The Inquirer moved his arm to point at the being displayed in the middle of the room. The planet grew larger until it filled the whole projection and details on the surface became visible.

  “That is, in fact, exactly where we are.” The projection next to the Inquirer had stopped zooming in and now showed the Reference Centre in its current state, one of the towers leaning slightly due to the weight of the metal encasing it.

  So I must have shrunk myself rather than teleporting… this means I am still on my segment! I must just be really, really small thought Seth as he started to ask his next question.

  “Where is my – “

  The Inquirer interrupted him.

  “You see, Aress is one of many elementals on the surface of our atom, and they decide what element our atom is, depending on the amount of elementals inhabiting the surface. There are three different kinds of elementals; Aress is a sun elemental, as observable by the glowing torso. There are fifteen sun elementals on the surface of this atom, and fifteen storm elementals. They are similar to sun elementals, only the torso is a globe of dancing colours and exhibits no glowing effect.”

  The Inquirer had momentum now. He had no good reason for informing Seth
about any of this, but the way he described it seemed like he was proud of having the knowledge and extra proud he could gift such information to someone else. Seth felt this was a sign of the arrogance Inquirers were known for; they were quite often blinded by their own brilliance and the need to show off to others. So, the Inquirer went on about the atom and the elementals while Seth listened patiently, hoping the Inquirer would impart some knowledge useful in helping him return to his segment.

  “The three elementals inhabit the surface of the atom, included fifteen sun elementals, fifteen storm elementals and sixteen dark elementals. The dark elementals look nothing like the sun elementals, just pure black globes dancing across the surface of the atom. Every year Aress’ circuit brings it within visual range of other elementals, which can be viewed through a special device.” The Inquirer had apparently been documenting the elemental’s activities from within the Reference Centre. Together, the 46 elementals together created the streams of lightning bonding their atom to others. The atom was part of a larger system, yet to be entirely explored; the Inquirers had impressive technology, but not impressive enough to explore the empty space beyond their own atom.

  Long ago, the Inquirers made several excursions to the surface of the atom. The first attempts at this journey cost quite a few men and women their lives. Eventually, an intricately engineered ship managed to reach the atom’s surface and the Inquirers were able to study the huge blue sphere in detail. Unfortunately the gargantuan blue orb had very little information to share; its structure was completely neutral and resistant to every form of scan the Inquirers tried.

  One of the reasons the Inquirers were so curious about the atom was because their own world was made up from the same thing. This confused Seth a little: how could they be on an atom, but made up of atoms at the same time? But one part of the Inquirer’s tangent sounded familiar: that the world was made up of smaller particles – apparently called atoms. This was something Io, Kern and Marsa had taught the people of Swevender thousands of years ago. It was hard to grasp that even as small as he was now, there were more particles making up this tiny world.

  The Inquirer pulled up an image that looked like the planet systems Seth had seen from inside the Restyard. Red had needed to explain how an elliptical orbit and the principles of a solar system worked. This image was like a simplified representation of a small solar system, but this was one of sub-atoms. “Sub-atoms” was how the Inquirer referred to the smaller atoms making up his own world. Certain particles were orbiting the nucleus of the atoms, the amount of which determined what property the atom would have. According to the Inquirers’ logic, the more they learned about the atoms around them, the more they would learn about the atoms inside themselves.

  “Many things are cyclical and the universe is no exception,” said the Inquirer. He was sure that if they were able to magnify the sub-atoms enough, they would find tiny worlds inhabited by tiny people, also made of atoms creating more worlds. Infinity was not a myth.

  Seth exhaled in a manner indicating he was starting to get a little fed up with the man’s soliloquy. He interrupted the Inquirer.

  “Where have you put my rings?”

  His question did not stop the Inquirer as he continued to rant on.

  “No one has ever managed to penetrate the surface of an atom on our few voyages down to the surface, but many have theorised what is inside the atom.” What the Inquirer had to say from then sounded more like philosophy than science to Seth. If one were to travel through the shell of the atom, inside they would expect to find an inverse version of the atom’s universe. So the universe contained an inverse version of itself, countless amounts of times.

  So far it had been impossible to break through the threshold into the ‘inverse’, but an alternate path had been found: each atom had a single pathway connecting its surface to the edge of the universe Seth and the Inquirer were in. If someone was able to enter this pathway then they would be able to discover the truth about what an atom contained. It seemed likely the sub-atoms had the same pathway connected to them, but the Inquirers hadn’t been able to enlarge an image of one enough to know for sure. The pathway leading from Aress’ atom stretched out so far that the Inquirers could not find the other end, where they predicted it met the edge of the universe. The pathway even seemed to lengthen sometimes, and the Inquirers had noticed that the distance between the surrounding atoms decreased as the pathway gained more tension: this was the observation which gave them the idea the pathways were all connected to a common source.

  Seth’s head was spinning from the knowledge he was trying to absorb. The Inquirer had also been bringing up diagrams and images to assist his explanation. One diagram showed a circle inside another circle turning inside out and then the first circle being encompassed by the circle it had just contained.

  Suddenly the Inquirer stopped talking. He looked at Seth suspiciously.

  “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.... Tell me, how is that you can control the elements? I had no idea the resistance had developed that sort of technology.”

  Seth needed a little time to adjust. He had just heard the truth behind the knowledge Io, Kern and Marsa had imparted to his people so many years ago, and it was slightly overwhelming.

  He looked blankly at the Inquirer for a second.

  “It’s not really something I can explain, better if I show you. Where are my rings?”

  The Inquirer laughed for a second and his smile lingered as he replied

  “I mir not think so boy. Whatever powers you have, you would have used them already if you could have. You won’t be seeing those rings until you’ve answered my raggles.”

  The dreadlocks on Seth’s head continued to swing back and forth as he slumped his head in surrender; this was going to be a tedious experience.

  An invisible force snapped his head back to the wall. He saw the Inquirer fiddling with a grooved cube on the table. One of the grooves lit up with a glowing lime-green, similar to the light emitted by the lines in the walls. Seth watched the light travel around the room.

  “How is it that metal and fire fly from your hands at your command?” asked the Inquirer as he walked back to his favourite place by the table. Seth felt his temperature rise as he became increasingly impatient with his incarceration.

  “Like I said, it’s something I have to show you. When I try to explain people just get confused.”

  “You will find it very hard to confuse me, try explaining it to me,” the Inquirer smiled.

  Seth took a deep breath and began.

  “Well, I basically have to imagine what I want — it doesn’t always happen the way I want it but you can’t want a specific thing. The moment you put limits on what you are trying to create it becomes impossible because limiting yourself in any way stops the possibility of matter manipulation. Matter manipulation comes from understanding the matter around you and realising it doesn’t have to be that way, so you picture another existence for it — but don’t grasp too firmly as your existence doesn’t have to be true either.”

  “Go on,” said the Inquirer, his hand to his chin in a thoughtful manner.

  Seth looked a little puzzled.

  “I can’t; that’s it” he replied.

  “So why is it that you need these rings to ‘manipulate’ matter?” The Inquirer held up Seth’s gold ring and closed one eye. He looked at Seth through its centre.

  Seth barely needed time to think about it; he saw his ring and a huge metal column flew from it, punching the Inquirer head first into the wall. His head rebounded, but immediately encountered the still-growing column of gold and was pushed back up against the wall. A wet, crunching noise came from the head of the golden pillar, as the column crushed the Inquirer’s head and sticky fluid squirted across the wall. The pole fell to the ground, bouncing off the table and knocking the Inquirers’ gadgets everywhere.

  Seth was shocked by the scene in front of him: he was surprised at how quickly he reacted, and how an
ger seemed to increase his power. He wanted to believe this is why he had just killed a man — that it was purely a mistake, an underestimating of his powers. The violent scene lying in front of Seth now was horrific; he wouldn’t accept that he had subconsciously wanted to kill this man. More red fluid leaked out from underneath the golden column on the floor. Seth was shaken, but remembered the urgency of his situation. He could submit to his guilt over the Inquirer at a better time.

  His whole body was still pinned to the wall. His eyes searched the room desperately for some way to release his bonds. He recalled the Inquirer — now headless on the floor beneath a mass of gold — adjusting Seth’s restraints by pressing a button on the cube on the table. A small root extended from the gold on the floor towards the cube and formed into a small hand. It crept up onto the table and Seth started pressing buttons on the device, hopeful of finding some way of being released. At the third button-press, the resistance member next to Seth woke up, but seemed to be gasping for air. The skin around the man’s neck looked like there were invisible hands wrapped around it; his coughing sprayed blood. His eyes looked directly into Seth’s as he fell limp.

  Seth knew this was a moment he would never be able to forget. He needed to escape it. He pressed a more buttons on the cube and the resistance member next to him fell from the wall onto his face. Seth was glad the fall had turned the man’s head away so he didn’t need to see his vacant stare anymore.

  A few more button presses and Seth’s left hand came free, then the next press released his whole body. Seth stumbled forward. Half of the glowing green lines running up and down the walls had now turned black. He saw more of his jewellery in the same spot where the Inquirer had picked up his golden ring. Seth needed to find the bead containing his sample of the liquid metal monster from his first fight.

  The remarkable expansion and contraction rate of the essence must have been how that kind of matter reacted when manipulated, thought Seth. Scattered on the floor were many different rings, all of which Seth recognised, but which he momentarily hesitated to recover. Some had flecks of blood on them from the Inquirer’s sudden demise… but they were still made from his own kind of matter, and were a bit sentimental too.