Modern Rituals

by J. S. Leonard

  Unseen eyes tickled the back of Theo’s neck. Inside the wall—within a machined, aluminum seam—a micro-camera’s eye loomed over Theo and Clayton. Theo had avoided being seen until then. Now Magnus knew where their fugitive had fled.

  “Dammit,” Theo said to himself. “I hate ruining people’s days.” He wrenched the card from Clayton’s hand, twisting the arm and pulling Clayton to his feet.

  “What are you doing?” Clayton said.

  Theo whispered into Clayton’s ear. “Putting on a show,” he said, and then aloud, “Let me in the containment chamber unless you want me to break your arm.”

  Theo slipped an earpiece into Clayton’s pocket as they moved toward the thick, titanium doors behind Clayton’s desk. These stalwart portals offered entry to a quarter-mile-long corridor connecting to Una Corda’s isolation chamber, which housed the creatures used in rituals.

  Theo estimated a security detail would arrive in less than two minutes—probably in the HyperLoop at that moment. He pretend-forced Clayton to open the doors and hurried through.

  Theo kept his cardiovascular condition in tip-top shape—it helped that Una Corda placed those who failed their biweekly physicals on administrative leave—or as Magnus employees liked to say, “forcible rehabilitation.” Sprinting down the passage proved a simple feat—he executed it within two minutes.

  Not bad for an old man.

  Theo arrived at the containment sector’s security perimeter—an unassuming set of titanium doors much like the entrance. An enormous dodecahedron, the containment sector boasted a three-mile diameter, and Una Corda’s campus enveloped the spherical prison like a bag around a marble. Only one entry existed: the corridor Theo crossed now. A gap cushioned the dodecahedron from Una Corda, and in this space existed a total void—an anti-spectral meridian. Any creature, living or dead, that attempted to sojourn beyond this boundary would be annihilated. If any event compromised the containment sector, then—by design—the single corridor would collapse and seal in the monstrosities. It would also seal in Theo, if his plan went awry.

  Theo swiped the gate key through the security panel. It beeped in reply, and the doors parted. Theo entered. Some time had passed since his last visit to the containment facility. He had accompanied Clayton on an interview with a talking monkey—they had concluded that the monkey wanted nothing but to murder children and ring its tiny cymbals, and this they had recorded in their report, hoping never to see the damned creature again. Fortunately, it had never been summoned for a ritual—yet.

  He had forgotten the overwhelming vertigo the facility’s high roof imposed. Typical prisons feature a gridded arrangement of cells—and this works just fine because they house humans. Magnus, however, applied unorthodox methods to safely store spectral entities and mythical creatures. While humans live happily in a comfy three dimensions—and a touch of a fourth (and seven or eight more, but who’s counting)—paranormal creatures played by a different rulebook, and in response to these needs Magnus had designed dimensional spheres. Each family of creature held captive in a dimensional sphere resided within a wormhole linked to an isolated—and artificially crafted—chunk of the universe. This afforded them a healthy environment, whatever that environment may be—and these cosmic worm-bubbles floated freely in the containment facility, bouncing and touching and behaving much as balloons do.

  It was an odd sight.

  Theo shaded his eyes and squinted at the lot of them. He felt as though he stood inside a gargantuan gumball machine or marble-filled fishbowl, except instead of gumballs or glass spheres, dimensional spheres of all sizes—each translucent like a crystal ball—danced with each other.

  Beside Theo lolled a bubble about his height. He stared into it: beyond its clear, filmy threshold, submersed in a lagoon filled with rays of rippling light, mermaids flittered, cutting in and out of the water, swirling around each other in captivating gyrations. He laid a hand on the sphere, running his fingers over the velvety surface, and bent closer to watch a mermaid swim within what appeared to be inches of his hand. It remained oblivious to his presence: the spheres allowed light to travel in only one direction.

  The containment facility accommodated a near-infinite number of creatures in perfect comfort. While Theo observed the mermaids in their six-foot sphere, they believed themselves to be in their natural habitat.

  The sphere’s inner domain linked to a partition somewhere in the universe—if a creature required an enormous place in which to live, the inner sphere grew to meet the demand, but the “outer” sphere (what Theo saw now) expanded exponentially less. For instance, the mermaids’ sphere enclosed a lagoon the size of a small island. If a larger creature required twice the space, the outer shell would grow by just .005% or about ten millimeters—that’s two lagoons for the price of half an inch. Quantum physics deals one hell of a bargain.

  Spheres could also store spheres: space within space within space—near infinite confinement.

  To catalog and retrieve creatures, Magnus had assigned each sphere a unique spectral frequency. Theo walked to a console near the entrance, next to which sat a wide, parabolic recovery platform. He punched in a string of numbers and pressed a button labeled “retrieve.”

  A computerized voice spoke. “Recovery platform emitting frequency 23.343082KHz. Retention field calibrated for entry.”

  Broadcasting the inverted frequency worked as a recall tether—like a magnetic lasso—attracting the desired sphere anywhere within the dodecahedron. A retention field placed over the recovery platform allowed only the summoned sphere to pass—other floating spheres bounced off it, and these formed a cloud of buoyant crystal balls atop Theo’s position.

  On average, retrieval takes less than a minute—still more time than Theo could afford. He shaded his eyes and squinted into the distance, hoping to spot his sphere as it advanced to the platform.

  Twenty seconds. Stillness.

  Thirty seconds. Nothing.

  Forty seconds.

  Was that a jiggle?

  At fifty-five seconds, a foot-long sphere popped through the cloud and touched down on the platform.

  Finally.

  Theo rushed to it, pulling on a pair of resonation gloves. He knelt beside the sphere. It was a small thing—and pitch black. Theo shoved his hands into the bubble. It offered no resistance—the resonation gloves had calibrated themselves to the sphere’s frequency, allowing Theo to penetrate the dimensional membrane. Theo grimaced as the full length of his arm entered another dimension. He wrapped his hand around a furry, squirming creature.

  As he pulled his arm upward, a voice said, “Freeze! Theo, remove the gloves and come with us quietly.”

  Here we go.

  Theo dropped the gloves and placed his hands above his head.

  CHAPTER 5

  He said unto them:

  Fear not, for I am born,

  bow down to my divinity.

  (Sæmorous 1:1)

  1

  General Holmes paced back and forth along the row of consoles. He stroked the base of his chin and scanned the images on HULK.

  “Never a dull moment, eh?” he said, leaning into Susan.

  “No sir,” Susan said.

  “Who’d have thought that Part Seven would turn on his own?” he said. “This is the stuff of movies. He’s a serial killer, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Participant Four is in shock from severe blood loss,” Susan said. “His systolic is 90mg, heart rate at 45 beats per minute. I doubt he’ll survive much longer.”

  “Excellent—that will put us in a much safer zone. Keep me abreast of his vitals,” he said.

  New faces decorated the Purgatory 8 monitoring station. Holmes had invited close colleagues, executive and military, to watch the ritual’s conclusion—all to his credit. News of Theo Watson’s capture had coursed through Una Corda and was generally well-received—Theo had made a habit of stepping on people’s toes. The ritual’s impending success shone a lustrous light on General Holmes.<
br />
  Icing on the cake.

  Holmes noted Trevor and Parts Five and Six’s position on the map—just outside the suicide chamber where Horace had tortured Keto, forcing Colette to watch.

  “Looks like Trevor and his two pals are in for a rude awakening,” he said. “This ought to be interesting.”

  The three entered the suicide chamber, and Holmes grew uneasy as events unfolded. Something about Trevor’s actions, or lack thereof, raised a red flag. When James offered himself to Horace in exchange for Keto, he detected an unexpected emotion in Trevor: empathy had burned in the young man’s eyes. Holmes wondered where Trevor’s training had failed. He scribbled a note on his mental TODO list to place Trevor in a reconditioning class.

  A series of kicks propelled Keto across the screen. Three cameras caught his blood-spitting tumble in high resolution from multiple angles.

  “Wow—did you see the spiral from that blood?” Holmes said, chuckling with his comrades, who joined the laughter.

  Susan lurched, looked away from the monitor and stroked her neck until the green left her cheeks. Weak girl, Holmes thought.

  What followed caught Holmes off guard. Trevor appeared to defend James, and then—of all things—he drew a gateway symbol in his own blood.

  “No—what’s he doing?” Holmes said. His bottom lip burned as he bit into it. Trevor’s intentions were clear—the torii proved he had defected.

  The events blurred—suddenly an impaled Horace fell onto the gateway symbol, sacrificed for Arikura’s freedom.

  “No!” Holmes said again, slamming his fist onto the desk. A few of Theo’s things fell to the floor, including his absurd red stapler.

  Minutes passed. Every eye and ear in Purgatory 8 remained transfixed on Trevor as he divulged Magnus’ secrets. When James, Trevor, Colette and Olivia came across the escape tunnel, Holmes jumped up, toppling over Theo’s chair.

  “Send the troops. Wipe them clean,” he said. “All of them.”

  2

  A rivulet of sweat trickled down James’ cheek. Labored footsteps and heavy panting broke the corridor’s stillness. Their feet clacked on lacquered concrete, and the shuffling of their clothes echoed in the metal conduits above their heads. James’ nostrils rebelled against the tunnel’s damp air. Swaying, overhead lamps reflected strings of fluorescent light onto the glossy floor.

  Trevor led them around a dizzying number of bends and up and down stairs, dissolving James’ sense of direction—he, Colette and Olivia glued themselves to their guide. They’d put their trust in Trevor as their sole navigator. They had no other choice now.

  “You have any idea where you’re going?” James said.

  “Yeah, for the most part,” Trevor said. “These service tunnels can get confusing. But I memorize each facility’s blueprints before a ritual begins, so I know this one pretty well. We should be about halfway under the school, heading north.”

  “Memorize?” Olivia said. “How the hell can you keep track of all this in your head?”

  “Not sure. It’s just a habit, I guess. I used to enter memory competitions—I was the champ for awhile. Memorizing the tunnel patterns is no different,” Trevor said.

  “For you, maybe,” James said.

  “There are lots of techniques for improving memory,” Trevor said. “I’m nothing special, nor are those people who can memorize 1500 random numbers. It just takes practice. Tell you what—if we make it out of here, I’ll teach you how sometime.”

  “I can barely remember my name right now,” Colette said.

  “Of course you can’t—you guys’ hormones are imbalanced on top of everything else,” Trevor said.

  “Why would our hormones be imbalanced?” Olivia said.

  Trevor sighed. “I really need to keep my mouth shut,” he said. “Ah, well. Remember when I said I’d researched paranormal phenomena? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I transferred to Magnus from a stint at Harvard where I wrote algorithms modeling pathogen replication and transmission.”

  Trevor looked down at Colette and smirked.

  “I was dead set on becoming a sub-thirty-year-old Nobel Laureate, but Magnus took interest in my research and offered me an attractive job. Been here since.”

  “What does that have to do with our hormones?” Olivia said.

  “I was getting to that,” Trevor said. “They used my research to help develop a serum they now inject into ritual participants.”

  “What kind of serum?” James said.

  “Well, having perfected pathogen models meant also modeling cell interactions. I decoded them, which allowed me to reverse engineer their response to stimuli,” Trevor said, raising his head high to squint down the hallway. “There’re more than a few geniuses within the hallowed walls of Magnus…” They came to a fork and he chose left.“…many of whom are dedicated to nanotech research—manipulating rituals on a molecular level is less likely to alert the Gods of our interference.”

  “Get to the point, man!” James said.

  “Damn—give me a minute,” Trevor said between breaths. They’d been keeping up a decent pace and he hadn’t stopped talking in a good while.

  He continued, “Anyway, I teamed up with the nanotech folks. They built nanomachines to stimulate the body’s cells based on my modeling and wrapped it up in a serum called MINIMITE. It can vary your hormonal output at any given moment,” he looked at James. “So, when I’m not cleaning up other people’s messes, most of my time is devoted to improving MINIMITE—that, and I step into the odd research gig when they reach a dead end.

  “James, have you been feeling more pumped-up?” Trevor said. “More ‘go get ‘em?’”

  James reflected on the past few hours. He had been behaving slightly out of character. He tended to be creative and maybe somewhat lazy, sorta aloof—or so he was told. These heroic tendencies surprised and excited him. From a chasm in the pit of his being, a newborn, tumultuous passion stirred.

  “I thought it was just the adrenaline.”

  “No doubt, it’s a combination of both. Thing is, we need you to keep your head on your shoulders, so your adrenaline is reduced while other hormones are increased.”

  “You are this ritual’s protector, and subsequently your testosterone is through the roof. You see, each of you has an archetype to play, but we can’t tell you how to play it. We just manipulate your hormones as well as offer a mild suggestion on the cards you received. Man, before MINIMITE, you wouldn’t believe the shit Magnus had to do to get participants to comply—” Trevor said.

  “Hold on. You are saying this stuff is in our bodies right now?” Olivia said.

  “Yes,” Trevor said. “It’s also relaying your vitals to a monitoring station,” Trevor said.

  “What the fuck!” James said. “Is this shit safe? I’m not gonna get cancer or something, am I?”

  “God, no—you really think we’d allow a travesty like that?” Trevor said with a startling lack of irony. James rolled his eyes. Trevor continued. “Our work is stellar. Plus, if you did, we have a cure for it.”

  James halted.

  “Hold up. A cure for cancer? You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

  Trevor stopped and faced him. “Cancer is tricky,” Trevor said. “Every person reacts differently to treatment. That changed when the human genome was decoded. Now we can design a custom treatment based on your genetic identity to attack and destroy any form of cancer. It was developed right here in this very facility. Magnus owns and operates all of the major pharmaceutical corporations. They plan to introduce the technique over the next ten years.”

  James slowed. There are certain truths that can incapacitate—can render the student immobile—and this fact sucked the strength from James’ legs. Olivia appeared affected too. She cast James a stunned glance.

  “What about our location? Can they track that also?” Olivia said.

  “Of course,” Trevor said. “But not through the serum. That reminds me—we need to take care of that l
ittle issue…”

  Colette grabbed hold of Trevor’s arm.

  “It was you,” she said, tears in her eyes. “You did something to me to make me feel the way I did for Keto, didn’t you?”

  “Colette,” Trevor said. “Yes. I’m sorry. Amida is a dirty old man of a god. He likes a little T&A. You were manipulated. Now, back to the GPS issue—I need your hands, everyone.”

  James stood near Trevor. Olivia fell in next to James and Colette completed the circle. Trevor held out his left hand, palm up, and pointed at his ring finger.

  “There’s a sub-dermal, rice-sized location chip embedded in each of your ring fingers,” Trevor said and pulled out a short pocket knife. “We need to remove them.”

  He placed the tip of the knife on the fleshy, inner connection between his palm and first knuckle. Blood ran from the incision as he drove the flaps of skin apart and coaxed a tiny piece of plastic from the wound, dropping it to the floor.

  “You had one too?” Olivia said.

  “Standard Magnus protocol. It can also be used as a communication device. Your turn,” Trevor said to James.

  What happened to ladies first? James thought, and immediately felt like an ass.

  Trevor made short work of removing each of their tracking devices. His steady hand kept the procedure near-painless.

  “Thanks,” James said.

  “Yes, thank you Trevor,” Olivia said, rubbing then sucking on her finger.

  Colette stared at the ground.

  “Doesn’t this officially mean you’ve aided and abetted fugitives?” James said.

  Trevor laughed.

  “We’re in the same boat at this point,” he said. “Something’s gone wrong, and I intend to find out what’s up—with my head intact.”

  They resumed their pace until sweat flushed their foreheads.

  “If we keep traveling north, won’t we eventually hit the edge of the facility? What happens when we run into the…uh…thermal mesh?” James said.