The Chronicles of Qi

by J E Kerry

  “Welcome to the Simulation Hall,” General Ma’s avatar commences. “Be proud. You are the strongest and most skilled soldiers we’ve had at the SFB.”

  “The next hours, however, will determine if you were meant to be here,” General Ma warns the recruits, and their smiles unhinge slightly, Wang and Philipe exchanging a concerned look.

  “The following simulation puts you into a never-ending battle against technology, strategy and your own nightmares,” the General continues with a more serious tone. “It’s the last test to lock the final spacetime unit.”

  From behind, Sniper takes over and continues with instructions, “You will have to pass the 4 Chambers of Death. Each simulation consists of an extra-terrestrial, genetically mutated or AI (artificial-intelligence) threat.”

  Wang may never want to admit it, but he isn’t fully used to modern civilization just yet. He still relies on Philipe and Jodie as his shoulders to lean on. Hearing that there would be hideous threats ahead does not frighten him, what gives him pause is the prospect of another psychological challenge.

  Considering the odds against them, he steels himself for the task ahead, calling in the favors bestowed on him by the old monks confident that he will get through.

  Sniper’s avatar looks into the round, “A detailed map of the chambers is on your Visuals.”

  The soldiers’ holo-wristbands activate.

  “Your HWBs will tell you the team you’re in,” he goes on. “Each one exists of six soldiers.”

  Four different colors pop up on each of their HWbs.

  Wang ever so slightly raises his wrists to his line of vision. Squinting, he slowly opens them to see the color.

  “I'm red,” Wang says excited.

  “Me too,” Jodie reveals.

  “Moi (me) three,” Philipe chimes in.

  Sniper’s avatar points to a wall of four white doors changing into the colors of red, blue, green and yellow.

  “The doors will lead you into the first chamber,” he instructs, “but be aware that your paths will cross eventually to compete against each other. And don’t forget, you’ve only got two lives.”

  Everyone nods respectfully and the avatars of General Ma and Sniper de-materialize.

  “Alright, ladies,” sounds an unfamiliar voice from behind. The former American MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Champion, Aaron Meloy (Aaron), 26, conventionally handsome, with an overly muscular physique, steps forward within Team Red. “Let’s get this party started!”

  ∞∞∞

  * CHAMBER 1 *

  Wang’s team step one after another through the door into the Dark Forest of Chamber 1, unaware about the dangerous hybrid creature hiding above their heads, lurking around to attack.

  “What’s our first threat?” Philipe asks into the round while Jodie already scrolls down on her Visuals and pauses at a gigantic hairy spider.

  “Genetically mutated spiders,” she says with her usual poker face, leaving no doubt that she’s absolutely cool with any monstrous creature they are going to encounter during this simulation.

  “Great, I’m arachnophobic,” Rahul Smith, a 26-year-old Indo-American IT freak and hacker, ingenious and eclectic, chunters to himself, becoming instantly pale.

  “Of all the things to be afraid of or phobic to,” queries Brian Chen, a 25-year-old Chinese mechanic, cocky and boisterous, “you’re scared of little spiders?”

  “Guys, concentrate,” Aaron intervenes and leads their focus back on track.

  “We should cloak,” Jodie suggests with questioning eyes to Aaron.

  “Second that,” Aaron agrees much to Jodie’s surprise.

  “And use our petit (little) Dragon as bait,” Philipe adds, teasing his friend.

  “You’re enjoying this a little too much,” Wang responds to Philipe’s joke with a nudge.

  “How about communication?” Rahul asks, trying to distract himself from his arachnophobia.

  “There’s a telepathy function,” Jodie says as she keeps swiping on her Visuals.

  “Alright then, let’s cloak!” Aaron decides and commands his teammates to begin with their simulation.

  The soldiers activate their cloaks and become completely invisible while Wang moves carefully closer to the center and spots a tarantula, the size of a two-storey house, above his head, busying herself with a web.

  “Oh maya!” (oh mother) he says to himself with the soul of a warrior showing his respect to the gigantic enemy setting for an attack.

  Not a second later, Wang must bravely face a swarm of winged tarantulas and uses his advanced Parkour skills to lure them into a blind spot, right where his cloaked teammates await the enemy to attack.

  The group’s plan seems to work at first, killing a handful of tarantulas with their glove-poisons, until Brian accidentally touches one of the spider webs and is stuck.

  Its electromagnetic charge disables his suit, deactivating the cloak.

  “Yun!” (what the fuck) Brian shouts. “Guys, I could need some help.”

  “Of course, it has to be the douchebag,” Jodie sighs.

  “I know, right?” Philipe agrees.

  “You were hearing that?” Jodie wonders.

  “Guess I’m not the only one who talks aloud to himself,” states Wang triumphantly.

  A tarantula nearby has spotted Brian and rushes over, grabbing the soldier with her mandibles and twirling his body around between her long legs, wrapping her lunch into a cocoon for storage.

  “Help, Help!” Brian screams his lungs out.

  The entire team is on alert and speeds from different corners over to Brian who disappears completely under the wrap of webbing and falls into stasis. More tarantulas are on their heels.

  “There are too many,” Wang shouts while having trouble to keep up his little parkour game. “We need another strategy.”

  Rahul’s eyes go wide, “Frequency. We can use our psionic manipulation feature to let them kill each other.”

  “That could actually work,” exclaims Aaron.

  “So, we just have to find a frequency that can be used to turn a giant tarantula against its fellow ‘giant’ tarantula,” says Philipe a bit sarcastically.

  “Trust me, they don’t need much to turn on one another. It will only take me a few minutes; you guys just do your thing and keep them off me while I tune.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Aaron agrees as he administers his glove-poison on the back of a tarantula and knocks it out.

  Rahul nods approvingly, momentarily forgetting that he can’t be seen. He switches his position and hides behind a big tree trunk to begin with the tuning-hack on his Visuals.

  The soldiers proceed with their task until Rahul has finally found the right frequency and unleashes an invisible brainwave that causes a tarantula near Philipe to attack another one, ripping it apart. Pieces of its spider-brain land on Philipe’s shoulder.

  “I know, je suis (I am) sizzling hot, mais c’est dégueu. (but that’s just disgusting),” Philipe says nauseated as he wipes the slimy, smelly brain off his shoulder and tries his best not to throw up in front of everyone, especially Jodie.

  Wang takes his revenge on him, “I think, it suits you perfectly.”

  “Let me sync with your Visuals,” Rahul says and connects with them.

  A frequency code arrives on Wang’s Visuals and is activated, just before another tarantula wants to jump him but is ripped apart by a second one.

  “Ra, you’re a genius,” he cheers out loud to Rahul as he watches the entire hoarder of Arachne tear themselves apart one by one.

  “I know,” Rahul uncloaks with a confident smile.

  ∞∞∞

  * CHAMBER 2 *

  As the last one of these spiders is killed, the Dark Forest magically transforms into a snowy mountain range, with the cocoon opening and releasing Brian to the ground.

  The now uncloaked team gathers around him, and Jodie quickly scrolls on her Visuals for the antidote of the spider poison that still runs through Bri
an’s system. Meanwhile, Wang uses his right hand-glove and revives his teammate’s heartbeat.

  A moment later, Jodie uses the tip of her glove to administer the antidote on Brian’s neck.

  “Come on Brian, wake up.” Wang says concerned while he elevates Brian’s legs up and helps his blood circulating back to the heart. The tension increases with every second that passes until Brian finally gasps for air and is back with his usual charm within seconds.

  “Hope you missed me,” he says with his eyes slowly opening and finding focus again.

  “Not a light-second,” Rahul answers joking and reaches his hand out to him, pulling Brian up.

  “Let’s scan the terrain,” Aaron suggests.

  “So far, I haven’t found anything” claims Jodie. “This looks like a place of respite guys.”

  But just as everyone believes to be safe, they are being surprised by two giant hybrid bird breeds with three heads each and dangerous Scorpio tails, arriving on the mountain’s peak to initiate with a roar.

  “Oh boy,” Brian exclaims, “What exactly were you scanning Jo?”

  “I scanned the entire terrain,” Jodie protests.

  “But these came from the sky,” Wang points out.

  As if a referee blows the whistle the creatures shoot out of the Mountain cliff and go after the adventurers.

  The team defend their territory bravely and skillfully, with the entire arsenal of the suit at their disposal, yet they find themselves making no headway with the birds.

  The physical flexibility and speed of them make it difficult for the team to strike and kill them as the creatures constantly bob and weave out of the way.

  Wang runs away from the onslaught of one and manages to get behind a snowy rock just in time for the bird to graze its underbelly on the sharp points of it. This marks the one and only hit they can make so far.

  The team are getting incredibly angry with the frustration and the birds appear to be toying with them.

  On top of that, the weather unexpectedly changes, and a storm starts to brew above them. In a moment of distraction, Jodie is hit by the bird’s claw, lifted up by an artificially strong gust of wind, and thrown down the cliff.

  “Jo!” Philipe calls out for her in worry.

  The forces of nature seem to team up with the monster-birds as they affect the team one by one.

  Paralyzed by the realization that Jodie is gone, Philipe stops fighting and is knocked unconscious by the bird’s wing. Wang communicates telepathically to Aaron, Rahul and Brian to keep the birds busy while he jumps down the cliff-face, searching for Jodie. He finds his teammate half unconscious right in front of a snowy cave entrance; her arm dislocated.

  Wang shakes his head, “I guess we’ve found our malfunction,” he says sarcastically, thinking this could have been him if his suit would have malfunctioned.

  He assists with the correction of her arm manually via his own first aid skills before the suit can at least revitalize her body while he climbs up to re-join the battle. As he arrives, the birds are dangerously close to defeating his team.

  The soldiers are on the defensive, backing away from the birds that grow bolder in their advance, pecking at the group.

  “Who would have thought that the mighty Brian would finally end up as bird food in a not so temperate clime,” Rahul drones fending off a tail-attack that comes from nowhere.

  “Whatever happens, at least I got to fight beside Aaron.” Brian retorts.

  “What?”

  “If we had two Aaron’s and one less Arachnophobe, we would be farther along now than we are,” Brian adds.

  “Well, remind me to never use my brains to get you out of spider cocoon ever again,” Rahul states angrily.

  Ducking under another attack, Brian continues his banter with Rahul, “Oh, so you know what to do in this situation but won’t, because you can’t stand my little taunts?”

  Aaron unleashes a sonic blast that does more to quiet his bickering companions than help the situation at hand.

  “Hey spaceclowns, you care to find a frequency blast for these guys?” Aaron snaps at them.

  “There could be, but there isn’t enough time for that. These creatures do not seem to be as easy to turn against themselves like the tarantulas,” Rahul laments.

  In the meantime, Wang walks as silently as possible towards the birds and when he sights Philipe’s prone body, he realizes without a doubt that something different needs to be done.

  He pauses his walk for a moment and concentrates on his Qi.

  “In movement, seek stillness and rest,” he says to himself and his thoughts travel to the others, letting them become a collective mind. “In rest, be mindful and attentive.”

  “In rest, be mindful and attentive,” Aaron repeats as he jumps on the enemy’s wing like a Ninja, heading further to its sacrum, just in right proximity to not get hit by neither the heads nor the tail.

  Wang’s Visuals scan over the battlefield and analyze the anatomy of the birds. He looks for a soft spot and finds it on the back where all three heads have their connection point. He takes a deep breath and runs toward one of the birds, avoiding its swinging wings and piercing tail, dodging out of two direct strikes and making his way behind it with an elegant slide. He then balances his feet and locks his boots to the monster’s skin, summoning all Qi to strike with his glove-enhanced iron fist.

  “Embrace your Qi and strike like iron,” Wang thinks to himself within the hivemind and propels his fist forward with the speed of a shotgun blast, slamming it firmly into the creature’s side.

  The hybrid being goes screaming to the ground.

  Meanwhile, Aaron follows Wang’s example and kills the second bird in a similar manner by destroying its sacrum and using his glove-poison to paralyze it from the tail to its upper trunk spine.

  The heavy creature crumples and lands dangerously close to Philipe’s face. The vibration of its body hitting the ground lets the soldier regain consciousness and stare one of the bird’s heads right in the eye.

  “What did I miss?” Philipe asks, his eyesight being a little blurry, as he slowly realizes the knocked out giant next to him. “There is a bird à côté de moi” (next to me), he says, wondering whether he might still be dreaming. It takes his brain five seconds until he finally gets it and screams “Sauve qui peut! Sauve qui peut!” (save yourself if you can)

  Without thinking twice, Philipe leaps to his feet and is just about to set for an attack as he notices the motionless body and reaches out to poke the corpse with his boots.

  “Please be dead, please be dead, please be dead!” He sings but notices one bird-head surprisingly opening its eyes. “Ahhh, Bonne Maman!” (holy shit)

  Philipe quickly throws himself in a reflex on the bird’s neck and applies a poison through the stings of his glove. He waits anxiously, his eyes squeezed like a baby about to poop, until the enemy finally closes its eyes again and he climbs off the slimy monster, adrenaline pumped.

  “I killed the beast,” Philipe cheers. “Moi, killed the beast!”

  He does a gorilla sound and beats on his chest, only to be highlighted by one of his embarrassing old-school hip-hop humpty dance moves. Everyone, including the healed Jodie, gather around him and the hybrid creature with wondering expressions on their faces.

  “Really dude?” questions Brian with a strange look on his face.

  “What is it?” asks a confused Philipe. “I just slayed the beast.”

  “Yeah right, and I just got a postcard from the Council telling me they would be gracing my grandmother’s house on her birthday,” adds Brian.

  “What? That’s never going to happen,” quotes an astounded Philipe. “You guys should be thanking me.”

  “Dude, you just killed that poor thing twice,” Aaron calls from behind.

  “It had a postmortem reflex,” Jodie adds, rolling her eyes from over Philipe’s shoulder, who immediately stops with his little self-loving performance and begins to realize the embarrassin
g faux pas.

  “I knew that,” he clears his throat, trying to play it cool.

  Meanwhile, the storm has stopped raging over their heads and the landscape transforms into an open sea, with the ground under their feet suddenly disappearing. The soldiers are sucked into the next chamber.

  ∞∞∞

  * CHAMBER 3 *

  The minute Wang’s suit gets in contact with the water, his protective helmet automatically activates, and he sinks into the artificial deep blue sea, followed by his teammates. Together, they find themselves caught in a swarm of dangerous-looking jellyfish. Brian nervously hits one of them with his arm. The hybrid creature immediately sends out a mind-wave, calling other jellyfish for help to attack the intruder.

  “Okay, Brian you just had to touch the jellyfish, didn’t you?” chides Rahul through his telepathic channel.

  “It was getting dangerously close,” Brian protests.

  “And now it’s getting much closer,” Aaron says, doing the mental version of a frustrated scream. “And it brought friends,” he adds.

  Wang tries to calm down the situation but soon enough, the same is happening to the rest of the team who try to defend themselves, except Jodie. She floats in the water like a piece of wood while the jellyfish swim peacefully around her.

  The number of jellyfish multiply as more approach from all directions, utterly surrounding the team.

  “Don’t move!” Jodie communicates telepathically to the others.

  Aaron wants to follow her advice, but one of the jellyfish is strangling his chest and cutting off his air. The more he moves, the tighter the jellyfish squeezes. He’s breathing heavily. Wang’s team can’t help him and must watch their teammate struggle until he blacks out.

  The second he’s unconscious, the jellyfish releases the pressure and follows its swarm away from the team. Aaron sinks to the bottom of the sea.

  Wang is the first to get to him. He bends over the soldier’s body and uses the power of his Qi to unlock a pressure point on Aaron’s chest, so he can finally breathe again. The moment he awakes, the water begins to move and pushes everyone straight forward into an ocean vortex.