“Cool it—you’re going to upset him, Brady!” Nova said sharply, while Brady picked himself up off the floor.
Then her pitch grew softer and sweeter. “It’s okay, he won’t hurt you.” She spoke to the buzzing air in front of her. The creature dashed back and forth between Nova and Brady before stopping in front of Nova.
“So let’s see. If I remember correctly, you guys have actually met once before.” Nova smiled. “Thorn, meet Brady. Brady, Thorn.”
“Nice to meet you, Thorn,” Brady said with a slight wave of his hand. “I, um, I’m sorry about what I said earlier.”
Thorn continued to bob up and down in front of Nova. She held her arm out, and the creature dropped into the palm of her hand and settled down to rest.
Nova stroked the bird’s miniature head with her fingers. It made several soft chirps before its bright blue eyes extinguished, allowing the dark gems to show through. The wings gradually stopped fluttering and the tail folded inward.
The bird grew still.
“I’ll wake you up if I need you. Sleep well, Thorn.”
Nova carefully placed Thorn in the back of the rotorcraft and closed the hatch.
“Okay, Brady, time for us to go.” She moved around to the driver’s side of the craft. The gull-wing door swung up and she disappeared inside. “You can ride shotgun.”
The passenger side door whooshed open, and Brady climbed apprehensively into the empty bucket seat. Once inside, the doors glided automatically into place, locking with a tight seal.
The interior of the cabin was lit only by the soft amber glow of the dashboard. Nova was already busy setting various controls on the wide panel of glass in front of her. It was calm and quiet inside, apart from the faint hum of the instrumentation.
“You have flown this thing before—right?” Brady frowned as he searched for the nearest escape exit.
“Maybe once or twice…” She smiled. “We had to get it here somehow, right? I know what I’m doing. Try to relax.”
All of this was cold comfort for Brady.
“So, how are you going to get us to Felix anyway? You said they’ll be waiting for us.”
“And they will be. That’s why we’re going in a different way. The Collectors mostly stick to the underground tunnels—so we’ll just have to go over them.” Nova continued to adjust the controls. “We’ll avoid them as long as we can, although I suspect we’ll eventually have to go underground.” The headlights flashed on with a push of a button. “Ready?” Nova asked.
“Sure…” Brady tried to play off his anxiety. He felt his seat begin to vibrate softly as the four rotors spun up. The craft lifted gently off the ground and came to rest in the air.
“Nova?”
“Yes.”
“Before we go… I—”
“What is it?”
Brady paused. He couldn’t let it go.
“I—well… I was thinking about what you said when we were back in the tunnel. About how they, I mean the Collectors, would, you know, be upset because you were stealing from them. Why are you stealing?”
He paused.
“I need to know.”
Nova looked at him for a second, then turned away and looked out the window. “Like I said before, it’s not what you think. I’m only taking what—what my family needs to survive. I promise you. That’s all I can say about it. Are you okay with that?”
Brady decided it was best not to push harder, for now at least.
“I guess,” he replied, unsurely.
“Great. Now let’s get out of here.”
Nova guided the craft slowly forward through the hangar doors and out into the stormy night. Wipers kicked in automatically as rain sloshed across the windshield. Brady looked back and saw the twin metal doors slide together, and then the ghostly mirage of the empty barn reappeared in their place.
The aircraft glided to a stop in the clearing by the barn. The long blades of grass were forced to the ground by the gusts of air from the rotors. Dense evergreens blocked the way forward.
“How are we going to get back to the blue door?” Brady asked. “There’s no way we can fly this thing through the trees.”
“No, we can’t go through the forest,” Nova replied. “But lucky for us we don’t need to. It’s a good thing the barn is where it is. There are only a few ways into the place where we’re headed. One of them is actually pretty close to here.”
“That happened by chance?” Brady asked.
“Not really by chance…” Nova smiled. “Besides, the other door was too small. We’ll just open a new portal big enough for us to travel through. It’s going to take more power, though. A lot more.”
“Ah, that’s why we brought the Evercell along!” Brady said.
“Exactly. There’s a quantum amplifier in the back as well. We can tie them together to create a door large enough for us to go through. Hopefully we’ll have enough energy to keep the tunnel open until we make it back. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”
Nova opened the door and jumped out. At the back of the rotorcraft, she opened the hatch, retrieved the amplifier, and set it on the ground. Then she slid the Evercell all the way out until it fell to the ground with a thud.
“Everything okay back there?” Brady called out as he stared out the rear hatch. The heavy rain sluiced over the glass door.
“Yes. I’m going to connect my watch to the amplifier. By itself, it has enough energy to open the portal we traveled through earlier. It won’t be enough now though, so we need something much stronger.”
As Nova typed a sequence into her watch, the amplifier began to glow—softly at first, then brighter. When she was finished, she connected a wire to the battery lodged in the mud. She then braced herself against the back of the vehicle.
“I started the countdown—you might want to cover your ears for this. In five, four…”
Brady covered his ears with his hands.
“Three… two… one…”
A shockwave rocked the aircraft, knocking Brady out of his seat and onto the floor. He watched through the windshield as the blinding light tore through the rippling air. The door quickly grew until it was more than wide enough for them to pass through safely.
“Thanks for the heads-up!” Brady shouted, picking himself up and climbing back into the passenger seat.
Nova shut the hatch and climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“Like I said, I’m not sure how long the battery can hold this open, so we shouldn’t waste any time. Are you ready?”
The craft moved forward toward the portal.
They were on their way back.
Chapter 11: Unwilling Passengers
SOMEWHERE ON THE OTHER SIDE of the portal, deep underground, the boy opened his eyes to a haze of shiny bronze just inches in front of his face. I must be dreaming, he thought. For a brief moment, the boy smiled to himself. His mind was still in a far-off place, a dream world decorated with the familiar trappings of his own room. He imagined hearing his brother and his mom talking downstairs in the kitchen, the smell of pancakes wafting up through the rafters and into his room.
Then the vision evaporated and the voices slipped away. His eyes came into focus, and he could see the scratches, dents, and seams in the metal that wrapped him like a cocoon.
Felix was lying on his side with his legs bunched up to his chest. He tried to stretch out, to roll over, but found no room to spare. He was stuck here for the time being.
Where am I?
Memories rushed into his mind. Brady, Nova, the portal. The Collectors, and…
Achilles. Where is Achilles?
Somehow Felix was still alive. He wasn’t sure about everyone else though. He wondered if he had been captured. It certainly seemed like it.
The steel cage shook suddenly, and he was jolted against its side. His head pounded as he lay there, disoriented. After several tries, he just managed to squeeze his hand around to the back of his head. Ouch! He felt a large welt, tender
to the touch.
He looked around the metal coffin and started to breathe faster. Then Felix did something he had never done before. He began to panic.
There was a rhythmic motion below him. The cage that held him would move for a second, stop, and then move again. An unseen force was pulling him forward. From outside he heard the whooshing sound of air around him and the low haunting whale-like bellows of the electric zombies.
The Collectors are nearby.
Where were they taking him?
As the seconds passed, he felt his head began to swell. The throbbing pain was becoming unbearable. His vision began to blur until the seams in the cocoon disappeared, leaving him floating in a foggy gray sky.
He was losing consciousness again, grasping desperately for something to anchor to, but it was useless. The last thing he remembered was sliding down to the end of the cage as he was pulled upward on an incline, higher and higher. Felix closed his eyes and drifted slowly into peaceful unconsciousness.
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Achilles lay on his side, his legs bound together by ghastly tendrils. He slid across the floor inch by inch as the Collectors dragged him onward through the pitch-black tunnel. The dog remained aware, but barely. He had diverted most of his power to protecting Felix. Any energy that remained was used to keep his backup systems active. Achilles even dimmed his eyes in order to maintain power reserves in case of an emergency.
A small group of Collectors drifted about languidly in front of Achilles, pulling the beast and boy slowly across the tunnel terrain. Achilles had lost the fight. There had been too many of them. At first he had been able to swat them back as they advanced, but more and more Collectors had joined in, and they had managed to wear him down until, finally, he fell.
Afterward, most of the crowd had dissipated back into the recesses of the tunnel, leaving only a few Collectors behind to tend to their fallen prey. The machines were cautious at first, poking and prodding the listless dog with the end of their tentacles. Pent-up electrostatic energy caused firecracker-like pops to ring out as the tentacles discharged on contact. Finally convinced of their victory, the Collectors slithered around the animal and prepared him for the journey to come. Now they moved with slow-witted determination toward an area far underground where few dared to venture.
A lumbering train roared into the station where hundreds of Collectors were gathering, carrying their scrap and salvage behind them like trophies. Its arrival was announced with a deep, low, foghorn-like sound that reverberated for miles through the tunnels. It groaned to a stop, then sat waiting for the frothing horde of undead machines and their prized collections to come aboard.
Over time, the locomotive’s exterior had developed a patina of rust and grime, a terrifying tapestry of orange, brown, gray, and green textures. Pieces of scrap had been welded to the sides where holes had rusted through the exterior frame. The front was flat with no lights and no windows to lend it character except for a double-sided plow of sheet metal that formed a sharp V. Instead of snow, the train pushed scrap to the side as it traveled. The engine stood between two gigantic parallel rails that disappeared down the length of the dark tunnel.
Suddenly the Collectors began to part to make room for something. A group of new Collectors had entered through an antechamber off to the side of the room, and the new arrivals were pulling something different behind them—something that demanded respect from the others.
A large metal hound.
The terrible melody of the Collectors echoed off the metal walls as they spoke to one another and floated up to the side of the train with their victims in tow. When the doors on the rail cars grinded open and ramps extended down to the tunnel floor, the Collectors floated up and onto the train. The ramps rescinded back into the train and the doors closed. Then this freighter of anguish lurched forward, continuing on its journey deeper into the underworld.
Chapter 12: Mesh Brain
THE ROTOCRAFT DRIFTED quietly through the portal on powerful torrents of air. Nova and Brady found themselves inside a large, dimly lit room with tall concrete dividers that stretched lengthwise like towering aisles in an oversized warehouse. Stacks of Evercells covered the shelves and reached high into the shadows that canvased the ceiling.
Brady craned his neck around his seat and peered out at the portal through the rear windshield. Behind the door of cold fire, the concrete aisles receded into the distance. He struggled to comprehend the number of cells stored here. Like the stars, they were far too numerous to count.
As the rotorcraft hovered in place, Brady broke the silence, his face still poking over the top of the passenger’s seat.
“There must be enough batteries in here to last you a lifetime. For, um, whatever you need them for.”
“Unfortunately, they’re all empty,” Nova replied softly, more to herself than to Brady.
“So, where are we?” Brady asked, taking in the sights around him. Through the aisles he could see mechanical arms pivoting and swinging in synchronized motions. They were grabbing the cells and loading them onto conveyer belts that disappeared into gaps in the far walls. Attached to the shelves were steel rails that allowed the arms to slide forward and backward through the rows.
“We’re in an old storage room that connects to the rest of the energy farm.”
“That’s what this place is? An energy farm?”
“Yes. One of hundreds, actually.”
“Hundreds? Seriously? What could possibly require that much power?”
Nova paused. “Machines.”
Brady’s eyebrows perked up and he turned back around in his chair. Nova had his attention now.
“Some of the machines, computers here, if you want to call them that, are highly evolved; they operate on an entirely different plane of existence. Take the fastest supercomputers in your world, and imagine them about a million times more powerful. It takes an enormous amount of energy just to keep them alive. My father told me once that all the fossil fuels in your Earth would run out in a week at the rate energy is used up here.”
“Keep them… alive? What kind of energy do they use?” Brady mumbled, watching the conveyer belts carry cell after cell out of the room.
“Fusion and solar power. There’s a fusion reactor not too far from here. Think of it as a small sun burning inside a box. And this place is surrounded by fields of solar cells that capture energy from the sun with near perfect efficiency. Nothing is wasted.”
“But generating the energy is only half the problem. The computers needed a place to store it, so a new type of battery was created that could hold enough energy to power an entire city for a month: the Evercell.”
Nova gestured around the room with a wave of her hand. “All of these are just sitting here waiting to be charged up.”
Brady’s thought went to Felix and Achilles. “Are we safe in here? What about the Collectors? They’ll be looking for us now.”
“I don’t think so. Remember, they spend most of their time moving about in the tunnels beneath us. We opened the portal higher up this time. We’re still pretty close to the spot where I was captured earlier tonight.” Nova glanced down through the transparent floor of the vehicle. “Actually, we’re right on top of it.”
Just the thought of the Collectors stirring beneath him caused more terrible memories to flood into Brady’s mind, and he curled up in his seat.
“But why bring us back to this place at all?” he asked. “Why not bring up the portal so that it takes us somewhere outside? It seems like it would be a lot easier.”
“Sure, until something discovers the portal floating out in the open and sends thousands of machines streaming back into your world. I needed an area large enough to hide the gateway while it’s open. This room is fully automated, and I don’t think anything ever comes in here, so the portal should be safe while we’re here. At least for a little while.”
“Okay, that makes sense, I guess. But why do you have to keep it open? Why not just close down the p
ortal and reopen it when we’re ready to go home?”
“It’s not that simple. When a door opens, it leaves a quantum signature behind on the side where it was created. Sort of like a trail of breadcrumbs between universes. The people in your world aren’t advanced enough to pick it up—yet—but it’s a different story here. They would find it, and then…”
Brady put the pieces together. “You’re saying if we open a new portal here, the bots would see the signature. They’d be able to figure out where we came from and follow us home.”
“Exactly. We might as well just leave them a map.”
“So no one here knows about our world? Then how did you find us?”
“It took my father years. He visited world after world until he found one that was suitable. There were equations that helped, but still…”
“Your father sounds like a genius.”
Nova suddenly grew tense. “Yes, you could say that. Anyway, we should get going.”
The headlights on the rotorcraft shined down the dark aisles. The paths between the shelves were narrow, not nearly wide enough for the aircraft to fit through.
“How are we going to get out of here?” Brady asked. “It doesn’t look like there’s room to go anywhere.”
Nova dragged a wireframe map around the control panel and pressed a dot on the screen. The spot lit up as her finger made contact. “Don’t worry; this thing has a few tricks up its sleeves. Hold on tight though, this is going to feel pretty snug.”
Two belts extended down from the roof of the vehicle, crossed over Brady’s chest, and clicked in place near his waist. He had to suck in his stomach to avoid them pressing too hard into his skin.
“Okay, that should help. Hold on. This will feel a little weird.”
The left rotors spun faster and faster until that side of the craft began to lift up. When they were completely sideways, the left blades stopped moving, leaving the right rotors supporting the full weight of the vessel.
The craft moved vertically along the aisles. Fortunately, the belts held Brady into his seat as gravity tried desperately to pull him out. He watched through the glass roof as they passed stack after stack of Evercells. It felt as though the craft might tip over at any time.
The Quantum Door Page 9
