“Why did you turn off your coms devices?”
“Just never mind that, this is very important. I repeat, a tan alert. The most dangerous convict in this facility is on the loose.”
“Which way did it go?” the voice asked. They responded instantly due to the fact that it was a tan alert. All other incoming signals would have to wait.
“It just went into the ceiling, and I can’t see it any more. But it moves extremely fast, and it could be practically anywhere by now.”
“Affirmative. We are on our way.”
The Sandman wanted to hit himself for wasting all that time standing there in shock after it’d escaped. He knew now that it would now be twice as hard for the guards to catch it. He pictured them all coming out of the office, flying down the corridor at unimaginable speeds due to the special equipment with them. But if what the phericke had said was true, then they would still be no match for it.
The Sandman began to go swinging down the corridor, searching for any clue about where it might have gone. He knew though that it was pointless. But the complex was huge, and heavily secured. Surely it couldn’t get all the way out.
Suddenly, the Sandman detected a voice echoing down the corridor, and he was instantly alert. “Hello there!” said the voice rather cheerfully. “Don’t worry, I’ve manipulated the ripple waves so that they can only be detected by you, so that way no one else can hear me. And you still have no idea where I am. Child’s play, really.”
The Sandman was surprised at first that it was speaking to him, but he quickly yelled out its name. “You have to stop this!” he cried. “It’s not too late! I can still help you!”
“Oh, please. Do you think I need your help with what I’m doing? I already have plenty of help, and that help is far more helpful than your help would be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I really don’t want to talk right now. I only called you to tell you this. You and your little soldier friends should leave while you still can. Wasting lives is so pointless, but my mission can’t fail. You were going to help me escape. Now I think you should be focusing on escaping from me.”
The voice stopped, and the Sandman still had no idea where it was. He couldn’t detect anything anywhere, no matter how hard he looked. Frantically, he began to move forward again, terrified at the situation.
He thought about that time when he’d been in the phericke’s manipulated dream. He’d been everyone at once, including her friend Shawn. He hadn’t actually been inside of Shawn’s body; in fact, he had been quite disconnected the whole time. It had been more like he was an aura, an essence that controlled all of the simulated bodies created through the vortex technology. But the whole time, he had paid particular attention to the body of Shawn. Sometimes it felt, even though it was entirely ridiculous, as if he were Shawn. And he legitimately did want to comfort Karena. Of course, his job was to increase her anxiety and to make her despair, that was the job of every dream master. But it hadn’t been what he’d wanted to do at times. And sometimes he had failed in increasing anxiety, and instead had lowered it. This was made up for by the betrayal, of course, something no human had ever tried on a convict. And it had worked brilliantly.
All the same, he was different from other humans. There was something about him, a certain quality, that the other humans lacked. He couldn’t quite identify what it was, though. He was just able to tell that there was something different about him, and about the way he reacted to things. He didn’t think it was the ability to fully feel emotions, that was something that humans hadn’t been able to do for centuries. But maybe he could partially feel them. Or maybe he just had some sense of irrationality that changed him to the extent that it seemed as if he could feel. Whatever it was, though, he realized that it must have been why he had helped the phericke. And that was also why it had outwitted him and escaped. If he’d just killed it before it’d regained its memory, then everything would have been fine. Now he’d be fired for sure, and a dangerous criminal would be on the loose. Perhaps even worse, he would be killed, if what it’d said was true. But he didn’t dwell on that.
Suddenly, a signal came from the Sandman’s internal coms device. “We found it,” the human said. “The phericke. It’s in the Translucent chamber.”
The Sandman was surprised that they’d managed to find it. And he was also surprised about where it was. The Translucent chamber? That was in the center of the complex, and they were near the end of it. Even at the speed it had been travelling, he didn’t see how it could have gone that far. And why would it be going there anyway? He suspected that it actually did have a plan, and that it wasn’t going to benefit him or anyone else working here.
“I’m on my way,” he replied, and he began towards the Translucent chamber.
65
Karena had made it a long way in a very short period of time. This was something she was used to, ever since she’d been through the experiments and had been upgraded so that she could do remarkable things. Including killing someone from over a mile away without using any sort of projectile weapon.
She was on top of Translucent. She’d never actually seen it before, but she had the intel to know what it would look like and what she would need to do. It looked essentially, like a giant hourglass, filled with swirling, shimmering sand that was spiraling down but never seemed to reach the bottom. The glass-like material around it was see-through, but objects behind it were out-of-focus and blurry, hence the name Translucent. However, it really was the machine that harnessed the energy of the vortex and allowed it to be manipulated to create dreams. She almost laughed as she thought of her own time under the control of this machine, where she’d thought the hourglass to be the most terrifying thing. And the Sandman. The hourglass he’d been holding actually did look an awful lot like a small version of Translucent. In every simulated dream there was a small Translucent, hidden somewhere within it, that served as a basis for controlling the events of the dream. It all seemed so silly to her now, since she’d gotten her memory back. Really it had been no big deal.
The guards were coming for her. They would soon be in this room, surrounding her, and she’d be trapped inside the center of the complex. But of course that was all part of her plan. That was what she’d been planning to do the whole time, and nobody knew.
Just a moment later they were all there. They thought they were so powerful in their little suits, with all their weapons that they thought they were going to be able to use to take her out. They had no idea. They surrounded Translucent and pointed all their projectiles directly at her before securing the target permanently. Karena watched all of this, feeling quite amused. There was another of her powers, the ability to feel amused. Quite remarkable that the scientists had been able to pull that off.
They called her name. “Come down now with your wires in the air.”
“And why should I do that?” she asked. “Why would I surrender myself to you so you can kill me?”
“Because you know the law. Your conscience should tell you that it is not right to go unpunished.”
“Sorry, but my survival instinct is overruling my conscience right now.”
“Then we will have to deactivate you now.”
“Fine. Go ahead.”
The commander pulled a small button out of a container in his uniform. She presumed that the projectiles were all synced, so that if the commander pressed the button, they would fire at once. Any ordinary person would be obliterated.
“We will give you to the count of 10,” said the commander. “If you are not down here by that time you will be deactivated.”
Karena was perfectly relaxed as the commander began at 10, and then began to count down to 0. However, when he reached 6, he was suddenly interrupted by another voice calling her name. She recognized it as the Sandman’s.
He called her name again as he flung himself to the base of Translucent and stopped, in front of all the guards. “I need to talk to you!”
Th
ere was a pause. The Sandman couldn’t see Karena from where he was on the ground, but he assumed that it was standing in the center of the top. After a moment, however, it came to the edge. “Yes?’ it asked.
“Please, just a moment of your time.”
“Go on. But make it quick. As I’m sure you can see, you have just interrupted my being ‘deactivated,’ as these humans call it.”
“Do you remember how I said I had helped you?” he said. “And it didn’t seem like I was really helping you, but instead tormenting you, because of what happened in the dream chamber?”
“Oh, honestly. Please don’t bring that up now. That entire episode in the dream chamber was ridiculous.”
“No, listen. Well, I was everyone in that dream, including your friend Shawn.”
Karena knew what the Sandman was going to say, and it didn’t want to hear it. “I want you to listen,” it said. “I am not going to change what I’m about to do just because you were friendly to me inside that dream,” she said. “You don’t understand the full scope of what’s going on here. I am (insert name here) yes, but I am also someone else. Did you ever wonder what would make me want to assassinate the Figure? Well, it was because I was strongly, how shall I put it, influenced by another. And that someone was the one who experimented on me, the same one who gave me the powers that I now have. And the same one that is going to make me do what I am about to do. (Insert name here) is about to be deactivated, yes, but not by all you guards. I’m going to deactivate myself. And I’m going with a bang.”
Suddenly, another human burst into the room, and the Sandman whirled around to see who it was. It was none other than the head of the entire facility, leaving his lofty office to come and see what all the commotion in the Translucent chamber was about. And he had come at a good time.
“Who was the one who experimented on you?” he asked, stopping himself near the base of Translucent surrounded by guards.
“I am not at liberty to discuss that.”
The head turned his attention to the Sandman. “This is a matter of universal security. This phericke has assassinated the Figure and now you know that for sure. And yet before you were attempting to help this phericke and even to let it escape from its punishment.”
The Sandman could feel something like worry beginning to grow inside of him. “What evidence do you have of that?”
“Enough. Did you honestly think that these schemes of yours would go unnoticed? I know your kind, though they do not appear often. You are the kind that can feel, and that kind cannot be permitted in this facility. The Figure was one who brought justice and freedom to all in the universe, and you aided the phericke who killed him, which is just as bad as killing him yourself.”
The commander interrupted the argument. “I am afraid that this discussion will have to be delayed, under your permission, head. This phericke is still up here, and it must be deactivated immediately.”
“Of course,” the head replied. “Please proceed.”
Karena was up on top the entire time, hardly having moved an inch. “Please spare me all of this talk and just incinerate me already, or kill me in whatever pathetic way you plan to try to kill me. I don’t have all day.”
The Sandman turned his attention back to Karena. Unlike the others, he knew that no ordinary projectile would harm it. “Please, you don’t have to do this!” he cried.
“You don’t understand.” She turned away.
The Sandman racked his mind. There had to be something, something that he could say to make her believe him and not do whatever it was she was about to do. He had been dedicated to helping this phericke for so long, and now it felt as if it wasn’t too late to help it after all. And then he had it. Increasing the amplitude of his ripples, he called to her. But her didn’t say her phericke name, which was of course her real name, but rather the name he had known her to be for all those months in the dream chamber. “Karena!”
She stopped. It was obvious that she’d been about to do something drastic, but all of a sudden she stopped right in the middle of it, freezing completely still. Then, she slowly moved her body back to focus on him. “My name is not Karena,” she said. “Karena is from another time and another place. I know how it works. You go back in time and take information about a single person’s life, it doesn’t matter from what aeon or era. And then you take that person’s life and emulate it through a dream. Karena is the person that you took the information from. I am not Karena. I never was Karena. I will never be Karena.”
“But think back to what you were like when you thought you were Karena.”
“I had had my memory wiped. I was foolish. I did not know anything about the real world back then.”
“And yet you were still a person. You still had feelings, and when I betrayed you, you felt legitimately felt betrayed. That must mean something.”
There was a silence. The guards all still had their projectiles locked on Karena, awaiting the signal of the commander. The head stood in silence, watching it all as if it were a show, though of course there was no such thing in his millennia. The Sandman sat still, waiting. And Karena did not reply for the moment.
“It means nothing,” she said finally. She made it clear from her tone that this conversation was over.
The Sandman glumly backed away from Translucent. There wouldn’t be any stopping this now. Karena was going to deactivate herself, and not only would that be bad for her, it would be bad for everyone in the proximity of the area. But he could not go now. It was too late, and anyway, he had to see this.
“(Insert name here), you have one last chance. Will you surrender?” The chief guard, however, knew it was essentially pointless to ask this. She was not going to surrender.
“No,” she replied.
The guard nodded at the Sandman and turned back to the button that would activate all the projectiles. And this time, without a countdown, he activated it.
They screamed forward, moving almost faster than the human eye could see. All of them were locked onto one target along, Karena, sitting still without showing any sign of concern. They were going to collide with her in the middle and she was going to go up in an explosion that would hopefully stay contained in the area where she was. It wouldn’t destroy Translucent, because it was made of too strong a material to be destroyed by any of these weapons. But it would kill Karena for sure.
In the blink of an eye, they were all upon her, and the Sandman shut off his optical transmitters, waiting for the explosion. But no explosion came. There wasn’t even the faintest sound, and when he opened his eyes he saw that Karena was standing on top of Translucent perfectly fine, and that there were no projectiles in sight.
The guard was befuddled. Confusion was not something that came easily to humans, because they quickly discovered the logical explanation for everything. But for some things, it seemed that there was no logical explanation. One of these things was the phericke becoming sentient. Another such thing was the projectiles vanishing into thin air, leaving Karena perfectly all right.
“How did you do that?” the commander asked. Fear was also something that did not come easily to humans, but the commander was beginning to feel the first pangs of it within him now, as the Sandman could see from the patterns of his ripples. He could feel it, too.
Karena did not reply. It was clear that she was concentrating on something, because she was standing, motionless, on top of Translucent. Some of her cords were rising slowly, but most of them stayed down, pressed flat against the bulk of wires that was her body.
“She’s doing something,” the Sandman said. “If I were you, I would recommend getting all your troops out of here immediately. There isn’t time to waste.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. If you want to go, then save yourself right now.”
“I can’t go. This is my doing, and I will see it through to how it ends.”
The head spoke up for the first time after Karena had destroyed the projectiles. “This is absurd,�
� he said. “I’m not going to stand here waiting for this phericke to do whatever it is she’s going to do. I’m leaving here whether the rest of you are staying or not.” And with that, he turned around and flung himself down the corridor as fast as his flesh could carry him, before disappearing around a corner and heading off towards the exit. Hardly anyone noticed his departure, or else they didn’t care. Everyone was focused on Karena, who was still raising her cords up, more and more of them by the second.
Suddenly, the Sandman noticed something strange on the side of Translucent. It looked as though it was shimmering, but not in the way the sand beyond it was shimmering. It seemed as if it was unstable somehow, the slightest little bit. And it was shaking, hardly visibly, but, with a closer look, it was clear that it was definitely shaking. Not the whole of Translucent, just the individual areas of glass all around it. The glass was not divided into segments, but not it seemed as though it was, and all these segments were rattling against each other, more violently by the second.
“Look,” the Sandman said to the chief guard. “Translucent. The phericke is moving it.”
By now it was obvious that Karena was, indeed, shifting the surface area of Translucent. The whole time she stood in the same position, concentrating fiercely on what she was about to do. It began to look like some areas of the glass were caving in, succumbing under some sort of incredible pressure. Some parts of it were flexing outwards as well. She was actually bending Translucent, something that was not possible in any way. The material it was composed of was stronger than any material used to make anything on earth, made to look exactly like glass. You could place a cubic meter of a neutron star on it and it would not break. And the Sandman saw what was going to happen just moments before it did.
The glass shattered, raining down upon the whole room. The entire surface area was made of glass, including the top and bottom, and every inch of it fractured into a million tiny pieces. But it wasn’t the broken glass that was the main problem. As soon as the sand was released, the raw power of the vortex was felt by everyone in the room, being unleashed from its chamber where it had been for so long and creating incredible amounts of energy. The sand poured out, flowing over everything, and in seconds the Sandman and all the guard were buried under the sands of the vortex, drowning in its sheer energy which greedily devoured everything in its path.
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