Strange Cosmology

by Alex Raizman

  What they couldn’t give Dale was the resources needed to handle so many threats. We need better intelligence, so we can start triage, he groused to himself. Is a chimera worth engaging if it’s staying away from civilization? Do we need to send subs to open fire on the akkorokamui before it moves into shipping lanes, or can we wait? On those, the nerds could only speculate, and Dale did not trust speculation far enough to gamble the lives of his soldiers on it.

  He was so distracted by the enormity of the task in front of him, it took him a moment to key into the actual feeling of the room. It wasn’t desperate or frantic like he had expected. People were talking excitedly, and there were smiles and thumbs up. There was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air, almost electric in its nature. What’s changed? He wondered as he waited patiently for security to finish confirming he was who he appeared to be - a precaution Lazzario had insisted on. “We don’t know if there are shapeshifters, but myths are full of shapeshifters, and let me tell you, a single shapeshifter is all that we need to wreck our entire operation.” Insights like that were why Dale considered the comic book expert to be a worthwhile investment.

  Doctor Pivarti approached once he had cleared security. The younger woman - a term Admiral Bridges was finding increasingly useless with every passing year, since the doctor was in her forties and still young enough for him to mentally assign the moniker - had a tablet in one hand. Usually, the doctor was an exceedingly restrained woman, but today her eyes were practically gleaming. “Admiral. I finally have some good news for you.”

  Dale finally relaxed his death-grip on his fingers. “I’ve been waiting to hear that for some time, doctor.”

  “And I’ve been waiting to say it for even longer,” she said, handing him the tablet. It showed the designs for a mechanical device that looked like a flattened backpack with straps across the chest. Dale studied it for a moment, not wanting to admit he couldn’t make heads or tails of the thing. Fortunately, the doctor knew his limitations and started speaking after allowing him a good look. “We finished fabrication this morning. We finally figured out why our initial injections were unsuccessful.”

  The Admiral raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” He handed back the tablet.

  “The ichor did take. It did change the genetic structure. We’ve actually seen some of those subjects display some low-grade abilities - the ability to run in excess of seventy kilometers per hour or lift up to five-hundred kilograms. Impressive results, but nowhere near the range we need.”

  Dale stared at her for a moment. “You just said you’d created literal super-soldiers. With a force of those, I could win almost any conflict on the globe. And I’m just now hearing about this?”

  “Super-soldiers?” Doctor Pivarti cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve been spending too much time around Lazzario. I didn’t say anything because you specifically told me you did not want your time wasted, Admiral. As impressive as these soldiers are, they aren’t what you wanted. We’re dealing with gods, or at least beings with the power to claim that title. They would tear these soldiers apart. You wanted me to reach out when I had real results. And now we do.”

  The Admiral debated if he should let the oversight slide. The doctor could be so literal sometimes that he worried about giving her instructions he hadn’t parsed carefully. She should have notified him the instant she knew there was a way to create super-soldiers. Instead, she’d waited until now to tell him because they weren’t precisely what he wanted?

  Before he could open his mouth to object, the doctor was already moving on. “You see, the key was the Black Stone you brought in with the subject. It’s been growing steadily, and we finally identified the radiation it’s giving off.” She paused for effect, showing a dramatic flair that Dale would have expected from Lazzario, not her. “It has the same signature as cosmic background radiation, but at a much greater intensity.”

  If she had hoped that would impress the Admiral, she was doomed to disappointment. “And that means?” he asked.

  Doctor Pivarti’s exuberance was unabated. “It means that this stone is somehow emitting the same energy as the rest of the universe, but in greater quantities. From a physics standpoint, it’s...” She looked at his face, and the Admiral could see her resist the urge to roll her eyes. “The important part, Admiral, is that this harness draws that energy off the Black Stone and imparts it to our soldier. We’re calling it a Prometheus Pack, after-”

  “-after the man who stole fire from the gods. I do know my mythology, doctor. What effect will that have on our soldiers?”

  “We’ve already exposed one of them to it in controlled doses. They get powers, Admiral. The way one subject described it, he could see the fundamental mathematics that governs reality, and manipulate them.”

  “Get me the nerds,” Dale barked at a nearby sergeant. The man snapped to attention and scurried off. “Is the change permanent?” he asked Pivarti.

  “No. It only lasts a short period of time from the initial exposure. That’s what the Prometheus Pack does, Admiral. It drip feeds them a steady dose of this radiation. There are some side effects, but they seem to be minor.”

  “Go on.”

  “After draining the radiation, the soldier reports extreme thirst, hunger, drowsiness. All of those we expected. What we didn’t expect was that the soldier would experience a high level of loneliness, bordering on a compulsive need for human companionship. We spent some time comforting him, talking to him, and by the end of it he was functional, but it was alarming. He also, ah…” The doctor trailed off.

  “Spit it out, doctor. I need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “He propositioned one of the aides, sir. In rather crude terms. She’s talking to HR now. We’re reassigning her but keeping her within the project to avoid any allegations of discrimination. It seems to be a side effect of the loneliness, and the soldier was highly apologetic once he calmed down.”

  Dale pursed his lips. “Doctor, did he express any concern about his ability to...control himself?”

  To his relief, Doctor Pivarti shook her head. “He was horrified at the suggestion. I think that with time for them to adapt, they’ll be able to handle these side effects well. However, I do think Lazzario’s point about mental stability was well made.”

  “Agreed.” Dale moved on, relieved that they weren’t accidentally creating a whole new breed of monsters. “So we can have bursts of them being...what did Lazzario call it? A ‘reality warper.’ And after that, they’re merely stronger and faster than any human alive.”

  Doctor Pivarti shook her head. “Once he’d burned through his available store of the radiation, sir, he was no stronger than he had been before the ichor treatment. That came back once he’d eaten, drank, and slept, but it is a vulnerability to keep in mind. I’d strongly suggest we avoid deploying these soldiers as individuals, to compensate for that weakness. Otherwise, we run the risk of a lone soldier ending up as weak as a normal human in the middle of a battle.”

  Dale nodded in firm agreement, then paused in thought. “Doctor...do you think it’s possible these other beings have the same limitations?”

  Doctor Pivarti nodded. “I think it’s a certainty. Perhaps they can be similarly drained of their powers.”

  “Excellent,” Dale said, with as much emphasis as he could put into that single word. The idea of finally finding a weakness in these beings... it’s taken far too long, but we have something else we can use.

  Lazzario entered the room at a rapid clip, puffing as he headed straight for Dale. “Everyone else is on the way, sir. I just ran.”

  “I can tell,” Dale said, regarding the man’s red-faced and sweaty countenance. “We would have waited for you.”

  “Yes,” Lazzario said, “which is why I ran.”

  Dale smiled in approval. “You can fill the others in. Doctor Pivarti, is our soldier ready for a demonstration of what he can do?”

  Doctor Pivarti nodded firmly. “Follow me, gentlemen,” she said, leading t
hem out of the room.

  ***

  Dale was pleased that Roger Evans had volunteered for the Myrmidon project. The man had shown a good deal of common sense in the retrieval of Bast’s body, knowing it would be valuable even though they hadn’t anticipated that she would revive. Dale had reviewed his service record after that, and everything in there made him a perfect candidate: he had done two tours in active combat zones and serviced with distinction, earning a Bronze Star, had no living family, had scored the highest marks on their psychological evaluation, and, in Kathleen’s words, “will look damn good in one of our uniforms.” As far as Dale was concerned, they couldn’t have chosen better.

  Which is why it was so annoying that Lazzario hated the choice. “He’s too perfect, Admiral,” he protested.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow,” the Admiral said, as technicians helped Roger into the harness. “He meets all of the criteria you set.”

  “Yes, exactly.” Next to Lazzario, Jake was nodding his head firmly.

  “Care to elaborate on that?” Dale asked.

  “It’s rule one of this kind of thing. When someone is a perfect fit, there’s something wrong. I mean, for god’s sake, the man rescued a cat from a building in Kabul. He saved a damn cat, Admiral.”

  “It’s too perfect. It’s too arranged,” Jake added. “It’s almost certain that this is going to go terribly.”

  Dale could feel a headache coming on and fought back the urge to reach for the Advil in his pocket. “What was the point of the criteria, then, if you don’t want someone to actually meet them?”

  “Oh, we want someone who meets them,” Lazzario said.

  “No point to having criteria if we didn’t,” Jake added.

  “Just not too well, if you know what I mean,” Lazzario finished.

  “I really don’t,” Dale said. “What do you think is going to go wrong?”

  The two glanced at each other. “The thing is, Admiral, why does Corporal Evans here need to be a super-soldier? He’s already basically Mr. All American.”

  “Because he can’t fight these beings yet, Lazzario.”

  “Oh, no, of course he can’t. It’s just…” Jake groped for the answer, looking at Lazzario for help.

  “...we don’t know how much stories influence these things,” Lazzario said. “I mean, we’re operating from the assumptions there’s a degree of influence. Cycles of myth that turned into the basis for our modern tropes. The thing is, in all the stories, if someone is the perfect candidate to be a super-soldier, they usually make an imperfect super-soldier.”

  “So what, then, should we be doing?” Dale asked, unable to keep the frustration from his voice.

  “Watching him closely,” Lazzario said after a long pause. “I suppose it’s a bit too much to really worry that narrative causality is actually that firm a rule. If it is, then we’re pretty much screwed anyway, now that I think about it.”

  Dale frowned. “Why would you say that?”

  Lazzario grinned. “Admiral, we’re a super-soldier program in the desert trying to reverse engineer divine power and stuff it into a human frame. If tropes are laws, it’s pretty much guaranteed that Corporal Evans over there is about to turn into a terrible monster and kill us all. If the real world is operating under narrative law, we’ll end up with a psycho killer no matter who we strap into that device.”

  Meanwhile, Doctor Pivarti stepped away from Evans and gave the Admiral a thumbs up.

  “So objection withdrawn?” Dale said.

  Lazzario and Jake shared another glance, then nodded reluctantly. “Objection withdrawn.”

  ***

  Inside a windowless concrete pillbox, Dale kept his eyes on the monitors showing Evans striding into the desert towards the designated testing area. Peripherally, Dale saw the two comic book specialists move to the back of the room like that would somehow protect them if something went wrong. It was almost amusing.

  By contrast, Doctor Pivarti was perfectly calm. “Everyone ready?”

  “Ready and eager, Doctor.”

  The doctor leaned forward and pushed a button to speak to Evans. “Corporal. There’s a rock to the southwest of you. I’d like you to make that rock go away.”

  On the screen, Evans nodded and turned to face the offending stone. It was about four feet across, a huge boulder that must have been rolled into the testing area for this purpose. He stretched out a hand, and Dale leaned forward, watching in fascination as Evans wiggled his fingers for a moment. The harness strapped to his body began to glow.

  Then the boulder exploded with a deafening peal of thunder. Dale reflexively jumped backward, then mentally chided himself for reacting just like the civilian consultants.

  Roger stood there, hand still outstretched. Dale stared, his mouth hanging halfway open in shock as the debris from the boulder settled onto the ground. The display had been impressive, and he needed to process what he had seen, which was not an easy thing to do. A man - not a demon, not a god, but a man that Dale knew - had stretched out his hand and a bolder had detonated like a claymore.

  That last word helped his rational brain kick into gear. It really had been like a claymore: a shaped charge. The rubble wasn’t spread around wildly; instead, formed a narrow cone. He turned it into a shotgun blast of rock, Dale thought, marveling at the realization. If anyone had been standing on the other side…

  Doctor Pivarti leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “Well done, Corporal. Now, there are hostiles to the east. Deal with them.”

  As soon as she mentioned hostiles, cardboard cutouts of men popped out of the desert. Before she finished the word “east”, Evans leapt to the side and extended his hand again. Some force Dale couldn’t see cut one of the cardboard men in half before she could finish the word “them”. Evans gestured again, and the other two were struck by balls of flame that flew not from Evans’s fingers, but instead materialized behind them and streaked into their heads. Everyone in the pillbox stared at the flaming remains of the “hostiles”.

  “Thank you, Corporal.” Doctor Pivarti said smoothly. “Now, tell me, what exactly did you do there?”

  The Corporal’s voice came clearly through the speakers. “For the boulder, I applied a kinetic force, but at irregular pacing. I...well, I selectively told chunks of it they wanted to move away from me but applied slightly different forces to each one so it would tear the boulder apart. For the first of the hostiles, I pressurized the air and sent a stream at the target at about 15,000 psi. For the other two, I pulled all the oxygen in the air into a single point and increased its temperature, then sent it in their direction.”

  Dale leaned toward his own microphone. “Why did you start the fireball from behind them? Why not just form it directly around their heads, or just hurl it at them?”

  Given how quickly the answer came, it seemed Evans had anticipated the question. “We’re dealing with beings that have been doing this for thousands of years, sir. I have to assume they’ve seen most of the tricks. I went with an assault from behind so they won’t see it until, ideally, it’s too late. It’s the same reason that, even though it’s frowned upon, it’s a sound tactic to shoot from behind.”

  Lazzario, who had finally moved up with the others, nodded and chimed in, “The logic is sound. I mean, even with these powers, he’s got a hell of a learning curve. Anything he can think of, the enemy has probably already seen and dealt with. The trickier he is, the better his chance of succeeding.”

  “Excellent,” Dale said. “And how do you feel, Corporal?”

  “Hungry, sir.” There was a pause. “No, it’s more than that. I feel...great, but also like I haven’t eaten all day. I’m thirsty, to the point where it’s distracting. And...I feel isolated. That’s fading while we’re talking, but it definitely was strong immediately after doing three different alterations to reality in such quick succession.”

  Dale glanced at Pivarti, who was nodding. “This is in line with previous experiences,” she said. “I
think we’re very likely going to want to make absolutely sure we equip them to deal with these needs. Backpacks with straws for easy hydration. Food beyond normal rations to satiate this strange hunger. And always, always working in groups to deal with the loneliness.”

  “I wouldn’t send someone against one of these things alone unless I had no other choice,” Dale said, drumming his fingers on his knees in excitement. “How soon can we have more ready?”

  “We have three additional harnesses prepared, awaiting your orders.”

  Dale nodded. “Get them equipped and start their training. I want all four ready to deploy tomorrow.” He stood up and glanced at Pivarti and Lazzario. “It’s time to start pushing back. Any objections?”

  If they had them, they knew better than to voice them.

  ***

  New York had seemed like the best city to visit, since virtually no one stood out here, even if their faces had been plastered on the news. At least, that’s the theory, Ryan thought to himself, scanning the street. His phone began to beep with dozens of notifications. He’d been cut off from the core world for so long, they were all coming in at once now. “Sorry,” Ryan muttered, remembering how much the phone had annoyed Athena back when they’d gone to meet the heresiarch, “but I have to check this.”

  Crystal shrugged. “I don’t know about you two, loves, but I burned enough power climbing up and down a bloody mountain to be a bit peckish. Can we find somewhere to eat?”

  Ryan nodded absently as he unlocked his phone. They started walking down the street as Ryan scrolled through the notifications. Most of them were-

  “Street,” Athena muttered, bringing Ryan up short.

  “Right, thanks.”

  Most of the notifications were from friends tagging him in various videos of himself, demanding to know what was going on. Using “friends” in the loosest possible terms - college classmates, former coworkers, his sister, who was beyond furious at him at this point, and...Jacqueline. He just stared at the notification in mute surprise for a few seconds, unable to process it. Jacqueline hadn’t spoken to him much since the breakup, not that he’d exactly tried to reach out. A six-year relationship falling apart didn’t lend itself to an easy friendship afterward. But here she was tagging him in some ANN article? She has to know I’m not the damn antichrist, he thought, pulling up the notification to see what-