The Desolate Guardians

by Matt Dymerski

  Chapter Three

  It took several days, but it finally happened. I was startled out of idleness by a sudden successful return from my search trigger. I'd had a few false alarms until I'd adjusted my algorithm, but I quickly knew that this was it. The network I'd been alerted to was haphazard, and traffic was sparse. There was still some activity, though - someone was still alive out there.

  To my amazement, I found that I'd been alerted to a streaming video from someone's mounted camera. Other data came with the stream, monitoring the person's vitals. There was a field for location data, too, but it simply read error. Wondering what had triggered my search parameters, I watched and listened.

  Whoever it was remained low, crouching behind a crest of dirt along a ditch or trench of some sort. Above a vast jumble of broken buildings and pock-marked wasteland, the sky seemed a patchwork blaze of colors. Irregular yellow cut across flaring red, both backset by an eerily bright blue, itself trailing into a maze of other hues. Each color seemed to have its own angle of light, too, evinced in cloud banks and errant beams that simply made no geometric sense. The sight was hauntingly beautiful and immediately terrifying. Trying to make sense of the low-resolution image, beset by momentary flickers, I couldn't help but stare.

  What was I seeing? Where was this?

  Was this another reality? I'd known, from the network structure and files I'd seen, that it had to have been a real concept? but seeing it for myself still made for a surreal moment.

  It was then that I noticed that my unknown scout was watching something. A figure crept along a vast stretch of blasted gravel and grey dirt, heading for the trench some hundred feet further down. As my subject turned, I got a better look at the trench? and nearly closed out of the stream.

  Corpses.

  I reeled emotionally, but clung to logic: they had uniforms. The nearest body was charred to a crisp, his blackened flesh and skeletal remains gaping widely into the lower half of my view? but he had a uniform. Surely that meant this was some sort of conflict - some sort of organized endeavor? Deaths were expected in war, right?

  Beyond that wretched soul ran a very long trench filled with unidentifiable equipment, bolt holes, vast puddles, and bodies. Some were blackened by fire, but others had fallen unburned? without better resolution, I couldn't make out their causes of death.

  "Brunette woman, unknown origin, no uniform?"

  The voice was male, and he sounded like he was in his twenties. Was he talking to headquarters? Or me? No? he was talking to himself. His low words were being muttered without concern for audibility. He was thinking out loud.

  "How'd she get here? Hostile?? Hmm? four minutes?"

  He moved forward with some stealth, creeping over bodies without even a cursory glance. As he passed, I could see more detail: some looked waterlogged, as if they'd drowned; some had nail scratches all over their faces as if they'd attacked themselves; some? had holes bored in their skulls.

  What the hell had happened here?

  Or, was happening, to be more accurate? I'd finally found someone in real-time, someone who might know something.

  He peered around a corner of dirt and watched her for a moment.

  So this was her? the woman that had visited two hapless souls in two different realities in the last two weeks? and possibly more. I only had data for what I'd managed to find, but I'd had plenty of time to guess at her agenda, intentions, and capabilities.

  The very first thing I noticed was her expression. She gazed around at the littered bodies in conflict, her high cheeks cold, her eyes warm. I had the distinct impression she was evaluating their manners of death while struggling not to think about the living men and women they'd been. One of the fallen seemed to be a younger woman hardly old enough to participate in combat. As both my camera-wearing ally and I watched, the older brunette found a muddy blanket and covered her in particular.

  Apparently, my unknowing partner had reached the same conclusion about her nature as I had. He remained behind his corner and called out. "Human?"

  The woman immediately leapt behind a sturdy metal box of supplies, her gaze jumping toward his direction.

  He stepped out slowly, his hands up. As he moved, I saw the edge of a large rifle bouncing on a strap around his chest. "I'm human."

  Unexpectedly, she laughed, and then? I heard her voice for the first time. "Does that mean we're on the same side?"

  "Out here it does, ma'am."

  "Ma'am?" she replied, warily watching him approach across wide puddles and charred gravel. "How old do you think I am?"

  He stopped in place, his feet planted on a flat metal plank that had been cast across the gulch. "No disrespect intended."

  She stood slowly, revealing herself from her hiding spot. "Military?"

  "With respect," he countered. "There's very little time. You should take a gun - there are plenty around here - and we should go."

  She shook her head and took a few steps forward. "I've never come across a situation out here where a gun would have done a damn thing. Have you?"

  My unknowing ally said nothing, instead instinctively looking around at the bodies of his fellows.

  "Alright then," she continued. "What's the situation here?"

  He began moving away, his vital signs increasing. The camera glanced straight up, sighting a large irregular square of dark red overhead. A peal of thunder rang out, once, twice, and a third time. Between cracking booms, he managed to shout: "Don't fall underneath!"

  He looked back, and I saw her running after him. A rumbling roar sounded, making speech impossible, but I could tell she wasn't sure what he'd meant.

  He looked up again, and I saw? what was that? A curtain of tangible darkness, spilling down from the edges of the dark red sky, as if the square's edges were the lips of a basin into which an ocean was pouring. As I continued watching, the word ocean became more appropriate? all around, the darkness began crashing down to blasted earth and spilling out across the terrain.

  It was water.

  In those moments, with frothing walls approaching from multiple directions, I couldn't fathom what those two must have been feeling. His heart rate was dangerously high, and I could hear her shouting something just behind him as they ran. Wherever he was leading them, they didn't seem to make it in time.

  A massive fist of emerald water blasted down the trench, and he leapt up the side and clambered onto grey dirt. Looking to his right, he confirmed she'd done the same, but a look to his left found the deluge swelling out onto their level just a moment later. Standing quickly, and pulling her up, he braced against the tide.

  It hit with visible force, quickly rising up nearly to the camera's height - where was the camera, anyway? She didn't seem to notice it, and it wasn't bouncy enough to be on his helmet?

  He shouted again, but the roar drowned out his words. The entire wasteland had a torrent of water rushing across it in a vast flat and frothy plain, maybe three or four feet deep judging by the level moving against him, and the force was clearly pushing them both to their limits.

  What had he said? Don't fall underneath? what would happen if they did? There were waterlogged bodies in the trench, but had they died from this, or had they just been soaked by repeated floods? He'd known the exact moment it was coming?

  The camera rattled and then fell backwards abruptly, and I froze as his ragged shout filled my senses. Had he?? No, the woman had caught him, and now struggled with grit teeth to lift him back up without falling herself. Desperate, he shouted something akin to thanks, and then pointed at a distant hill.

  At first, she seemed to think they were supposed to head for it, but his meaning quickly became clear. As all three of us watched, the surging green water coasted up and over the hill and covered it four feet thick. Beyond the hill, the craggy ruins in the distance glimmered darkly as water surged up any surface it could, defying all logic. The only structures that remained above the flood were those most intact and straight; only pillars, towers, and the
largest building sat clear under the insane technicolor sky.

  Don't fall underneath, he'd said. It seemed likely that, if one fell underneath, there was no coming back up? what a horrible fate that must have been, drowning in four-foot-deep water inches from your comrades? Had they tried to pull their colleagues up, only to bring the emerald deluge up with them, still covering the drowning men even as they ran around clutching at the air and trying to breathe?

  I could tell by his vitals that he was about to collapse. His heart rate was too high, and the strain was too much. Was I about to watch this man die?

  Like a reverse blast, the emerald tide was suddenly gone, rushing away across the wasteland. He collapsed onto soaked grey earth.

  Above him, the woman stood and tried to shake off water while also catching her breath. "That happen often around here?"

  "Every day," he croaked, panting. "Get back? down in?" Stumbling up with her help, he pulled them both back towards the trench and fell roughly to hard dirt between two corpses. "Over there? don't move? they're alive." He looked up once, noting the sickly yellow patches of sky overhead.

  She followed his lead, lying in the trench among the dead.

  What new horror was coming for them? I watched with terrible fascination as strange glows began appearing all around them? radiance which soon burst into flames directly. The fires began dancing along the floor of the trench between them, coalescing into balls of white-hot energy that seemed to move along without source or pattern. Dozens of flames began floating along and above the trench, hovering around certain objects and seeking out fuel?

  After only a few minutes, I had the oddest sense that they were alive. Each ball or pillar of flame moved from object to object, touching and investigating with little tendrils of orange and white. If they were alive, could they be reasoned with? Perhaps they'd -

  One ball of flame suddenly struck out, lancing a dead body through the heart with a blindingly fast spear of fire. It receded slowly, only withdrawing when it was satisfied of something. Perhaps the corpse had been too wet to burn, or maybe it'd thought the body a threat somehow? images of those charred bodies came to mind, immediately revealing what happened to those the flames considered a threat.

  The stream went black, but I could still hear noise.

  My subject's vitals were low, rather than high, and I could guess why: he was lying still, eyes closed, trying not to move, breathe, or attract any attention to himself.

  Thinking about it, I had only one conclusion - the camera was in his eyes! That was an odd choice of location, but it certainly explained why his stream was still on through all this. He probably had no way to turn it off.

  Forty-three minutes passed before he decided to open his eyes again. By then, the flames were gone. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked up, noting an oncoming purple blade of sky. "We have some time before the next one."

  Across the trench, the woman sat up abruptly. "Those flames. They were alive?"

  The camera moved up and down as he nodded.

  "I need to talk to them. How long until they come back?"

  He laughed, confused. "Um, talk to them?" He threw a hand up at one of his charred comrades. "I came here with fifty thousand other guys. This is what happened when they tried to talk to them."

  She came over and sat down next to him. "Fifty thousand men? How many are left?"

  He said nothing at first, but I could see a slight misting at the bottom of the camera. "There's a Russian guy maybe two klicks northeast of here. He came here with a hundred thousand, so he's pretty well stocked. I can't speak Russian, though." He tilted his view down toward grey mud. "There's a Yngtak lady a bit west. I don't know anything about her, though, and she doesn't speak either of our languages. I see her in the distance sometimes."

  Yngtak? What the hell was Yngtak? The thought struck me: why was I just sitting here watching and wondering? I had the entire network at my fingertips. I could look things up? if I was careful. Yngtak? Yngtak? no results on this network. Was she from another reality?

  "So it's just you?" the woman asked. "You're the only one left out of fifty thousand men?"

  He said nothing.

  "What happened here?" she asked, changing tack. "What happened to the sky?"

  "Nothing happened to the sky," he countered. "All those skies are just fine. We just happen to've got royally screwed here. It didn't work, obviously."

  "What didn't work?"

  He slowly looked up at her, and the camera's view narrowed slightly. "Aren't you from Command?"

  It was her turn to say nothing.

  He stood abruptly. "How did you get here? Who are you?"

  "You haven't heard back in over a year, right?" she countered.

  The view shifted down for a moment, then back up. "I just thought? if I held out long enough? they'd come? and then there you were?"

  She regarded him with that same conflicted expression I'd seen her use on the corpses. "I'm sorry. I don't know anything that might help you, but I've met others still surviving. You're not alone."

  The view went black as he closed his eyes again. I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard a single slow intake of breath.

  "Can you tell me what happened here?" she asked again.

  He kept his eyes closed as he explained. "Tech test. It was a bomb, or something like a bomb. I couldn't tell you what it was for, only that we got sent in to clean up the mess. It fractured space, turned this place to shit."

  "So the sky's not changing at all," she guessed. "It's bubbles of different realities moving around at random."

  "Yes ma'am? but not at random." He opened his eyes again to find her studying him with an intent gaze.

  "So there's a pattern, and that's how you've survived."

  He nodded. "Most died in the first few weeks, but at least a hundred of us figured out the pattern. But that was a year ago, and one mistake gets you killed."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Appreciated. But nothing you can do to change it." He looked up, judging the sky. "Purple slice is next, gotta tie ourselves up." In response to her asking look, he explained further. "You gotta tie yourself up or you'll claw your own eyes out, or worse. The trick is making the ropes escapable, just not too quickly. Purple slice doesn't last long, but you don't want yourself getting out early, and you don't want to still be restrained when the brain-eaters come. That's the piss yellow. Not pea-soup yellow like the flames' sky."

  "Brain-eaters?" She frowned.

  "Yes ma'am. And after that, the white? I hate the white? that godforsaken Preacher?"

  "I have a better idea," she said, looking toward the direction from which she'd come. "Why don't you come with me, and we can both go home?"

  Yes. Say yes! Thinking to look up his file, I quickly accessed and scanned what I could. He was twenty-two, and from? that reality. Damn.

  "With respect, ma'am, I'm already home." I heard a certain bitterness and resignation in his words. "And? I have to be here for the black."

  "The black?"

  He remained quiet for nearly ten seconds, long enough that I thought he wasn't going to answer? until he snapped out of his own thoughts. "I have to be here for the black, ma'am. I, uh? I?" He paused again. "I don't have the words to tell you about the black, but I think you should go, if you've got a way to get, before it comes. Guys are all dead, but the equipment still works, and I gotta be here to use it when the black comes. I know this place is hell, but there's a whole fractured world out there full of my people, and I got to? I got to? I'm staying as long as there might be one kid out there, or one family, or whoever, trying to make it. Russian guy, too, and Yngtak lady, though I don't know why she cares about us. I think she stays because of the black, and what might happen to other places if we don't stop it each day. So? I can't go with you. Sorry, ma'am."

  Throughout his bitter and hopeful speech, she just watched him, her eyes a mix of disappointment and understanding. "Alright." She looked up at the sky. "Do the flames come back
again today?"

  He recited practiced phrases out loud. "Gravity, death music, shapeshifters, flood, flames, invisible slicers, silver nooses, flood, flames, crazy, brain-eaters, the Preacher, tree ghosts, flood, silver nooses, crazy, dream-stealers, the black? nope. That was their second time already today. Come back tomorrow."

  She grimaced. "I can't. I've only got a single day here. But I need to talk to them - if I could just find out where they came from, that'd point us in the right direction."

  "Whaddya need living flames for?"

  "Some people I'm looking for went through their world, or one like it," she replied cryptically.

  "Some people, eh?" He searched around in the mud for a minute or two, before lifting a muddy red crystalline shard. "Well, best I can do is this. It's a dead flame. But careful, though, if it gets hot it'll come back to life."

  She took it carefully, and placed it in a pocket. For the first time, I saw her smile. "Thank you."

  "Of course. All part of the job." He laughed weakly. "It's just good to hear some English for once. Russian guy talks over the radio sometimes; no idea what he's sayin', but I think by now he just talks to talk. There's nobody coming, is there?"

  She hesitated. "You? never know."

  "Ah, sure."

  Wait, did he say radio? What did I have access to here? Quickly running through the systems at my disposal, I searched for any sort of radio apparatus. He did say the equipment was still working. Could I transfer audio to that reality, and then have it broadcast by a radio tower there?

  As he began tying himself up, and she stood up to leave, I quickly put together my little scheme. "Hello?"

  I saw them both jump as static came from a radio somewhere on his person.

  Testing my unused voice, and trying to clear up the signal, I spoke again. "Hello, can you hear me?"

  He immediately lifted the radio in sight, close to his mouth. "Command?!"

  "No, sorry," I replied, electrified at actually making contact. "I'm? actually, it's probably best if I don't say who I am. I don't know who might be listening. But I think I can help. I've got a lot of information here? I could probably try to find the flames' world."

  I saw my mistake in their reactions.

  "I'm watching through a camera in your eye!" I explained quickly. "I noticed her showing up in logs and messages, and I set a search trigger to try to find her in real time."

  "Me?" she asked, looking him in the eye with a curious glare.

  "I know we don't know each other," I said, choosing my words carefully despite my fear and excitement. "But you seem like a good person, and something terrible is clearly going on, and I'd like to help."

  "You don't know me at all," she said quietly.

  "Where are you, man?" my camera-bearer asked.

  "I'm - well, again, I don't think I should say. But I'm not in your reality. This network spans dozens of Earths."

  The woman nodded. For the first time, this close to the camera, I noticed that her eyes were light brown. She seemed lost in thought. "I suspected that something like that might exist. If nightmares can cross dimensions, it makes sense that people can, too, and it's the nature of bureaucracy to spread."

  Bureaucracy? she'd chosen the right word, and guessed well. I was nobody important, but I had the ability to help, because nobody knew who I was or what I had access to in the vast structure of my organization. It was a running joke online that nobody knew what I.T. really did? and that joke, being true, was the sole reason I'd learned any of this.

  "Do you know what happened to Command?" he asked.

  "I can try to look it up. Do you know which reality it's in?" I almost laughed. I would never have believed I'd be asking that question if I'd told myself about it two weeks ago.

  He closed his eyes, and the camera, for a long moment. "Damn. I don't. All I know is, the comm girl was named Sarah."

  "That's what you know?" the woman teased.

  "Eh, get off," he protested, looking away and probably blushing.

  Stepping closer to his eye view, she addressed me directly. "I'd appreciate your help finding -"

  "Shit!" His cry interrupted her. "Purple slice! The crazy!"

  Her eyes went wide, and she took off running without a second's hesitation. He fumbled with his ropes, either trying to tie them in time or get out of them and run, but I could see his hands begin to shake. The view began misting over as he started whispering to himself. "Oh God, oh God?"

  I watched in horror, helpless. Would my interruption get this young man killed? No - there had to be a way! "What's your name?" I asked, trying to keep him focused while I desperately sorted through files and specs.

  "Jonathan," he answered, his voice trembling and straining. "Jonathan Cortin. I'm dead, man. Goddamnit, not the crazy, not like this? any of the others would have been better? go out firing at that goddamn Preacher?"

  "Don't lose it just yet," I insisted, examining the specs for his internal eye camera. "Jonathan? I can knock you out."

  "What? How? Do it!" he screamed, bending over and staring at his hands as he resisted curling them into claws. Tears dropped down to the wet grey earth beneath as he pressed his forehead into mud.

  "I can overload your eye camera, and it'll knock you unconscious for several minutes," I told him, thoughts racing. "But that's it. It'll be offline, and if Command is out there, they won't be able to access it and they won't know you're alive. You'll also? go blind in one eye."

  He screamed at the top of his lungs, a guttural and rage-filled sound. "Have you seen 'em? I'm losing an eye either way! Do it!"

  Steeling myself against the pain he was about to feel, I sent my quickly typed code instructions to his eye camera.

  The resulting yell filled me with pain just by pure empathy? and then the stream went black.

  I made no move for nearly two minutes, simply struggling to understand everything that had just happened. Other realities were real, something terrible was going on, the only semblance of organization out there had been absent for a year? and I'd just burned out some poor kid's eye to save him from scratching his own face off.

  That was not the idea of helping I'd had in mind, but? at least he'd live, and keep holding the black at bay, whatever nightmare that entailed. Only now, there would be no hope of rescue or reinforcements. He was on his own? because of me. And I'd probably doomed that woman, too.

  I'd made a mistake.

  Meddling had been a mistake.

  Who the hell was I to be messing around with interdimensional affairs?

  It had all happened so fast...

  Getting up, I unhooked my awareness from the computer I'd been engrossed in, and decided to go home. Would anyone even notice if I left early? Knowing Human Resources, that would probably be the offense that finally drew attention? but I couldn't stay. Not after what I'd done.

  Moving out through the stacks of servers, each darkly lit by a rainbow of diodes and info lights, I headed for the door.

  The hallway was dark and quiet. There was no need to light the building when I was the only one here? I'd never tried to leave before my shift was over, and it felt incredibly eerie to trespass through a space I shouldn't have been in. Cubicles sat open and empty, filled with pictures of families and children. These people would have been my coworkers, had I ever spoken to any of them or even been in the office during the same hours. I'd only been here once in daylight - a bright, shining, and warm day of basic corporate policy training.

  I pressed against the exit door, intent on going home and resting - and I came up short.

  The door refused to budge.

  With only the red EXIT sign's crimson light to see by, I studied my escape.

  It'd been welded shut.

  With a very, very strange feeling that I knew what I was going to find, I went around the entire building, testing every exit.

  They'd all been welded shut.

  Peering out the windows desperately, I saw only parking lot and grass, lit weakly by
the ceiling lights I'd turned on. The rest lay shrouded in thick fog.

  As I stared out, I thought about breaking the windows? until I saw something moving in the fog, something which sent me reeling back in terror. Turning all the lights off as quickly as possible, I watched it shamble by without noticing me - a massive jellyfish-like creature twenty feet tall, moving on various tentacle limbs.

  Where was I? What was happening?

  How did I get into work? How did I usually come into work? I recalled a very odd sensation at the start of each shift as I entered the server room. Was I? was the server room? in another reality? It might have been necessary for interdimensional connectivity. Had I been unknowingly working in another dimension all this time?

  The server room door!

  Rushing back to the server room, I examined the very peculiar door that I'd always assumed was for security purposes. It was large and metallic, and could definitely have hidden circuitry or devices or whatever it was that connected realities.

  I waited.

  Once the proper time came, I attempted to leave.

  The doors remained welded shut, and the situation outside remained mysterious and deadly.

  Had I broken something by trying to leave early? Or by fooling around with the system?

  Had someone noticed my transgressions and purposely done this to me? Had I been left to die?

  My world would only know that I'd disappeared without a trace? no sign of foul play?

  Dazed, I returned to the server room and sat at my computer. There was only one hope now. I could only sit and wait, and pray that the mysterious brunette woman had escaped. If she showed up again somewhere, and if I could contact her again, then maybe, just maybe, she could get me out of here? in the meantime, I resolved to research the things she'd mentioned in the hopes of paying her back.

  And maybe, just maybe, we could try to warn somebody, or do something? anything to try to help the situation out there. How many lonely souls remained after some unknown disaster, holding down the fort of humanity at our metaphorical dimensional walls? However many there were, I was one of them, now.

  Chalk up one more for the cause?