“But they’re not supers, they don’t have a display—”
“There are some supers in Hinansho. They just have made certain pledges to be able to stay here. Some of the more devious ones aligned themselves with the clans and especially the High Court. You know what an inquisitor is, don’t you?”
“No, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“It isn’t! Do whatever you can, but you have to get that information,” Prime pleaded with Gus, horror in her eyes evident with her huge pupils that would have been at home in an exaggerated anime reaction.
Crap. Why can’t I just keep my big mouth shut? I thought I’d have more time to play around with the cube, but when are things easy and convenient?
Gus turned to Aurora and whispered, “Can you watch over me while I delve? I don’t know how long this will take. If they pressure you—say that it’s heavily encrypted and I need time to decode it properly, or the data will be destroyed. That may buy us some time.”
“Be safe in there…”
The words faded away as Gus focused on the cube. He turned it to the yellow side. After unlocking the directory, he knew this was the appropriate plane to access the insectoid research. He had never delved this side, which didn’t bode well. It could be anything in there. He could feel the skin on his face tighten as he fell into the plane.
Hot wind and a burning sun beat down on him from above. Shielding his eyes from the glare and sand whipping around, he found himself atop a small dune. A sandstone path led forward to a large temple of some sort. It sat like a squat trapezoid, pillars, statues, and obelisks stood aside a wedge-shaped opening in the middle.
Gus stumbled down to the path and hurried along it to get out of the merciless heat. As he walked along the path, he could swear he saw something in his peripheral vision. Crawling under the sand, burrowing there, but it was hard to tell with the sand whipping around. Anytime he turned to look, all he saw was the sand carried by the wind over the dunes.
As he approached the temple, gold scroll-work traced around the entrance. Hieroglyphic characters were arranged vertically down both sides of the angular doorway. The shade inside must have dropped the ambient temperature by at least ten degrees. Gus rubbed his eyes, already raw with squinting amid the scouring sand.
Brushing it away as best he could, he felt the cool stone walls. They were pristine, not like the old timeworn Egyptian structures in the real world. These looked like they were finished yesterday, blocks still having sharp edges. Others were smooth and seamless, though he could see differently arranged bricks.
Bright frescoes lined the central corridor, disappearing into the darkness as the corridor extended away from the doorway. An earthen clay bowl filled with a pungent liquid sat just inside the doorway. Next to it was a gravy-boat-looking dish with a small wick made out of some twisted fibers. Gus touched the liquid and rubbed it through his fingers; it was slippery like oil, and it smelled waxy, like crayons. Gus dipped the vessel and scooped up some of the oil, holding on to the wick so it wouldn’t fall out.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t find anything available to light the wick, so he was back at square one. He remembered how fortunate he was when he first got powers that fire was never a challenge thanks to his early abilities. He would probably never have made it without them. Gus racked his brain on how he could light the wick and wondered if he could find some glass that he could focus like a magnifying glass or lens. The sun was certainly bright and hot enough that it wouldn’t take much to focus.
Gus checked and realized for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his normal clothes, that this was a virtual environment and he was wearing a tawny flax tunic that hung on him like a shapeless bag. He had no pockets to search. A cursory search both in the entryway and outside the temple revealed nothing but sand.
He sat in the shade with his feet sunning outside the doorway and exhaled in a burst.
Hells bells, now what? If only I had my abilities here.
Gus checked to see if he could bring up his internal stats. Maybe his perception would allow him to see in the tomblike temple.
With a thought, he found he actually could bring up his stats, though the normal display he saw around the periphery of his vision was absent. With a more concentrated focus than usual, he could temporarily bring up some information, but it faded like an afterimage if his attention wavered. His stats were the same as they had been outside of the cube.
Gus got to his feet and walked down the long hallway, waiting for his enhanced senses to kick in as the light waned the further down the tunnel he progressed. Unlike reality, he didn’t have any form of night-vision, at all—which seemed like an odd paradox, since this resembled a VR game.
Do I have any abilities? he thought distractedly as he cracked his knuckles.
Some brief words flashed in front of him before disappearing:
Inherent abilities available in yellow zone.
“What’s an inherent ability?” Gus asked no one in particular. Having an internal personality like Nick made it so talking to himself all the time didn’t seem so strange, as his rhetorical questions would usually get answered. Here in the cube, Nick couldn’t be accessed.
Gus wondered if it could be a type of ability and tried to think of what best fit the description of ‘inherent.’ It was one of those words that he was sure he knew, but when he had to define it, he had no clear idea.
Screw it. Let’s just do this with trial and error. Gus stomped back to the entryway, reed sandals slapping noisily on the flat stones. He picked up the lamp he had laid there and racked his brain to remember his abilities without the aid of his display as a crutch.
Might as well start at the beginning. He picked up the wick between two fingers and tried to recall the sensation when he used Wreck-It-Gus to create fire. He fully expected it not to work, but he could feel the flow of MP and the wick quickly began to glow.
He had to push much harder to get the effect, but it worked. The dry wick fizzled and smoked as he gave his ability a rest. Using his fingers, he plunged the whole wick under the oil and wrung it out before trying again.
This time the wick produced a familiar, steady flame. The scent was unappealing, but it was light.
As he descended the decline, more frescos became visible in the flickering light of the lamp. Gus turned to look at them as he heard a clicking by his ear. Raising the lamp, he saw a large beetle the size of his fist crawling towards him along the wall. The light of the small flame caused the immense bug to back up and flee as if it were poison. Somehow the bug squeezed into an almost indistinguishable slot at the junction of the ceiling and wall.
More scuttling in the dark, directly behind Gus, made him turn with a start.
A small splash of oil fell out of the lamp as he twisted and the wick rocked back and forth, almost being washed out with the oil.
The ground was covered completely with hordes of the large bugs, crawling over each other. Like their brother, they retreated with reckless abandon when exposed to the light. Centering the lamp in the corridor, Gus saw that the ceiling was also covered with the bugs, the scraping and clacking of their carapaces sending a chill down his spine.
They also had a distinctive odor that stood out among the stale peanut smell of the rancid oil. Something definitely unpleasant on a visceral level, at times so pungent that Gus had to cough and fight dry-heaving. The action caused his loose oil to rock the little wick again and Gus forced himself to get it under control.
Blinking away a tear and clearing his throat, Gus’ eyes fell upon one of the frescos. This one depicted two of the typical sideways-posed Egyptian figures. One in the lead held a lamp similar to Gus’, and the same beetles were fleeing the beams of the lamp. In the picture, Gus recognized them as scarabs. A lagging figure had an extinguished lamp and was being beset by the insects. There was a section missing in his arm, and white bone showed through the opening.
Gus swallowed, trying to get some moisture down his raw throa
t. The message was clear: No light equals bugs eating you alive.
Gus picked up the pace, trying to evaluate how fast the small lamp was using the oil and where the halfway mark was, so he would know when he would need to turn back. A quick glance over his shoulder showed the tiny white opening of the temple, further away than expected. Scarabs had repopulated the walls and ceiling behind him and Gus got back to descending.
The fragile nature of the lamp required him to walk slower than he would have liked, to both avoid spilling oil and also to keep the tiny flame from extinguishing. Gus knew he could light it again, but he was unsure how quick these bugs would be in the time it took to relight the wick, and how he would focus on the wick without being able to see it.
As he descended, the quantity and size of the bugs appeared to increase more and more. He tried to keep looking straight ahead, keeping a steady pace. Shadows in the far periphery of the small sphere of light around the flame hinted at what lurked there. Along with the number of bugs, the crackling, crawling noise they made was unsettling in its own right.
How long is this damn tunnel! Gus thought as he wiped sweat off his hands onto the tunic, taking care not to rock the small lamp. The oil was definitely getting lower now.
Was it past halfway? It definitely looked like it was burning more quickly as the oil got lower in the rounded base of the little gravy-boat lamp. The only consolation was that he could move more quickly as the oil dropped lower into the lamp. Imagining he must look ridiculous, like one of those speed walkers, he pressed on.
Please let there be another vat of oil at the end of this passage! A trickle of sweat fell into his eye and stung, but he blinked it away, not wanting to remove his hands, both of which were stabilizing the little lamp. He wanted to wipe it away with his upper arm but didn’t dare. Shaking his head didn’t do anything to divert any perspiration from falling.
As his heartbeat increased, Gus wondered if he could pull out of the delve if he saw he was getting close to losing his light. He had a fear that if he did so, he would lose his lamp and wick and he would not be able to go back into the tunnel. The large vat would be heavy to carry, and its narrow, rounded top probably would not allow the light to spread out enough to keep the scarabs at bay. He growled at the futility of the situation.
After what seemed like an eternity, the passageway flattened for a small stretch and then opened into a wider chamber.
Finally! The small room was relatively small and, to Gus’ chagrin, there was no other vessel with oil in the room. No sconces or other items along the walls. Gus checked the lamp and saw just a small splash of oil in the bottom of the lamp. His eyes darted around but aside from the carved hieroglyphics on the walls of the circular chamber, there was nothing.
Scarabs began to pile in the doorway in droves, choking the opening so that Gus couldn’t exit even if he wanted to, they were so thick. From there they spread out, crawling along the walls until he was totally encircled. Backing away as much as he could, he ended up in the center of the room, and the bugs kept coming. They were so thick that the space around Gus was actually shrinking with the layers and layers of the gross bugs crawling endlessly in a roiling mass.
Instinctively, Gus began to crouch as the bugs crawled on the ceiling, dropping like rain when they hit the outer edge of the light and getting briefly stunned. He looked into the small lamp and saw the thin film of oil. The wick began to spark and smoke as the flame began to gutter out. Gus tried to exit the delve. Whether he could get back was immaterial, there was nothing here for him.
And nothing happened.
Gus struggled to pull out of the cube but met resistance, as if he were under countless blankets pressing him down.
No, no, no!
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dust in the Wind
Gus lifted the flame up as high as he could, trying to give himself as much light as the poor lamp could muster. The arm holding the lamp was trembling in anticipation of his demise and he put his other hand down to stabilize himself. There was a small grating noise as his fingertips brushed against something depressible on the floor.
Squinting, Gus couldn’t make out below him, but his fingers frantically probed for something, anything. His fingernail caught the end of a flat ring, flush with the ground, and he pried it up in desperation. The lamp flames were dipping lower and the masses of bugs swelled in response to the shrinking light.
Gus pulled up hard on the ring, twisting and turning it. Anything to move it or cause it to react. There was a loud bang, followed by a series of other noises overlapping. The white noise of falling sand, the squelch and crunch of bugs being crushed. Plumes of sand filled the chamber and Gus buried his mouth and nose in his shoulder to avoid inhaling the mess. A pungent scent as whatever ichor inside of the smashed bugs wafted out in the musty, sand filled air.
After a tense second, blinding beams of sunlight flooded into the chamber, highlighting Gus like a spotlight. The wave of scarabs was almost upon him, and they struggled to flee from the bright light as it burned down into the chamber. Smoke began emanating off the carapace of the slower insects, knocked aside by the flight of the others. Others flailed about, having fallen on their backs. They tried in vain to rock onto their feet as their hairy legs writhed in the burning sunlight. More sand began draining away, and the swath of light increased dramatically. Motes of dust and sand shone blindingly in the room and Gus pressed his eyelids tightly shut to give them time to acclimate.
The sound of scrabbling scarabs receded to a dull, distant murmur that faded to silence. Gus opened his eyes to see the bugs were gone, no evidence of their presence besides tracks in the sand extending from his position to the exit. Pulling the collar of the tunic to cover his nose and mouth, Gus rose to his feet and looked at the chamber, which looked totally different when illuminated by the noon-day sun. The sand and dust quickly settled, and Gus saw that four large stones had fallen near the edges of the room, exposing windows to the outside.
Though he had felt like he had descended a great deal, the opening above appeared to only be twenty to thirty feet above him. The weight of the stones had also lowered the entire floor of the chamber, revealing grates into which the residual sand fell, making a faint *shush* as it sifted into the darkness below. Gus shivered again, glad the openings were small enough that a scarab couldn’t crawl through. The whole ordeal had made his skin crawl and twitch, even though he knew the bugs wouldn’t brave the light.
A cramp in his hand made him look at his hand. He still clung onto the ring with a death-grip. He finally let go of the ring, letting it *clank* as it fell. Gus’ pull had lifted a foot-high cylinder out of the floor. Shaking and rubbing blood back into his hand, Gus saw that the center of the stone cylinder was hollow. He crouched down to look into the opening and saw something nestled in the shadowy recess.
Looking around, he found the discarded lamp buried slightly in the sand where he had dropped it and used it to probe into the opening. A large yellow gem the size of a lemon began to glisten as the hot desert sun played across its facets. As Gus picked up the gem from the sand a prompt filled his display:
Welcome Dr. Flak!
Followed by another menu with Journal Entries, Trials, Results, Protocols, and other tabs with techno-speak so complicated Gus could only guess what they contained. Gus checked the Journal first, perusing the first entries.
I believe that I have found the ideal storage medium for my further work. With the breaches in security that allowed the unscrupulous to profit from my work on mammalian integrations, I will be much more careful as I progress in this new direction. The medium of Quorian cubes is one that has always fascinated me, and more so now that their creator has passed. The knowledge of their creation, unfortunately, has passed with him, but I was able to glean much on their function and programmability before his demise. I was able to find three other cubes, all inferior ones with only a couple of sides active and functional. One was specialized to the point that it ha
s lost all plasticity and could not be altered.
Still it provided a structure and blueprint that I have been able to extrapolate to practice and learn how to modify the cubes.
This cube, where I will store my life’s work, will be the epitome of all I learn. My most precious knowledge, hidden away from those who would attempt to take it again. My first goal would be to lock access to each facet under each successive side. Inability to unlock the environments sequentially will provide additional security. I know the cubes cannot be hacked in the traditional sense, but as experience tells me, often your worst enemies are those closest to you.
To wit, I’ve locked the first layer of information with a test that only I should be able to navigate. Supers will find that their abilities will not function in this virtual environment unless they are one of the few who possess an inherent ability. Even then, it would need to be one that allows one to manipulate light or energy. I have designed this temple as a gauntlet that will trap anyone who attempts to steal this information, super or not. Once past the initial chamber, one will be committed to finishing the trial and will not be able to leave the simulation.
Failure will result in acute neurogenic shock leading to physical death within a short period after the event. I believe that this will deter further attempts to access my work once these consequences become known.
I plan on layering each facet with similar protections to safeguard the information contained in this cube.
Gus closed the window and swallowed. For a minute, he just stared at the shifting dust motes as he tried to absorb the bullet he had dodged. If he had failed, he would have died! Like permadeath, died! And left Prime and his team screwed back in the real world. And it sounded like the other sides of the cube were just as dangerous, and he had been fairly cavalier about exploring them without a lot of protection or even knowledge of what he was dealing with. A chill washed over him despite the hot sun at how his team would have suffered if he had not been able to complete the trial he didn’t even know he was undergoing.
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