Feeling suddenly spooked and disoriented, Izumi hastily scanned her surroundings. The hair on the back of her neck rose and she felt her breaths grow shallow. It felt like someone was watching her. There was nothing there; no movement, no rustles beyond the regular sounds of small creatures and the wind through the leaves. Yet she felt something there.
Shaking off the queasy feeling, Izumi checked the GPS reading on the TIDI strapped to her wrist and gazed around her, noting the triangular branches of the trees that curved away from the thick trunks. Maroon leaves hung off the branches like large rhomboid panels, resembling colored glass. They gave off a sweet aroma edged with the smell of sawdust. Some kind of filigreed purple fern and low undergrowth with triangular leaves and juicy deep purple berries covered the ground in a soft carpet that squished under her feet. She glanced down to where her boots sank into the spongy undergrowth, creating little pools. It was awfully wet here, she thought, inhaling the hint of rotten eggs in the humid air. Why was the forest so rich in nutrients? The meadows and savannahs toward the lake were bleak in comparison. What process could be at work?
Izumi glanced at her GPS again. She was covering new ground. She’d never been this far in the forest before. “Today, we’re heading for P-9,” she said to RAPSODI, “where we’ll take our first algal and water sample.” She paused to look around her then added, “The old-fashioned way.” She’d failed to secure the Hyrdolab, but that wouldn’t stop her. She’d take the samples by hand and bring them to the Hydrolab back at camp. She’d only be able to take surface samples, but that would be a good start.
Izumi picked her way beside a small meandering creek toward scum pond P-9. She glanced down at the clear water burbling over the coarse streambed. The water looked deceptively fresh and inviting. To everyone’s chagrin, all of the surface water they’d encountered so far had turned out to be undrinkable. It was briny, very hard with traces of selenium and dithiocarbonates. They only had one ORMUS™ Vortexer that worked. Not nearly enough for a large colony in need of healthy drinking water.
Just as she struck away from the creek, the sun winked out briefly and something flew overhead with a squawk. Startled, Izumi shrank down and stumbled into a crouch. She gazed up through the dense canopy. The bird-like creature easily spanned ten meters across. Six iridescent wings whirred like a giant helicopter. Still crouched, she watched it disappear to the west as the normal sounds of the forest returned. Things were big around here. Then she realized that she’d hollowed a pool with her weight. Something made her cup the water that had pooled around her and take a sip. It was almost fresh! She stood up with a grin and gazed at her surroundings again. The vegetation had eased into another dominant form.
The trees had thinned out and several had fallen. The purple ferns had given way to a low thick ground cover of olive and pink bryophyte-like vegetation. She stared. The leaves resembled the lips of open mouths. She bent down to get a closer look. They looked like they were all moving—
A low reverberating rumble made her freeze. It was more like a vibration she felt than a sound she heard. The pitch escalated and grew louder, resonating through her stomach and making her nauseous. The eerie multi-timbral chorus seemed to come from all around her: the deeper tones from the trees and the higher pitches from…those “lips” on the ground all around her. They were singing! And crawling toward her!
Her heart seized. The predator of the forest wasn’t a hex. Hexes were the alpha predator of Mega. Achieving speeds that would make a cheetah on Earth look slow, they used their set of six legs and streamlined bodies to literally soar in bounding leaps, defying gravity and barely touching the ground before seizing their prey.
These tiny creatures were the ground. And they were swarming her!
Heart pounding in her throat, she dashed away from them in the only direction open to her: toward P-9. Within moments, she was scrambling along P-9’s embankment, slick with a layer of settled oily aerosol.
A thousand “mouths” were crawling toward her and—
Her feet slipped. The slime beneath her gave way. She slid with a yelp down the steep embankment toward the pond of fluorescent green.
Then bounced!
It wasn't a deep pool of scum, but a tensile slimy sheath over a chasm! A kind of shimmering sticky net that held her suspended. Over what?
The film burst with a pop, releasing a cloying sweet-sulphur stench. She broke through, stomach lurching, and fell into pitch darkness.
Something hard caught her in a wrenching grasp. She scrabbled for purchase and now dangled from it. Some kind of branch or root or lignified vine, she surmised. When her eyes adjusted, she saw that many other roots, like the one she clung to, stretched across the gaping fissure of black nothing, forming a kind of net.
Izumi peered up through a fog of pain into a hole of light with an alien blue sky tinged with wisps of green cloud; the gas that had vented from the sinkhole.
She glanced down into the pitch-black vent and found to her surprise that tiny lights flickered below. For a moment, she felt as though she was looking “up” into another universe of stars. And felt inexplicably drawn to it. The hot mist energized her and the pain subsided. Izumi felt a strange calm wash over her. She heard rumbling and echoing multi-timbral chimes. They sang like an ethereal choir—something just for her outside her comprehension, yet felt so deeply that she cried.
RAPSODI chirped and clicked then told her in a droning voice, “There is a great toroidal mass of drinkable freshwater swirling below, Izumi. I register temperatures of 60°C to depths of more than 2,000 meters. The water is circulating in a great vortex of powerful centrifugal and centripetal forces…it’s locked in some kind of stasis…as if waiting—”
“—for me,” she finished, suddenly realizing. It’s waiting for me…
“…the toroid is accompanied by low frequency infrasound of 6 to 18 Hz…” the drone continued on.
Izumi’s heart leapt in a dance. She suddenly knew. These were the sounds the colony heard following each of the exploration partys’ disappearances. She’d figured it out; periodic vortices of hot water and steam shot up like a hot geyser, attuned to Mega’s hexagonal-frequency and causing the clouds they’d witnessed. The water washed over the forest, creating a temporary igapo, and bathed the forest in nutrients and energy. Each event followed an animal’s entrance into the forest depths.
She was overcome with the beauty of it all. This was the dance of life and death to Mega’s music. She finally knew what was missing and what explained Mega’s electromagnetic–gravitational anomaly: Mega was a giant self-organized honeycomb, filled with energized subterranean water that steamed up and occasionally—when a film burst from the weight of a prey—shot up like a geyser, roaring with the infrasound of new life. Energized water flowed over the planet with life-giving energy. The planet took a life and the planet gave life in return. The planet’s core was a giant hydrogen fuel cell. Perhaps a singularity, even. Another dimension, into which Patricia, Stan, Viktor, and Benoit had disappeared. Perhaps to be reborn as stars, through a Jetstream of water. What looked like stars below could be entities of light, phosphorescent “beings” of energy, released into Mega’s atmosphere to seed the forest and the land with life. Or was she in fact looking down into another dimension?
What everyone thought was a lightning-fast predator was actually the forest ushering its prey to the sinkholes that, in turn, nourished its thick carpet of “beings” with its regurgitated upwelling. A cooperative ecosystem in tune with itself, intelligent and communicating through infrasound.
She’d found the answer to all of the colony’s needs. The only requirement was that they understand the language of Mega’s frequency. It was all recorded in RAPSODI: unlimited drinking water, hot water and energy, algal food, and more. The promise of a good life through cooperation.
Only one problem. Izumi realized that she couldn’t free RAPSODI for its flight back to camp and hang on to the tree root at the same time. In that same
moment, she felt a sudden calm wash over her. It was as though the hot mist spoke to her in soothing notes. Memories of all those she’d loved embraced her with the warmth of hope. She remembered Fingal’s Cave and knew that the darkness wasn’t the end. It was just the beginning.
She let go of the vine to free RAPSODI for its journey home. “Return to camp, RAPSODI, and report our findings!” she instructed the drone. She felt herself slip off the vine as the drone hovered briefly then shot away.
Izumi smiled, imagining the comfort of holding hands with her son and her husband. Then plummeted into the lights of darkness below.
Notes for MEGA’s world:
Birefringence is commonly found in mineral crystals that have two distinct indices of refraction; this is an optical property of a material whose refractive index depends on the polarization and propagation direction of light. These optically anisotropic materials are described as birefringent or birefractive.
Earl is in charge of stores
Epitaxy is the transfer of atomic structural information from the surface of one material to a liquid—without the transfer of any of that material. Used in nanotechnology and semiconductor fabrication.
ESA stands for “European Space Agency”
IASA stands for “International Aeronautics Space Agency”
Infrasound, sometimes referred to as low-frequency sound, is sound that is lower in frequency than 20 Hz, the "normal" limit of human hearing. Hearing becomes gradually less sensitive as frequency decreases, so for humans to perceive infrasound, the sound pressure must be sufficiently high and is described more as a vibration or rumble that is felt. Infrasound is used by elephants and whales to communicate. The University of Hawaii (Infrasound laboratory) and others (e.g., US military) have demonstrated that infrasound can evoke profound psychological and physical effects on humans and other animals. Humans exposed to various infrasound frequencies have reported disorientation, nausea, fear, panic, sorrow, loss of bowels, drowsiness, visual hallucinations, chills, high blood pressure, increased blood flow and respiratory problems.
Magnetic-Electro-Gravitational-Anomaly of Mega refers to how it defies Newtonian classical physics regarding gravity, mass and global electromagnetism. This is because the planet is essentially a self-organized “honeycomb” with a mysterious link to another dimensional time-space at its core.
ORMUS™ Vortexer is a water purifier that works on the principle of filtration and succusion to reduce impurities and toxins and balance water’s chemical and physical properties for human consumption.
RAPSODI™ stands for “Recording and Precision Sampling Optical Drone Intelligence”; it is an AI device that can fly, suspend, sample, record sound, visual and other data and can be programmed to interact in a number of ways. Developed by IASA for exo-studies.
Structured (hexagonal) water is a term that describes the most stable structure of liquid water as a crystalline geometric structure formed by eight organized water molecules (the Star Tetrahedron or Kepler's Star). From a profile view its form is in the shape of a hexagon. This geometry is considered to produce an effect called ‘molecular coherence’. Molecular coherence amplifies water’s natural abilities to archive and transfer information, similar to quartz crystals used in computers and watches.
TIDI™ (Tiny Integrated Data & Images) is a mini-holo computer worn on your wrist like a watch.
Barend Nieuwstraten III
Barend Nieuwstraten III has been primarily working on a collection of works set within a single fantasy world as well as a series of science-fiction pieces. He is currently working on stories ranging from flash fiction and short stories to stand alone novels and an epic series.
He has worked in film, short film, television, music, and comic formats. His writing experience has mainly been in comedy (sketches/comics) and music (lyrics), but is now focused on High Fantasy and Science Fiction which both delve into horror.
He grew up and lives in Sydney, Australia, where he was born to Dutch and Indian immigrants.
Learn more at Twitter at Barend666
Custodian One
Barend Nieuwstraten III
Andrews skipped through the playback of the captain's logs, smudging black streaks onto the controls from his greasy, sweaty hands. A scrambled glitching image of the captain sped upon the small screen as elements of diced dialogue modulated in a low digital gibberish. Andrews took his finger off the pad a moment to see if he'd found the right spot.
"…in the morning, but then, I didn't take this job to get a suntan," the captain said, shrugging playfully as he returned to normal speed. "We've dropped one-hundred-and-forty-nine prisoners off at Hades Seven, along with all ten guards, and the other staff, leaving just my co-pilot, Andrews, and myself to bring this broken bucket of bulkheads back to Uberluft Twelve. Taking the five-and-a-half-month scenic route, of course, with the slip-drive on the fritz and no one willing to come out this way to fix it. So, thanks again to the corrective services for this massive overtime opportunity which had better be…" Andrews resumed skipping a while before removing his finger again. "…bribed the staff for one-weeks’-worth of real food before we're forced to go back to powdered…" he skipped some more, "…football made from old ident bracelets and nearly broke a…"
"Hmmm, he seemed like a nice a fellow," the disembodied creaky, mumbling voice that now followed Andrews everywhere said. "See. I'm telling you-"
"It's something in the water, I know," Andrews said annoyed, looking to one side. He never knew which way to face when engaging the mysterious voice.
"You sound a little angry there," the voice, he'd been asked to call Eddie, said. "I guess it still hasn't left your system yet."
"You still haven't left my system."
"Maybe I've always been in your head and you just couldn't hear me until you drank whatever it is they're testing on you," Eddie suggested with a jovial tone.
"So, you're a long-term side effect then?" Andrews asked, tapping his finger in the center of the control pad to pause the log. He looked up to the time-frozen image of a much happier, less psychotically murderous captain on the screen. "And no matter how much toilet water you make me drink, I'm going to be stuck with you?"
"If a friendly voice guiding you to safety all the time and watching your back is the worst thing you get out of this whole experience, you'll be doing pretty well."
Andrews buried his face in his hands as he wrestled with his own sanity, breathing deeply, trying not to break down.
"Well, you might not appreciate our partnership, but if it means anything to you, I'm glad I chose you over the captain," Eddie said. "But then, he drinks more water than you, so the stuff you two lab-rats have been hydrating with got to him a lot faster."
"Still pushing the tainted water theory. How do you know it's not in the food? This military grade, experimental phase, super combat drug of yours." Andrews leaned back, running his fingers through his greasy hair.
"Your memory keeps wigging out on us," Eddie sighed. "That's why we're in the cockpit, remember? That's why you're checking the logs. We keep having this conversation."
Andrews' eyes darted from side to side as he tried to realign his conscious thoughts. "Actually… that sounds familiar," he said, skipping through the captain's logs again.
"Process of elimination and all that?" Eddie tried to make him remember. "When you guys left that delightful prison world, the good captain made a deal with the kitchen staff and warden there for supplies. People food, or at least prison people food. They gave you a couple tanks of that green prison-formula that provides all the vitamins that the brown stew and grain meal doesn't really have. It also curbs certain natural desires, which is why no one went to the little boys' room for 'number threes' for the first fortnight after leaving."
"That explains a bit," Andrews quietly admitted, looking down at the grey metallic floor.
"It was when you guys went back to dispenser-water, that you both started going a little not-haha-funny."
&n
bsp; "I was a little reluctant to go back to regular water," Andrews said, watching the dates tick over in skip-play.
"Yes, well, you always prefer flavored drinks over water. That's why the captain's leaner than you, if you don't mind me saying. But then, that extra bulk is probably why you took longer to metabolize whatever crazy chemicals they're testing on you."
"If it was in the drinking water, then it should have affected us all on the way out here," Andrews reasoned.
"They probably set the dispensers to start dosing you after making the prison drop," Eddie suggested. "No doubt expecting the guards to stay on board to provide a larger test group. Probably set it to start however many days after they set the slipdrive to fail."
"You think they sabotaged the engine?"
"Goddamn it, Andrews, why do you think you're covered in engine grease? Focus. You were just in the engine room. Don't you remember?"
Andrews paused the rapidly skipping log a moment and closed his eyes, squinting them hard, as he tried to recapture some lucidity. A memory flashed of his own hand holding up a piece of shattered casing he found on the engine room floor. He was no mechanic, but the scene had been suspicious. There were burnt wires and parts on the floor that had no place in that section of the engine. Some sort of small explosive device had been attached to the broken casing that had separated from the central manifold of the slipdrive. How could he forget such a recent revelation? He refused to admit it out loud, but if it weren't for Eddie badgering him, bouncing around inside his head, he'd be totally lost.
Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology Page 7