by Travis Borne
Grand stalagmites speared the bizarre stratosphere on the jagged cliff behind their backs, at least a quarter mile away. Kim thought: Trench? All of this resides within a trench. We are at the bottom of the ocean. I can’t help but tie it all together, just like the yellow magazines in the library—The Marianas Trench! Her mind correlated those pictures with her current reality.
The back side—east, she surmised—was mostly unrefined and retained a natural appearance. Rock speckled with silver ore. Mine shafts, or caves mottled its base, at least four that she could make out, as well a few wrecked ships, ones that resembled crafts made by mankind—unlike everything else she’d seen thus far.
Ahead was white stone as smooth as marble, mixed with silver and gray, high-tech architecture. A multitude of disc platforms, like halves of upside-down mushrooms, were shelves supporting small and seemingly automated fat-bellied crafts. Many continually departed, went through the force field dry, returned wet, then landed. Some entered similar white stone archways with metal sliding doors, then went inside the earth; others dumped a load of sea life onto shelves that were glass-bottom pools then departed again; portals opened, sucking in the mass of deposited water and creatures. Archways everywhere, metal doors opening and closing as ships, mostly small, came and went. Kim recalled some old fairy-tale books. She thought it resembled an incongruent mix of the sparkling city of Atlantis and a clockwork futuristic factory. Everything was immaculately clean.
She counted a total of four silver buildings standing tall like half cylinders, one straight ahead and the others afar and to her left: north. They gleamed in the hazy blue air. The same silver-dollar domes as those skirting the floating repair city grazed the flush side, which faced outward. One opened. Out came a tiny ship, sleeker than the automated maunderers above: dark green, it glistened with a teal energy; it snagged the attention of those still outside and snaked high and away, arcing round then disappearing into a portal somewhere between the first and second structures, between which, at ground level was a massive archway tunnel leading into the cliffside; a metal barrier at least twenty feet in was sealed.
Higher on the intricately adorned cliffside façade, Kim made out what resembled dozens of chrome swords similar to the gleaming chrome tower in Jewel City: the broadcast needle. These penetrated the force field and were moving up and down, as slow as a second hand on a clock.
Then, something else. Before the last fifty entered the building, it grew dark outside. Larger, larger, the edges more and more defined. A circular shadow enveloped the whitish-beige landing zone.
Ivy walked before Joey, Crisp behind them. Both turned their gaze upward. Behind Crisp was Jake, then Lion. The both of them assisted Jake; Boron made little room for more than a single-file line so the aid Jake received was awkward. Crisp took the front walking sideways, Lion assisted the best he could from behind. Clusterfuck, and the Boron were not helpful. Each few steps Jake wobbled. He continually bumped into the immovable Boron or fell forward onto Crisp, or backward onto Lion—crushing either of them. But they kept him moving. His voice was the only audible sound aside from the whistling of crafts flying about above; the occasional haunting, low grunt was a warbled record playing at half speed, max volume.
Kim was last. Not much she could do. She felt terrible for everything that had transpired. And she couldn’t care less about whatever was coming down onto that membrane, force field, whatever it was up there.
And Boron, every one of them, a shoulder-to-shoulder fence, seemed they couldn’t care less about the moping, drooping slowpokes. None attempted to hustle the humans inside—as long as orders were being obeyed. Patient, evil fucks. Occasionally a long-faced or angry human looked up at their plain green faces, and sometimes a green face returned a look, smiling oddly; most did not.
Then it arrived.
Like an eclipse forming from the center, the sky took on a purple hue and progressively went deeper, darker. Yellow static sparked around the edges of a hollow disc pressing into it. A bulging, growing ring painted its shadow onto the cream-colored ground. The ring pushed itself through the field, slowly. Jake’s head fell back onto Lion; his eyes went wide upon seeing it, but just as quickly he reeled over in pain, falling forward onto Rick Crisp.
“Huuuaah,” Crisp reeled; Jake squeezed the air out of him.
As the two bounced the furniture truck between themselves the humans still outside became captivated by the sky; not one Boron moved a head. From ground level it hadn’t appeared much larger than the moon used to look on the horizon—before it had been blown in half by the dozen nukes of May 17th, 2025—but this oddity quickly grew larger as it neared. Then it pressed itself inside. The center of the disc was hollow, but appeared as if a floor could spiral out.
That thing we stopped on for repairs, Kim thought, realizing it. Glowing engine ports rounding the edge were bulbs surrounding bulbs. They went dim after it descended to rest on spanned supports anchored into the cliffsides. The echoes of it locking into place broke the silence, reverberating from cliff to cliff. And quickly the sky regained its captivating, soapy swirls of light; a mesmerizing soup. If things had been different this world might even seem wonderful.
Boron nudged the last of the captivated citizens and said in eerie cadence, “Keep moving please.” The voices moved like runway lights, from back to front. Behind, Kim saw how the Boron were folding in. Twenty to go. And she would be the last. The Boron folded inward to seal the rear, others peeled away to reinforce the sides—there would be no escape.
Some show, Kim thought. Some hell. The Boron shuffled with organized precision until the bulk surrounded the entrance like an impenetrable cap. Kim paused before entering and asked, “Why?”
“You will soon know everything, Kim the botanist. Soon, you will join the last of your species—for there remain no others on this planet.”
9. Inprocessing
Eyes became distended like beer bellies. Myriad circuitry, screens, tubes, lights, and weirdness were glints thriving like a civilization on the mega-gloss coating of Kim’s overwrought peepers. She entered last and instantly became enthralled by the view. And for some reason or another a thought of Jim smacked her: his touchy nervousness. Jim would be shitting himself right now! Bedazzled yet terrified, her expression mimicked all the others also being whipped into a state of awe.
She knew of the lender facility, way more than she should’ve. Ted snuck her in a few times through the years and she’d logged in with Rob at a small disservice to the feed. They weren’t compatible with the system, causing detriment rather than surplus, same as most; only a small percentage in the town could produce viable output. But they were the only non-lenders ever allowed. Ted occasionally needed a new baseline for his data and ever-evolving tests, and their high status in the town, as agreed upon by Rico, allowed them to be the ones. So, she knew of the technology and had experienced it thoroughly. She’d seen the 3D screens, hologram table, and played around in the maps with Rob while Ted collected his results. She even furthered her studies of botany while logged in to her favorite map: The Jungle. But this previous dabbling did not, could not, have prepared her for the view currently stimulating her lucidity.
All were inside now. The space was open and vast. Technology abound. Imaginations piqued like shots of lemon juice and habanero salsa; the in-awe, captured townspeople had become slow-motion bobble heads. Above were clear tubes weaving beyond visible range like glass noodles. The back of the building was flat and semi-transparent and many of the tubes penetrated through portals, shooting toward the nearby cliffside behind it. A dark opening constricted most tubes and within and beyond it were columns upon columns of casings, beyond that even, seemed an entire world!
Tediously, and fucking-enough-already, Lion aided Jake, along with Rick Crisp who stood next to Kim. Perhaps more than most, Crisp was a petrified gawker. Kim noticed his stupefied gaze: the inventor in him, creative juices popping like fireworks in his eyes. Contrarily she possessed her awe a
long with dread; as glamorous and intricately stuffed with technology this new world was, she was downright terrified. She felt like crying but tried to keep some good thoughts at the forefront of her mind: Rob and the great conversations they had together, Jim holding in a shit, and Jim doing what he did so fucking well, and all the goofy shit they’d always done in Jewel City—goofy for she was able to see things more objectively now. She thought of all the exercise: Bertha like a freight train pumping out some squats while others cheered her on; that one almost plucked her from despair and elicited a needed smile amongst this chaos. Then Boron sealed the exit.
“Look,” Rick Crisp said, captivated, “they’re all spawning from one point.”
Kim followed the crystalline glass pipes by lowering her gaze and realized it all started from the large dome structure before them. From it, the tubes meandered to various stations above before exiting toward the world inside the cliff; they discharged into myriad glass-bottom pools of variously colored running liquids, swirled out through the bottom and continued, and to numerous tiers on the cylindrical front of the building, transparent stops like factories, each contained within a larger, bulging tube of a room. Some were chambers of laser lights, others more mechanical, others still, organic with cilia moving in waves. And like the towering rear flat wall, the front cylindrical-shaped façade also possessed a high degree of transparency. Being in the building was akin to being outside—a bright world of wonders.
Movement caught the right side of Kim’s eye and she said, “And look over there, Crisp, more of—them.” The pathway was curved following the perimeter of the inner central dome, creating a twenty-foot-wide path beside a moat of flowing liquid metal. Boron shuffled from the ends of both sides of the horseshoe-shaped floor and oriented the people toward a central bridge. They were at least double in count now—seaweeds everywhere. Behind them too. Boron flooded in from the sides, continually working to organize the people. Herding, Kim thought, sheep. The idea disturbed her. And they were shuffled across the small bridge and into the dome, exactly like sheep.
“Sheep,” Lion said.
Kim looked at him unnervingly. She realized everyone likely had the same word floating around inside their heads.
And they were in. It was just as magnificent, a control room of sorts. Outside were the gears and myriad mechanical workings, glass highways, ludicrous destinations—inside was the technology, control center, brain.
“There,” Crisp said. He pointed at the main tube. It exited through a central vortex, and paralleling it, were many smaller ones. The funnel-shaped ring surrounding the pellucid noodles was clear too, allowing them to see beyond, and partially, the vast network of tubes they’d seen outside the dome. Like the beds in the broadcast room, spread about in a circular pattern, this room had several archways intermittently spaced about a spiraling path that wound its way up and to the center where a final tunnel of an archway led into a smaller dome, the one with tubes spewing from its top. In appearance, the central dome was similar to the larger one in which they currently found themselves.
“Scanners,” Kim said. It was the first thought that popped in her head.
“This does not look good,” Joey replied. “After the scanners—vacuum?” A hint of frisson elevated his voice.
Lion said, “Getting sucked into that tube? The middle one is the perfect size for a human body.”
And then if not, what? Nothing seemed worse at the moment. Kim’s mind wandered discursively, and like trying to catch a frantic chicken that’d lost its head, she couldn’t get a hold of it. Likewise, with each and every, imaginations assembled the terrible scenario with nervous, jittery eyes. Joey, perhaps, was the only one who seemed excited; it was as if the grandeur of it all made him forget Macy, as if, a part of him was enjoying this.
Jake hobbled and clenched his jaw as he and the rest were ushered into a glass box of a room with the rest. Crisp, more so Lion, laboriously continued to assist. After all were inside several Boron guarded the way in. At the far end was the only other opening, the starting point of the path that led toward the elevated central dome.
“Almost there, Jake,” Lion said.
“Yeah, there,” Crisp uttered sarcastically.
There. Kim hoped it could at least be somewhere, and soon. Jake looked like shit. Kim looked into his eyes and she tried to send a burst of support with her trusty greens, to say thank you for his courage back there—but his couldn’t meet hers long enough. The big man’s grunts continued with each step and he couldn’t focus on a naked woman if one had bent over right in front of him. Once such a capable chunk of mass, the pain had turned Jake into a broken-down furniture truck. Lion shifted his position and Jake let out a roar that silenced the mass whispering and gasps. The outburst stole everyone’s attention, re-vivified terror, and caught the full attention of Boron. A hundred heads focused only on the truck.
Kim pleaded with one nearest her, “Can you please help him with the pain?” Slowly, only that one removed its focus on Jake to face her. She pleaded, “Please…Boron?”
Jake curled over in agony. Crisp tried to assist but this time the truck was rolling off the cliff. His eyes rolled into his head and Lion was about to get crushed. Boron swiftly reached. With one arm he brought the Belgian blue to his feet. Jake’s eyes returned into his face.
“No, no, please,” Jake uttered. Boron lowered his head, gesturing a single slow nod then reached for the shoulder that’d swollen to the size of a watermelon. “No, don’t, it—” Even Boron’s long fingers could no longer enwrap it totally—but he touched Jake with care. Nevertheless, Jake’s memory had become an inflamed post-traumatic-stress bonfire. Mouth agape, and as if not seeing anything, he reeled back trying to jerk himself away. The spasm incited a surge of pain that sent him waning from consciousness. It was obvious, Jake was spent. Boron just stood holding his two shoulders, looking down at the limp planet; Jake’s head orbited his once strong frame as if his neck had become a pin.
“Follow them, Jake, sir,” said the Boron. “You will be first.”
Coming to, Jake shook his head worriedly. It was not the help Kim had in mind when she’d pleaded. She sent Jake an eye that said: Just go. The haunting memory of what had occurred earlier, Macy, came back pushing every struggling good thought from her head. Her decision. Macy would still be alive. She had no choice, and not wanting another to suffer the same fate, she said out loud, “Go, Jake. Do as they say.” With her last words arrived two Boron. They carried him to the front of the line as though he was a feather.
Lion finally got a chance to take in the surroundings after his heavy burden was carried away. He’d been doing more than his share as stupefied-Rick had been too entranced. Lion sparked at the sight of this control room as if Luigi Galvani was inside his mind with a set of jumper cables, galvanizing his dead memories back to life. Technology lined the walls. A memory of the broadcast room punched the back of his head and like a bright pulse of light, made its way to his forehead: Logging in, with my friend, Jim. This was not the broadcast room, though—it was different, smoother, sleeker. The cylindrical walls were one seamless screen above black glass control panels. They illuminated with a peaceful sky-blue glow and white code that didn’t resemble English, or any language of mankind, encircled the inner wall like dust being nudged by a slow breeze.
Nine Boron departed the herd and went to an equal number of indentations that allowed them to stand nearly flush with the wrapping panels. They faced the wall and placed their hands on the panels, illuminating them. Then, like the one outside that had made Jake a human stress-ball, reformed in reverse. Their hands and arms didn’t reverse, just remained firmly in place. A burst of colorful code spewed from above each. The symbols floated upward to merge with the others already in motion. Then the background color of the enwrapped wall of screens evanesced into a soothing rhythm: easy-going purples, harmonious greens, warm calming yellows.
“It’s a whirlwind of symbols,” Joey blurted. He couldn�
��t help it. A smile tattooed itself onto his face.
“I’ve never seen anything like—” Kim added.
“Look, they’re saying something to Jake,” Crisp said. A single Boron was bent over, whispering something into his ear. Jake stood up straight as soon as he finished; he looked pale like the gray innards that’d fallen out of Macy; his once black skin had death swimming around inside and it was swelling him up like a balloon. He glanced back toward his friends, then nodded to his escorts. They released him and he started walking.
Boron stood everywhere: outside the glass-chamber’s exit, at the entrance each human would likewise be forced to enter, and all others surrounded the room full circle, a step down from the control panels where nine were currently logging in. One after another, around the room’s circumference, each Boron connected then brought the panels nearest them to life. The code whirlwind increased in speed after each and the display became intensely harmonious and ever easier on the eyes.
Kim no longer saw code. She saw birds fluttering around a daytime sky, a peaceful place into which a part of her mind was falling. The others too. She forcefully had to pluck herself from the mesmerizing world then once again saw it as code. Others’ faces were glued to the screens and they’d become indifferent to the possibility of impending peril. Mouths opened and words fell out all around her: “Mother, it’s you,” and, “I knew you’d come back,” and, “it’s, it’s, beautiful,” and, “I never knew…” Feelings of serenity and peace abound, and Kim felt her nerves settle as if Jim was spooning her; it was only the two of them and Rob was the furthest thing from her mind.
“The motion path,” Lion mumbled. His galvanized memories were putting a fireworks show in the once tired eyes above his grocery bags. “Kim—” He jolted his attention to her, but she was fine. It was the others. He grabbed Crisp by the shoulders. “Crisp, snap out of it, man. It’s doing something to us.” Lion recalled the path before the broadcast room, its gentle colors, binaural beats, delta waves, also the feeling of relaxation it provided.