by T Hodden
“I don't suppose there is any chance I can convince you all to wait here?” I said. But the bears were already pulling cover alls and hoods over their brightly coloured gas masks. Ginger had decorated his with bright yellow flames, Tiger with tiger stripes, Gwyn with a digital camouflage pattern, Wendy with purple swirls, and so forth. They were fidgeting impatiently. “That means no? Okay, we have to be quiet and sneaky as we are really not meant to be here.”
“And who will know we are here?” Doreen asked.
“I don't know.” I admitted. “But something feels wrong here.” I could not put my finger on it, but something about the road did not look as abandoned as it should have been. I glanced out the window and saw it. In the scattered litter that was fluttering against the fence were pages of a newspaper.
“Today's newspaper.” Ginger said.
“On the inside of the fence.” Ted purred through his mask (painted with a chess board pattern). “Somewhat less abandoned than we hoped.”
“Well, somebody would have to be here.” I said. “If there was an Earthquake they would have to check the mine right? Be sure that the asbestos isn't getting any worse. I should think.” The bears were not entirely convinced.
“We need to be low and sneaky.” I told them, pulling on my tan coloured overalls and respirator, before hoisting the drawstrings on my hood. “Everybody okay with that?” The bears nodded. “Are your fingers crossed?” They nodded. “Come on.” I pulled on my gloves and tool belt before I climbed from the van. I spent one moment checking what was in my satchel and testing my torch. Doreen followed me as I crouched by the fence and cut a small slit to crawl under. We crept up a dusty hill covered in spindly plants and razor sharp grass. At the top we kept low in the shadows and found ourselves looking down upon a ghost town. Wooden and brick houses on a single street that had been attacked by the elements and by mother nature. The hardy plants of this unforgiving corner of the world had colonised the buildings and made them slump and lean. On the far side of town there were the low brick and steel buildings of the mine, on a concrete base through which the grass was beginning to sprout, with conveyor belts and earth moving vehicles that were rusting hulks.
In among the buildings were a number of static caravans and tents that had been parked in the mine compound, connected by tunnels of plastic, with a communications tower in one corner. There were men in dark fatigues and gas masks patrolling the edges of their town in gas masks and tactical vests, with rifles slung by their side. They did not move like soldiers though. They slouched around and one of them kept staring down his rifle and pretended to shoot the few birds that hopped from tree to tree.
I looked down at the bears and motioned for them to follow me as I crept down the small hill and into the valley towards the mouth of the cave. There was a train of wagons that had been left to rust on the tracks, the grass poking through the old wood. A figure was emerging around the end of the train. In unison the bear dropped and rolled under the wagons. I pressed myself into the gap between two of the wagons and held my breath as the armed and masked man walked past. His gun was pointed at the floor and he was muttering into a telephone. I let him move past then I ran as quietly as I could for the mouth of the mine, the bears hot on my heels. We pressed through the chasm of fibrous rocks, hewn away in regular flat surfaces by industrial machines, following the cables and the lights that marked a route these new visitors had followed.
We could all feel the dry energy in the air that meant magic was present. Old magic. Magic best left buried. My nerves were shaking because now we were in the mine we had nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. We followed the seam and anybody stumbling onto us had no choice but to see us. The others were aware of this. Doreen faded in to give me a worried smile as we reached the mouth of a wide chamber. Far wider than the rest of the seam and perfectly circular. There were decorative pillars and a pair of giant doors sealed firm by mortar.
“This feels wrong.” Doreen whispered. “This was not made by miners. It looks more like... In the British Museum, when we visited it once, I was sure there was a recreation of an ancient tomb. This feels much like that. But on a bigger scale. Too big for human. And the shape of the doors. They are like a coffin. Chamfered edges and wrong angles.”
“This is very old. Far older than humanity.” I said. I hurried forwards to inspect the seal. “Thank god. Nobody has tried to open them yet.”
“Of course not.” The voice was behind us and it rung out with a sharp tone. “This chamber alone takes time to record in suitable detail for an archaeological study. It is wondrous.” She was plump and would probably be amiable looking if it were not the Hazardous Environment Suit and mask. She was flanked by armed guards.
“You know that is a bad idea.” I said as I turned around. “You would not have men with combat shotguns and machine guns if you did not think there was something very nasty in there.”
“Maybe they are here to protect me from intruders like you?” The woman asked.
“Oh.” Ted waddled towards her keenly. “Is that standard for archaeological digs in Australia? Because Tony Robinson doesn't have any of those on the telly.”
The woman had no answer. The bears all craned in expectantly.
“You should know I am here to stop those doors from being opened. You do not want to study what is in there.” I turned to look at the doors. They were indeed coffin shaped, and tall, covered in small etchings. “You really have to trust me on this one.”
“Oh sure. I will trust the English guy with the pack of wild bears, who broke in to a dangerous environment.” The woman sighed.
“That is a terrible, terrible way to describe us!” Tiger snarled. “Only Ginger is a little wild. But that is mostly because he is no longer allowed to burn anything any more.”
“I barely cleanse with fire at all now.” Ginger confirmed.
“Take them to the lab and lock them away somewhere.” The woman ordered the guards.
“I didn't catch your name.” I said.
“Mary Kite.” She answered. “And you are?”
“Fisher King.” I replied. “This is,” I glanced around to see Doreen had faded out, “is my bear pack. They mostly behave.” Even as I spoke I was aware of Ted and Wendy, at the edge of the group looking at one of the lamps which was now in pieces. They failed to look innocent or charming as men with guns dragged us out of the mine and to the collection of caravans and cargo containers that were nestled between the old mine buildings.
We were ushered into the airlock of a decontamination unit. We were stripped of our masks and coveralls and ushered into a maze of plastic corridors. We were being herded towards a supply cupboard, but I fought my arm out of the grip of the thug who was ushering me and stopped by one of the doors. There was a room full of computer screens on which columns of data were crunching. A bunch of researchers were staring at it, trying to make sense of the reams of paper their printer was churning out.
“No!” I ran for the room, but the guard grabbed me and slammed me into a doorway. “You are trying to decipher the runes. Do not do that! Miss Kite, you really have to not do that.” I turned to look at Mary. With out her mask she was all dimples and frowns, with a bob of black hair streaked with a reddish purple. “At least tell me you are not connected to the internet here? You have no idea what you are doing.” I lowered my voice to a whisper as something brushed the back of my neck. “Seriously, that big tower with the red lights at the corner of the tents and stuff has a plastic box on the corner with circuit breakers in, switches that need to be switched off. Broken. If they process those runes, they can not be connected to other computers.”
“The tower with the red lights. Turn off the power. I understand.” Doreen's whisper was as faint as her presence. She had faded away to be little more than a scent on the air.
I let myself be ushered towards the store room. Mary looked worried.
“Why do we not want to be connected to a network?” Mary asked before they slammed
the door on us and left us in a blank room of empty shelves.
“It is a spell Mary. Not a poem, not a warning, a spell. The mathematics of reality. Making sense of those symbols, converting them to letters of numbers is a real bad idea. It will act like a computer virus, but...” My voice was cut off by the door slamming.
“Right.” The bears huddled around the shelves and started emptying their pockets looking for an escape plan.
“Okay. Relax. We wont be in here long.” I told the bears.
They turned to look at me as one. I sat on the floor, crossed my legs and dug a paperback book out of one of the pockets of my fishing vest. I looked at my watch and smiled at the bears.
“It is done.” Doreen said, popping into being with a flourish. She smiled at me. “Being dead has its advantages when it comes to playing with Tesla equipment. I found a can petrol from the generators to pour over the breaker-fuse things. They went pop and bang and the lights of the tower went out.” She lunged forwards and kissed me as she faded out again. A few seconds later the door to the cell swung open.
Mary Kite was stood there with her arms folded.
“Where is your partner?” She asked. “And why is she not showing up on my CCTV?”
“Partner?” I asked.
“Well it looked like a petrol can threw itself at the distribution board. But that can't happen.” The man who was standing behind Mary had a shaven head and a look of pure thunder on his face. “So you will tell me where your partner is and how he did that.”
“You can't explain it?” I stared at him. “Just the start. Doreen, show yourself please.”
Doreen faded in. She waved.
“How did she do that?” The man stammered. “That was like...”
“A ghost? Yeah. Least of your worries. You need to stop what you are doing.” I said.
“You sabotaged all our communications. Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be?” Mary was exasperated. “Why would you do that?”
“Because the runes on the door are a spell.” Wendy said. “And running them through a computer might activate it just as well as recanting a rite or singing a spell.”
“And if it was connected to a network it would start to grow out of control and the effects would be utterly horrific.” Ted said. “End of the world sort of stuff.”
“You have to shut your computers down.” I said. “Please. You are running out of-”
The lights dimmed for just a second. Then they flickered back to life before glowing far too bright and exploding in shards of hot plastic and showers of sparks.
“Never mind.” I said and barged past the two people who were stood dumbfounded in the doorway. I walked with as much urgency and authority as I could muster towards the control room I had seen with the computers.
“Where do you think you are going?” The angry man shouted at me in a tone that made Mary wince. I glanced back at him and as he straightened up to point a finger at me I saw the identity card he wore on a lanyard.
“To your control room Doctor Ishmael. To put an end to this before you kill everybody in this town.” I raised my own finger, in a gesture learned by watching every film Peter Cushing featured in. “And failing that to ensure that only those of us unfortunate enough to be here get killed.”
“Mister Fisher King seems to think that what lays behind that door is an ancient magical evil.” Mary said. “No doubt from another dimension.”
“No. From the coldest and oldest parts of this dimension.” Ishmael corrected her.
“Why?” I asked looking at Mary. “What do you think is behind that door?”
“Evidence of a civilisation that flourished here before any recorded settlers.” Mary said. “Given the that were disturbed to reveal the chamber are so incredibly old and there is no easy way to explain how the chamber was built within them.” Her tongue caught up with what Ishmael had said. “You think it was...”
“Aliens.” Ishmael said.
“You are right.” Ted said. “It is just a question of how much older than civilisation those doors are. Were there fossils in the rocks that had enclosed the chamber?”
Mary nodded. “But we have geologists investigating how those strata got deposited over the chamber.”
“And they will confirm the chamber has been undisturbed for several hundred million years.” Ishmael assured her. “That geology moved around the chamber without crushing it or ripping it apart.”
“But that is impossible.” Mary whispered.
I nodded and turned again to walk towards the control room. Nobody argued. When I arrived there the screens all showed the same combination of runes, small marks in the middle of the screen that pulsed with light. I felt my spine crawl.
“The translation was completed,” a woman in a grungy vest and working jeans said. Her face was covered in piercings and studs. She had been tattooed with a Celtic pattern that stretched from the tips of her fingers, up her arms, across her shoulders, up her neck and down to her cleavage, then down the other arm. Her top was low cut enough to show of her ink. She gave a startled gasp when I was not Ishmael and nervously blinked. She sucked on the end of her ball point pen. The control room was illuminated by the ominous red of emergency lighting.
“And the computers went screwy?” I asked.
“They were already screwy. But it went from the printers to everything.” She pointed at the piles of paper the printers had been spewing. “Then the lights all went odd.”
“And the computer says that the runes translate to Pi?” I asked.
She nodded. “To many, many decimal places.”
“How did you know that?” Mary asked. “How would you know what was behind those doors?”
“Family curse.” Ginger said trying to be helpful. “We are exorcists.”
“The same way I know.” Ishmael said. “He was attracted by the tectonic activity, maybe saw the first images from the survey crews and made an educated guess to who or what might have built those doors.”
“The question is,” Tiger piped in, “if you know what the Expara are, and that they are in there, why would you open the doors?”
“Because I know what has been in there for hundreds of millions of years.” Ishmael said.
“You need to radio each and every one of those guards of yours and have them return here.” I told the girl with the ink. “Right now.”
“What?” She looked over at Ishmael.
“Not your job? You are here and you have a radio.” I said, insisting. “Please.”
“All units, status check.” The woman said into her radio. One by one the mercenaries called in. As they signed off Wendy and Tiger checked them off a list scrawled on a whiteboard.
“All units, report to Con Actual. We need to lock down.” Mary said into her radio, then looked at me. “Why are my men making a defensive stand here?”
“Because somebody just decided we aren't animals sniffing around the door, we are somebody they can talk to.” Ishmael smiled at me. “Is that your theory? We crunch the numbers and it somehow manages to reach into our computers and see what we are up to? If we were still able to link to the network it would groping around that too?”
“Everything that was on your computers it now knows.” Ted said. “Information is information.” He tapped his head. “Even the stuff up here.”
“There are a few ways they will try to make contact.” I said.
“We want to be sure they use the least deadly.” Wendy said. “Instead of punching their way into a head and possessing somebody. The Expara tend to burn the brains they borrow. Like giving your car to somebody who always drives at full speed and uses brick walls to stop.”
“Make contact.” The inky girl gave a nervous laugh. “Like, is there anybody out there?”
“Yes.” Doreen grinned. “Very much like that.” She went transparent to underline her words.
“Oh wow.” The girl was mesmerised. “That is amazing. You are beautiful. How do you do that?”
“Windfall.” The girl smiled. “So... You are serious about all this?”
“Deadly.” I said softly.
The screens flickered to life all at once. They filled with zeros that flashed in strange rippling pattern. Silence fell over the room. We looked up at the screen. The computers let out a squawking feedback sound that became a voice.
“Who speaks with authority here?” The electronic voice demanded.
“I do.” Ishmael spoke up loudly. “I am Doctor Roderick Ishmael, head of research and development for Psybernetix Inc. I speak with the full authority for my company, and I am the one who heard your call. Who understood that earthquake was a horn you were sounding.”
“No.” The voice said. “We wish to speak with the one who holds authority here. Identify yourself.”
“I speak with authority.” Ishmael repeated. He was greeted by silence.
“Oh. Please don't say you mean me. I am just an observer.” I said after a few awkward minutes.
“Identify yourself.” The voice repeated.
“I am Fisher King, servant to the Old King, bound by a curse and by duty. I protect this world from the dangers and protect the borders. My duty has not brought me here.” I said. “I really did not want anybody to knock your door.”
“Exactly.” Ishmael said. “He recognises I have the authority here.”
“None of us do.” I said. “Sorry.”
Ishmael shot me a look of daggers.
“Why are you telling them that!” Mary hissed. “If this is truly first contact with alien life...”
“It isn't first contact.” I said. “Contact has been made before. Mostly by those willing to offer their enemies as sacrifice to the Expara. Even then, it normally means being turned into a vampire to act as their servants for the rest of eternity. I was kind of hoping the Expara would meet their reputation for doing things in accordance to their own rules and laws. If we don't have authority we can't cede to them with an unconditional surrender.”