Mark 2.0: Book 4: Love

by Prax Venter

  She gave Verrelle a tight smile before turning to inspect the flickering workstation she’d come down for.

  The artificial Princess watched Jezebel with glowing eyes wide with awe for a few steps before she turned back to Angel.

  “Tell me please, what does sound have to do with magnets?” she asked, and Mark felt the droid’s interest pique as she attempted to phrase her response so Verrelle would get something useful from her. The bot’s personal desire to feel needed found a new path to explore in education.

  “Hey,” Mark said, stepping after his bonded satyr into the heavy silence around them. He could tell her mind was clouded with her role in both creating and destroying unfathomable instances of simulated life, so he tried to change the subject.

  “It’s crazy that they reinvented real-world speakers and even soundproofing- isn’t it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that…” Jezebel said as she approached the workstation and shifted into her centaur form. It was hard to tell looking down from the hallway above, but the surface and most of the display panels were about two feet higher than was normal for humans. She continued speaking as she tapped on the flickering touchscreen.

  “It’s one of two things; The Crystal Heart core systems were influenced by the humans that created them, building in hardcoded asset generation that influenced or inspired all of this, or it’s just that this shape is physically best at trapping vibrations within the medium of air, and every form of life operating under the same physical laws of reality would eventually develop the same conclusion about sound-dampening shapes- Ah ha!”

  Her finger paused for a moment, and he saw the phrase ‘System Malfunction’ among a wall of information. She quickly tapped something that he missed, and he then decided to follow along in her mind instead.

  Watching her search and sort information so effectively was exhilarating, as if he were watching a top professional speed-run a difficult action game.

  She dove into ‘Personal Storage’ and found unrestricted access to public areas with scraps of data. The text-based display flickered again, and she banged one of her front hooves into a metal drawer of the workstation. The sound was both eerily sharp and muffled. The panel came back on and she continued tapping.

  “This is going to be fucking awesome if it works,” Mark whispered, leaning forward as she swiftly intuited through a perfectly logical operating system to find a collection of centaur music files.

  “Damn,” she muttered. “The backup battery near this station got a tiny charge when they flipped on the power, but if we engage any of these speakers, well- it will be a very brief concert.”

  “Can we do something about that?” Mark turned and pointed at Sasha back up in the hallway. By the sway of her tail and her vibrant mental state, something exciting was happening up there too. They weren’t in danger, so he focused and finished his thought. “What if I borrow an Arc Bolt and zap the battery?”

  “I don’t know, Mark,” she said, rubbing her chin. “I’m not sure how magic will affect this technology. You saw what happened before when Sasha’s electricity interacted with one of their batteries.”

  Despite her ingrained misgivings, his Advanced Research AI turned her emerald eyes on his and opened her mind. His creativity and her solid grasp of the physical world embraced once more, and it only took moments before both turned their eyes to a nearby sprout of copper wire poking upward from the floor.

  “The wires will melt if…” she whispered then turned back to face him “What’s the worst that could happen? It’s very much worth a shot.”

  “We could bring the whole place down on our heads.” Mark shrugged, then focused a burst of will out into the universe. “But that is not our intention.”

  Jezebel gave him a small smile before she locked the pose into stone with her new ability.

  “I’m about to shoot some lightning!” Mark shouted as loud as the sound-dampening would allow him before he held the dark mirror in his mind up toward Sasha’s Arc Bolt. He then held out his hand and willed the negatively charged ions bursting forth to ride the indicated wire clump.

  This was only to fuck with the blind scavengers and kill a few minutes while Angel did her thing, but he poured every ounce of effort into shoving this wild, crackling electricity into this needle’s eye of a conduit.

  As always, copying a skill granted him a deeper understanding of its function and interaction with reality, so Mark used this temporary knowledge to deftly force electrons in the area to pour into the empty copper hose lying exposed, spread open for them. Then, the ability ended, and he noticed softly glowing orange squares of light begin to fade up along the walls.

  “This whole room is a speaker,” Jezebel whispered as a devilish smile somehow found its way onto her normally guileless face.

  “I have located the component,” Angel said as she and Verrelle walked up, and Mark turned to see the bot holding something that looked like a metal football with dangling wires.

  “Phenomenal!” Jezebel cheered as she continued tapping on the fully illuminated workstation. “The auxiliary battery will last about two hours now, plenty of time to cover our tracks. Now to just pick a file…”

  “What’s a file?” Verrelle asked as she leaned close to see what Jezebel was doing.

  “Pick one,” his doe-centaur said, indicating several titles. “Since we don’t know what they are, any one is as good as another. Just know that they each represent a unique cultural experience from another universe.”

  “And don’t think about it,” Mark said, hopping up into Jezebel’s back for the return trip back up into the hallway. “Let’s get this party started, princess.”

  “I choose Charge My Love,” the alternate-reality Blazar said with a grin on her muzzle.

  Jezebel nodded, tapped the file name, and the unmistakable dry hiss of a live speaker broadcasting silence came from everywhere.

  “This is a very clever tactic,” Angel said, hovering near Mark on his muscular steed. He looked over into her white eyes glowing softly in the dim research lab and saw unbridled awe there.

  Then, the selected song began with a swift high-hat that gave him the sense of a burning fuse. By the time he pulled Verrelle up onto Jezebel’s back, the full electronic force of the driving song began to vibrate the entire interconnected facility. The intense artificial melody wove itself around in a looping pattern as thundering bass began reverberating in his chest cavity.

  When they reached the others in the hallway, all verbal communication became impossible as the intricate techno music saturated the air. And it was remarkably less alien than Mark expected.

  Amina was smiling as she tilted her head to try and understand what she was hearing, but Learis looked pissed. The soft rabbit-woman’s tan eyes were wild as she covered her ears, and Mark couldn’t help but notice some new tech thing that looked like a flute in one of her hands. Since they couldn’t talk about it, he simply waved his hand to gather his team, and began sprinting back toward the Orb Fort with the shroud of sound hopefully deafening those blind cyber-weasel assholes.

  It only took Mark a handful of strides before he realized with absolute certainty that this random, public-access Centaur song was holding at exactly 256 BPM.

  - 17 -

  Once the team was back on track, it took another fifteen minutes of navigation through the sprawling science labs to find a way out under the deep purple of an early nighttime sky. Flying vehicles held up by constant exposed electricity roved in the air over Arclight and it appeared to be technology from the Centaur Technocracy. There were only a few, and they moved their searchlights lethargically, as if bored.

  “There’s no way they know we’re here,” Sasha said as they peeked around a defensive barrier a good distance away. “They’d be swarming the place.”

  “Probably tasked with discouraging scavengers,” Jezebel said.

  “We’re scavengers,” Abby said, pointing to the complicated speaker setup Angel was currently tryi
ng to modify.

  “They’ll find out soon enough,” Mark said, turning away. “We’ve got an Anchor to set up, a Moon to visit, and a Demi-god Fairy to deal with before she starts thrashing around again.”

  Everyone followed him into the first ring of the abandoned Orb Fort and found the long, curved halls of blue metal were empty. He continued.

  “Now that we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with back on Lagos, I say we jump right to the heart this time- right to the Orb, rather. If the rabbit drones are being created in the center, we need to shut that down before doing anything else.”

  With no guards in the area and no orange forcefield over the roof, they decided the fastest way to the center of this concentric fortress would be to fly over, so everyone but Angel did get a ride on shuttlebus-Jez after all.

  Previously, when they’d been here to steal the door code for the Kalorplast, the whole inner-most space had been covered in thick wire and multiple laser turrets, not to mention the many chrome-plated centaur soldiers.

  Now, it was a totally barren cylindrical room with 100-foot walls and no ceiling. Barren, except for the myriad of pinpoint holes in the universe only he could see. His magic eye became dazzled by the sheer number of inaccessible access-points scattered around this space. Only a handful went to Lagos, but with time and experience, he was seeing more. Always spreading his mind out into the virtual fabric of this digital construct- like slowly squeezing toothpaste from a tube.

  “May I announce complications with my plan?” Angel asked Abby, and Mark snapped out of his daze.

  The abyssal horror by his side nodded. “I insist that you do.”

  “Merging with this device should be dramatically effective at acoustically disrupting the magnetic field infestation. However, I will lose my ability to speak, modulate gravity, or even move faster than walking speed.”

  “It’s not permanent,” Sasha said with a snarl in her lip. “Is it?”

  “It is not. I can disengage at any time, and we will have the opportunity to figure out how to stop the infestation without constant assault. Commander, Mistress, everyone, I must reiterate that all previous information assumes my simulations are accurate.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Learis said, and Mark looked over to see her fiddling with the other object she’d scavenged.

  “How long do you need?” he asked Angel.

  “Forty seconds.”

  Mark waved his hand for her to proceed then turned to Learis as the bare-assed droid pressed the unwieldy device to her chest.

  “What did you find in there?” he asked Learis while nodding to what looked like a mix between a flute and a techno mage’s magic wand. Wires, buttons, and glowing tubes wrapped around the shaft but there was no mistaking the mouthpiece that could have been ripped from a saxophone.

  The Lagomorph shifted her tan eyes to his from the object in question.

  “Amina helped Abby break into one of the tiny rooms along the corridor while we waited. I found this in a metal basket in the corner. When I tried to play a note, it blackened a wall with a small burst of sonic power.”

  “A lucky find,” Abby said with only the slightest hint of jealousy.

  Jezebel stepped close, her emerald eyes dancing over the object.

  “Given where we were, this discarded device was probably a prototype weaponization of an instrument. The battery power may be limited, and I would be careful if you try trilling into that. It looks unfinished. It could be a powerful boost to your natural ability, or it could explode in your face.”

  Sasha crossed her arms under her heavy breasts.

  “You’re such a party-pooper, Momma Bear.”

  “Angel is ready,” Amina said with a nod, and Mark spun to see the bot’s normally alight and alive pixel eyes had dimmed considerably. Her hand was held up like she was asking a question in class but lowered it when everyone turned to face her.

  “That’s uncanny,” Learis said, her potentially explosive technoflute forgotten as she became mesmerized by Angel. “It sounds… so full.”

  “We can’t hear it,” Abby said, the corner of her small mouth pulled down.

  Learis sighed contently. “She’s oozing what sounds like many different versions of me all trilling in harmony to cover a whole spectrum. I never expected to hear anything like it.”

  If Mark squinted his True Sight eye, he could almost perceive the pulsing sphere surrounding them as a rainbow-whitewash, but this magically magnetic sound bubble was on a level above his capabilities. He blinked it out of his mind and reached out for the nearby pinpoint back to Lagos.

  “Time to see what it does,” Mark said as he pulled it open an inch just to peek through.

  Swirling metal chunks and motes of dust filled the spherical room and whistled past the opening like a volumetric blender.

  He rotated the perspective toward the hallway leading out and noticed the zipping metal particles coalesced into larger pieces as they moved further away from the central, all-powerful relic. His perception focused through the buzzing mess to see Lagomorph-shapes coming together in the distance like reverse explosions of their parts.

  “It’s building stuff from metal dust created by the orb,” Mark reported, and a moment later he felt Angel’s presence move close to his side. He turned to see the salvaged speaker housing hooked up directly to some components in her chest. An overwhelming sense of vulnerability washed over him as his focus lingered on the section of her thick armor now pried partially open.

  “We will all protect you with our lives,” he whispered, and she winced her dim eyes, then turned to face the portal. Silently, his eye saw Angel disagree. The time-lost bot still considered herself expendable compared to anyone else on the team, yet she’d recently moved closer to understanding her own value.

  Bracing for anything, Mark focused on the insanity sure to follow, then pulled downward and peeled aside whatever it was that separated the dimensions. By the rain of iron-nickel particles cascading onto the floor beyond, it was immediately apparent that her artificial chorus had an effect.

  Mark ripped this hole all the way to the ground and watched as their bot’s broadcast totally disrupted the magnetic hivemind’s control. Then, when she stepped through and bathed the entire spherical room with the invisible interference, her effect reached the ancient orb of legend.

  A swirling rage tickled Mark’s eye as if from a great distance. Then it was gone.

  Matter creation at the glowing white orb halted under Angel’s custom broadcast, and every hunk of metal within about twenty feet of her dropped to the floor. Sasha, Jezebel, and Amina immediately dashed through to surround Angel as several metal foes from outside the central orb chamber came dashing up the hallway at exactly 256 steps per minute.

  Mark’s three sturdy teammates standing guard in Lagos braced for combat, yet the first Lagomorph-shaped drone to pass within Angel’s magic broadcast flew into countless lifeless pieces, skittering to the floor.

  Six more did the same thing, their parts littering the ground in growing piles, but none of them could get close without losing cohesion and lying dormant.

  “Control point secured, Commander,” Sasha said with a glance back to Mark, and he flashed her a smile before he waved Abby, Learis, and Verrelle through.

  When Mark himself passed over to Lagos and dropped the portal, he noticed two of the magnetic drones marching in place in unison just outside the invisible sphere of acoustic influence.

  “It’s working,” Learis whispered as she ran her fingers over the rabbit action figure tied to her belt.

  “This small thing is the orb I’ve heard so much about?” Verrelle said, moving her now-serpentine bottom half swiftly to circle around behind its fantasy-tech pedestal.

  “Careful,” Jezebel said over her shoulder. “That is a powerful artifact… device.”

  “She’s right,” Mark said, holding out his hand to shade his milky left eye from the orb’s ethereal brilliance. “The last t
ime we were in this facility, the Jar of Stars here was forming all sorts of nonsense out of thin air. I’m positive the hivemind infestation was using it to create matter.”

  Now, however, it was only humming in-tune with the walls around them, as if it had been calmed by the magnetic hivemind. It was impossible to understand what he was seeing, but it was… waiting.

  “I require the Goddess Anchor,” Amina said as she stepped up to Jezebel.

  While the emerald-eyed druid pulled off her condensing bag, Mark turned to see Angel studying the displays and incomprehensible technology around them.

  “Great work,” he said, patting the bot on the head. Abby came over to rub her tentacles all over her mostly helpless android body.

  “My construct’s display of competence deserves a considerable reward,” the clinging green woman whispered into Angel’s ear but turned her big yellow eyes on Mark as she did so.

  Behind her, Amina hefted the carved obsidian obelisk in both hands as she moved near the middle of the relatively small chamber.

  This was it.

  With this third point in three dimensions locked in for the entity he’d named Salivis, there was a good chance they were all about to become much more powerful. Bullshit Crystal Shard scavenger hunt be damned. A part of Mark wondered what leisurely, roleplaying fuck-quest he would be doing right now if he’d woken up next to Jezebel and Sasha never came- if everything had gone the way the System Host had environed it. His sciencey, strawberry-scented satyr had stepped up near, reading his thoughts, and he turned to see her kind eyes locked on his. Maybe in another universe there was another version of them doing just that.

  While Amina performed her simple ritual to align the runed-carved stone near the one object in this multiverse that the Gods themselves feared, he shot a glance back at the growing army of Lagomorph drones staring at them with their high-beam, headlamp eyes. They were watching as they marched in place, and it was in that moment Mark felt certain that these things were being controlled by another Lagomorph somewhere.