by Marc Mulero
“There was one project I came across that riled my thoughts, back then. A geological aspiration, one of the first to be scrapped because of its grandiose scale. Project Fatum…” he closed his eyes, remembering the moment, “it entailed exploring the belief that minerals deep within the ground contained great benefits to our species. Fuel alternatives, curative substances, human enhancements… wherever my father got the idea, I’m not sure I’ll ever know for sure, but I have a feeling it was connected to my brother’s ephemeral chasing of shadows,” Mulderan said as he slowly placed his two fists into the boomeranged doors blocking his path.
Two molded outlines revealed themselves when he pushed clenched fists forward, making it appear as though he were submerging them through some thick liquid. A carving for his hands only. And a second later, the door became resplendent with a white glow.
“In an effort to find worthwhile purpose, to somehow serve the collective on my terms, I took it upon myself to discretely revive Project Fatum. I kept my work in the shadows, of course, out of reach of my father’s spies and the company’s loyal employees. I was quite political back then, if you can imagine. Only because I had to be, though.” He turned and retracted his arms from the molding so the construct could slide open. And so it did. A bellow of churning gears resonated as the dark scene beyond them was gradually revealed. “Hmph. You should see your face! I wonder, is it because you can imagine me as somehow different, or because you so desperately want to know what it is that I’m about to show you? Either way, curiosity does not suit you, Eldra.” He backhanded her rock-hard stomach in a uniquely rare show of physical touch.
“My game of politics, ironically, was played with the end goal of speaking with no one, so I could be left alone, so I could research deep into the night. Yes, while the sheep rested for their next meaningless day. Remember Eldra, the world was different back then, not as efficient as it is within our city’s walls.
“Anyway, it took months to gather remnants, but I eventually found my way, uncovering dusted drills and working to understand their capabilities. ‘How deep could they go?’ I always wondered. I’m afraid that everything spiraled from there.”
The Highest Lord walked forward, folding one hand over the other behind his cloak. Tap… tap… tap… his footsteps were wet, the bottom of his boots almost clinging to the ground. A smack of humid air blew his silken hair back. Where were they? The walkway was ridiculously narrow, and stretched over a boundless pit. Eldra felt it a plank. That unfamiliar wonder was starting to morph into something else - fear, like this was about to turn into some sort of punishment.
The smell of sulfur made her nose twitch, and as eyes adjusted to darkness, the earthy walls came to life around her. Scales the size of boulders from some unholy beast.
My god, she thought, we’re under the earth’s surface. This whole time we were walking down.
Her breath suddenly shortened and her ears popped once she peered down. Her body was screaming “danger!” Muscles tensed, senses heightened, eye dilated. That’s when she knew for sure that there was no ground below for miles. They were atop an endless sinkhole. If she wasn’t so attuned to her fears, the blindness of an unadjusted eye to darkness would have shaken her, and the idea of an endless plummet below would have knocked her off balance. Mulderan would have sniffed her out as a coward in a second. But she was no ordinary person – and she had a lifetime of war to thank for that. Her heartrate slowed before her husband could notice, eye fully attuned to a dim amber light illuminating their walkway. It gifted only enough brightness to observe the long pathway and the round structure at the end of it.
Then suddenly, the boomerang doors slammed shut, echoing a clank of heavy metallic alloy. That did it for her – it reignited that pang of fear. Eldra gripped the hilt of her sword in doubt, feeling unsure about a decision for the first time since she took oath. Her anxiety was almost palpable. Neck veins pulsing and somehow, Mulderan seemed to find pleasure in this - there was a ghost of a smile creeping onto his face.
Who is this man?
“You appear more uneasy than when the Quake was rattling your home,” Mulderan said with a certain satisfaction.
“You’re so calm, when just hours ago, everything you worked for was threatened, and may very well still be,” Eldra tried to deflect the call to her discomfort.
Mulderan ignored the statement, and instead continued on with his story. “To fund my curiosity, I needed resources, people. And not ordinary workers, no. I needed creative talent who wouldn’t ask any questions. How, you wonder? I feigned that orders came from Orin, and demanded scientists from other projects to be reassigned to Fatum. I plucked sparingly, from the laxest of department heads, so that my requests would be taken at face value without raising questions. More politics. I acquired builders well versed in Ordinate structuring and transported the drills far from the company’s reach. And I built this, Eldra. The first bunker beneath the Grand City of Nepsys.” He gestured widely with his hands.
Eldra responded to Mulderan’s display, pretending as if she hadn’t noticed the insanity around her the moment she walked in. She looked down to once again digest the dark pit below, where the strange amber glow rose from its basin, miles down, like a dimmed sun from within the middle of the planet. And because eyes were still on her, she looked again at the earthy stone cascading upward - protruding and spiny like an armadillo lizard’s back. The shards were lightly shadowed as if under a campfire, encircling the bridge and reaching all the way up to the natural ceiling, rising to an egg-shaped point, making her feel like she was inside a giant beast’s throat.
“Enthralling,” she chose the word carefully.
She experienced the same sense of awe that a cathedral’s enormity would create, but this was a darker feeling, doused with unease. Pull yourself together, she told herself, sniffing in the murky air to reset once again, to stay the course. She was already down the rabbit hole. There was no turning back now. It was time to see how far this road would take her.
Mulderan, whether keen to her unrest or not, flicked a speck of dust off of himself and carried on.
“The operation started small. We drilled deep into the mantle, bypassing the crust and examining varying chemical properties to see if the theories were true. Were there really anomalies spat up by the Quake? We both know how that story goes.
“And so, months turned into years as we became enveloped in our search. I remotely monitored my pointless operations at Ingora’s headquarters while devoting my energy to Fatum, to the mysteries that its discarded file had to offer.” Mulderan halted his pace at the foot of their next roadblock.
He placed the palm of his hand on a smooth, curved copper structure and slid his fingers down its grooves. The traced path illuminated his fingerprints on the metal surface while a computer verified the trespasser’s code. Eldra didn’t even want to know what would happen if someone had tried to break in. Once accepted, they were granted access to a small dome that could fit no more than ten Hiezers without their armor.
Shit, Eldra thought. What now?
Mulderan stepped inside the elevator and turned to face his queen, staring, awaiting her to cross the threshold. The structure shut, and he persisted.
“It wasn’t until we delved into the outer core that we achieved true progress. We made unfathomable discoveries that defied our understanding of chemical behavior. But there was one substance that broke everything. It toppled science as we understood it. It was the chemical that now flows through each of us - Ayelan, the key to our future.”
Eldra could feel herself abandoning all resolve. “The Ayelan… it was said to be revealed to the world by the first Quake’s cataclysms. Every history book speaks to its rising during that time. You’re telling me that you discovered it years before?”
The slight outline of a grin remained on his face, as he, too, could no longer contain the feeling. Only instead of the awe his wife was experiencing, it was pride that he felt, pride in his revelation o
f such stark and momentous secrets.
“It was at this pivotal uncovering that I was forced to sequester all who were involved with Fatum. For the greatest good, I was forced to abduct their families as collateral for continued work and utter silence, until we knew for sure what all of this meant. In sufferance, my scientists worked under the promise that their families would be safe. We conducted experiments, tracked the comportment of the enigmatic chemical, and after nineteen years, compiled the right assortment of compounds to preserve human cells.”
Mulderan coded the robust transport to descend, and so it did. Light fixtures located in the rock walls brightened their faces on their way down into the depths of the pit. A feeling of claustrophobia tightened Eldra’s chest the deeper they went. She felt trapped inside of the steel-clad transport, stuck watching a foreign show through a thick glass casing. It slid smoothly down its harnessed track, giving no indication that it suffered the wrath of two immeasurable quakes. Outlines of rock clawed by them like sickles, and a muskiness in the air seeped into their confinement to choke her. The speed of the elevator accelerated until finally, after a nearly endless abyss, they reached a depth where the fires of hell rose temperatures to ungodly degrees. Condition monitors measured the heat carefully, activating vents to suck out the heaviness and replace it with reserves of cool, fresh air. The cover of advanced refractory metals worked to shield the elevator from disintegration.
“Then it became clear, Eldra. Everything became clear. This was evolution. This was the destiny of the human race. My task brimmed to the front of my mind and locked into place. For that’s when I knew - I was obligated to simultaneously thin this overpopulated planet, and raise more Ayelan to the earth’s surface. I had to create a species that was fit for furtherance, and also help the unworthy to their end.”
“What… what have you done, Mulderan?” Eldra asked, her voice lower than before.
He paused for a moment to inspect her body language, and then the elevator stopped. The spherical door slid open to reveal a cave saturated with heat-resistant metals, and within it, a group of defeated scientists working diligently to fulfill their lord’s orders.
“I hired nuclear physicists with the last bit of grant money I embezzled from Ingora. I carried out my plan, Eldra. I delivered a concentrated nuke into the planet’s inner core, twice. I’m the cause of both Global Quakes.”
Eldra furrowed her brow for a long second, mouth hung open, before taking one shaky step back. She was confused a moment ago, sure. Fearful? That too. But all of it melted down into shock now. Frozen, divisive shock. Then denial.
How could it be? No way. She just stared on at him. But look around… all of the evidence is here. His eyes aren’t lying either.
Should she continue following a madman that at one point she’d confided in? Or instead draw her sword, right here, right now, and cut him where he stood?
The tick of her heart was pounding in her ears. She was about to act.
But she didn’t, she couldn’t, for some reason. The shadow of doubt that washed across her face was brief, and she regained her composure.
“Much to digest, I know,” Mulderan empathized. “My words have never lied though. I’ve carried out the same agenda that you have subscribed to, just on a larger scale.”
No, you lunatic. You had us believe you were the savior of devastation, not the cause of it.
“This changes things,” is all Eldra said.
“This changes everything,” Mulderan agreed. “You can either perceive me as the catalyst of the weak’s plunder, or as the Highest Lord of a greater species. A species that has triple the lifespan, and capabilities that reach far beyond that of our predecessors. The results are why I brought you down here. They speak for themselves. And I’m confident that whenever your thoughts become settled, you’ll see what I see.”
He’s right. Always was. His vision has always been sound. But what about his actions… how am I supposed to even begin to fathom those?
Could it be that he’s just that far ahead of me, fighting a deeper, more philosophical war than I can comprehend? Yes, that’s it. One between the strong and the weak, on the most fundamental level. Of course. Mulderan is always on the side of progress.
She looked up at him, taking in his gaze to find assurance.
There are no rules in war, only the victorious and the dead. He’s taken such that mantra to new heights.
Eldra gave a curt nod, and Mulderan appeared satisfied by it. They inspected Mulderan’s lair as he concluded his monologue.
“After the first earthquake, my father began my next phase for me. He gathered the Old World’s best, brightest, and richest, and banded them together with noble purpose. So I let him further my agenda, and used the chaos as a means to openly experiment with the ‘new’ chemicals brought to light. I experimented using many of Ingora’s resources. But even then, Orin couldn’t comprehend that sacrifice is a necessity. It was then that I removed him from this world. Another casualty of the weak, or so I thought.”
“The smoked island of Auront, Cryos being compounded and used as a weapon… look at what this madness is bringing to the surface,” Eldra tested.
“There are variables that even I couldn’t have predicted. That’s the beauty of it all - the uncertainty. Those who flourish in bedlam are revealing themselves as worthy additions to our race. I shook the world to rid it of its insects, and those who still cling may be worth our attention.”
“What of your brother, and what of the rebellions?”
“Those protected by Ordinate structures likely have outlasted the Quake. They are still a threat, for now. My brother has a capable mind, he always has, like my father. Regardless if we’re at odds, they’ve proven themselves worthy to inhabit the world. They’ve passed our trials, and will only meet their end if they pursue us and attempt to hinder our progress going forward. You must understand - we’re past the point of no return. This is the final stage, everything and everyone else pales in comparison.”
The two stopped at a screen that took up a large section of a wall. It projected what lay beyond the refractory protection. It displayed waves of thousand-degree heat waiting patiently to fry them. And passed it all, a cylindrical hole that extended far to a vibrant center. The planet’s inner core.
“You used that tunnel as your launch pad for the nukes,” Eldra said. “But what of side effects? How could you possibly have known that you wouldn’t crack the earth in half, or have it spin off orbit?”
“Decades of planning. The radiation is contained beyond this bunker, and any nuclear fallout will fade before ever reaching the mantle. The bomb was simple enough to crack the earth, but not strong enough to shatter it. The reaction was as controlled as possible and produced the desired results.”
All of Eldra’s detailed thoughts and questions slipped from her mind. The sight was simply too daunting, even for her.
She slowly turned to see unshaven scientists. They were so hairy that they looked like apes in lab coats, working diligently to protect those they loved, while knowing full well what they’ve done. Condemning billions to death wasn’t something to take lightly. It was written on their sagging faces. When you have a conscience it seems, you wear the pain of murder in your expression. That’s what this was.
She then raised her eye to the thick metals preventing them from disintegrating, and she mulled over the grandness of this past hour.
Mulderan was unmoved, still analyzing his wife’s reactions with a confident stance. “My work is nearly complete. Whether I lead this species or not becomes irrelevant, as long as they are pushed to the brink. When the rest of the Hiezers’ lives are preserved, Project Fatum, as amended, will be complete.”
Chapter 4
The Templos Rogues’ brains were rattled, vision still trembling – there, a woman with dirtied fingernails and a set of dingy engineer’s goggles draped a hot towel over a boy’s head. Her son, no doubt. She held him close in her bosom while murmuring some lul
laby passed down the generations.
“It’ll be alright,” she whispered in between, “it has to be.”
Others kept their heads to the floor and braced to find a renewed sense of equilibrium. It would come… they were sure of it, for they too had made it through the earth’s fury.
One look around showed how close they’d come to death though, when sections of the Centric Crater caved inward, so too did their underground facility. Thoughts of be being buried alive had plagued them for days. Many thought, Should we leave and take our chances out there? But the smart ones didn’t risk such action. Because even though fears spiked, their cave did hold.
How, you ask? Because of grit. The Templos Rogues didn’t possess unlimited resources like the Hiezers, nor did they have scientific models to predict breaking points. Instead, they survived due to other means. Perseverance, for one. Preparedness, another. Use of adaptive alloy – common scraps melded with rare materials – was applied to Ordinate structuring all throughout their fortress. And it paid off, gifting them strength beyond any shelter of olden times to withstand the second coming of the Quake.
An old Volt Unit who’d apparently regained his wits pressed his hand against a spike that drooped all the way down from the ceiling, like solidified lava. Hard as stone.
“Fascinating,” he said, knocking knuckles against the external casing and looking to another who’d joined him. “You see here, and here, where the alloy pressurized around the damaged areas? The burden of compounding rock became great, but the Ordinate techniques prevailed just barely. This technology spared us, son. Ever read Old World mythology? No? Oh I know, books are hard to come by these days. Well, I’ll tell you - there was once a titan - it’s like a god - his name was Atlas. This titan was tricked into shouldering the burden of the entire world, to keep it upright. This alloy here… is our Atlas. Hm?”