by Davi Cao
She stood up, walked to the window, not blinking once. Outside, the sun already shone less than the upper col.loc, a cylindrical arch of a planet coming toward Earth like a colossal pillar. Color splotches as big as continents spread on its surface, the bluish mist of its atmosphere refracting light and painting oranges and yellows over blue and red. Mountains grew at the naked eye’s pace, valleys became trenches spanning planetary distances, disappearing in the interval of a day. Something furious squirmed inside that thing.
“What good do you expect to come out of this?” Dalana touched Colin’s shoulder.
“She needed a goal in her life, she and many others. I created another option, that’s all.” He turned to face her.
“And if she finds danger? Aren’t you afraid for her?”
“I’ll follow her. I’m curious to see what Ai.iA has built in there.”
“Curious is nice. I think she’ll go.”
Angeline entered Laura’s website, where expedition information abounded on the home page. She called the number on display.
“I want to volunteer,” she told the agent.
“Are you aware of the dangers involved, ma’am?”
“I want to see it, I’m ready to help. If going there will bring us a better world, that’s what I want. I volunteer, no matter when.”
“Alright, stay in line, we’ll pick your info.”
Colin made sure she’d have a place reserved for her, leaving from the city’s outskirts at the next col.loc’s approach. Angeline received her preparation day, the scheduled time for her departure.
She took a big backpack out of her closet, turning it from side to side to check for damage. It was perfect. Her apartment's small size held little that she could carry, giving her the feeling that she could take her whole life on her back. She felt ready to go.
New Terra’s col.loc had four neighbor col.locs spinning to its sides, the central point of a cross. They completed their movements more slowly, making one full turn in more than ten times what it took Terra’s one to do the same, some taking even more. To predict their meet-up, when one would nearly touch the other, slowing down to allow the passage from world to the other, simple physics solved the issue. People knew when the sky would become land.
“Are you nervous? You’re shaking, I’m starting to worry about you,” one explorer told Angeline, at the top of the city’s highest hill.
“A little, Mary, I’ll admit to that. I’m not afraid, though, I’m just curious to see what we’ll find there. And the jump seems tricky to me, hard to believe it’s as simple as they say it is,” Angeline said, pushing her shoulders up to adjust her backpack.
“Well, we’ve seen the video. It’s been done before. Sure, they never got back after that, but at least they got to the other side.”
“Yes, that’s the least of our problems. I’ll take a deep breath and wait for the order then, don’t mind my shaking.”
Up on the horizon, a big flat mountain grew from the sky to touch Terra’s col.loc. Atmospheres mingled, their composition the same, sharing nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and other gases. The impact blew gushes of wind on the expedition bodies, twelve men and women packed to visit an alien world. Angeline ducked on the ground, grabbing Mary’s arm to look for safety.
Dalana scanned the sky with her restless eyes, looking for little black dots or any sign of life. A continent of perfect blue ruled over the view, nothing besides its plain color and the shadows of its many reliefs disturbed sight.
“Exploring a col.loc... How is that a thing of your original world?” Dalana bent herself backward, following the col.loc's growth over her.
“It’s true, that’s not a thing. But we were explorers back there, we wanted to discover new regions and visit new planets. That’s what we do.” Colin stood by the side of Angeline.
“We have that in common, then. I can’t wait to see what kind of place Ai.iA created. If it’s like the video we saw with Angeline, our jump time is getting close.”
“It is. Look at the mountain, I have the impression that it’s stretching to meet us down here.”
“So close we can almost touch it...”
“Team up! We jump on three! Three, two, one, go!” a man yelled, in front of the crew.
He jumped. Instead of falling, he moved up, ascending through the clear air of the sky toward the upper col.loc. Angeline jumped with closed eyes, acting before confirmation of the man’s successful landing. Mary followed suit, along with the rest of the group.
Colin and Dalana did the same, with eyes wide opened, watching Angeline’s body spin around itself on the way up. The air flowed through their bodies at constant speed, cruising at terminal velocity. The man hit the new ground ahead of everybody, bouncing and standing up. He looked up, to watch his crew mates land, Angeline being the only one to fall on her feet, despite her heavy bag.
“Everybody alright?” the man said, walking over to the others to help them stand up.
“Cool, sir, better than expected,” one crew member said.
“I thought I was gonna squash my brains on the floor!” another one said.
“We’ve made it! Wow, look at our home!” Mary said, poking Angeline.
She opened her eyes and stared up. Houses and buildings spreading on the sky, an inverted horizon. She felt dizzy, flying upside down, lost her balance and fell. Mary laughed and helped, all forming a line behind the man who led the expedition.
Nothing in front of them served as guidance. The leader had no map, in fact none of them had navigational skills. Things changed so fast in the alien col.loc that nobody could keep track even of major landscape marks.
They’d guide themselves by Terra’s approach, day after day, hoping to meet it again on the next encounter, one month and a half from there. Mary carried a telescope, Angeline had rules and writing material to track their angle according to Terra’s geography.
They entered a valley. Mountains grew to their sides, guiding them through a path they no longer could choose. Dalana, who walked barefoot, invented a new way of walking, bouncing her feet twice on contact, sliding them on the ground to feel its rubbery surface.
“It’s like a membrane of some sort, not a mass of particles and dirt.” She bounced and danced behind the exploratory crew.
“A living being the size of a planet? Do you think that’s what she did?” Colin crouched to touch the ground with his palm.
“Wouldn’t that be amazing if it was the case?”
The valley kept tightening its walls around the expedition. They followed the path given to them with suspicious looks, fearing not wild beasts, but the land itself.
After hours walking, they stopped to eat, unpacking meals while sitting on the smooth ground that shook with activity. Before anyone could say please, Angeline looked behind them.
“It’s closing after us! We’re trapped.”
Having no time to lose, the group of explorers repacked their things and ran. Bags bounced with every step, drops of cold sweat dropped from Mary’s face, the leader guiding them ahead, to where the valley continued and made a curve. Behind them, the floor elevated itself, enclosing them in a hole.
“This seems fun, if you think about it,” Dalana said, following the crew with her swinging walk.
“If they waited for it, maybe the mountain would grow under their feet and take them to higher places.” Colin nodded at her.
“Or they could just slide on the smooth surface while it swelled, moving forward without effort.”
“It’s a new alien place. We still have to learn what is safe.”
The mountain range in formation behind the group stopped growing, while in their path they met a wall. Everywhere they looked, tall barriers blocked their way, trapping them in a wide hole. Angeline abandoned her heavy bag to the floor, tired from the hurried pace. She took a pack of food out again, disobeying the leader’s order to keep going.
“Keep going where? We’re in the middle of a cauldron. These things change, so I think we must wait u
ntil it opens a passage somewhere. If it grew so fast, it could come down too, right?” she said, grabbing a fork from a plastic bag.
“For all I know, it can either stay like this for days and months, or change again in a few hours. We’re blind here,” the leader said.
“Then let’s camp here and wait for a while, John. How long do you think we’re going to spend climbing those mountains?” Mary said, siding with Angeline on the floor.
John took a deep breath, staring at her and then turning his gaze upon all the faces in the group. “Does everybody agree with it? Are you OK if we camp here for today?”
“Absolutely.”
“Yes, please!”
“That’s fine by me.”
They sat to finish eating what they had started before. With bellies full, they then took their tents and set them on the floor, having to insist a long time to pierce it. The pins penetrated the rubbery membrane like a nail on a sponge. The sun still shone in the full brightness of its cylindrical power, and the day at the col.loc still had some ten Earth days to go. Under their white tents, they lay down to sleep.
“I’ll create something to help me looking around this area, ok? I’ll see if I can find anything interesting,” Dalana said.
“That’s alright, I’ll stay here and watch them in case of an accident. Take care and don’t get lost, please,” Colin said, crouched at the camp, eyes intent on Angeline.
“Here, take this.” She gave him a necklace she created with the power of mind. “If you keep it, we’re bound together. We’ll always find each other. Besides, it’ll be easy to spot you from the air.”
A flying capsule appeared next to Dalana, a pill-shaped cabin with wavy sheets of a metallic material on its sides. She entered it and flew away from the camp. Soon the mountain range that circled around the group became small, a hole between many others, forming a vast expanse of craters stretching until the eye could see.
She travelled across the immediate area at high speed, finding blue land shadowed by high walls and little else. Two craters away from the camp, though, a mist filtered light, filling its basin with dust.
Dalana went straight there. Under the white smoke, people formed a circle, holding hands, many people, more than twenty, and around them a galaxy of tiny things spun amid the dust, and in their middle, something big was rising.
She got back to camp, swinging her spine from side to side in the confined space of her flying pill. Her vehicle landed, opened its door, released an excited Dalana to Colin's attention.
“I found a village, not far from here!” Dalana said, arms pointed at the direction she'd found it.
“Of native people? Were they like the woman we once saw in New Terra?” Colin ran toward her to hear more.
“Yes, just like her, many others like her! They made a circle while the ecosystem around them worked at something.”
“We have to show Angeline the way. Where is it? I’ll create stairs and bridges to help them cross the distance.”
“It’s over there, under the ray of light,” Dalana said, materializing a signal to mark her finding.
∙ 15 ∙ The hidden monster
Angeline woke up from her first sleeping hours in the alien col.loc after a nightmare. She drowned under dirt, swallowed by a volcano that formed around her. Her eyes hurt with the light outside the tent. The cylindrical sun struck at the ground with violence, its concentrated energy beams piercing through the fabric of the space walls. A path of red glistened in front of her camp, a line traced on the ground that led to stairs on the mountains ahead.
“Was it here before we slept?” she asked Mary, who lay by her side.
“It wasn’t... Things here are like this, they come and go at a whim,” Mary said, rolling on the mattress with heavy eyes.
John, the leader, explored the path before any of them, waiting for the crew to form an exploration army after bed time. Angeline drank water, packed her tent, joined the line, and advanced with the group. Behind the great wall in their way, a ray of light shone from the sky, guiding them to whatever lay after the horizon.
The higher they went upstairs, the more inclined each step became. Colin regretted not placing rails by their side, not making a tunnel through the crater’s rim, but the solution he found kept the most natural look to the landscape, despite their suspicion.
Angeline fought for balance. She carried a heavier than recommended backpack, for she brought more water just in case, and with the height of their climb came vertigo.
“Angie, are you alright?” Mary said, offering her a raised hand.
“I don’t like heights... I wish we didn’t have to go through here.” Angeline crouched on the steps to calm down.
“Someone drew us a path out of the trap. We have to follow it.”
“I know. I just don’t like it. When I think I’m—”
She tripped at the edge of a step and shot a hand at the smooth ground, clenching her fingers to get friction. The rubbery and slippery surface, though, repelled her grip and doomed her to fall. The heavy backpack on her back turned her upside down and threw her legs up. Angeline rolled downhill with wide eyes and a scream.
“John, get down there, do something to help!” Mary yelled, watching her friend travel to the crater’s bottom with loose limbs hitting the ground with every spin.
“We can’t reach her!” He shook his head.
“Why don’t we have ropes on our waists? You’re the leader, why didn’t you think of it?”
“It’s just stairs!”
When Angeline knocked her elbow for the first time and screamed with the pain of impact, Colin created a burst of wind to slow her down and a plateau to make her stop. Before thinking of anything else, Dalana wished for a healed Angeline and materialized intact bones, easing the woman’s pain instantly.
Mary came downstairs looking for her friend, and found an Angeline already on her knees, preparing to get up.
“Holy Jesus, is everything alright? Did you hurt anything?” She stopped before touching her friend, afraid to cause more pain.
“I guess I did... Ouch... But I don’t feel anything. It’s ok, I’m good to go, just have to be more careful.” Angeline narrowed her eyebrows and nodded, clenching her whole face.
“Are you sure? We can stop for a while before moving on.”
“No, it’s alright, we can go.” Angeline adjusted the backpack, leaving Mary behind.
“Hold my hand, and let’s get us some rope.” Mary groped Angeline's hand.
The group reached the mountain’s top, and the ray of light guiding them became clearer than before. In front of them, a bridge connected one wall to the opposite one, sturdy, concrete-made, supported by massive pillars coming up from the rubbery floor.
“I don’t want to see any accident this time,” Colin said, the first one in line.
“Good. A tunnel would’ve been better, though,” Dalana said, walking in front of the crew, testing the bridge.
“A bridge in the wild breathes adventure, though. Tunnels are creepy, don’t you think?”
Dalana laughed, patting Colin's shoulders. “Oh, no, I don’t agree with that. I like darkness.”
Beyond the bridge, a human village waited for them. After crossing the whole extension of their path, stopping at the crater’s opposite edge, before the stairs leading down to the circling group of native humans, John raised his right hand against their advancement.
“Give me the telescope, Mary,” he said.
“Just one second, sir. Do you think they’re hostile?” Mary put her bag down, unzipping its biggest section.
“Of course they’re not. They’re celebrating,” Angeline said, siding with John, staring down at the misty disc.
“Celebrating what?” John picked up the telescope’s main body. “You see that thing in the middle of their circle? That’s the news. That’s the risk.”
At a distance, he saw something black, dark where it touched the floor, gray at the top. A tower, intricate lik
e a sculpture made from wool, its shape massive and mysterious. Before taking the first step down, John watched the human group below. Angeline sat with Mary and the others, counting how many people held hands. The village held twenty-three people.
John had a gun on his backpack. A precaution measure, as told by his superiors, in case something went wild. He led the expedition toward the circle of native humans, squinting his eyes to see through dust.
The circle’s outer ous spun in broad orbits, collecting the outer layers of dust or spreading them out and multiplying them. They propelled themselves away from the advancing humans, aware of the future, waiting for it, unwilling to touch on the will of humans.
“Stop here, everybody. They’re not greeting us,” John said, holding the gun on his chest.
“I’ll introduce myself, like planned. They’re harmless.” Angeline stepped through his hand barrier.
“Are you sure it’s safe? We can wait longer, if you wish.” He tilted his head with pressed lips.
“No, it looks good enough for me.”
Angeline left her backpack to Mary, walked toward the natives, matched the pace of their circle, and entered orbit. She touched the back of a dark-skinned woman who carried a backpack and a crown filled with honey.
Immersed in the mist, whatever rose in the circle’s middle was a mystery, but the woman opened to her and Angeline had a glimpse of plenitude. A pair of native hands offered their palms to hers, one from the dark-skinned woman, another from the brown man by her side.
She accepted their invitation and joined the circling village. Things touched her, the ou.uo adjusting to her presence. A tiny object landed on her back, may more came soon afterward. A structure gained shape from her shoulders down, something they created on her body while she herself couldn’t take her eyes out of the tower rising in front of her, now that she formed a part of the human village.
The tower had a creature's shape, one square head on top of the other, ten or so rods coming out from its waist, still not completed. Delicate, intricate, they needed so much arduous work that her mind caught an immediate message, it said that it would take long to be concluded.