The Esoteric Design

by A. R. Crebs

  “Yeah,” she breathed a laugh. “Maybe.” She looked for his nametag and frowned when she saw none.

  Quickly, the man’s hand slapped the doors before they could close. He leaned in, and Aria noticed for the first time how outrageously tall he was.

  “Euclid.” He held out a hand.

  “Aria,” she stated numbly, her hand shaking his. Tiny electric prickles surged through her body causing her to shiver. Static electricity maybe?

  “Ah.” He smiled and poked the side of his head as he leaned back. “Aria. I’ll remember that.” Putting on his charm, he stared into her eyes as the doors closed in front of him.

  ‘What was that all about?’ She shyly smiled, her face burning with embarrassment. Aria looked over her shoulders and sighed, relieved that the elevator was empty. Goosebumps covered the woman’s arms as a sudden chill washed over her. In a flustered state, she hurriedly pushed the button to the elevator as if expecting it to go faster to the top floor. Glancing down, she noticed the sandwich still in her hand.

  “Damn,” she cursed, embarrassed that she had been holding onto it during the entire encounter with the dreamy man. Raising her wrist, the optical clock revealed that she had less than five minutes to get to the President’s office. She hastily shoved the sandwich into her mouth.

  Seeing that James Clarke wasn’t in his office, Aria let out a sigh of relief. Closing the heavy oak door–a luxury–she happily took her seat and nibbled on her lunch. Usually, James was early, and no matter what time she got there, she was always late. Only moments after did the door open and close behind the woman.

  “I see you beat me,” Mr. Clarke’s voice erupted into the room. He came around and sat in his leather chair, twisting to face Aria. He saw her quickly swallow a bite of her sandwich. “Glad someone was able to get lunch. I had left mine at home and ventured to the cafeteria in hopes of finding a replacement, but alas, they only had tuna salad.” He sighed and watched as Aria quickly popped the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth. She swallowed hard. “I see you got turkey.”

  “Sorry. Stole it from Troy, actually.” She ran her tongue over her teeth, hoping there were no food remnants.

  Mr. Clarke softly laughed at her. “Your face is a little red, Aria.”

  “Oh?” She returned a nervous laugh. “Sunburn, I guess.”

  “Of course.” He folded his hands, silence following for a second.

  “You wanted to see me, right?” she asked nervously.

  “I did. It’s about the mission from yesterday,” he began.

  “Should Troy be here, too?”

  “No, you can brief him later. He’s got training today. And since he was late last week for Delta instruction, he’s got new recruit duty,” the President explained. Aria inwardly smiled, glad that she no longer was required to do such tedious tasks. She felt for Troy, she really did. Training new recruits was like scrubbing toilets. However, Aria was used as a backup from time to time and had covered for Troy more than once due to his hangovers.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t buy him lunch tomorrow,’ she thought.

  James’ voice interrupted the woman’s thoughts. “It seems that more bases around the world have been attacked, four more since yesterday to be exact.”

  “Survivors?” Aria asked.

  “Hardly any.” He shook his head solemnly. “But what is strange is that nothing momentous appears to be missing. Just some ammunition and a few weapons are absent from the bases, but as for intelligence, everything remains in location.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I can’t make any sense of it either, and every attack seems to involve these ‘aliens.’ Panic is spreading in some of the eastern city-states as the reports have been leaked to the public. We can’t have the same thing happen here. The last thing we need is a worldwide panic involving aliens and world domination.”

  “Have you told the other bases to prepare the EMPs?”

  “I have. Some have EMP arsenals prepared. Bio-Tech’s EMP stocks have nearly tripled overnight. They’ve become an extremely valuable commodity. To think, there hasn’t been much of a use for those things lately. But some bases still refuse, lacking the proper static protection for their software. We’ve got teams of scientists working up new EMP arsenal recipes and military units on patrol to test them out if they happen to run into any more of those things.”

  Aria’s eyes narrowed, not much liking the idea of sending more people out to those dangerous bases, especially since she and Troy could have just been lucky. They still knew nothing about those creatures.

  “I know that look, Aria.” He pointed at her. She raised her gaze to meet his. “I have approved Dr. Camery’s request.”

  “What?!” Aria nearly stood from her chair but halted as he held up a hand to motion her to a stop.

  “I believe it is necessary to gather more information on those…things. He won’t be at the base due to safety regulations, but his position is set up where the disturbance was initially located before the attack took place.”

  “You mean 1,500 meters off the camp? Where those things appeared to come from?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many men did you send with him?”

  “He has a small unit.”

  “How small?” Her questions were rather gruff.

  “Five.”

  “Damn it.” Aria glanced to the side, her hand resting on her forehead.

  “Aria, we do not have the manpower to send out for something like this. Most of our units are currently located in Russite, keeping a close eye on Cherno.”

  “Bullshit,” she spat.

  “He insisted on leaving immediately. We’ve already lost too many men at that base. We have to think of keeping our own base safe as well. We’re already stretched thin.”

  “And now you’ll lose one of the best scientists that Bio-Tech has.”

  “They have a tight timeframe. If anything unusual happens, they are to remove themselves ASAP. Camery is a top priority.” Aria opened her mouth to protest. “Don’t argue with me Aria! I have sent teams all over the world to investigate the current situations. We have a worldwide crisis here! The attacks all occurred within hours of one another. Tell me this–how is it possible that one army could move that fast?”

  “They are not an army; they are monsters!” Aria shouted.

  “Rubbish! “

  Aria dramatically rolled her eyes.

  “This is all rubbish! Monsters, aliens! What we have is a large-scale military operation that has created some mutagenic biotechnology. They have sent these animals out to attack our bases.”

  “Equipped with weaponry? When was the last time you saw a cat use a gun?” Aria sarcastically asked.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what to do about it, Aria! I was raised in this military the very same as you were! We must think logically and treat all threats the same way. We cannot simply run from these things. We can either lose some men during the research and eventually find a weakness to these bastards, or we can continue to hide from them and wait for them to attack our cities and lose masses. Which do you prefer?”

  Aria did not meet his gaze. He was right, and she knew better than to argue with him. “You haven’t seen these things. You had better take my word for it. You WILL need more men than that. If you’re going to do this, then do it right. You had better hope Dr. Camery comes up with a solution…if he survives this mission.” She stood from her chair. “I know you don’t want to sacrifice any more than you have to, but putting small units like that out on the field without backup will only kill more in the long run.”

  He gave her a cool stare.

  “Is that all?” she sighed.

  “You’re on call,” he simply stated, tearing his gaze away from her. Aria’s eyes widened. “Troy and Gavin, too. You’re to alert them of this. You are at my beck and call. If anything happens, I’ll ship you out. If you want things done right, do them yourself, correct?”

  Ari
a’s expression tightened. A battle waged within her momentarily as she debated whether or not to argue, but instead she saluted roughly. “Born a soldier, die as one.” Her words were like poison. People like her, orphans created by war, were taken in and raised as killers and strategists. She was a soldier for life. She had no freedom. She had no choice. Her life belonged to the Corporation. She knew one day she’d die in the heat of battle, but she expected it to be against humans, not monsters. Aria fed the man a distasteful glare, turned about-face and rushed from his office, slamming the door behind her.

  The President sat in his chair. His fingers laced through one another, resting in front of his face. His eyes settled on a small image on his desk–a snapshot of him as a younger man in military dress posed with a little girl with black hair and green eyes. They stood in the deteriorated streets; a military helmet rested on the child’s head as she grinned happily.

  “Don’t think that the orphans of Bio-Tech are not loved by their father,” he softly spoke to himself.

  “This is just amazing!” Dr. Camery gawked at the free-floating boulder before him. He eagerly touched it, pulling as hard as he could. “Simply marvelous!”

  “This is weird.” One of the soldiers poked the stone with the barrel of his gun. It sat at shoulder height and was unmoving, sitting atop thin air as if it were sitting on the ground.

  “It won’t budge!” The professor pushed down on the rock. He glanced at the debris floating all around. Tiny specks of sand and pebbles were suspended much the same as the giant rock, the sharp edges glistening in the harsh desert sunlight. He shuffled to the side and laughed. The boulder was neatly bisected as if cut by a knife. Feeling the smooth texture, the scientist couldn’t contain his excitement, the inside appearing to be nearly polished. “It seems like a disturbance in gravity.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” a second soldier chimed in, warily watching the base from a distance.

  “Never in my life! But…I’ve read about things like this before, but it doesn’t quite make sense. The stories read more like science fiction.” The doctor stuck his arm across the boulder, reaching from one end to the other as if expecting his arm to disappear into thin air at a certain point.

  “Science fiction?” the first soldier asked.

  “Time travel. It was something about portals and space-time continuum–objects moving from one location to another through time. They get disrupted visually and materially. It mentioned spaceships and satellites that traveled through wormholes and came back as fused matter. In one story, all crew members had merged with the actual mass of the ship. Everyone died, of course. Gruesome I’d imagine. In another case, a man claimed he had traveled through time and saw the apocalypse. He then went back through time to warn everyone only to later find out that the actual events he had experienced occurred thousands of years ago. He died hours later; his insides were somehow flipped around. Tragic, really.”

  “So…this rock went through some type of time travel?”

  Camery chuckled quietly. “Not necessarily. You see, the space-time continuum involves more than the three dimensions you all know of; it also deals with a fourth dimension, hypothetically–time. This is like a disturbance in frequencies. Perhaps, these creatures are from another dimension in the same location, and they have somehow disrupted the frequencies to cross over to our plane. They are able to travel quickly over great distances through the fourth dimension, possibly like a wormhole. If I review the tapes and keep a record of the attack locations and times, perhaps I can run a few Euclidean tests. Or maybe…hmm, now that would be interesting.” The doctor had been looking at the ground, an item catching his attention. He leaned down, his fingers trailing through the dirt, and picked up a small device. “Now…how would a Faze Shield get out here?”

  “Those things had them on,” the captain informed.

  “That’s right. Aria had mentioned something like that. Why would these creatures have one of my creations?”

  The soldiers glanced nervously at one another.

  “I don’t know. Why would they have one of your devices?”

  “Faze Shields…of course! They use frequencies! Perhaps they were using something like this to disrupt the frequencies between the dimensional fields!” The doctor glanced at the rock and set the device atop it. “Faze Shields use high frequencies to create vibrations. They demolish bullets, and certain types are strong enough to obliterate heavy arsenal warfare before the enemy ever hits his target. I would have just assumed they stole them from the soldiers to protect themselves. But in order to disturb the worldly frequencies, you would need something much greater, something to amplify the Faze Shield’s vibrations.” Snapping his fingers together, the scientist exclaimed enthusiastically, “Of course! The beryllium skeletal structures of the creatures could possibly amplify the vibrations. But would it be enough to disrupt the dimensional fields alone?”

  A slight tremor shook the ground.

  “Perhaps if I turn this on….” Camery activated the device. It didn’t move or make any sound.

  “Do you feel that?” one soldier whispered to another.

  “Those vibrations?” the captain replied.

  “Well, it’s not vibrating yet. How about one of you take a shot at it and see if you can’t kick it up,” the scientist suggested, oblivious to the quaking soldiers around him.

  One man obediently raised his weapon and aimed.

  “Wait a minute. Are you trying to reactivate the portal through vibrations?” the captain questioned, bewildered by Camery’s intentions.

  “Precisely. Exciting isn’t it? I hypothesize that the high frequencies may have a particular effect on these boulders. It’s worth a try, right?” Dr. Camery smiled, crow’s feet marking the corners of his eyes.

  “Not really. You open that portal, what do you think will happen?”

  “Guys, do you feel that?!” The soldier who had asked the same question before was now frantic, stumbling over his own two feet.

  “What’s going on?!” The captain turned his attention to his fellow soldier.

  The militant screamed as the ground opened up from beneath him, rocks splintering and rising into the air. He floated among the debris, shrieking in fear.

  “What the hell?!” another soldier gasped.

  They all watched in horror as the man’s body distorted, his bones breaking and twisting in all directions. A low humming sounded; the vibrations created a static effect in the area around the soldier. A wave of snowy disturbance blurred the scene before them, and in an instant, three masses shot from the distorted mess, and the landscape immediately solidified. The man was free-floating, much like the boulder a few meters away. He was a tangled mess; sharp rocks merged with his body. Some stones cut all the way through, his clothing melding with the mineral, almost like camouflage. His skin was specked with pebbles. One point near his shoulder was invisible, his arm protruding from the opposite side right beside the other.

  “What the–?” The captain of the squad gawked in disgust. His question was followed by the screams of his comrades.

  Three terrifying beasts were clawing and tearing away at the other soldiers. One easily clamped a clawed hand over a soldier’s neck and clenched its fingers, nearly decapitating the man. Another secured its toothy jaws onto a comrade’s face. The third soldier fought with one of the beasts, shooting and stabbing the monster.

  “Damn it!” The captain moved. Firing a whole clip into the beast, he could do nothing but watch as it slowly tore his friend apart limb by limb. It wasn’t long before the three monsters turned their attention to the doctor, all saturated in red.

  “Run! Get out of here!” the captain shouted.

  Dr. Camery was frozen to his place, watching the horror scene unfold before his eyes. The captain stilled his actions as he saw the doctor wasn’t paying any attention to the monsters around him but was looking past the soldier, wide-eyed. Static charged behind the officer, causing all his hair to st
and on end. Disrupting the portal that held the broken dead soldier’s suspended body, the landscape seemed to swirl open.

  “Impossible,” the doctor whispered to himself.

  The creatures crawled slowly toward the men, hissing, and drooling. Their talons scraped against the sand as they neared.

  “S-sir?” the captain stuttered to the scientist. He was answered by a quiet giggle sounding from the portal, one that reminded him of his own daughter. He couldn’t even get a scream out before he was torn to pieces and fell to the ground.

  Camery felt ill, bile rising in his throat. The creatures were centimeters from his face, smelling horrible like rotten meat. One opened its jaws; drool dangled from its fleshy gums. Camery looked past them at the new intruder, absolutely flabbergasted as to how any of this was possible. The innocent giggle sounded once again, and tears dropped from the scientist’s eyes.

  Aria stumbled as she trudged through the door to Chester’s Bar and Grille, the fluorescent lighting playing against her blameless features. She held a slight pout as she slowly regained her balance and composure.

  “Oh, man!” Gavin laughed to himself, watching the woman stomp over to his table with a couple books in her hands. She slammed the items roughly onto the tabletop with a loud smack and dropped ever so gracefully into the seat opposite of him. “Look what the cat dragged in.” Gavin rested his chin in his hand. “I almost left, thinking you wouldn’t show.”

  “It’s only…1900,” Aria murmured. “You won’t be leavin’ anytime swoon.” She eyeballed him and caught herself. “Soon,” she corrected.

  “Have you been drinking, Miss Aria?” the man questioned her, the smirk on his face ever so present.

  “Don’t you…patronize me, Gavin.” She pointed a finger accusingly.

  “Whatcha’ got there?” He glanced at one of her larger books.