Martin had joined him at the back of the natural cave and he still stared at Alexia, probably amazed from meeting the Citadel’s star child. He then said “good to see you again, boss.”
“It’s good to see you too,” Joel said as he crossed his arms and looked at Ethan for any indication of him reaching for his wrist mounted computer. He figured he could run to them and knock the old man out before he did something stupid. Without losing focus on the potential threat, he asked “did he do anything out of the ordinary while we were out?”
“Not really,” Martin replied then a grinding sound behind them made them turn. Joel realized Solis was on his way down which was a good thing, as the Citpol officers should stand by if Alexia’s attempt to reason with Ethan didn’t work out. They both then turned back and Martin added “he just sat there in silence, almost like he was meditating.”
“Yeah, maybe recalling all the shitty things he’s done and how the Troika is going to deal with him,” Joel said.
Alexia still talked to Ethan while Joel felt like it had been too long already. Luckily, the elevator mesh doors behind them opened and Solis, Stone and Diaz stepped out, pointing their guns at them. For a moment he was alarmed as it was Alexia who blocked their line of sight to Ethan but then the Director stood in front of her, extending his arms up to protect her as he shouted “no, stop!”
Solis took two steps, forcing Martin and Joel to move aside, his sidearm still aimed at the disgraced Director then he said with that commanding voice “you’re done, Sommers. Hand over the computer you’re using to control the daemon.”
Joel didn’t like the whole standoff and hoped it would be over soon before Alexia got hurt. Ethan took a step back, placing some distance between them and the Citpol officers and forcing Alexia to move back. Then they took another step and another. Joel then realized they were walking backwards, getting too close to the chrome sphere. Some more steps and they would have no choice but to stop backing up unless they went around the steel platform.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Ethan said with a certain exhaustion in his voice. “The Troika doesn’t know what it’s doing.”
“I don’t care,” Solis warned again. “Stop and hand over the computer or else we’re going to shoot it off your arm.”
Alarmed that he was losing sight of Alexia as she walked back behind Ethan, Joel sidestepped to get a better view just in time to see her heel hit the steel platform under the portal. She looked down to check what she had stepped on then back up, as Ethan turned around, grabbed her patchwork shirt by the collar and pushed her up. It took an instant to register in his mind what was going on, then disbelief made way for rage as her body was swallowed by the massive chrome sphere.
Not quite aware of himself anymore, Joel ran towards the Director and pulled him away from the sphere to force him to look at him. On his face, there was a disturbing smile as if he was at peace. Joel gathered as much strength as he could on his right fist and landed a blow on Ethan’s face, making a sickening noise and sending the man who was twice his age to the floor. A sharp pain ran through his arm then some clarity returned to him, as he wondered if he had broken a bone. Then he looked up at the sphere, his instincts calling for him to dive into it in some irrational attempt to rescue Alexia but in the end he had to accept it was too late. She was gone and there was nothing he could do about it.
Joel turned and saw Solis approach Ethan, holding handcuffs and ready to put them on him. Behind him, Stone stood guard while Diaz had dropped her carbine in disbelief. Perhaps some of that maternal instinct the middle-aged officer had shown back in the reactor chamber of Francisco Citadel had remained and like him, cursed herself for failing to protect Alexia. Martin stood there in shock, apparently unsure of how to react.
Then for an instant, there was a blinding flash coming from behind Joel, its source apparently the sphere and the strong shockwave of an explosion sent him flying towards the back of the cave. His ears still ringing, he looked around and saw the lights had gone off in the reactor chamber, replaced by pulsing emergency red lights by the elevator and on the back walls. The ringing subsided slowly and was replaced by a loud alarm siren. A blurry veil on his eyes went away and Joel saw how the once perfect sphere had changed. Its surface was no longer smooth but instead, it spun much slower than it had before, as spikes rose from it and rifts opened. Some of the steel railing on top of it which Joel had always thought of as giant metallic fingers were cut down and the places where the unstable construct had touched melted down to the floor.
After the effects of the explosion let go of his senses, Joel realized what was happening to the gateway. Still focused on it, he didn’t notice Martin had reached him then immediately ran his arm around his back to prop him up on his feet.
“The terminal,” Joel mumbled.
“What?” Martin screamed over the maddening noise of the alarm.
“The terminal,” Joel insisted as loud as he could while weakly pointing at the ancient computer station where before, he had read the secrets of the Hermes Initiative. Martin nodded in acknowledgement and helped him there, as Joel saw the three Citpol grab Ethan, who appeared to be unconscious and take him to the back near the elevator.
Eventually, they made it there and Martin helped Joel sit on the stool in front of the workstation. Joel brought up the citadel status screen and his breath quickened in horror when it confirmed what was going on.
“The portal is collapsing,” he said when his voice had returned to him.
“What do you mean it’s collapsing?” Martin asked in disbelief.
“Here,” Joel said, pointing at the screen, as Solis and Stone approached them. “Its effective output has dropped about 10% in the last minute or so, it won’t stay up for much longer.”
“You have to fix it,” Solis commanded.
“You don’t understand,” Joel said at the top of his lungs, making his voice heard over the alarm siren. “No one controls it, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Sir, we have to warn people on the surface,” Stone yelled.
“It’s just like Francisco Citadel,” Joel explained. “Once the power source shuts down, the capacitors will empty their charge within a few minutes. After that…” he stopped when the inevitability of death overwhelmed his thoughts.
“Was it him?” Solis asked, the fool still resisting to accept they were all going to die within the next hour and motioning back at Ethan. But there had not been enough time for him to key in the directives on his wrist mounted terminal. The explosion had come seconds after Alexia was sucked into the anomaly.
It was inevitable at that point. The Citadel was about to fall and once more, a large percentage of the remaining humans on the planet were going to simply go away. Panicking, Joel rested his elbows on the terminal keyboard and held his head looking down. Maybe he could run up and somehow make his way to sublevel three. Maybe he could reach his parents and see them one last time.
“Joel, look,” Martin said while shaking his shoulder. Joel looked up to face his coworker, the guy he had spent the last few years with in the solitude of the steel cube where he had wasted his days away. Martin was facing the gateway so Joel followed and in there, he saw the sphere was melting.
It’s the only way his mind could grasp what he was seeing. The exotic matter that composed the once perfect sphere and which his auglens had failed to identify so many times was flowing down to the steel platform underneath. Joel figured perhaps that’s what happened when fourth-dimensional anomalies in space-time shut down and stood up, ready to move away. After all, if the whole of the massive sphere liquefied, it could flood the chamber. Then again, he reminded himself even running from that phenomenon in the end was pointless.
But the flowing stopped. And now the pool of molten chrome moved, leaving behind a trail of red-hot steel. When it touched the damp earth of the cave floor, water in the soil evaporated with a faint hiss and a small mist rose from underneath it. Once a few feet away fr
om the chaotic blob of the gateway, the moving chrome rose up in the perfect shape of a cylinder and after a little over five feet or so, it contracted to take a human shape. A nude woman made of quicksilver now stood there, much like a statue of molten metal with long hair that floated in place by force of some imaginary breeze. Despite its empty eye sockets and neutral demeanor, Joel recognized Alexia right away.
“Alexia?” he shouted over the alarm. The chrome statue turned to face him then shook its head slightly to answer with a negative and it looked away to walk towards the Citpol officers. Panicked, they opened fire. Bullets went through it then hit the back of the cave, causing portions of the liquid metal to separate from the moving statue, float there for a couple seconds then rejoin it. Then it lounged towards them, nimbly covering the space of several feet in an instant and with a quick motion of its right arm, cut through the assault weapons, leaving behind red hot hunks of melting steel the officers threw on the floor. Solis appeared to understand he was facing an enemy too powerful for small arms and ignored the sidearm still holstered in his belt.
The disturbing apparition focused its sights on Ethan who had regained consciousness and lay on the floor looking back at it with pure joy in his face. It raised its right arm and small blobs of quicksilver flew up. Joel followed one of them and saw it hit the alarm horns attached to the wall then the siren stopped. Solis moved away to clear the path for the entity to reach Ethan and his officers did the same. Carefully, Joel approached from the side.
With slow, calculated motions the nude statue of the woman who looked like Alexia reached down to hold Ethan by the collar of his denim shirt and rose him up. The old man smiled then said “you made it to the other side! Thank God, Aurora, you made it!”
The living statue which turned out to be Aurora observed him for a moment then she spoke through the hacked alarm horns, her voice vaguely resembling Alexia’s but laced with fury, echoing loudly through the cavern and said “now I understand the purpose of the Controller Program, Ethan Sommers.”
“Yes,” Ethan nodded through tears. “Yes, you’re the last human being and you made it to the other side. My daughter. My Aurora.”
“You don’t need to explain yourself anymore,” Aurora’s voice raged through the loudspeakers and yet her lips didn’t move. “But I’ll still take your life.”
Ethan’s joy transitioned to shocked disbelief then he looked down to see the left arm of the chrome statue had solidified into a sharp point and had gone through his chest. Aurora let go of him and the former Director of Control Administration fell to the floor, dead. Blood coated her arm then fell off of it, leaving no trace behind.
The manifestation of Aurora looked at him for a few seconds, as if choosing to stand there until the last signs of life had left Ethan’s body then it turned around and walked towards the sphere, ignoring everyone else in the natural cave.
Joel realized she was about to leave and shouted “wait! What about us?”
Aurora stopped and looked to the side to face him then her voice screamed from the overhead speakers “you could not begin to comprehend the resources that need to be consumed in order to keep the Citadels running. Once I leave, I will allow the gateway to shut down.”
“Oh yeah? Try me,” Joel insisted as he wondered if she meant all remaining Citadels were shutting down at that very moment.
“You may understand one day but not now. Trust me when I tell you, the combined lives of all remaining humans in this infradomain are insignificant in comparison and not worth preserving.”
“What?” Joel asked, disturbed. “You’re just going to let us die, then? Do you realize just how much you sound like Ethan Sommers right now? The man who killed your sister? This is wrong. This is evil.”
The chrome statue that resembled Aurora approached Joel menacingly, forcing him to take a step back to keep it from touching him.
“I come back from a domain beyond space and time where your morality framework does not apply,” she said. “The knowledge I have acquired all points to a null justification for the existence of sentient life in this infradomain when you factor in the cost for preserving it.”
“Infradomain?” Joel asked, struggling to keep up. “You mean, this universe?”
“Correct.”
Joel looked at the living statue in horror. Its face was reflecting metal that showed no emotion, accentuated by its empty eye sockets.
“Why did you come back then?” Joel asked.
“To fulfill my purpose,” she answered as she turned back to look at Ethan’s body.
“Aurora,” Joel said. She turned back to face him. “We deserve a chance.”
“You don’t,” she replied unemotionally. “Sophia was right. Humankind is a plague. In the short time your civilization lasted, you nearly destroyed your own planet. As long as the gateway remains open and your species exists, there will be damage of exponential scale the more the infection is allowed to grow.”
“You’re such a hypocrite,” Joel remarked. Martin looked at him in disbelief.
“What the hell, man? Don’t piss off the omnipotent being!” the coworker said.
“How so?” Aurora asked with a hint of intrigue in the voice thundering out of the speakers.
“You wouldn’t be in that position to judge us without human civilization,” Joel said, holding his arm in pain. “The gateway wouldn’t have existed without the technology that came from us. So what if a few trees were cut down in the process?”
Slowly, Aurora approached Joel as she spoke through the loudspeakers and said “the energy powering the citadels comes from an extraneous domain. Its presence here speeds up entropy and with it, the death of this infradomain.” He tried to step back, away from her but found he was cornered against the computer terminal. She then raised a chrome hand and reached for his face. Bracing for the searing heat that had melted steel before, Joel closed his eyes and hoped he would die quickly. But her touch didn’t burn and instead was cold and slick.
“I still don’t understand what Alexia saw in you,” Aurora said through the deep rumble of the loudspeakers.
“That’s because you’re not human, Aurora,” Joel said. “Never have been, never will be. How easy it is for you to judge us. First from Alexia’s mind and now as… whatever it is you’ve become.”
The impossible quicksilver apparition let go of him and turned around. While it observed the unstable portal construct in silence, Joel faced Martin who had stepped away and joined the officers by the elevator. He was attempting to open its doors but the controls appeared to be unresponsive. Somehow, however, Joel felt he was getting through to Aurora.
“I was human,” the speakers grumbled while Aurora still faced the gateway. “Twice actually. At least as close as one can be.”
“How was it?” Joel asked, relieved that at least she was open to reason. “What did you learn?”
“I learned fleeting happiness followed by sustained pain. Loss. Fear of death. And the desperate search for a purpose,” she said as she turned back to answer Joel. “To allow mankind to exist is to curse this infradomain to be consumed by your unending thirst for resources. And to curse you as a whole to an unending existence of uncertainty. There is no logical reason for your existence. I trust shutting down the gateway is an act of mercy on your species.”
With the corner of his eye, Joel saw the capacitor charge had gone down to 40 percent. It wouldn’t be long before the barrier out there collapsed and irreversible damage was done to the Citadel. Aurora looked down with a melancholic expression, perhaps recalling these lives she had lived as a human. Even back when she had first made contact with him in the Francisco Citadel reactor chamber, Joel was not sure what she was. His impression of her went from being a complex artificial intelligence to an aspect of Alexia’s mind, then finally a stand-alone consciousness trapped inside her head. And now there she stood in her new form, borrowing exotic matter from the Celestial Gateway. Bothering to appear there only to kill Ethan with her
own hands when he would have died anyway. Just like Joel was about to, along with the rest of the human race.
“Then help us,” Joel finally said.
She looked back at him and asked, “how?”
“It’s all we’ve ever known, as a species, you know?” Joel said, pleading with nothing else to lose. “It’s how we survive. Consuming resources, competing for them. You’ve been out there for so long, maybe you learned something we haven’t.”
Aurora observed him with curiosity, much like an entomologist would have looked at a colony of ants that perhaps exhibited more cleverness than they had a right to. Then she took a step towards Joel and placed a chrome hand on the computer terminal next to him.
“It has been two hundred and forty-six years since the Celestial Gateway was opened,” she announced, her voice echoing through the walls of the natural cave. Joel looked at her arm and noticed some of the liquid chrome matter was spilling over and going inside the computer as if being absorbed into it. “The knowledge you want has been embedded in this terminal. You have twenty years,” then she turned and walked back to the gateway which slowly was beginning to regain its perfect spherical shape.
“Twenty years? What do you mean?” Joel asked.
She stopped for a moment and without looking back said “I will force the gateway to stay active for twenty years. If you haven’t used the knowledge I just gave you to learn to live without it by then, I won’t be responsible for your extinction.”
Twenty years, Joel took a moment to let that information sink in as he looked down at the terminal screen which showed the capacitor matrix slowly recharging back to full. He then returned his attention to Aurora just in time to see the chrome statue rise up then rejoin the sphere which at that point appeared to be back to its perfect shape.
After she was gone, artificial lighting returned to the reactor chamber. Joel stood there, astonished at what had just happened. Without notice, Martin hugged him from the side, making him snap out of it.
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