by Lucia Ashta
“That’s the thing. I’m not exactly sure.”
“You’re not sure how you got past a force field and into your father’s lab?”
“As far as I can tell, I got past a force field, and a breath scanner and eye scanner.”
Dolpheus whistled and went to the window that looked out over the valley below my quarters; it felt as if one was floating, with no other structure in sight. The valley eventually climbed into a ridge that hid everything behind it. It was my slice of private paradise where even my father left me alone.
“An eye scanner too? As if a breath scanner weren’t impossible enough to beat.”
“Yeah. At least, I think so. That’s what father has let ‘leak.’ But it could be worse.”
“It could be better.”
“But it’s probably not,” we said at the same time, and Dolpheus laughed at his place next to the wall of glass. That panel cost as much as every “priceless” item contained within this room. It was one of the few advantages of being the son of a splicing empire, even though I benefited from a small fraction of what I could if father and I were on better terms. I compromised myself to secure the panel of glass; it was worth it. I’d planned a nice visit with father before asking for the funds that were well beyond what he allotted me per solar cycle. The visit didn’t turn out to be as nice as I’d predetermined, but it had, apparently, been nice enough. Father must have known it was the glass that I wanted and not time with him, yet he agreed nonetheless, surprisingly congenial.
Dolpheus swiveled to look at me again. “So? How did you do it? How’d you slip by ridiculously insurmountable defenses? I mean, how’d you get past the breath and eye scanners? The breath and eye are fully unique to each incarnation. I have no idea how you could have done it.”
I squirmed, which I never did, and Dolpheus’ eyes grew rapt, ravenous for the tale to follow. “Come on, man. Why won’t you tell me? You tell me everything. I can’t imagine how you did it. I’m all ready to be impressed.”
“That’s just the thing, Olph. You won’t be impressed. I have no good explanation for what happened, so my experience is almost completely useless.”
“No way. That can’t be. You got past the defenses, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I did. Somehow. But I have no idea how.”
“How can you have no idea how you did something?”
“Because I was right next to the force field. I’d already tried to transport, with no success. I was standing there, thinking, when one of father’s employees arrived, atop one of those bulky flying mobiles that hardly anyone uses anymore. I was just wondering whether I could force him to give me entry. But no, I couldn’t. Not without having to kill him or father finding out. And I preferred not to kill him. Then I wondered if maybe I could trail him as he gained access through the breath scanner, but then I’d have to be invisible, and how would I become invisible? Maybe I could dematerialize like I did when we transport, but I’d never tried it before. I didn’t know if I could break myself apart and put myself together on command when I was also trying to follow a specific linear path and had to do so before the force field closed behind the employee again.
“I was wondering all these things, if it was worth the risk of trying to break myself up without knowing if I could put myself back together again. As you know, it’s a challenging process, especially if one aims to get every single piece back in the right place.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t try it. Too risky. You didn’t, did you?”
“In the end, I didn’t.”
“So how did you get in? Come on, Tan. You’re the one who’s in such a hurry to get this done. Stop dragging it out.”
“I fell asleep.”
“You fell asleep?”
“I did. And when I came to again, I was in the inner lab, just where I needed to be.”
“You’re serious.”
“Regrettably.”
“And how did you get out?”
“Well, that part was easier. It seems that father believes no one can bypass his system to get in the facility, so he has no security on the way out, unlike with the royal palace where the guards check that the shape of our balls conform to their records every time we stop to breathe. I found an unused sterile uniform and put it on. It has a face mask and everything, so no one could see me. I don’t imagine anyone else was leaving work with a sterile suit on, but I didn’t know what else to do. Wait till I fell asleep again and hope that I magically woke up on the other side of the force field?”
“Did you know for sure that Brachius didn’t have any exiting security measures in place?”
“No. I didn’t. I didn’t know anything for sure. But I figured—and hoped—that I could count on his arrogance to get me out. Thankfully, it turned out that I was right.”
“And fucking lucky as shit. Lord Tanus, whose valiant heroics are already the stuff of legends, entering the most secure premises on the planet by, what you ask? By falling asleep. No way, you say ladies and gentlemen, no one breaks into a secure facility by simply falling asleep. But yes, I say to you. Lord Tanus does. Lord Tanus, who is unlike anyone else, does.”
I chuckled without mirth. “I know. Pathetic. And obviously of no help to us whatsoever right now.”
“Well, maybe not. But maybe. If you did it once, perhaps we can figure the way for you—and me—to do it again.”
“Our plans are getting worse by the minute.”
“Without a doubt.”
I joined Dolpheus. A minute of silence passed as we both looked out the window. The beasts in the treetops were at their liveliest at this time of day. Dark, scaly wings stretched nearly as wide as any tree canopy.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked me.
Without any real understanding as to how we would accomplish what we were setting out to do, we both knew my answer before it came. “Yes.”
Dolpheus grabbed a sword. We prepared to transport to the outer edge of my father’s facility, beyond the force field, where I’d slumbered my way through it the time before.
Fourteen
It had been just days since I was last here, to break into the facility the first time. Nothing had changed since then. Mature trees surrounded the sprawling building, their full canopies nearly obscuring the structure from afar. One had to know what he was looking for to find the place.
I knew exactly what I was looking for and where. Finding the place wasn’t the problem. All the rest of it was.
“So this is it, huh? Your father’s grand facility.” Dolpheus looked around, but there was nothing to see but trees and a few single-unit hover craft. “I see that your father’s employees don’t have enough imagination to transport.” He shook his head, lamenting. “What kind of scientists is your father hiring?”
“The very best, no doubt.”
Dolpheus continued to shake his head. “It truly saddens me, you know? What’s happened to people? Where did all the imagination go? Why are people so willing to believe they’re more limited than they are?”
I came up to my friend’s side, indulging his reflection. “I know. It isn’t right.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “But at least we can transport.” I smiled, trying to imbue lightness into his sudden sobriety. “And we’re quite good at it.”
Dolpheus continued to glare at the hover units as if they were the scourge which would be humanity’s ultimate downfall.
“Come on, Olph. Let’s go see what we can do about getting into this place.”
He gave regret one more second, then shook it off. “All right. So what do you propose? Should I sing you lullabies?” His grin was impish.
I wasn’t really in the mood for laughing, but I laughed anyway. His look was perfectly naughty, and I hadn’t seen mischief like this in his eyes in quite a while. “Maybe.”
“What are we going to do?” Dolpheus’ grin was gone. My father’s security measures were no joke. If we got caught, the repercussions of our actions would be severe. There could be no doubt about
that. My father didn’t take anything in life lightly. He was punctilious in maintaining the integrity of his splicing advancements, even if no one really understood what the true science of splicing was.
“I was actually just considering that maybe we should try to take down the force field. Or maybe even better, make an exception to it that allows us to enter.”
“You can’t be serious, Tan.”
“I am. We can’t try to replicate my falling asleep to get in. That would be ridiculous. It was a fluke. I don’t know what happened or how it managed to get me inside, but I have an idea. I’m thinking that within sleep, where there are even fewer defining and limiting constructs than when I’m awake, I was able to manipulate the matrix. I think that while I was asleep, I managed to alter the delineations of the force field so that it no longer excluded me. Certainly, the force field must have allowances for all the employees to cross it. I must have included myself as one of the allowable exceptions. Or something like that.”
Dolpheus’ hands came to his waist while he stared intently at the force field. It revealed itself as a shimmer in the air ahead of us. “Okay. Let’s try it. Although I do wish we had a chance to practice before taking this on with so much at stake.”
“I don’t think there’ll be any fail safes in place that would prevent modification of the force field. There are so few capable of setting one up in the first place. I don’t think father would have anticipated this contingency.”
“We didn’t anticipate this contingency,” Dolpheus muttered. But he didn’t fool me. There was a spark in his eyes that hadn’t been there moments before. He liked a good challenge as much as I did. “So what should we do? How should we start?”
“I think we should do it separately, and each try to set up both of us as exceptions to the force field. That way, all it’ll take is one to achieve success for both of us to be able to get in.”
“Okay. I like it. That way, we double our chances of getting it done.”
“Exactly.” At least figuring out this part was easy.
“And as to getting it done, we just do our best to figure it out, something we’ve never been taught to do, nor ever really thought of doing before.”
“Precisely.”
“Mmmhmm.”
Now we both stared ahead at the force field. I would have thought its magical shimmers beautiful if not for the obstacle it presented. It was keeping me from drawing one step nearer to Ilara.
“I’m thinking that we might begin just as we do when we transport,” I said. “By closing our eyes, calling in stillness, by pushing away anything extraneous that’s outside of ourselves. Then, when the moment arrives when we barely recognize ourselves as separate from that which surrounds us, then we try to access the force field.”
“At that point when our physical borders begin to fade and merge with everything that surrounds us, we reach for the force field. Before we allow ourselves to disintegrate as we do for transporting, we access it, reaching into its fabric and remolding it. When we feel most like everything else, it’s possible that the force field won’t reject us as something outside of itself. Then we can make changes from within its structure,” Dolpheus added.
“I think it might work.”
“At the very least, our plan’s starting to sound more sophisticated. Although I’m still pretty glad there’s no one here to overhear us.”
“No kidding.” I stared at the force field for another full minute before saying, “Ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be to attempt to take down a force field.”
“Good. I’m ready too.”
There was no more to say. We’d both transported together enough that we knew when to leave each other alone to do what we had to do. Even if neither one of us had ever hacked a force field before, it was similar enough to transporting to realize how important it was to proceed without disruption. Just as with transporting, when we tore apart the fabric of our beings, we were about to attempt to tear apart the fabric of something else.
The task would require our complete focus.
Hidden from sight from any employee that might come or go, standing amid the trees that lined one whole side of the force field, Dolpheus and I settled into our bones. Our legs were shoulder width apart; our weight sunk into them. Our eyes began to lose track of the details before them. When we closed them, we were one step closer to the force field, even though neither one of us had moved.
Fifteen
I hadn’t expected hacking into the force field to be easy, which was a good thing. It spared me from disappointed expectations. I had no notion of how much time had passed since Dolpheus and I’d begun this experiment, but it must have been a good while. One of my calf muscles was beginning to cramp from lack of movement.
I still hadn’t been able to fill the space usually reserved for my thoughts with the necessary nothingness and simultaneous everything. Yet I’d made progress. I’d reached out to the force field, to the threads that joined to make it what it was. It seemed receptive to my interference. It would allow me to merge with it as I needed to, I was sure of it now, or at least as sure as I could be of something that I didn’t fully understand but dove into following only my instincts.
Still, I needed a break before persisting. It was enough for now. I’d learned what the force field felt like—its particular energetic signature. Next time, I’d be able to attempt the manipulation.
The flesh of my forehead was tense from effort. I wouldn’t be able to do what I needed to do with finesse if I couldn’t relax any more than this. It wouldn’t work. There was no way to compel what naturally resisted aggression. The force field would respond more readily, more gracefully, to a gentle manipulation that more closely approximated its own energy.
Coercion had its place. It could accomplish much. However, force ripped and tore. It destroyed. What we wanted was a gentle adjustment, a plucking of sorts, where one thread was moved this way, another that, while leaving the weaving of the force field’s fabric otherwise intact.
Slowly, I began to disengage. Pulling away too quickly could cause tears in my consciousness. This was another reason why so few attempted transporting. Not only was there the risk of your body not reconfiguring properly, but there was also the peril that your mind might not reassemble the way it used to be, that you might leave a fragment of what you identified as yourself behind, to merge with the energy of something—or someone—else.
I pulled away bit by bit. I allowed myself to begin to have identifiable thoughts again. With each thought that formed in my mind, another piece of my consciousness returned. I let go of my connection to the force field—Easy, I reminded myself when I realized I was going too quickly—drop by drop, hazy fragment by hazy fragment, until I felt myself completely separate from it.
When I experienced myself almost whole, fully within myself again except for lingering thoughts of the force field and what I’d set out to accomplish, I opened my eyes. That’s when I really settled back into my roots. I came completely back into my body, experienced my upper body sunken into my lower. I saw the force field’s shimmer right in front of me—separate from me once more.
It was safe now to disengage all the way. I looked to Dolpheus to my left. He was reaching out to the force field. The outlines of his body were blurred, blending with the energy of the space that contained him. He was still there, unlike with transporting, where he totally disappeared, but he wasn’t fully within his body. His physical shell didn’t fully encapsulate his consciousness.
Disturbing him now was extremely dangerous. He could fracture, both at the mental and physical levels.
I stepped back with nearly silent footsteps. I watched where and how each boot would land among the wild grasses. When I was far enough away from Dolpheus that I didn’t think sitting would affect him, I sat. I spread my legs out in front of me, rubbed my hand across my face, and suppressed a mildly disappointed sigh. I put my hands behind me and leaned into them, tilting my head
to the sky. We must have been at it for longer than I thought: The Suxle Sun was high above, more than halfway through its eighteen-hour trajectory from horizon to horizon.
I was content to watch the leaves sing and dance above me while I allowed my brain the break it needed. I wasn’t yet fully recovered when the edges of Dolpheus’ body began to assume greater definition.
When he was fully himself again, he turned, looking for me. He came over to join me, plopping to the grass with unusual commotion. He landed with a loud exhale. Sword and knives clanked in their sheaths, even though there was little for them to clank against. His boots clonked out in front of him. He laid back, extending himself fully, arms out to the sides, legs spread wide. He sighed. “Well that was intense.”
“It was.”
“Were you able to do it?”
“No. You?”
“No. But I think I got close,” he said.
“I was close, too. I’m pretty certain I’ll be able to do it.”
“Yeah. I feel the same. I got close enough to the force field that it let me pet it.”
I smiled, still looking up at the sky. That was exactly what it felt like. A wild animal that had finally accepted me enough to allow me to touch it. If I approached it in just the right way, so that it didn’t feel threatened by me, it might let me mount it, like the wild horses that roamed outside the royal city.
“It was taking a lot out of me,” I said. “I didn’t know how much more effort it would take before I could get far enough to manipulate the fabric of the force field. I decided I could use a rest before continuing.”
“Good idea. I don’t know if I would’ve stopped if I hadn’t sensed you stopping too. But now that we have, I’m glad for it. I’m exhausted.”
We watched clouds that had formed after we honed into the force field cross our slice of sky. They were tinged red and gray against a rapidly darkening horizon.
“A storm’s coming,” I said.
Storms on O brewed speedily and ferociously. A clear sky could shift in what seemed like only minutes. The sky was blackening, almost to the point of obscuring the Suxle Sun, the brightest of O’s two suns.