The Minotaurs of Maze World

by Eddie Patin

  Gate. Portal. Whatever.

  The room wasn’t very large. Chad and Melinda were set up in the back on the left, and the floor sloped down to the far wall—toward the gate—with three rows of technician terminals and equipment along the way that reminded Chad of a college classroom. There were three long rows of desks, with a central walkway down the middle. The difference between this deep, underground science lab and a small university classroom was that up at the front of the class—where a professor might normally stand at a whiteboard or something—there was only the gate...

  Portal Zero.

  When Chad was a kid, he'd watched a movie called Stargate. That movie had a huge portal mechanism with a great, big runway and a large, rotating ring-thing full of Egyptian glyphs. Whenever the characters—the soldiers and such—walked into the portal, it was a huge deal: walking up that runway, rolling up their massive pallets of equipment...

  There was certainly no shortage of techno-stuff in this room, but this place and its coming big test was rather lackluster compared to Hollywood’s version. The portal itself was a large ring about seven feet in diameter, just like in the movies, made of steel or some sort of metal alloy, but there were no fancy glyphs or runes or other decorations to make it look magical and cool.

  It was just a big metal ring. Columns and cases of electrical equipment and sensors were attached to it on the outside of both sides, bolted onto the heavy steel frame. There wasn’t any sort of magical field inside, humming and buzzing and waiting. There was no black hole, or even a fancy, twisting aperture. On the other side of the ring was just the back wall of the room, about two feet behind it: a solid concrete wall painted UEA baby blue. A huge array of wiring was connected to the hardware on the outside of the ring, all neatly gathered into two thick tentacles of Cat 5 Ethernet cables, power cables, and other wires that Chad didn’t recognize at a glance. The bundles were zip-tied together every twelve inches or so and led to the various technicians' desks and terminals. Both of the thick, collected cordage bundles were attached firmly to the concrete floor with black duct tape.

  There was no Hollywood bullshit—no regular pointless beeping machines, no holograms, no big laser maps of space with radar stuff or whatever...

  It was just the gate ... and a bunch of computers.

  That wasn't to say that it wasn’t impressive...

  This was definitely the first real, live inter-dimensional portal Chad had ever seen—the only portal he’d ever seen that wasn’t on TV or in a video game.

  If it worked...

  Not actually live, Chad corrected himself in his head.

  “Alright, ready to do the intro segment?” Melinda asked.

  “Sure.”

  The senior anchor loosened up her shoulders. Chad looked around at the scientists, all calmly working on their computers, occasionally getting up to talk to a neighbor nearby, or the project director, standing at the back of the room behind them. Four UEA soldiers stood quietly near the entrance of the room behind the news team, two on either side of the sliding glass door, each holding what Chad assumed was some sort of machine gun. They were dressed in blue-grey jumpsuits, wore some sort of ... torso armor full of pouches and gear, and had the UEA-colored pale blue helmets on their heads.

  Melinda took a breath and smiled. “Are my tits okay?”

  Chad’s eyes glanced down then up again. He nodded, and signaled her to go.

  The anchorwoman stood smiling for a while after the red light turned on, then came alive with energy.

  “This is Melinda Ballard reporting live at the UEA’s Science Research Lab under the UEA Office in Geneva, Switzerland. Today we’ll be reporting from the UEA buildings of both Switzerland and from the UEA Headquarters in Manhattan, New York, because scientists and organizations all around the world are coming together for the first ever test of the newest technology to advance humanity as a whole. That’s right—I’m talking about the UEA’s new Dimension Drive technology, ‘Dim Drive’ for short.

  “Behind me is a team of talented UEA technicians all under the direction of UEA Science Director Dr. Stefan Freudenstein, one of Germany’s top scientists, who has been working on this technology for the last two years." Melinda smirked. "And what is Dim Drive you ask? When faced with the irrefutable evidence of man-made climate change and resource scarcity of the twentieth century, as proven by UEA and United Nations scientists of the time, ten years ago the newly formed United Earth Alliance announced its United Pilgrimage Initiative, declaring its focus on finding habitable worlds for humankind and the development of fast and reliable deep space travel to get us there...”

  Chad watched the camera display intently and looked up when one of the scientists walked by. The man looked directly into the camera, and his white lab coat glared in the lights for just an instant.

  A little messy for the take, but no big deal.

  Everything was going fine.

  Irrefutable evidence? Chad thought. Those were strong words. Was that right? He shrugged. Well, Melinda would know, he supposed. The young man had grown up hearing about global warming and humans raping the world and all that all his life...

  “Now,” Melinda went on to say, performing flawlessly for the camera, “the science team is getting everything squared away, and the actual test will take place at any moment! Past the desks behind me is the gate itself, appropriately termed ‘Portal Zero’, which will—hopefully—create a direct means of instantaneous transportation to the other identical gate waiting for us in New York!”

  Melinda paused, smiling and nodding her head at the camera for a while. Chad looked down at his laptop screen, and saw that one of the anchors back at the studio in Los Angeles was asking her a question. He had the volume turned low so that it wouldn’t become a distraction, since there was a bit of a transmission delay.

  “Yes, indeed,” Melinda suddenly said with a smile. She pivoted to the side a little, allowing the shot---as Chad had set it up—to focus more on the portal behind her. There were three small, metal crates sitting on the concrete floor close to Portal Zero, one of them perforated with dozens of holes designed to allow airflow. “The test will consist of not only connecting the two portals, but the scientists will also be passing those three crates through Portal Zero to reappear in New York so that the science team there can check for any flaws in transmission. One of the crates is full of fresh, organic food, another is holding the refrigerated heart of a pig to study the portal’s effect on viable organ transplants, and the other...” She paused, stepping back fully into the shot and giving the camera a totally goober smile. “...holds a puppy!”

  The anchor woman stood smiling and nodding for several seconds, then flashed a big smile and spoke again.

  “It certainly is! He’s a young Jack Russel Terrier, and he’s so cute! We’ll all be rooting for little Max, for sure!”

  With that, Melinda stood for a while smiling then turned away to the scientists.

  Chad heard the faint voice of the anchor back at home on his laptop. “We now go to our own correspondent, Katherine Hall who's live in New York, to see the other side of the Dim Drive Portal Zero. What’s happening over there, Katherine?”

  “How long, guys?” Melinda asked the group of technicians with a low, disinterested voice.

  Chad heard the correspondence with Katherine playing faintly on his laptop while he thought about the pack of smokes in his jacket pocket. They were saying something about not doing a smaller trial because of ‘critical mass’ or something...

  The director’s voice spoke up from the back of the room, thick with his German accent. “It looks like we’ll be ready in about twenty minutes, Ms. Ballard, give or take.”

  To let the news team create their own lighting, Freudenstein had turned off the fluorescent ceiling lights at the back of the room. The imposing man now stood in the dark near the soldiers, watching his team work with his arms crossed. The senior scientist’s face was severe, and he was thin and lean. The small spectacles
perched on his nose reflected the light of a dozen computer screens.

  “Should I stop it?” Chad asked Melinda, who was taking another sip from her water bottle, being careful not to move her hair or mess up her makeup.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’ll start it up again in fifteen minutes or so. That was good.”

  Chad was dying for a cigarette, but he knew that he couldn’t smoke down here, and wouldn’t be taking the lift back to the surface any time soon. Instead, he pulled out his vape, pressing the LED-lit button, and took a long drag on the propylene glycol smoke that tasted like caramel cappuccino. The device sizzled, and he blew a thick cloud of vapor toward the ceiling, earning him some looks from the soldiers.

  “Do not do that,” the director said suddenly, the disdain in his voice as thick as his accent.

  Chad nodded, embarrassed, and stuffed the vape back into his pocket.

  “Yep,” Chad said. “Good.”

  “Any minute now, Ms. Ballard,” the science director said.

  The room had certainly become more animated in the last five minutes, the technicians all declaring when they were done with their individual duties and migrating to help each other. The energy of all of the people working on this project was starting to buzz, and the soldiers started standing a little straighter as well.

  Chad heard a little bit of techno-speak here and there, but found that he could keep up with very little of it, even as an AV guy. It seemed that most of what the scientists were talking about involved physics, which was never Chad’s strong suit.

  Plus, he just wasn’t paying much attention to what the others were doing.

  Melinda spent most of her downtime sitting on a folding chair and playing on her phone.

  Chad sat at his laptop, idly watching one of the anchors in L.A., Brent West, discuss a criticism of the president's latest rejection of the UEA’s repeated encouragement to let go of its antiquated borders and join in the politico-economic union of the United Earth Alliance. Chad wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, but everyone on TV at least sure supported joining the world government...

  Sometimes, Chad felt a little ashamed that he was still part of a xenophobic culture that resisted the ways of the future. He could feel it in the eyes of all of these UEA people—the soldiers, scientists, and other individuals he’d encountered on this trip. Their disapproval was palpable.

  But something about the U.S. joining the UEA didn’t feel right either...

  The young man didn’t really know what he thought about it. But he’d support his network and stand up for his job—that was for sure.

  “Thank you, doctor,” the anchorwoman said. She looked at Chad and her dark, thin eyebrows arched. “Ready, kid?”

  “Uh yeah. Should be good—hang on...” Chad stood up from the flimsy plastic and aluminum chair and pushed it back out of the way. He double-checked the camera, checked the levels and output on the laptop, and made sure the shot hadn’t moved. Everything was ready. “Just tell me when.”

  Melinda straightened her red blazer, checked her microphone, and took another sip of water. She watched the science team.

  “Ready, doctor,” one of the men exclaimed.

  Melinda pointed at Chad.

  He hit record, and signaled back at her.

  The anchor woman, smiling in the lights for several seconds, blinked, breathed evenly, waited for several seconds, then opened her mouth to speak.

  “Initiate phase one,” Freudenstein said suddenly in the background.

  “Thank you, Katherine. This is Melinda Ballard back in Geneva, Switzerland, reporting to you live from the science lab facility under the UEA Office. We are seconds away from the first ever test of UEA’s new Dimension Drive—Dim Drive—standing in front of what the UEA is calling ‘Portal Zero’, along with the science team working hard to bring this new benevolent technology to better the whole of humanity...”

  All of the scientists behind Melinda were intensely focused on their work. Some of them typed furiously. Others were monitoring various graphics and text feedback that Chad didn’t understand.

  “Phase one complete,” one of the technicians said.

  “Hold it for a minute,” the director said, his accent was thick, but his voice was intense and cut through the room like a laser.

  Melinda was still talking. “Dim Drive is short for Dimension Drive, which is a major project of the UEA’s United Pilgrimage Initiative, and is the latest technology involving space travel. After the test, we’ll be showing you a graphic explanation about how this new technology works, but I can tell you that it’s not warp drive or some other form of faster than speed of light travel from the movies. The simple explanation is that it involves bending space through the use of what’s called an ‘Einstein-Rosen bridge’. Basically, they're creating a shortcut, like a worm hole, between two points in space, or space-time as physicists—”

  “How are we doing, Plessner?” the director asked from the back of the room. He uncrossed his arms and moved up into the empty central walkway between the desks. “Is it holding?”

  “Stable, sir,” the man responded, looking up from his computer screen. “Should I initiate Phase two?”

  “Do it,” Freudenstein responded. “Keep an eye on the levels.”

  Melinda went on. “Respectable scientists have calculated that our planet Earth will not be able to sustain the world population much longer. According to the UEA, in just seventeen years all of Earth’s natural resources will be consumed, and we will be suffering from lack of food, as well as the weather extremes caused by manmade global warming...”

  Something happened in the room suddenly.

  The screen of Chad’s laptop blinked for just an instant, then went back to normal, showing a little window of Melinda talking about global warming and everything else. But Chad felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and was suddenly aware of an extremely low-frequency hum in his ears. A low drone vibrated in his bones. The young man looked down at his right arm and saw his arm-hair slowly standing up, charged with static electricity. Looking over at the news team’s table, he saw the water in Melinda’s water bottle vibrating, creating tiny concentric rings, ripple after ripple...

  Must be an insane amount of power for this portal, he thought, looking back to the camera’s display.

  “Whoa,” Melinda said suddenly, interrupting herself and recovering with a flashing smile. “Something’s happening! It looks like the portal’s going to be opening very soon! As you can see, the scientists are working very hard and are very focused! Now, there’s ... a deep hum in the air, and I can feel a lot of static. Is this normal?” she asked, looking off to the side. “Is this supposed to be happening?”

  Freudenstein ignored her, raising the volume of his voice to counteract the rumbling hum.

  “Phase two holding?” he asked sharply, looking down the room at the portal.

  Chad looked at the portal too. It was still an empty metal ring. He still saw the blue concrete wall on the other side.

  “Phase two holding!” one man shouted. “All levels nominal!”

  “Let’s make history, gentlemen,” the director exclaimed. “Open it!”

  Chad saw the scientist’s gaunt features tighten with excitement, then, he looked down at the portal to watch...

  “Sounds like...” Melinda shouted to the camera, raising her voice as if reporting inside a storm, holding her earpiece with one hand, “Here we go. It seems they’re opening—”

  There was a sudden explosion.

  Like a massive thunderclap sundering the air in the room, the sound made Chad’s head reel with the concussive force of whatever just happened around Portal Zero.

  Chad felt himself instinctively drop down to the floor, raising his hands to protect his head, and for an instant, all he could see was Melinda and all of the scientists reacting in the same way as a gust of wind blew through the room.

  And then, there was only darkness...

  2 - Arthur K
line

  Colorado Springs, CO

  “Yeah, I’m just getting home now,” Arthur said into his cellphone as he pulled up to the house.

  “Okay, honey,” his wife replied in his ear. “We should be back in time to watch a few episodes before the kids go to bed.”

  “Sounds good,” the man said, turning the key off in the ignition and pressing on the parking brake.

  An obnoxious female voice said something in his wife’s background.

  “Mom says hi,” Sheryl said.

  “Hiiii,” Arthur said unenthusiastically, stepping down from his truck. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay, love you,” she said.

  “Love you too,” he said with a smile, then hit the lock button on his phone as she hung up, slipping the device back into his cargo pocket. Arthur deftly slung his keys around in his fingers until his truck key was hanging, done for the day, and his house key was ready for action.

  Arthur Kline approached his house with weary steps, his steel-toed boots feeling extra-heavy. He stomped off the job-site mud left over on his soles onto the concrete as he walked. In one hand, he carried his lunch bag and water bottle, both now empty.

  He wanted nothing more than to get out of his clothes and get a beer...

  Slipping the key into the deadbolt lock, Arthur tried to unlock the door, but failed. He jiggled the key once, twice, and eventually finagled it open.

  “Damn lock,” he muttered, stepping inside. It was getting worse every day, it seemed. One of these days very soon, he’d have to stop at Wal-Mart or something on the way home and get a new set of locks and keys for the house.

  Putting his work stuff on the dining room table, Arthur headed upstairs and into his bedroom.

  Sheryl had left her side of the bed unmade. He smiled to himself and shook his head, approaching his side of the bed and working to unhook the paddle holster from his belt. Once the hooks let go, he put his holstered Glock 19 onto the dresser then changed into some sweats. With a quick look at the bathroom mirror, Arthur smoothed out his thick, dark blonde beard and ran a brush through his mane of hair, matted from wearing a hardhat all day.