by Jim Spencer
To my cousin, without whom the ending would have been very different
Chapter 1
He was standing guard upon the edge of a great city. The constructs of which had never been done before. The environment was harsh, hardly surprising. They had almost depleted all their natural resources two hundred years ago. At that time, the oceans were still full of water. Back then, they were trying to build better worlds, scientists created an ultimate rigging machine to go further into the rubble. The rigger dug so deep, it went straight into a tectonic plate and caused a major earthquake.
The civil race came close to extinction that day, with the quake causing the lands to crumble to the ground and the water simply disappeared. Most couldn’t explain how that had happened. Some theorized that it went straight into the mantle of the planet. Only the giant rig could extract it, which was too dangerous.
Upon further research, they found that water was down there, but it had mixed with asphalt and needed extracting. Still, they had managed to do this without causing any further damage to the environment, but one region had become uninhabitable to humans. The entire eastern hemisphere. The oceans were dry, the fish died, but fruits continued to grow without the need for water.
Amongst this, they were in a constant battle with creatures that they had lived with from the beginning of known history. Some had become extinct due to the changing environment, but others were alive and well. They were known as the Rantsys. Huge flying organic machines, who would simply pluck you away if given a chance. They had created some weapons to combat them and used their wings to create great flying machines of their own called the ptactyl pods.
But a new problem arose from the ocean, which they had not expected. Some creatures, instead of dying, began to evolve. Slowly but surely, they attacked the known lands, in search of food. Since there were no fish, they had to hunt humans. A new enemy had arisen. They were known as the Nargus. Tall, slender boneless creatures with piercing eyes. The eyes alone were as big as a human.
Not one to be afraid so easily, the guard had almost lost control of all limbs the day he came face to face with one. Luckily, it was lost and looking around for somewhere to settle. It stood its full height, an almost god-like figure, standing about 30 metres tall. Everyone screamed around him to move, but he simply couldn’t. Eventually his lieutenant smashed a boulder straight into the creature, who wailed a silent scream.
The scream was so low that it would hurt the ears, to the point of bleeding. Eventually, more catapults were hit and the thing fell to the ground. It seemed to have been lacking in energy, as if it was on its last limbs. He was lucky that day, his lieutenant had told him. ‘Most people never live to tell the tale’ he would keep saying to him afterwards. Of course, his reputation had become so great that he was now the guard of the great country.
Civil country itself was now entirely built in. The outside terrain was too harsh that great glass buildings had been constructed. These great shards of engineering spanned for miles each, almost like a splinter in the desert. Distant travelers from tribe country had mentioned how it looked like a great mirage when they first looked upon it. Of course, the reason for these constructs of man was to mainly block out the harmful rays of the sun. It was also used to operate as a station for sustainable energy, in case another earthquake should happen.
The guard stood there, thinking about Tribe country. When he was young, he had been told that these people were of a lower class. Not to be spoken to, only wondered about. They were the structure of what society used to be like. They were the inhabitants who had refused to evolve with the times and had decided to stop studying the sciences. It was as if they had given up on education or they felt that they had done enough damage. Hard to believe that this race of people were once the pinnacle of society. How low they had gone.
He shook his head, as he stood guard. His day watch was almost over. He would hardly talk to anyone during the day, but he preferred it that way. Besides, this place was full of dirty politics, it was best not to entangle oneself in such matters. A simple guard was a good enough life for him. Just then, as he stood there, a figure went passed him. He knew it was a Nargus with how it moved. Due to its lack of bone, it had to slide along the ground. Apparently, it used its suckers to pull itself up. It was a fairly small one however, roughly half his height, probably a newborn.
He tightened his armour, just in case. He had an extra layer of armour on which made him look somewhat like a clown; but he didn’t care, these things had some immensely strong suckers. One piece was embedded with a hundred small incisor teeth which could penetrate the skin in a matter of milliseconds. It was best to be cautious. He rounded out the corner where he saw the thing run. He had to be cautious, these things were very fast, almost blindingly so. A slight wrong turn and it would either panic (which would be lucky for him) or it would attack. If it did attack, he would have probably five seconds to get free and then its teeth would sink through the armour.
He turned around and there was the creature, standing on one of its legs. This leg had become bigger, due to evolution and had grown muscular, but was only used for balancing, not attacking, so he found out. Apparently, the only way to take them down was to cut that leg somehow, but the big ones required big machines. It gave a small squeal, as if curious and afraid,
‘Don’t be afraid little one. I won’t hurt you, just wanna touch you’
He came closer to the being. It backed off slightly. Knowing it was afraid, he slowed his pace and began to whistle to try and entertain it. It’s head (if it could be called that) tilted to the side ever so slightly, as if it was wondering what that noise was. He finally came close enough to touch it. Laying out his hand, the creature moved forward slightly, as if wondering whether to eat or caress the hand. After a moment of hesitation, he touched the baby Nargus. It felt spongy and surprisingly wet, possibly another part of its evolution.
He pushed his hand back slightly and the creature seemed to move forward. It raised a tentacle and began to move towards the guard. For a moment fear overtook him, but then again, the creature had trusted him enough for him to touch it, so why shouldn’t he do the same? He laid his head forward and the creature copied the same movement he had done. It was only a baby after all. Then suddenly, the baby moved back and looked beyond the guard. He knew what was there before he turned around. It was not an adult, but it was twice the height of him, possibly a teenager.
If there was an infant, then there would most certainly be an adult close by. He pressed the emergency button in his armour, for he knew he might not get out of this. Closing the gates would be the only defence now. As he turned back around, the baby Nargus stood full height. It was in fact the same height as him. It had changed somehow. What seemed to be a small creature who was curious now seemed wrathful. He picked up his walking stick, but before he could Taser the creature, the bigger infant came and snuggled the guard in one piece. Wrapping its spongy body around him, the pincers began to bite into his armour.
As he screamed and writhed, he knew deep down, this was the end of the road for him. His armour cracked, the bites came through. Quite literally, one thousand knives stabbed into him. As his blood flowed out, memories of his life swarm in front of him. Small images of childhood, of fighting and laughter swarmed by, but in the end, it was all suddenly shut off, when the tentacles wrapped around his head and snapped his neck. He fell with a great thud and the creatures along with three others, whom he had not seen, emerged and began to suck his meat and bone into their innards.
A tasty treat for them, because all that would be left of him would be his armour. Even his skin would be devoured. The skin would be a camouflage, the blood would sustain them like water. The meat would fill their bellies and his oth
er bits would strengthen their sight. For this is what they had become, great pack hunters. He should have known better than to go against these creatures alone. The only good that had come from this was that he had raised the alarm first, so the rest of civil country would be fine, for now.
*
He heard the alarm go off. It sounded like one of the Wolves. A ground pack hunter, who had cheetah-like speed. He pressed the alarm button and put the command in to shut the gates. As the gates shut, he could see from the sensor reflectors that the Nargus had devoured their human subject. Thankfully, it was only five this time. They had had enough problems, with the Rantsys and Wolves since time immemorial and now these new creatures were causing bigger issues.
Arion sat down as he watched the Nargus go away back to the edge of the coast. For now, they would not attack, but the fences would have to go on for tonight. Extremely large electrical fences which had been constructed all around the dry coastal area of the civil country over the last one hundred years. It got its energy from solar rays, but could only be functional once every month due to the amount of wire that was there. Luckily, they hadn’t used it for two months, so keeping it on for 24 hours would not be an issue.
As he sat there, Arion tried to recall what he was doing. He had been racking his brain for years on this. As he looked at the board, all he saw now was a blur of numbers, but he was sure he had it all figured out. The world had become a strange place for him. He now lived in a cubicle. But then again, so did society. Over the last 200 years, tribal country had announced that they were going to stop all scientific research due to what they had done. Civil country stepped in and begged them to not do this as we were coming closer to realising the full potential of the human mind.
But they simply wouldn’t budge, and after what felt like a great amount of time, but what was only several years, a new supreme leader was elected, who was in favour of civil country’s views, and the tribal country were overthrown and exiled to the east. They did not take this punishment lightly as they felt that exile was not the way. Thus begun a two-century long feud for land and superiority. Civil country had become more technologically savvy, by simply adapting the things left behind from the siege, and tribal country had become more cohesive at controlling animals.
Since civil country had always considered taming animals as low, tribal country’s status had become that of our early ancestors, barbarians. Not that Arion cared too much about this. He had always found history to be fascinating. Like the history of the planet. They lived as the most dominant species on the planet due to their knowledge. For their skin was not tough, they did not have any fur, unless you counted head hair, which wouldn’t exactly protect against a storm.
Their life span had slowly depleted, so that now people lived for a mere 80 years at best. And yet here he was, trying to discover a formula for elongating life. He had a small chamber with some mice, whom he was supposed to experiment on. However, in order to do the experiment, he had to make sure it worked first. Which that was the issue, there was no way of knowing if this would work. The reason for this, no one had ever attempted to revive anyone before! It was impossible. And yet, that was the formula he was trying to discover.
Arion pondered for a few more minutes, before he finally decided to call it quits for today. He could discover the answers to the universe tomorrow, for now he needed to rest. And with that, he closed office and went out of his cubicle and into the outside world.
*
He walked out onto a great marble floored construct. The air was unusually clean, due to giant filters being installed on the outside. The air was still breathable outside; this was only as a precaution. A recent discovery had put into effect that oxygen was the one thing which allowed blood to flow properly to the brain, but our atmosphere only allowed us to absorb around 80%, thus rendering our minds incomplete. So therefore, these filters were made to allow us to absorb the full amount of oxygen from the environment, thus realising our full potential.
It was all nonsense to Arion, who felt that the extra 20% didn’t make a big difference. For after all, if you were destined to be a genius, it would happen. Of course, the question then arose, what about the oxygen from the outside? For this, a two-way system was built to extract oxygen from what we breathed back to the atmosphere. This way we would be giving back to the people. He shook his head as he thought of this, but then again, he wasn’t the one who made the decisions here. That was the chancellor.
He was called Tali. In the olden days, he would be referred to as the leader of the senate. Or the civil country senate anyway. Of course, neutral country had their own senate which controlled relations. They were formed after the Tribe country were exiled. They did not agree with how the civil people exiled the tribe folk, but didn’t want to sever ties with civil country either, so they decided to be the peacekeepers for both, hence the name. It had worked well enough over the past 100 years, though tribe country had always kept an open grudge against that decision.
It was a horrid history, to say the least and didn’t look favourably towards the civil country, but there were still good people here, who worked to try and mend these relations, including discussing the possibility of giving tribe country some of their land back, or simply sharing resources. However, getting into this was dirty business and trying to make the world a better place was easier said than done. So, for that reason, Arion had decided that a career in science would be a better, not to mention safer option.
Besides, who would want to kill the brains of the operation? Or so he reasoned with himself all those years ago. Hard to believe how much the world had changed since then. For example, the marble floor he was walking on was not even there at that time, it was simple rubble. The giant filters were fairly new, now it was simply old news. He had however, made one discovery in his scientific career, and that was to make an every flavour drink. It sounded insane when he had proposed the idea.
But somehow, he had put the pieces together so that when someone put their cup in the fountain of water, depending on the material of the cup, and sometimes it’s positioning, the molecules would align to make different flavours. It was a great popular tourist attraction and allowed him to go from humble poor man to great business entrepreneur, not something he expected to see on his resume. A scientist, inventor, businessman and entrepreneur? Unusual combination indeed. His new-found fame and fortune however, had found him gaining great respect from some of the richest folks in the entire district including the chancellor himself.
Being a huge fan, he was ecstatic when he found out that the chancellor wanted to meet him personally, he was always a great figure to look up to. At the end of a very long dinner and great day out for his family, he was offered a defense contract. The salary was tremendous by what he was getting before. A full 5000 cubes per month. Paper money was considered worthless as of 80 years ago, since there were very trees outside anymore. Only gems worked now. These gems were shaped into three dimensional squares, hence the name cubes.
He could hardly say no to that. That was two years ago, and his first task was to discover a revolutionary method to help in cell recovery. He theorised that if he could concentrate atoms from within a room, he could use them to manipulate cells within the human body, making it either stronger, or recovering from injury. It would also have great applications for medicine, where a person would not have to be operated on anymore. He would simply sit in a room and this machine would kill off, say his cancer cells within a few hours. A revolutionary way of chemotherapy without the pain or side effects.
Of course, during his two-year study of these particles, he had managed to discover an extra particle within the atom. It was simply…there. Just between every living device. There was nothing like it in the periodic table and nothing of the sort in anything that he had seen. When this discovery was made, he was asked to see if there was anyway of manipulating these particles to achieve the same results. This required some immense calculations, for one wron
g move and it could spell disaster. He felt though, after so long, he was close to discovering the final piece. He was close, he knew it.
He moved along the busy construct of the civil country underbelly. He was of course in one cubicle, the work cubicle. This one building spanned more than twenty miles of land. People had become accustomed to living life in order. Monetary items still existed, but the world was on a timetable. You woke up, you worked, or you learnt combat skills as a soldier. Or better still you picked up rubble and cleaned everyone’s dirt, or built things. All for the great of the country. To stop people from presuming priority, classes were demolished completely. Only the chancellors’ families didn’t work, but that was because they made the decisions.
Once work was complete, recreational time would happen. This was where, for three hours, you could do what you wanted as long as there was no crime. The great country was patrolled by soldiers in this time to make sure of law and order. In order to keep everyone equal, no one was given a surname anymore. This was considered to create too much tension, as one person would be considered of a certain tribe if they did this. And as they were taught from a young age, the giving of a surname was why the tribal folk were where they were now.
It was stupid, but he had lived his entire life as an Arion, he honestly didn’t know what surname he would give himself anymore. Oh well, he thought as he mounted onto a ptactyl drive, a small two man powered moving vehicle. It ran at a speed of 100mph, enough to outrun a real animal if needed. He tried to recall what had happened to the guard outside. He wondered if he could feel anything for the man. But in all honesty, he didn’t know what to feel. He never knew him personally. Maybe if he did have a surname he would have been able to identify what family he came from. The council would probably disapprove of this way of thinking.
He shrugged away his thoughts as he knew they would do him no good. In the beginning, when civil country was made and they decided to build in, instead of out as he called it, people had objected certain points. They were simply put on trial to either rescind what they said or be put to capital punishment. As mentioned before, the history of civil country, was anything but that. Either way, he was somewhat unsure what to feel for this guard. He knew the gates were closed now and the guard remains would probably be looked for tomorrow, for now would be too dangerous, but still…no feeling.