by Brett Bam
“No! Stay away!” Marcos shrieked in panic. They could not take the boy from him. He would never allow it.
“Marcos, what are you doing,” the man asked again, his voice flat and his back straight in spite of the pain he must be feeling.
“I am taking my son, we are leaving this place.”
“You betray us?” The man dropped his hands to his sides, while Marcos whimpered in fear.
“You cannot take him away Marcos. We have been searching for him for so long. Everything we have done in this place has been to find this one single entity. You will undo a thousand years of labour.”
“I don’t care!” screamed Marcos, clutching Kulen tightly. “You can’t have him! He’s mine and he doesn’t want you!”
“Marcos, what he wants hardly matters. He is the Kulen De Sol. He is the Reaper of the Sun. His purpose is not to be denied. It has already happened, it is his destiny.”
“No! I am his father, he is my son!”
“Marcos, he is the father of us all. What must happen will happen no matter what you do. Put him down and walk away.”
“No! Never! Stay away from us!” Marcos turned and searched desperately for somewhere to run, a way out. There was no escape in the chaos around them. The man who was not a man took two steps forward and grasped Kulen’s wrist. It was a mistake. He stiffened and his mouth and eyes opened in a silent scream. It was like he was being electrified, a powerful current seizing his body, contracting every muscle at once. Smoke rose from the crown of his head and out of his open mouth. His eyes bulged and then melted and something snapped his head sideways. His body went limp and he collapsed to the ground at Marcos’ feet in a boneless heap. But more than that, more than in the physical, something dramatic happened in the real as well. Something made a knot in the fabric. The entity inside his brother was screaming. It was in terror, that giant, immortal, invincible thing, was fighting for its life. In the real it thrashed and convulsed, screaming all the while. In the real it reaped an unholy chaos as its pain lashed into the fabric, and the fabric gave way. It tore to shreds, great pieces of it turning grey and peeling back from the wound the boy had induced. Blackness engulfed the entity and Marcos watched as it grew smaller and smaller, until he felt he could crush it beneath his shoe. It blinked out with a small spark, and digital smoke drifted away in an artificial wind.
Marcos began to weep. A tremor ran through the structure, which shifted and leaned. The corpse slid away and over the edge, into the chasm below. Marcos watched it drift idly down until it struck a pole and began to tumble. The sheer horror of the moment paralysed Marcos. Death, real death. His brother was killed, and more than that. The entity which had held him was dead too. One of the original caste, the oldest living creature in history, dead because it had touched his son. Marcos let the horrible image of the burning face skitter away in his memory, he sobbed with relief as he surrendered to the psychological repression.
And then, in the tortured sounds of collapse, Marcos looked across the chasm at his feet to the opposite side of the canyon he climbed and saw their salvation. Lying amongst a pile of smoking rubble with a steel girder draped across its shoulders was the tight geometry of an aerodynamic object. The geometry pulled his attention and he looked hard until he discovered the flyer in the mess of debris. A flyer on a launching pad! The pad was damaged and precariously balanced by the debris; it looked as if one small shift would bring the whole arrangement tumbling down, but the flyer was clearly charged and active. Marcos could fly it manually - he had the experience. It was jet- powered, with a massive exhaust dominating the tail, and twin tilting rotors in the wings. It had vertical take off and hover capabilities, it could lift them out of there, and if it had enough charge, it could get them away!
But there was a chasm at their feet. Kulen seemed to be asleep in his arms, and Marcos' feeling of desperation increased. The means for an escape was so near, yet the chasm yawned below them hungrily.
Jump.
The suggestion came from his son; he knew this as surely as he held the still form tight to his chest. The suggestion swamped him with fear. It was a long way across and a long way down. He might just be able to make it, but there had to be an easier way.
Father, look up.
The voice from the otherplace compelled him to turn his gaze upwards. The mass of broken and shattered razor-sharp material suspended above them was trembling and shifting. Marcos had climbed them into a dead end of crumbling destruction where the continual chaos finally caught up to them. In the momentary trembling stillness, a small piece of steel slid free and fell. It bounced with a clear ringing sound once, twice, ricocheting from place to place. It struck a beam trembling with the pressure of the load it supported. The beam slipped and the chaos came surging toward them fast and huge. Far above, the sunlight was obscured as a landslide of plastic and glass and steel swept downwards thundering and shrieking.
Jump Father or we'll die.
Marcos took two massive strides and leaped across the gap before fear could stop him. It was a valiant leap, and the two soared across the yawing abyss heavily. It was a long way down. Marcos saw the landing was going to be nasty, so he clutched Kulen to his chest to save him from the worst of the impact.
They landed with a bone-sickening crunch. Marcos felt a horrible crack and a tear deep inside his chest and he coughed a painful, blood-filled cry. He rolled the still quiet form of his son from his chest and fought for life, and a breath which would not come.
The pain was so bright it obliterated movement. He could not inhale. Maybe something had seriously broken inside and he would never breathe again. He began to believe he would die as the pain drained from his body and a chilling numbness seeped in. He could feel euphoria swelling within as he realised he would die and be free. His death would be a final thing. He would not suffer the repeated indignities of a long-lived life under the Protocol. His memories and his soul copied and used as hopelessly as data projected everywhere, seen by everything. He wondered how many of his brethren were still alive and attempting to flee this place. Was his own father still alive and trapped in here somewhere? Would his father have saved him and granted him freedom if he could have? If he died, what would become of Kulen? With that thought a great disappointment flooded him, and he could still not breathe.
Not yet Father.
His son’s voice caused him to turn his head and look at him for what was perhaps the final time. The boy was lying where Marcos had dropped him. He was still curled into a ball, but his multi-hued eyes were open and he was looking at his father. The eye contact was as electrifying as before, and Marcos felt a shock pass through him. With a desperate shuddering gasp of relief his chest heaved and he drew air. He inhaled and inhaled, and then released it in a burst, only to desperately draw it in again, and again. When his breathing finally receded to a hard panting he allowed himself to feel the broken thing in his chest. He could feel the rattle of his breath, and knew in the pain of movement that there was something horribly wrong. But he was alive and breathing and the relief was dizzying.
He finally managed to sit up and touch Kulen, and with the physical contact he knew immediately that his son was unhurt. He turned and contemplated the flyer. He would never shift the girder draped across its shoulders now, he would have to hope the small craft had enough boost to lift it clear. He gathered Kulen into his arms and limped towards it. He could see into the dark recesses of what looked like a hangar, that there were other flyers in there, all crushed, broken and buried. This lonely flyer on the edge of the launching pad was the only one to survive. The vessel opened readily at Kulen’s unvoiced command, and Marcos sobbed with relief when the motors caught and started, humming with life and power. He struggled, but eventually succeeded in loosening the craft enough that it could slide backwards out of its trap. Free now, with his son beside him, he flew upwards through the smoke and fire and out into the sunlight.
I turn my attention to the sky and watch as the world u
nfolds beneath me. I am flying through the air at a tremendous rate. Far away from the fabric, I have escaped.
As I look back I see the damage I have caused. The smooth sphere of the Installation has shattered into many pieces stacked up against each other. I can see level upon level of fire and death and melting metal. A staggering column of smoke has obscured the horizon. The mountains themselves are cracked and lava is beginning to seep out from the deepness of the wound. I have marked the earth here. It will bear this scar for the remainder of its days.
The eruption when it comes is stupendous in its magnitude. It traumatises the sky and splits the universe in two. We are high up and far away enough to be clear of the main force of the blast, and we’re still accelerating. The craft shivers as the shockwave passes us, but the flyer handles the turbulence well. Behind us the mushroom cloud grows and grows.
And then there is nothing but rushing air and clouds and pure sunlight for a long while.
I am quiet for a time, taking comfort in my father’s presence and the rushing nothingness of the sky, a kind of freedom. And then I became aware of the whispers. I can hear them at the edge of my ability, a whisper that increases as I become aware of it. The whispers became gasps and then loose words and strange sounds all jumbled together, a tremendous flow of information in the atmosphere. The sound of screams, the otherplace, the fabric! Ahead of us is the coagulation of energy that is Africa City. We are flying directly back into the hands of the Protocol. The fabric of screams and the blue oblivion awaits me on this path.
As much as Marcos feared coming here, it was their only hope. Their charge was running low and this was the only place they could connect. Marcos had begun to form a dim plan of action. They would leave this world. They would abandon it and run as far as it was possible to go. They would head into the Community of Man and find a place where they could rest and sleep and be at peace. It was simply a vague idea; they would have to find more power first, avoid the Protocol’s clutches, and then find a way off the planet and across the gulf between worlds. It was an impossible mission. The entirety of the idea made him despair and he focused on the one thing in front of him, one problem at a time, and right now they needed to charge their little vessel, and that meant Africa City.
The metropolis reared up before them and it was glorious, Marcos could not help staring. It was a facility designed to be high, to cast a net across the sky. And it succeeded, towering nineteen kilometres to pierce the clouds. Its upper levels split and spread out ingeniously at outrageous angles while its lowest levels spread out in a strong-buttressed foundation. Between the upper towers huge sheets of material glinted, shifted and rippled with the wind. The base of the structure was split open in many places and highways and railroads spread out onto the land. More streams of roads trickled directly up and down the outside of the structure, roads where the vehicles were elevators. The main bulk of the tower was so thick and squat it looked almost as thick as it was wide. It was a wild disarray of untidy geometry, streaming with life and energy. The city was still alive, although in distress. Fire, flame and smoke poured from its every quarter and accidents raged through the traffic system causing blocks and snarls and traffic jams. It was a wounded place, bleeding chaos.
Marcos slowed the flyer’s speed and pointed it randomly into the swarm of traffic around the city. He was not hailed by traffic control, or asked to log on to the city net. He did not bend to the flow of the traffic, weaving between the lanes. The traffic was in turmoil, but he was not the only craft off course, others were wheeling out of control. He saw an impact, a flyer veered and swerved before crashing into a freight carrier, which fell from the sky, its cargo scattering. The deeper they went the worse the chaos got. The system was obviously collapsing around them. Suddenly, Kulen clutched his silver right hand in his left. It shimmered for a second and then blinked brightly, once. Kulen looked afraid.
They are here.
The words chilled Marcos to the core. In his mind’s eye, he could see the approach of the Protocol. The wind which he felt at its coming, that saturating hiss which grew in intensity, that looming tsunami, and then that vanishing of self - like a plunge into icy water. It was happening around him right now. It was pouring into the city’s digital networks like a flood, spreading and controlling, watching everything. It was searching for them, and it was here.
The wheeling chaos around them was taking on a semblance of order. Inevitable vehicle impacts were adjusted and narrowly avoided, the swirl of conflicting and unstable flight patterns began to stabilise. The destruction lessened as the governing intelligences reassembled crashed networks. The vast array of traffic began to flow into controlled pathways. Peace and order re-established, and in the middle of the flow, one jarring inconstant, one streaming projectile which did not respond, their craft. They were seen! The traffic was suddenly in their way, some of the flyers coming straight at them, zooming close. The pathways became barricades in the sky, barricades aimed at blocking and turning them from their mad flight, confining them, catching them, forcing them to stop. They were being hunted.
Marcos jumped the thrust to maximum and the flyer leapt forward. He flew the craft directly into the flowing barricades, pushing the performance limits on the plane to their utmost. Heavy g slammed them into their seats as he twisted and turned and dodged his way through the blur of traffic around them. He took the tightest gaps, squeezed through impossible places, more than once narrowly slipping between two colliding craft. He pulled the plane left and right, shooting up and down until he was finally caught. A large cargo carrier reared up in front of them, filled with strapped down containers and flashing lights, and there was nowhere left to go. Marcos braced for the impact.
Move.
The command came from Kulen’s small non-voice, that quiet thing which spoke inside him, and Marcos heard it clearly, loud and commanding. The mighty bulk of Africa City itself seemed to feel that command, and suddenly they had a clear run. The cargo carrier stalled and its flight path curved. It flipped over and out of the way, colliding with three smaller flyers in a desperate bid to avoid them. Their influence spread discord and chaos wherever they flew. They tore through the traffic in the sky like a scar through clouds. And then they were through, into the city.
There were many tall towers here, like skyscrapers at fantastic angles, buildings buttressed and supported by each other in a haphazard scheme which somehow held the weight of the city. Windows showed lit interiors, and everywhere they passed, machines turned to watch them go. The branches were a maze, Marcos skipped and turned and slipped past them, hardly slowing his airspeed. He was nearing a great open space of several kilometres on the other side of the maze, when something hit them from behind.
The flyer screamed as it died in metal agony. It dropped from the sky and smashed into a section of the city, bouncing away on a long curving trajectory, trailing smoke and flames. It began a fast, tortured descent to the hard ground below.
Chapter 9
Dalys
The ability to construct space-worthy vessels capable of crossing the solar system in its entirety was fundamental to the development of the Community of Man. It was the gift of advanced propulsion systems and enhanced manufacturing techniques from the Protocol which allowed the dispersal of the Caramel Culture. All across the solar system, in millions of orbiting facilities, space ships became a mass manufactured product.
The wide variety of manufacturing techniques, the dynamics of available resources and the great distances involved meant that ship building was a wildly varied industry. Ship designs ranged and shifted and evolved. There were millions of different makes and models and comfort levels. Individual ships could often do surprising things.
The Ribbontail was first commissioned by the Rommel Corporation as an asteroid shifter. Thirteen hundred identical vessels were made before the design was altered and the manufacturing facility began to build something else. The ship was made to attach to asteroidal masses with a grapp
ling platform, and apply thrust to alter their orbital shifts creating clusters of exploitable rock. These days Dalys used the ship for something different but similar to its original purpose. She shifted ice, not rock, but still, this took a tremendous amount of time spent under very precise thrust, so the Ribbontail was built accordingly. A powerful central framework was constructed from a composite filament winding process. The result was rough but strong, and elastic enough to withstand very high stress. She was powered by a Tokomak magnetic confinement chamber. The technology was a marvel of the Protocol; it was lightweight and enormously efficient. At its core, densely packed, high-precision equipment encased a mirrored vacuum chamber in which a super-compressed cloud of Helium3 rotated at sub-light velocity. It twisted as it rotated like a strand of DNA. The cloud was scorched by electric currents, like bolts of confined lightning, and the circulating Helium3 was converted into heavier elements at room temperature. The process was tremendously energy efficient with a by-product of vast amounts of electricity. This powered the electro-magnetic field required by the acceleration helix. One end of the reactor was capped with a magnetic mirror, pushing all the escaping elements out of the opposite end of the machine. By releasing and applying magnetic pressure on the plasma and tapering the magnetic mirror, the amounts of particles being expelled could be increased or decreased to give more, or less, thrust to the ship. The manufactured heavy elemental plasma was siphoned off and ejected through the dissipater fans at tremendous velocity. When the fans unfolded behind the ship, they looked like a series of sharp wings encapsulating a spinning fan. Under thrust they expelled a twirling ribbon of heavy elemental radiation which stretched out for kilometres behind the ship. When the Ribbontail had open sky ahead of her the Tokomak could open up to as much as 15 g’s of acceleration, building constant velocity, it's fans exuding long streamers of phosphorescent matter which twisted in its wake.