DUALITY: The World of Lies

by Paul Barufaldi

  “The force field is only the first layer of field. The weak field encompasses an even larger volume, some 120,000 square kilometers. We, the Kinetic, are in fact within it now, as ship's sensors are confirming.”

  “And...?”

  “And that weak field serves to divert and drain radiation moving into it, before those energy streams even get to the main force field. But I digress, the correlation I refer to was discovered by one of my lateral inductive reasoning banks, which noticed by random pattern matching that the measurements of the target's object's fields, when set to scale, elegantly match that of Ignis Rubeli itself.”

  “Like a smaller scale model of the entire star and its surrounding heliosphere?”

  “Yes, Captain. I don't know what to draw from that. I just found it highly conspicuous.”

  He could see Mei's head buzzing away. “What do you think, Commander?”

  She ignored him silently for a few moments in thought, until her eyes lit up and she queried System. “Kinny! Let's assume this is what you say, a scaled down version of The Red Star. Based on the relative size of the fields we're detecting, what size would the corresponding small scale solar orb be?”

  “The visible sphere of a star, as demarked by the surface band of the photosphere, is only the center of its entire heliosphere; in the case of Ignis Rubeli, for example, extending half of the distance to Cearulei Azur. So to extrapolate downwards to the scale of the field we are currently observing, we would find an orb of roughly 15 meters in radius, with an expected circumference of approximately 100 meters.”

  “Way too large for the cargo hold...” she muttered to herself.

  Aru did not know how to respond to that. Of course it was too large to bring aboard the Kinetic; it was a third the size of it and probably half its equal in volume.

  “Mei... we are to investigate the object,” he reminded her. “There's nothing in the mission parameters about retrieving it.”

  “We are to investigate its contents, Aru,” she countered. “And since we are running short on time, I say we tether it to the Kinetic and haul it out of here with us into cooler climes.”

  Was she completely mad? “Mei, you see these energy readings, don't you? We're not even going to be able to get near that thing, let alone capture it!”

  “The tethers would allow catastrophic levels of hypercharged ions to seep into the Kinetic's magnetosphere during our coronal exit. Also, the tethers themselves would invariably incinerate,” offered System.

  “Aru, I haven't asked you for a maintenance report, have I?”

  “You haven't heard one from System either. You're welcome.”

  “And I appreciate that, love. I truly do. But to complete this mission we can't just come back with some crazy pictures and energy readings; we've got to know what's in there! It's coming with us, one way or another.”

  Aru's head hurt. Even if the ship were not on in its death throes, there was just no possible way for them to capture an object that massive and haul it out of the corona.

  “What is that?! Kinny!” Mei demanded, pointing at a development on the holograph. The shimmering force field of the target in its entirety was now in view, and streaming from the back of it seemed to be... a tail. Aru expanded the image. Upon closer resolution, the tail was shown to be a pair of braided cords twisting and streaming their way out from the edge of the object's force shield and winding down towards the photosphere.

  “It's a plasma cable, Commander, that appears to be originating from the solar surface,” answered Kinny.

  “That would start to explain where the power is coming from to generate these fields,” she mused.

  The object started to come into visual range of Nearprobe 2's cameras. Through the red grainy haze it was impossible to make out anything visually at first. System overlaid lines to highlight the edges, and created a half dozen other high contrast false light displays to give them a better look. The sphere was now visible, barely.

  “Telemetry confirms a solid body. Spheroid or possibly perfectly spherical object with a 30 meter diameter, as earlier postulated,” announced System. “We should have a clear line direct image shortly.”

  In a meek voice Mei asked him, “So.... you're not taking those damage reports either?”

  He shook his head.

  “Oh... oh that's bad, isn't it?” She mumbled more or less to herself.

  “Nearprobe 1 coming into sensor range,” System reported. Nearprobe 1 was approaching regressively along the orbit, and gave them a far-side mirror-image of what they were already observing. Probes 3 through 6 would be converging shortly and were all set to be in place by the time the Kinetic rendezvoused with the sphere.

  Nearprobe 2's approach hit the sweet spot where the fog cleared and they got their first unimpeded view of the sphere in high resolution, which System immediately magnified to intimidating proportions on the holograph.

  Mei let out a gasp and Aru was shocked into awestricken silence.

  There, buzzing and crackling before them, was The Golden Sphere in all its terrifying glory. It was a flawless orb of uniform glimmering gold encapsulated in a force-shield so mighty its outline was clearly visible in the stardust. Within, wide bolts brachiating into fine fractaling hairs of fierce blue energy discharged between the sphere and the inside of the field, cracking and flashing in a near seizure-inducing lightning dance so intensely luminous that even as a filtered and projected image Aru found himself shielding his eyes from it.

  It was the damndest sight he'd ever beheld. But wasn't the damndest thing you ever saw exactly what you should expect to find on an odyssey to the depths of Hell?

  This was it, this was the end. And this symbol of madness was the vision of it.

  He peaked at the ship's diagnostics to momentarily distract himself from the mind-crippling terror that loomed before them. The heatsinks were all lost, the outer hull of the ship warped beyond recognition, and the thermal seepage to the inner hull had begun the irreversible process of accelerating. They were, by every measure of reason, doomed to die within the hour.

  The Trip

  Gahre awoke late, sluggish and sweaty from the sun bearing down, his mind feeling about as nimble as a brick and unable to remember most of the night. There had been a bit of rain, and the site stunk of soggy coals.

  His varmint companion was long gone and had left quite a mess its wake. It had managed to wrangle open a strap on his satchel and pilfer his preserved rations. So much for food reserves! It had also torn into his teas and herbs, leaving Gahre with the hopeless task of separating them back apart. In the end he resigned to having them blended together and drinking very oddly flavored tea for the remainder of the journey. The Cloudy Moss pods were all still there and at the appropriate dryness for packing. He squashed the whole collection into one jar, but left himself out a wee pod... for later.

  With what felt like a headfull of sediment, he set out again scouring the area for a trail or a marker of some sort. Again, all signs of such eluded him. He swept in a great circle back to the gorge without finding a trace of one. That wasn't like him at all, but the guidebook did say the trail was well hidden amid a turbid landscape. He thought about just heading west into what would become rolling hills, but this was a very large tract of wildlands, and he could find himself lost days deep into it, and far from his destinations without following that trail.

  He sat down back at his previous night's camp. He could rest another day here, he supposed -not that he particularly wanted to. Frustrated, he dug into his pockets, pulled out the pipe and the Cloudy Moss pod, and unwound a while as he smoked the whole of it. He rose to cautiously scout again, making a conscious effort to keep his wits about himself as he had just consumed about triple the dose he'd tried yesterday.

  His perceptions quickly altered, and his mind felt clear and fresh. The world became positive and filled with potential once more. It smelled to him now as though the land itself had cast its first scent of summer into the air to heral
d that season's onset. He peered down the vertical cliffs of the gorge to the rapids far below and said goodbye to the river which led to the inland Lost Sea and the tropical realms of Omadi. A part of him longed to follow that route and disappear into their peaceful culture rooted in Dharma, with its temples and mysteries, and there was no real reason he couldn't. He could just slip away from Tulan and make a start fresh. The notion was as romantic as it was tempting, but still something held him back. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but he had some impalpable nagging in the recesses of his mind telling him he still had unfinished business back home.

  He wracked his mind to determine what that might be. Friends and family? He was not nearly so weighed down with these as most men. Gahre was a kind and empathic soul, polite and even charming when he chose to be, but when it came to close personal relationships, he was... aloof. He never got tied down in the issues or business of others, and he tenaciously avoided committing his time to anyone. Time. He was self-centered when it came to his time; he wanted it all to himself, and went to great lengths to make sure he didn't get trapped into social obligations that stole it away from him. That's what people did, his peers. He had seen it over and over again. They would fall for a maiden and marry, become consumed with their work, their in-laws, their colleagues, their finances, their business, their properties.... until they no longer owned more than a few hours of their own time in an entire week. Gahre owned every moment of his time, night and day, so he could not put his finger on what it was that beckoned him back there. Maybe it had something to do with his dealings with Indulu. Indulu intrigued him. He was his godfather, but in absentia, so he barely knew the man really. Uncle had raised him, while Indulu was all over the realms conducting the high affairs of governance. He spoke to Indulu generally only once a year, around the Spring Conference, which would be conducted soon. The field guide! Scouring his mind for the reason behind his homeward draw, somehow he made the connection to the field guide he carried. It was, he recalled, on loan from the Tulan Library, which expected its return.

  “No, you foolish mind!” he laughed. “You are grasping at straws!”

  Obviously he would never think twice about venturing to far-off lands over such a trivial obligation. His mind really wandered down some errant roads sometimes. That reminded him of the previous night spent waxing philosophical with a raccoon, and he laughed again.

  The optical effects of the drug were greatly enhanced by the daylight. Cloud to sod and all in between reflected the radiant majesty of Cearulei Azur. Light and color joyously lit the world for him, and the path revealed itself. A line of shining silver light emerged on the forest floor before him and wound down into the lower lands and further up and over a yonder hill. Without thought or question, he strode into the forest’s nearly tangible essence, accented by warmth and breeze and the budding scents of spring. The hue of the greenery still moistened by the morning dew was a newly discovered color to him, a glowing pastel. The world around him transformed into a painting. It was all heavenly art, he realized, all preset for this very moment, laid out for him and him alone. Who was he, he wondered? Was he this moment, this environment, all one in the same? There was no more distinguishing himself from his surroundings than the painter and the painting, the water and sea. Nature! Nature was his nature. The running stream, the breeze, the dew, the cycles of life... it was all of him. That world of man, that corrupt and deviant aberration of nature; he did not belong to it. He was primordial. He was eternal!

  He glided along the silver pathway's every twist and turn, hill after hill, and delighted in the sensation of every step and all the splendor of his hypnotic surroundings. Hours floated by like a dream as he drifted deeper into the canvas. The clouds opened and the heavens played for him a symphony of empyreal melodies, notes so perfect in their pitch the entire world resonated with their vibrations. He had visions of grand armies of angels and celestial battles and beautiful women and great feasts. Every instant fulfilled him with awe and wonder, every moment was bliss as he wove his way into the magic horizon until every aspect of his passage blended together and time ceased to be, and all things within and without became unified as one mind, his. Music, color, movement flowed forth undifferentiated and swept him along with it.

  When he phased back, rather abruptly, into lucid sobriety, he had no idea where he was or what he had been up to. Immediately apparent was that he was seated muck deep on the edge of a pond. Some flicker of memory reminded him an aethereal nymph queen hovering above a body of water that was not water but pure shining metallic fluid, she had beckoned him.

  But this, this was water he sat in at the pond's edge, well, more like muck and algae, black smeary sediment and slimy undergrowth. He was covered in it from head to toe. He had been bathing in this sludge for God knows how long, and it had undoubtedly seeped into his pores. His dull head made each realization dawn slowly, and each was worse than the last. He was unclothed and his upper body was badly scratched and riddled with insect bites. When at last he could separate his brain from the blaring pain signals it was receiving, his ears attuned to the discordant buzzing of the mosquitoes swarming in a thick cloud around him.

  The pain. There was enough blood congealed within the muck plastered his to body to alert him that he must be injured. He focused on his body to locate the specific sources of what had been til now just a mass of undifferentiated pain. Upper body: deep scratches to two full lacerations that were still letting blood, one that extended from his chin and down back across his neck, bitemarks, some deep from a mammal of what he guessed to be of moderate size.

  Another flicker came to him, a hazy vision of a gnarled tree with a cat on its branch. The cat had a long wispy mane that billowed like smoke and pointed ears with tufts sprouting from them. He remembered approaching it. Making sense of the drugged memory he realized he had tussled with a bobcat. He had approached the notoriously vicious animal as if to pet a housecat, and it had leapt upon him.

  More pains were present in his lower body. He stood himself upright with all the grace and vigor of an old man half in the grave, and stumbled onto the bank of the pond with a marked limp. He could not bear to rest even a tiny amount of weight on his right foot. There were dozens of long lumps on his mud-matted lower half. The backs of some of the lumps poked out and glimmered a dark surface in the twilight. Leeches, and enormous ones at that! He braced one arm against a tree for balance and bent forward to slowly pluck them off. There an acute stinging in his upper left thigh. He wiped it down to the thinnest layer of goop possible to discover two holes, red and swollen. Great! A snakebite. Roughly judging by the fang gap, he reckoned it must have been a serpent a good meter or two in length. This was quite grim, for it were a water snake, he was most likely envenomated.

  Daylight was fading. He hopped along on one foot to a spot where his clothes lay in a pile. What had he been thinking, swimming in that fetid place? He no longer felt at one with nature, quite the opposite. It was now the manifestation of some filthy demonic plane that sought to kill him. His pack had once again been pilfered, the tea sachets torn open, and the Cloudy Moss pod jar spilled out onto the forest floor. He had a wicked impulse to smoke more of it to kill the pain. His whole nervous system felt like it was on fire. The medicine would return him to that golden realm where there was no pain and he could carry on, but, he reminded himself, that golden realm is a lie! Wisely he cast the hard won jar of pricey herb along with the pipe far into the middle of the pond where it splashed down and artlessly sank into the murky depths.

  Thankfully his knife was honed to its fullest sharpness. The bitemarks on his thigh were swollen and tender, and he cried out in agony as he drew his blade deeply across them, then twice again vertically. The blood flowed, and he opened and squeezed at the gap til it gushed. He bled himself as much he dared, until he felt faint. Then he salved and bandaged the wound. He reckoned his treatment was in vain anyhow, since chances were the venom had long since spread through his circulatory syst
em. All there was left to do was let it run its course and see if he came out alive on the other side. This was not his first envenomation; it was his third, but the first two had been quickly attended to, and were of species whose poison was not prone to kill a creature the size of a man -as that of watersnakes’ were.

  The red lanterns of the night were already making their debut in the heavens. He could not camp here. He had no idea where he was, but it had to be some distance east of the river. He tried to guess if he had veered more north or south in his idiotic frolic, but couldn't be sure. Visibility was restricted by dense woody growth, but by the shorter stouter stature of the flora, he guessed he was not in a lowland as it appeared, but rather a highland glen. There was no view in any direction. North, east, and west the landscape ascended sharply. Eastward would take him back to the gorge, but he had absolutely no sense of how far he'd veered in longitude on his winding misadventure. His foot was in great pain. He had impaled itself on a something jagged and piercing, probably the sharp broken end of a wooden branch on the pond floor when he had waded in and frolicked there. He bound his foot with the last of his spare cloth and forced his boot on, moaning in agony.

  Hobbled or no, this stinking glen was no place to make camp. The sky was clear, and with the bloodmoon Oberion waxing full, there was ample redshine to light his way. He foraged for a sturdy stick forking at the top to serve as a crutch. His nervous system was going haywire, sending sudden random shocking pains to different areas of his body. When they hit his chest he gasped for breath and thought the poison had seized his heart, but it was just acute nerve pain. It hit his face, his legs, no part of his body was spared this shocking sting that was at times so utterly debilitating he could do nothing more than collapse onto the ground. His heart rate and respiration were highly elevated. He was sweating and he felt his mind slipping more and more out of his grasp.

  He hobbled southward for lack of any of other clear route. Perhaps further on he could get a view of the lowlands and survey them for a route. Backtracking his previous way at night would move at a snail's pace, and his mind was too crippled for the task anyway. How could he retrace a winding path in the dark when he could at most only think of one excruciating step at a time? One thing was certain, the silver trail he'd followed with such great faith had been a hallucination. As the cuts and scrapes of flesh and robe attested, he had bushwacked it the entire way.