The Opening (The Universal Portals Book 1)

by J. Blanes

  “It wasn’t that bad, eh?” Blip said sarcastically. “These capsules will protect you during the crossing. You only have to enter them and wait until it’s over. You can keep wearing the suits, but you need to loosen them before entering the capsule.”

  The capsules were near the left wall, standing in a vertical position, one next to the other. They were oval, like cocoons, and the size of a big person. Many of the tubes in the room connected to their sides. Their doors were open, and Dylan realized with increasing anxiety that they were not transparent, as he had seen in so many movies, but as opaque as the rest of the capsule.

  “I don’t care what you said. I won’t enter a coffin while I’m alive.” Dylan refused to move an inch more.

  “You must, if you want to live,” Blip said plainly.

  “No way. I’d rather die than go into this thing,” Dylan insisted stubbornly.

  “Listen to him,” Keira told Dylan. “Don’t be stupid; it’s just a capsule. You’ll be OK, right Blip?”

  “Of course, the Tolok designed them with strict security measures in place. They’re completely safe,” Blip confirmed confidently.

  “It’s a waste of time.” Albert spoke for the first time, trying like the others to breathe as little as possible the stinky air. “He’s claustrophobic.”

  “Really?” Keira couldn’t believe it. It was the first time she had heard about it.

  Dylan looked down. “It’s true,” he confessed. “I’m claustrophobic, and I’ll never enter one of these things.”

  “What’s claustrophobic?” Blip asked.

  “It’s when a person is scared of being locked up in a closed space, like your capsules,” Albert explained. “It’s a strong feeling, and people who suffer from it would do anything to avoid a situation like this.”

  Blip tried to understand. “So, Dylan doesn’t want to be locked up in a capsule because he’s afraid of closed spaces?”

  “Yes,” Albert confirmed.

  “Then there’s no problem at all,” Blip said.

  “What do you mean?” Dylan asked, suspicious of his real intentions.

  “The capsule door can be left open during the crossing,” he said to their surprise.

  “How do I know it’s not a trick?” Dylan was still suspicious. “If I enter the capsule, you can easily close the door and trap me inside.”

  “If that’s the case, you’ll have plenty of time to jump out before it happens,” Blip assured him. “The doors are heavy and close very slowly. It’s a careful process, too.”

  Dylan inspected one of the doors and tried to move it. Blip was right; it was extremely heavy. He pondered his options for a minute and finally decided to trust him. “If you lied to me, I’ll kill you. Do you understand, you little smurf?” He gave Blip a threatening look, sliding his finger from right to left across his neck as a menacing gesture.

  “No problem, you’ll see every step of the process,” Blip reaffirmed.

  Dylan pushed the suit buttons under his neck to loosen the suit and transform it into a poncho-like sheet again. Then, he reluctantly entered the capsule, looking everywhere suspiciously and ready to jump out at any indication of trouble. To his relief, Blip seemed to have told him the truth for once. “It’s a little tight in—” he started to say, when two small, metallic tubes emerged from inside the capsule, one on each side of his neck, just under his ears, and swiftly injected him some anesthetic that put him to sleep before he could finish talking. Then, four straps came out from behind, embraced him, and held him in place. After that, a mask covered his mouth and nose, and the heavy door slammed shut much more quickly and carelessly than Blip had made them believe. Finally, the sluggish substance quickly started to fill up the capsule until submerging his whole body.

  “Problem solved,” Blip said to the others, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction.

  “What have you done to him?” Keira asked, concerned about Dylan.

  “Nothing, he’s sleeping now,” Blip said dismissively, “and you’re next. It’s the same process for you.”

  “Does it hurt?” Her worries shifted now to herself.

  “Not at all,” Blip replied in a tone that was not reassuring at all.

  “And there’s no risk at all?” she insisted, still unconvinced.

  “No risk at all.”

  “What if another ship tries to cross the portal at the same time from the other side?” Albert suddenly asked. It seemed that everything that bothered them was now used as an excuse to delay entering the capsules.

  “That’s impossible. A portal is one-way only.” Blip was starting to lose his patience.

  “So this ship arrived here from another portal?” This interested Albert so much that he had already forgotten about his own fears of entering the capsules.

  “There’s no time for talking,” Blip snapped impatiently. “I’ll tell you more when we’ve crossed to the other side.”

  Keira and Albert looked at each other. Keira shrugged, as if asking if it was OK, and Albert replied with a nod. He entered first and rapidly suffered the same fate as Dylan. He was put to sleep, held in place, locked up, and immersed in a sluggish substance. Keira didn’t wait long before entering her capsule, too, leaving herself no time to change her mind.

  What curious and stubborn creatures Humans are, Blip thought. It had not been easy, but it was finally done. Now, the most hated part for him, his own turn. He leaned on one of the walls and covered himself with the sluggish substance that impregnated it, as thoroughly as he could. As if this were not enough, he inserted some of it inside his mouth, ensuring a perfect sealing. Although he didn’t have the senses of taste and smell, just feeling that texture inside his mouth was revolting. He would never get used to it. Finally, he closed his eyes and applied some of it on top of them.

  In a few minutes, the ship would travel through the portal. Blip had seen once a portal crossing from another ship, and it had been spectacular. He knew that the portal they were about to enter was different. Portals were normally built near stars that provided the energy needed for their operation. The more powerful the star, the more distance the portal could cover. But this particular portal was far away from the star in this system, the one that Humans called “sun.” The main reason was that Humans had enough technology and satellites monitoring the sun to easily discover the portal or detect a crossing through it. This would be in direct violation of the law that prevented advanced civilizations from showing themselves to the less privileged ones. This was why this portal would not have enough power to transport them far away, and they would have to make a stop in star system near here, only a few hundred light years from the sun. The ship’s resources would also be depleted after the crossing, because a lot of the energy would have to come from it, instead of the star. Blip had no idea how the ship would regain its energy again, but he would worry about it later.

  Less than a minute, Blip thought. The portal would be active by now, a spectacle in itself. Three colossal engines drove a portal, each one separated from the others by the distance equivalent to the diameter of a huge planet. Before seeing one, Blip always had believed that portals had a geometric shape, like a triangle or a circle. He had been wrong. Portals had no definite shape, but that made them no less impressive, at least when active. When a portal was inactive it was practically invisible, always shrouded by colossal clouds of dust that gathered around them, electrically attracted by the engines themselves; but when a portal was active, things changed radically. The engines slowly powered up and started clearing the area by sending away the clouds of dust and destroying any possible rocks that wandered nearby. This seemed a simple task, but it required the enough energy to melt a small planet in minutes. When the area was cleared, the engines started demanding energy from the star. As the energy built up inside them, thousands of powerful bolts of lightning emerged, striking each other on a scale
that would dwarf a planet and sending particle waves that every planet in the system could feel. Finally, the engines released the energy at the precise moment that the ship entered the portal, bending space-time around them and transporting the ship to the portal-programmed destination. That, at least, was the basic theory as Blip understood it; he ignored the technological details that made all of this possible.

  As he waited, he imagined all the lightning and the chaos that reigned around the portal that would transport them, and he shivered with emotion. However, nothing compared to the moment of the crossing, at least seen from outside. As he had witnessed that time, it was especially beautiful and impressive. The whole portal gradually lit up with an intense blue color as the ship approached. When the ship entered it, the portal collapsed quickly into a single blue plasma sphere, called the portal Star by most civilizations. It was the size of a small planet, and so bright and beautiful that many creatures had been blinded by it because they could not look away, lost in its beauty. It remained lit up during the ship’s crossing and vanished into nothing when everything was over. If another ship tried to enter a portal while the portal star was visible, both ships, the one already inside and the one trying to enter, would be furiously destroyed, a horrible end the Tolok called the Blue Death.

  Less than ten seconds, Blip counted, eager to end it already and get rid of the thing inside his mouth.

  Three seconds.

  Two.

  One.

  Zero!

  This part always disappointed Blip. In contrast to the spectacle seen from the outside, nothing impressive ever happened on the inside. Nothing impressive, he thought, except the insignificant fact that the ship traveled thousands of billions of miles in the blink of an eye.

  THIRTEEN

  Blip had already cleaned himself thanks to the nanorobots, or Bots as he called them, when he opened the door of Keira’s capsule, releasing the gooey substance that had filled it onto the floor. The Bots were part of an advanced Tolok nanotechnology of bioengineered robots. Bots were not intelligent and were only capable of following the most basic instructions, like identifying and destroying a particular molecule or destroying themselves after a given amount of time; but complex instructions were not needed anyway as their strength was in numbers. They were so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, and they always acted together, billions of them at a time, sometimes trillions, to achieve the most incredible tasks in a matter of minutes, like cleaning him of the disgusting substance. To get some Bots, Blip only had to send a command to the ship, and he would get a glass tube full of Bots immersed in a liquid gel, already programmed with whatever task he had ordered.

  To clean himself of the substance, he’d commanded the ship to provide one of those glass tubes with Bots programmed to find and destroy the disgusting stuff. After getting the tube from prearranged storage inside one of the walls, he’d applied some of the gel over his skin, and the diligent Bots took good care of the rest in no time. After finishing their job, the Bots had simply autodestroyed themselves and vanished.

  Keira was already waking up, and Blip would need more Bots to clean her, too. He asked the ship for them and got several tubes full of Bots. He applied the contents on top of Keira’s feet and climbed the capsule’s border to reach her hands, hips, and head. Then, he patiently waited for the Bots to do their job. They would do it perfectly, so perfectly, in fact, that she would wake up without ever knowing that she had been immersed in anything.

  A few minutes later, she finally opened her eyes and looked around, confused. “Is something wrong?” she asked. “Why is the door still open?” Her confusion came from the fact that nothing indicated that they had already crossed the portal, and she’d forgotten that she had been put to sleep before the trip. From her perspective, she had just entered the capsule.

  “Nothing is wrong. We’ve already crossed the portal,” Blip announced to her.

  “Blip, I’m in no mood for games,” she replied. “Let’s get this over with now.”

  “I’m telling the truth. You didn’t notice because you were sleeping,” Blip insisted.

  She frowned and looked around again. Was he really telling the truth? She had no way of knowing. “OK, if that’s true, tell this thing to let me go.” She was referring to the straps that were holding her.

  “OK, but be careful,” Blip warned her and ordered the ship to let her go. The straps immediately released her and disappeared into the capsule, along with the mask. Keira tried to take a step forward, but she suddenly felt dizzy and desisted on her effort. The penetrating stench was not helping either. “I told you to be careful,” Blip warned her again. “The effects of the anesthesia are not completely gone yet.”

  “Anesthesia? Do you really want me to believe that we crossed the portal?” It was too surreal to be true. They were already in another star system, probably billions of miles away from Earth. How could she accept that?

  “Never lied to you about this particular matter,” Blip confirmed as he proceeded to repeat the same waking and cleaning process with Albert.

  The stench and the dizziness were too much for Keira, and she leaned forward to throw up. Blip didn’t look at her and continued his job, but his face showed his disgust, with his tongue out of his mouth. For some reason, the joke of not telling them about the helmets wasn’t fun anymore. He felt pity for her, and the thought that he should have brought the helmets before waking them up rushed to his mind. Why would he feel that way now? Was the programming of his emotions wrong? It must be, he thought; there was no way Humans could deal with so many emotions changing from one moment to the next. He should inform about his faulty program to the Tolok once they arrived to their destination.

  Albert started to wake up, too. He also believed that nothing had happened yet, and when Blip broke the news to him, he thought he was joking. However, seeing Keira throwing up and feeling his own dizziness and nausea, he realized that something else could have transpired. He could not think for long anyway, as moments later he was also vomiting violently.

  “If the crossing is over, can you open the corridors so we can go back to the kitchen and wait for you there?” Albert managed to ask between vomits. Getting out of there was his top priority now.

  “No problem, you can go. I’ll let the corridors open all the way to your quarters,” Blip said, feeling angry with himself for not having thought about it.

  Albert and Keira left the room with haste. Now, only Dylan remained in his capsule, and Blip repeated the same steps with him.

  “…inside. Poor Albert, he won’t fit inside one.” Dylan not only had not noticed at all that he had been sleeping, but he’d continued his previously interrupted statement as if not even a second had passed. Only after a pause did he realize something was wrong. “Wait, what’s with this mask, and why am I tied up? You promised me that I could exit this capsule whenever I wanted, you toothpaste-tube liar! Release me immediately!”

  “OK,” Blip said dismissively with a glint of revenge in his eyes.

  The straps and the mask retreated inside the capsule, and he quickly jumped out of the capsule. However, his legs didn’t respond as he expected, and he landed facedown on the floor. “What’s happening to me? What did you do to me?” he shouted at Blip. He was covered in the filthy, viscous substance again, some of it dripping from his face.

  “The fact is that we already crossed the portal. You’re just feeling the effects of the anesthesia,” Blip replied calmly. Strangely, at seeing Dylan and his arrogance on the floor, the feelings of pity evaporated in an instant, replaced by the funny ones Blip had missed so much.

  Dylan was about to reply when his insides revolted abruptly, making him vomit violently.

  “You need to clean yourself up,” Blip told him. He could have gotten more Bots for this task, but he was not feeling particularly inclined to do so. “Your friends are waiting for us in the kitch
en.”

  “In the kitchen? But they were just here!”

  “Look around you.”

  Dylan complied and looked around. Blip was right; nobody was there except for him. How could it be?

  “Don’t waste time thinking about it.” Blip seemed to have read his mind. “Let’s go to the kitchen, and you’ll be able to verify it yourself.”

  The idea of abandoning that place was extremely appealing to Dylan, and he didn’t resist the proposal. He managed to crouch and crawl out of there. When they were outside, Blip closed the doors behind them, and Dylan took a deep breath. He sat against the wall to recover his strength and let the effects of the anesthesia die away.

  “Are we really in another star system?” he asked incredulously when he felt better.

  “Yes, we are,” Blip assented.

  “How do we know that’s true?” he asked with incredulity.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that; you’ll have plenty of proof soon,” Blip replied enigmatically.

  Dylan got up. He felt better now could walk without help. He still smelled like shit, but it was much more bearable than the foul stench inside the room. He would be like new after a shower and a change of suits.

  They arrived at the kitchen where Keira and Albert were waiting for them sitting at the table and drinking some water.

  “Hi, guys, it’s been a long time,” Dylan greeted them sarcastically.

  “Oh, my God!” Keira exclaimed in disgust, pinching her nose. “What happened? You smell like shit!”

  “He fell,” Blip said. No more words were needed. Dylan understood the message and left for a shower. Keira took Blip and put him on the table.