by Brian Parker
Mike unscrewed one flange, then the other, before adding one capsule to each and screwing them back into place. Next, he filled the reservoir with water and sealed it tight. The huffer began working immediately, activated by the water. He crammed the flanges deeply up his nostrils to ensure the device stayed in place and inhaled deeply.
The huffer worked like an old-school nebulizer that doctors used to give patients to aerosolize liquid medication, except this contraption added a small amount of water over time to the dust capsule, creating a slow vapor release for several hours or days, depending on the setting. The flanges fed that vapor directly into the user’s lungs.
The familiar phantom tingling he’d felt in his toes after dinner was replaced by the real thing. His head immediately became what he termed ‘fuzzy’ with a soft thrumming noise reverberating inside his skull and a general sense of relaxation that came over his entire body.
Mike slid the goggles down over his eyes and watched the world transform before him.
The choking depths threatened to drown him, every time he opened his mouth or tried to breathe, water rushed in, causing him to sputter and cough. Mike looked around wildly, feeling his body flowing freely while floating aimlessly. Darkness surrounded him. High above his head, the water became green where it eventually met the surface.
He was underwater; a long way underwater.
Mike panicked momentarily. How had he gotten there? Flailing his arms, he tried to swim upward. He didn’t think he would make it to the surface before he was forced to inhale. That didn’t stop him from trying though.
He kicked his legs with his arms extended above his head and hands clasped. He tried to make it to the surface, to break out of the crushing water, but the burning in his lungs became too much and he was too far away. He was beginning to black out from lack of oxygen.
Mike lost feeling in his legs and his body took over from his brain, forcing him to take a ragged breath. His lungs filled with water, the burning sensation from earlier replaced with terror at his impending death.
The water pulled him down toward the depths. Surprisingly, the numbness in his body went away and he found himself breathing regularly, if a little heavily from lack of oxygen for so long. The water flowed in his mouth and nose, into his chest and then back out again. He was breathing underwater!
How? he wondered. Why?
Of course he had no answers, but something compelled him to go deeper, telling him that something magnificent was at the bottom of the ocean below. So he swam. The darkness became complete and then his skin began to glow, emitting enough light for him to see for several feet around himself. Everything was very strange and he had no idea what was happening until he came to the city.
The bricks seemed to radiate a light of their own, allowing him to see the entire city laid out below him. It looked familiar, yet different and he couldn’t quite place it.
Then he remembered. I’m in the Sphere!
Of course he was in the Cybersphere. He was breathing underwater and swimming along a city that he’d been designing a few hours before. He felt like an idiot for thinking that he was actually able to survive underwater.
The feelings faded and he put aside the thoughts that he was stupid for not realizing where he was. Sometimes the dust was stronger than other times and the result was truly disorienting.
A darker shadow than the water began to swim alongside him, keeping pace. At first he didn’t notice it, only dimly becoming aware of the shape beside him. He turned his head and realized that only a few feet away, a beautiful woman swam. He stopped and so did she. He smiled and she replied in kind.
The smile remained frozen on her face as she swam toward him, her body bloating into a much larger creature. Her smile grew wider and he saw her teeth were actually row upon row of razor-sharp needles. The woman opened her mouth impossibly wide and he turned to swim away from her.
Mike swam for all he was worth, exhaustion threatened to take him. He felt her closing in and risked a glance over his shoulder. She was right there, literally nipping at his heels.
He redoubled his effort to put distance between him and the disgusting creature. The city faded far behind him as he fled for his life.
The feeling of being chased subsided and he hazarded another quick peek behind him. She was gone. He must have outdistanced her or even left her territorial waters.
Maybe she was guarding the city, he thought, thankful that he’d escaped the certain death that her catching him would have been.
Too late, he felt the massive creature’s jaws close around his midsection from below. He was twisted violently around and saw both of his legs drifting away from his body. She’d ripped him in half.
Mike stroked his arms uselessly to add more distance between himself and the monstrosity as she turned for another pass.
The last thing he saw was her massive teeth, and then blackness.
Light. Exhaust. Heat. Wind.
Falling.
Mike clung to the metal restraints holding his shoulders in place against the seat. Around him, he saw others in similar positions as they fell from the sky. The sun! The sun was bright and warm on his face, then he rocketed through a thick layer of clouds and his visor was assaulted by splashes of rain and the bright flashes of lightning nearby.
He tried to make sense of what was happening to him. He sat in a chair of some type, barreling toward the ground somewhere below. He was restrained at the shoulders, and across the chest and lap, by thick metal bands that kept him firmly in place. From what he could tell, he wore a dark grey uniform of some kind and a weapon of unknown design was strapped to his leg. The weapon looked like a blaster pistol from old science fiction movies that he hadn’t seen in years.
Finding no more information, he looked out to where his fellows were similarly outfitted and restrained. As his eyes fell upon each, a name appeared in his visor’s display, telling him that he was beside Private Tennyson, Corporal Haynes, and Sergeant Niederhauser.
Once he realized that there was information about his surroundings, he began to notice more of it on the far periphery of his vision. He saw that they were rapidly descending at a speed of 234 miles per hour. He tried to remember junior high physics… They were traveling at roughly twice the terminal velocity of a human skydiver with no special equipment.
That meant the seats were either much heavier than they looked or they were rocket assisted somehow, propelling the group—soldiers?—toward the ground.
Additional information could be accessed by a toggle switch operated by his chin. For instance, he learned that the weapon he had was a plasma pistol, deadly out to one hundred and fifty feet, incapacitating at two-fifty.
Mike attempted to withdraw the pistol to examine it, but his visor flashed and an annoying alarm sounded in his ear. When the visor stopped flashing, the message “X-34B Plasma Pistol may not be unholstered while in freefall descent toward the planet’s surface” displayed across his field of vision.
“Well, that answers that question,” he muttered.
“What was that, LT?” a male asked, pronouncing the letters individually.
“I was just trying to remember where I parked my car,” Mike answered, trying to make a joke.
“Car?” a female asked. “What are you talking about, sir?”
“My car. You know, it’s a joke.”
“Sir, we’ve got about forty seconds until we eject,” the first speaker stated. A small circular symbol appeared next to Sergeant Niederhauser’s name on his heads up display. Mike figured that was the indicator telling him who spoke. “I need to know that we didn’t lose you, sir. Are you good to go?”
“I’m right here, Sergeant,” he replied.
“I see that. But I need to make sure you’re still with us mentally. That was a nasty lightning storm we went through. I’ve seen it do some crazy things to men before.”
Mike nodded his head inside his suit, but the helmet didn’t move since it was secured for saf
ety. He used his chin to hit the transmit button. “I’m good to go. We just need to get on the ground and get this mission over with.”
“Antsy to start killin’ bugs, huh, sir?” the woman spoke again. It was Corporal Haynes.
“You know it,” he replied. “I love killin’ bug—”
“Five seconds to ejection,” a synthesized female voice said.
“What?” Mike asked, thankfully not transmitting.
There was a burst of pressure from behind him and the restraining belts held firm for a split second before opening and sending him alone into the air. The chair fell away below him rapidly.
His readout said he was one hundred and twenty feet off the deck when a parachute of sorts deployed from his suit. It was more like a hundred plastic streamers creating wind resistance to slow him down. They were still coming in fast, falling rapidly toward a flat surface, littered with large rocks.
He twisted around, trying to get his feet under him like he saw the other soldiers doing, but wondered what good it would do if he broke both of his legs or his spine.
Ten feet off the ground and his boots emitted a gelatinous blob underneath him that absorbed his impact. The material went all the way to his waist and his feet still didn’t touch the ground.
“Contact!” Niederhauser shouted.
Mike looked up from the sticky mess his legs were stuck in and saw the creatures charging toward him.
What he’d thought were boulders from above were actually some type of giant spheroid bug with several legs that were moving too fast for him to see, and massive pincher jaws that protruded several feet from their bodies.
He slapped his hand down on his sidearm hesitantly. It’d been stuck in the holster earlier and he wasn’t sure it would come free. Mike jerked hard on the weapon.
It slid free and he fired wildly.
“Watch it!” a new voice yelled. “You almost hit me.”
His HUD told him that was Private Tennyson. The man struggled to get free of the gelatinous foam. Worse, he wasn’t trying to shoot his weapon or defend himself.
“Tennyson!” Mike shouted. “Look out!”
The private looked up in time to see a pair of jaws close in around his neck.
Mike watched in horror as the bug clamped its pinchers around Tennyson’s head and then it jerked upward. The private’s head came clean off, along with several vertebrae and a long, stringy substance that Mike could only guess was his spinal cord.
A ragged cry escaped Mike’s lips and he began to fire his pistol at the nearest creature only a few feet away. Impossibly visible purple energy shot out in a straight line from the end of the weapon, impacting uselessly against its bony carapace. He’d never heard of a visible laser before, but rolled with it. Using the light to adjust his aim point, he finally managed to hit the bug in the face. The head exploded in a spray of gore that sizzled when it touched the ground.
“Need to avoid their blood!” he broadcast to his teammates.
“Good observation,” the sergeant replied, his own lasers hitting the bugs much more effectively than Mike’s had.
The damn things came from all directions as if they were drawn to Mike and his team. He went into autopilot, firing his weapon until he was able to make it to where Sergeant Niederhauser and Corporal Haynes fought back-to-back. Once there, they formed a triangle of death for the massive creatures.
After what seemed like a lifetime—indeed, it would have been a lifetime if the bugs reached him—Mike’s team killed all the bugs in their area.
“What—What the hell is going on?” Mike panted as if he’d just got done climbing five flights of stairs.
“What do you mean, sir?” Niederhauser asked suspiciously, his eyes narrowing inside his helmet.
“Why are these things coming after us? It’s like they know we’re here.”
Corporal Haynes laughed. “Oh boy.”
“Of course they know we’re here,” the sergeant stated. “We’ve got the beacon drawing ‘em to us. How else are we gonna clear this planet?”
“Planet?” Mike asked in confusion. “How are the three of us going to clear an entire planet?”
“He’s gone,” the corporal said over her shoulder as she scanned the area around them for more bugs.
“Sir, what are our orders on this rock?”
“Uh…to clear it?” Mike replied hesitantly.
“I just told you that,” Niederhauser pointed out. “What is our objective?”
Mike searched his mind, but came up with nothing. He shrugged.
“Told you,” Corporal Haynes laughed. “The LT may be here,” she pointed to the ground. “But he ain’t here,” she finished pointed at the side of her head.
“We’re here to find and relieve the 761st Shock Battalion. Command lost comms with them two weeks ago.”
“How are the four of us—three of us—supposed to do that?”
“You really don’t remember?”
“No, I don’t,” Mike grunted.
“Command sent the 761st here to clear the planet. They failed, so we got sent in. We’re Special Forces…each of us has a tactical nuke strapped to our suit’s exterior…ring any bells, LT?”
“Nope,” Mike grinned widely. “This is all news to me.”
“Sir, by authority of the Terrestrial Expansion Federation, I am relieving you of command until a medical professional can examine you.”
“Relieving me?” he blanched. “What for?”
“That lightning strike must have scrambled your brain,” the sergeant replied. “Don’t worry, LT, as soon as they fix you up, they’ll give you a team again. Until then, stay with us, follow my orders, and fight. Any questions?”
Mike had an entire checklist full of questions, chief among them was where the hell were they and why were they calling in giant bugs that could kill them with one swipe from their jaws? And what was the Terrestrial Expansion Federation? The only thing he’d ever heard of was—
He stopped. The insertion. The armor. The mission. He realized he was inside the Sphere. This was a continuation of a simulation he’d played years ago called System Ownership Soldiers, SOS for short. He’d stopped playing SOS after a few days because it was so tedious. The only objective of the game was to kill native sentient creatures or animals that could pose a threat to human colonization at a future date. There were no intermediate objectives, sub-missions, or civilization establishment; the only thing to do was shoot everything that came at you.
It got very boring. Maybe the insubordinate sergeant relieving him of command was an expansion pack, added to the original simulation to make it more interesting, to give the game some type of storyline.
And so he decided to play along. As the team went from section to section the gameplay paused at times as a spinning information bar inside his HUD told him that their progress was being saved before they went into each new area. He always made sure to refill his health and ammo after the save because it usually meant they were going up against a new type of threat.
Mike and the remainder of his team killed bugs great and small until he was sick of it and just wanted to get up. Part of him believed he could stop fighting and let a bug rip his head clean off like they’d done to Private Tennyson, but he also thought about what that would mean for Haynes and Niederhauser. Even though he’d been relieved of command, he hadn’t been relieved of his weapon and they needed all the help they could get. Letting himself get killed would only lessen their chances of success.
As the mission went on, he discovered that he was a deadly shot with the laser pistol—something that he was not in real life. In fact, he’d only held a pistol one time, and that was when he pulled it from a trash heap before calling the cops. Instead of thanking him for finding a potential piece of evidence, the dickhead cop on scene berated him for tampering with evidence. That was the last time he trusted that the cops were out there trying to do the right thing for the regular, non-criminal citizens of Easytown.
Mike
found himself on a mountain ridge, fighting a species of spider-like creatures that shot poisonous webs from their abdomen. Once he figured out to watch for a straightening of the creatures’ legs so they could fire underneath their bodies, the spiders weren’t a problem. Their moves were incredibly choreographed and easy to spot. As before, a few well-placed shots into their heads or multiple rounds into their bony carapace did the trick.
During a lull in the fighting, Sergeant Niederhauser pointed toward a large, smoking crater in the valley below. “That’s our objective, team,” he stated. “We go in there, clear it out and the T.E.F. will send a retrieval boat for us.”
“What if we don’t clear it, Sarge?” Mike asked.
Both Haynes and Niederhauser snorted in derision. “Then we’re dead,” the sergeant replied. “Check your ammo. We leave in two minutes.”
Mike recharged his pistol and ate a ration bar to replenish his health meter. He had a feeling he’d need it. As he stood up, everything slowed once again and the spinning bar appeared. The computer was saving his progress.
The bar stopped spinning and gameplay resumed. He dutifully followed behind his teammates. Just as he stepped onto the path leading off the mountain, the screams began. It sounded as if several humans were screaming simultaneously, slowly being tortured in the worst possible way.
Turns out, they were.
Hiederhauser, on point, held up his hand for everyone to freeze. “This is some fucked up shit,” he finally muttered after a few moments of quiet observation, and then motioned the other two up.
Mike jogged quickly to where the sergeant still kneeled at the bend in the path. “What am I looking at, Sarge?”
The man turned to him and shook his head. “You really don’t remember, do you? At least your body remembers; you’re a damn fine shot with that laser pistol.”
Niederhauser looked back around the bend.
“What’s going on?” the corporal hissed. She was always on the backside of their group pulling rear security and missed a lot of what happened.