by Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep- The Best New Science Fiction from Sweden (retail) (epub)
The sky was not blue, but purple. Clouds with strains of yellow in them floated around like majestic creatures. Despite having daylight I could see at least two planetary bodies up there, like big coins in the sky. We were in a desert of sorts, with black rocks sticking up here and there in the yellow sand. In the distance I could see an endless flat, yellow surface.
"Dammit," Ortega muttered. "Do you guys realize this is the exact same position as all the previous times?"
"Yes, our technology is improving," Henning said.
"No it isn't," the bearded guy objected. "Ortega is right. This is the only place where we always end up exactly here. There are always some deviations otherwise," he added and looked at me. "This planet probably has strong magnetic fields which we haven't really been able to measure yet. Nothing strange about it."
"It is strange," muttered Ortega and shook his head.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"We call this planet 'Yellow Bard', because of the unique air composition. When the wind increases you can hear all sorts of exciting noises."
I tilted my head and tried to listen to the wind. There was something very different with it, and after a few moments I heard it more clearly. In the background there was a constant whirring and purring, like many small mechanical toys emitting sounds somewhere around us. That, combined with the static electricity, made it almost sound like someone was playing some strange instrument.
"What's that, over there?" I asked, pointing at that fle surface at the horizon. It was a kilometer ahead, Beata told me. The terrain, covered in black rocks, made it easy to misjudge the distance.
"That's the Yellow Sea. As far as we know it covers almost eighty percent of the planet."
"How can you tell?"
"Oh, lots of factors. Wave size, the curving of the planet, things like that. Aren't you supposed to be smart?" Beata smiled and pinched my cheek. "I'm just kidding. This planet has some really cool things," she added. "The sea is some sort of acid. It's extremely potent and could be used to make big money for us in the industry. Provided we could gather it," she giggled. "This time we have some new test containers. We'll see if they hold together."
"Let's move out," Ortega said. "We have a short walk to the main base."
We started walking, parallel to the distant shoreline to our right and the black cliffs to our left. After a few minutes I could see the base. It consisted of some big tents, almost like barracks, anchored in the hard soil by wires to keep them from blowing away in the wind. As we approached a glimmering from the sea caught my attention. I stopped and held up my hand against the dull light. There was definitely something there.
"What's that?" I asked. The line came to an abrupt halt. Ortega and the two soldiers joined up shortly after. We all looked at the sea and the thing out there.
"What is it?" I asked again.
Silence.
"Is it ours?" I tried.
"No," someone answered.
Finally Ortega produced binoculars from his pack. He looked through them a long time before lowering them.
"I don't know," he said. "It's the first time we've seen it. It could be ..." He looked again before passing them on to the other soldiers. "It could be some sort of ship," he said, voice low.
"What do you mean? Some alien ship?" I was excited and scared at the same time. The expression on Ortega's face was excitement rather than worry. A real alien lifeform. Intelligent, since it could make ships.
"If that piece of metal is floating out there," Beata said, "we definitely need a sample. Our containers just melt."
Some nervous laughter followed.
"We have to investigate," Ortega said. "You two come with me. The rest of you proceed to the base and start working on our equipment."
Uncomfortable silence, before Henning cleared his throat. "All right. Let's proceed, everyone."
And so we split up. The soldiers backtracked and took off towards the ocean while we headed to the camp.
There were three big tents in place, flapping in the electric tasting wind. Beata took me to the center one, where she showed me an engine that had malfunctioned.
"Can you tell me what's wrong with it?" she asked.
It was obvious, at least I thought so. You could hear it as soon as you entered the tent.
"Probably that thing," I said, pointing at a dented pipe. "I guess pressure is building up within, causing circuits to overload. It's common with advanced and fragile technology. But that's not the only thing. Do you hear the sound it's making, that screeching? I think a rubber seal has broken down, you know like a flat tire on a bicycle. You can fill the tire with air and it could work for hours, but eventually it will be flat again. I think the dented pipe is a symptom of the rubber seal."
"Impressive!" Beata clapped me on the shoulder. "I'll have Bernt in here to fix it up. What background did you say you had again?"
I shrugged. Machines had been a part of me since childhood, when my father worked in the garage, repairing cars. It simply computes. Bernt came and started working. He had a replacement pipe, as well as new polymorphid plastic to replace the rubber seal.
"How long will it take?" I asked.
"Not too long, fifteen minutes maybe. Then we need to collect the data the machinery has gathered. See if we have been able to spot any reference points in this universe. Stuff like that."
While he worked Beata stood beside him pointing and instructing, I stepped outside. I was on an alien planet, after all. Strange, how quickly you adapt to things if someone tells you it's normal. I stood outside, indecisive. The rest of the team were busy inside the tents.
Suddenly there was a small, but very visible change to the light, like a shroud had been dragged in front of the sun. The world turned pale. It clearly radiated from the ocean, because there was a grayish spot on the horizon, far away. There was also a change to the background noise. The wind carried some new, crackling sound, and in the backwater of it there was a boom of silence, as if that non-light canceled all sounds. Much like thunder coming after a flash, only this thunder carried silence. It made my skin crawl. The event lasted for a minute before abruptly ending and the light resumed its usual yellow-purple color. I held my breath the whole time.
"Did you guys see that?" I asked before realizing I was alone. The others did not seem to have heard that strange absence of sound. It must be the tents, shielding the air inside.
The phenomena was close to the metallic thing. The ship. Curiosity gripped me and I was on my way. I had about fifteen minutes before they would notice I was missing. The ocean was closer here, compared to our landing site. Five hundred meters, perhaps. I started jogging, crisscrossing between the few black rocks sticking up like teeth through the bleak, yellow soil. Soon I came upon small pools of liquid. It was a green-yellow mess, almost fluorescent, but without any distinct smell. The sight of them made me shiver and remembering Beata's words about a most potent acid I kept a safe distance. The closer to the ocean I got, the more frequently I saw the pools. Did this ocean have tidal waves? I pushed the thoughts aside and kept going. I was, after all, on an alien planet. Not taking the chance for some miniscule exploring was stupid, and I really wanted to know what that light was.
As I approached the ocean the metallic reflection from the thing out there got stronger and soon I could see sharp lines. It was definitely metal, smoothly shaped. I went closer still, eyes fixated on the thing. It wasn't a ship, not really. More like an island, far out into the ocean. Maybe it rotated as well ... I was close to the shoreline and could clearly hear the waves. That sound was different too. It didn't sooth as our waves do. This crackled, as if the water, or fluid, was made of razor blades and stones, grinding frantically. I stopped and watched, feeling a sense of dread creeping upon me.
There were several things not right here, and that was beside the fact that I was very far from home. The land was barren. Nothing seemed to live here. I wasn't sure I wanted to encounter any alien species, not even something the size of a bug. Th
e fact that everything was desolate nagged at me. And that metallic island out there ... Now I was sure, it did rotate, slowly counterclockwise, and it had moved further to the right, in the direction from which we came.
Suddenly I could hear something very familiar from the camp. There were screams. High pitched terrified screams that were cut off. I started running toward the camp, thinking I should've never left. In the distance, well three hundred meters away, I could see four people running in my direction, and something huge, metallic towering behind them that I hadn't noticed earlier. The metallic thing looked like a plain wall, raised in the middle of the camp. Then it moved, sank down and revealed a body with several arms, flailing wildly, picking up tents and objects like they were made of paper and tossing them around. I could see this, despite the distance, because of its size. I froze midstep, stumbled to the ground where my shoulder hit a rock, sending a spike of pain through my body. I lay there, covering behind the black stone, peeking around it.
Whatever it was it tore the camp to shreds, turned around and started moving towards the people running in an angle away from the camp. Its movements looked like a bizarre mechanical wolf, hunting its prey. It didn't take long before it caught up with whoever was running parallel with the ocean. It raised its long arms and impaled the runners, one at the time. Short screams, then silence.
The four people coming toward me were closer now, maybe fifty meters away. Beata was among them, and Bernt who had worked with the machine inside the tent. I couldn't remember the name of the others.
The mechanical beast turned and immediately took course for the runners. Beata stumbled and fell. One of the others stopped as well and crawled up behind a rock, covering his head under his arms. Bernt and the fourth man kept running, panic in their eyes. I could feel the earth tremble as the mechanical monster rushed towards them. It was well over eight meters high, with ten individual legs attached to a cylindrical-shaped body. There were more arms on its back, moving with no apparent function. From some of them dangled the bodies of team members. Now it looked like a gargantuan spider, or a centipede with extra pairs of legs on its back, like it could roll over and keep running just fine. It was almost comical, had it not been for its head. At least I think it was the head, because I could see two rectangles, slightly more yellow than the rest of its body. Sensors maybe. Eyes. They radiated something very familiar; hate. The mere sight of them struck me with fear and I was happy to sink behind the rock again.
It caught up with the two runners some twenty meters away from the rock where I was hiding. I heard a thump, and a short scream of surprise. The other runner passed my hiding place, but the beast was over him in seconds. It stretched down, grabbed him with a mechanical claw, raised him in the air and with a motion that almost seemed serene it twitched the man's head off with another claw. Then it turned for Beata and the other man. Two quick thumps, before it strolled past me towards the ocean, bodies impaled on its legs, one headless in its grasp. It walked to the shoreline, and from my point of view it looked like it tossed the bodies into that yellow mess. I quickly went behind the other side of the rock, curling to a ball, hoping it hadn't seen me.
It wasn't just a machine. I knew it instinctively. The moment that thing had passed me I could hear the sound from it. Where there should have been some sort of rotor sound, or familiar fans or cogwheels spinning, there was a very faint humming. Like a mechanical heart beating. It was alive.
When it was finished with the task of dumping the corpses of my former colleagues it disappeared along the shore. In the direction of where Ortega and the others had gone. Somehow I must warn them. My mind was clogged with a single thought; to get to the wormhole and go home, away from this nightmare.
I waited a long time before daring to move. When I thought it could no longer see me I got up and started running towards the wormhole. Soon my heart thumped like crazy and my lungs burned like fire. It was definitely not earthen atmosphere. Something with this dry static electricity made it horrible to run and I had to slow down.
Paralyzing fear gripped me as I realized I had no idea where the wormhole was. I was desperately lost, but refused to acknowledge the fact. Instead I kept going, one staggering step at a time. Suddenly I heard gun shots, and in the next second I could see two of the soldiers, maybe a hundred meters ahead of me. They ran with a good distance between them and I immediately understood why. From the mountains the mechanical monster appeared, climbing over the cliffs. It took aim for the man at the back, who was desperately firing at it. It was upon him in seconds, grabbed him and lifted him into the air. He must've been terrified, because he never let go of the trigger. His rifle sprayed bullets everywhere. One hit a rock close to me. Another stray bullet accidently hit the other man in the back and he stumbled and fell behind a rock. Then there was silence again as the machine carried its load to the Yellow Sea, before disappearing towards the mountains.
When it was gone I took a deep breath and hurried to the man who was shot. It was Ortega. He tried to raise his weapon when I got to him, but he was bleeding badly, hands shaking, face ashen. When he saw it was me he relaxed.
"Marko must've shot me," he said. "We saw that ... thing and tried to outsmart it. I guess it got the better of us."
I nodded.
"You ... must shut it down," he whispered.
"I can't. It was so big. So fast."
Ortega shook his head and his eyes became glass. He probably had a punctured lung. I could do nothing.
"Shut it down," he forced himself to raise his voice. "We found ... a building. Of sorts. With data in it. It makes sense now. We should've made it, I think, but Dan had an accident ..." Ortega coughed blood. He didn't make much sense. "I went out and saw it. The absence of light. Did you see it?"
I nodded, feeling as bad as Ortega looked. He reached for something at his side, grimacing with pain.
"It's them. They consumed ... They must never find our coordinates. You must shut it ..."
His eyes faded out, like someone had turned a light off. I was alone. I noticed that he had reached for a grenade, hanging from his belt. Could I blow that titanic robot up? Maybe, but not likely. I took it anyway and put it in my pocket. I tried to take his rifle, holding it in front of me like a shield. It was too heavy and I doubt I could harm that machine with it, so I threw it to the ground. Having never seen a dead man before I felt as if I should be more ... affected. But my mind turned off, went pragmatic. I just wanted to go home, without ever encountering that machine again. Ortega had moved in a straight line. If I followed that line I should reach the wormhole.
I started jogging, legs still shaking, but not so much that I couldn't go on. After a short while I slowed down. Something with the scenery ahead of me wasn't right. There were the black cliffs that we had emerged from. I couldn't recognize it. I wished I had looked back more carefully when we went for the camp. And I had to take into consideration that I had moved a long way along the shore to get away from the camp. Simple triangulation told me it should be nearby. Then I saw, and immediately threw myself to the ground. There were reflections, like a massive mirror bathing in sunlight, just past a cliff that stood out from the black wall. The machine was there, waiting. Hiding. It guarded the wormhole. Was it that intelligent? Panic rushed through me like acid. Maybe I could make it if I ran. One big problem was that I wasn't sure exactly where the wormhole was. Another was that I'd seen that machine move. It was fast and grim. My hope withered away. It was more than a machine. It was a clever lifeform. A piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. Erling had told me that some unknown force had reached into our tunnel and dented the S.E.L.D. The machine must've done that to get us here. That was probably why the wormhole on Earth had looked sick. It was infected, by that machine.
I turned around, crawled as long as I could and then got up when my sore knees bled through my pants and left red streaks in the yellow soil. I had to get to that building Ortega had mentioned. There was nowhere else to go.
I started walking, alone in this weird landscape. Sometimes I heard crackling and popping sounds carried by the wind that could be small animals skittering around the stones and soil. Or remnants of some alien tunes, played in the distance. I never saw anything. After a while I came to a slope, which led down to a cauldron shaped valley with strange rock formations, looking like black mushrooms or fingers, pointing up from the ground. I went down, searching for tracks after Ortega and the others. They were difficult to see in hard ground, but they were definitely there, giving me something to follow.
The tracks went around the formations in a circular pattern, and ended at a rock wall. There was an opening, a cave or bunker ... When I got closer still I could see a rectangular opening, definitely not natural. Inside was a crudely cut tunnel that led downwards into the darkness. There was some light source ahead, far into the dark distance. I kept going, thankful the tunnel was too small for the mechanical guardian to enter. At several points I stopped, thinking I heard noises in the dark. I never saw anything and there was no other option than to push ahead. Eventually I could see the light clearer, some dim, white light coming from the walls in a room.
I entered a big rectangular room with round pillars reaching for the roof high above me. The pillars almost formed small rooms in the big hall and made me think of a banquet hall. But they were also utterly different. Some were round, others had sharp corners. Most of them were shapeless, and had small holes, like honeycombs, from which the dim light came. It wasn't a light bulb exactly, more like microscopic sensors that were emitting the strange light. I slowly moved ahead. The hall seemed endless.
"Stop. Who's there?"
I froze when I heard the voice. There, leaning against a pillar was the last soldier, Dan. He looked as healthy as a ghost. He aimed his rifle at me.