by M. Modak
She jumped to her feet and in a blur took another stab at him. Thwarted, she spun around and slashed, feigned a strike and reverse slashed again!
Impressive!
However, nothing she did landed a blow.
He could tell she was genuinely frustrated, as if she had never fought one as he or met anyone who could best her. He could not imagine the feeling. She continued mindlessly striking like this for some time, never the same move twice.
She was incredible for one so young; this is no ordinary human girl. There was something artificial about her as she continued transmitting hopelessness, trying to penetrate him to no avail. He had heard enough talk from the Red Dragons to immune him from any communication that did not contain truth or joy.
The distorted, fanged tooth image of her kept popping into his mind, almost distracting him with its ugliness. He had never met a human that would do that, but those beasts from space had tried. Even the Dragon Exiles had a kind of honor, an honor they would violate from time to time if it meant victory over their enemies. However, never, in all his battles with them had they played such mind games.
Fascinating!
Abruptly, he realized he had allowed the fight to go on just a little too long. He would be arrogant if he continued this way. He withdrew his energy from his sword and the flames went out. Then he took the blade from her again as she tried a desperate slashing leap over his head meant to decapitate him. She landed on her butt with a thud, empty-handed. She just sat there, watching him, brooding with arms crossed.
This time he spoke to her in the language of the soul. He sent his energy to her using the highest images he remembered and grandest feelings he had ever experienced. Stories of broken hearts healed by inner peace slipped past her defenses. Reminders that love and forgiveness could heal all wounds filled her mind. He repeated to her of the law of causality.
You can choose another way, was the message he sent.
He forgave her for trying to hurt him and invited her to leave the ways of madness and search herself for truth. Elohim will be with you no matter what you choose. When you’re ready, He will always be there.
He waited as she stared up at him. Her heart pounded as it produced emotions her mind and body did not understand. She started shaking. Tiny spots appeared all over her skin as jolts of blue light highlighted the pathways of her nervous system. To him, she seemed like a programed thing that was malfunctioning. Half her thoughts began to feel organic. He saw the spark of joy light up her eyes.
Then her other, mechanical side, prevailed. It absorbed the images he sent and replaced them with blackness. The spots on her skin disappeared. The compassionate feelings she had begun to open up to, turned into data. That data filtered into categories, and her mind responded with a cold, blank slate.
He could no longer feel any good inside her though he knew it must be in there somewhere. Suddenly her whole countenance changed and she was on her feet again, running away from him and into the jungle as fast as she could!
He waited, listening to her retreating footfalls then he heard something motorized engage, a door was opening and in a final burst of wind, the town was silent again. She was gone.
Slowly, one by one the town’s people emerged from their homes and gathered around him. He was nearly twice the height of the tallest among them, and they noticed that he was naked. Someone brought him what looked like a dirty bed sheet. He understood, he wrapped it around his waist and threw the remainder over his shoulder.
With that, they erupted into cheers, hoots and hollers! From all around, booms came from the fire sticks in obvious celebration; they had also heard his plea!
He looked over at the bleeding man with no right hand. He was trying to stop the out poring of his life essence. A woman had just tied an old rag around the stump, squeezing it tight. He felt great empathy for the man who had bravely tried to defend himself and his village from what, to him, must have seemed like a sword-baring ghost.
He approached slowly so he would not startle him. He picked up the fallen hand and after the woman backed away, he removed the rag and held the man’s hand and stump together.
Inhaling deeply, he organized all his energy and forced it into the image of what he intended it to do. Then he gave thanks to Elohim.
His hands began to glow a soft blue as heat entered the severed limb. There was enough energy in this world to do it; it would just take more time than usual. He stood with his eyes closed, chanting as he kept his mind focused on the healing.
The process took more than twenty minutes, much longer than it would have taken back on TOL. He stepped back and released the arm. The man slowly shook it then made a fist. He cocked his head to the side as he tried to understand what just happened. Then he looked up with a big grin on his face, ready to give the man or angel who had saved him and his town, everything he owned… but he was gone. A collective gasp came as they searched the empty space where he just stood. To them, he had vanished before their eyes.
Yrrep would have to find another village to get directions. He had attracted too much attention to himself here and that was the last thing he wanted. That night, he slept on the ledge of a cliff, under strange stars and dreamed of his family.
The next day he saw that the light path, which had been poised to overshadow the town, had now turned blue. It had a sharp bend in it and section by section, it grew in length until it passed in-between the mountains away from the valley below…
He started running again, now he had a way to go, he would follow where the light path had come from. It would not be long before he learned his location on this small world. Then he could get to the business of tracking down the man he was to save and the enemy he had come here to destroy.
2 Aughra
Universe 311
September/7/2035
8:00am
John awoke with a shout as he kicked the covers off the bed! A trillion screams echoed in his mind an ominous warning he could not discern. The shock stayed with him until he shook his head and he took several deep breaths. As his heartbeat settled, he stared at the blank ceiling thinking this must be déjà vu. The same kind of sick feeling had come every morning for the last two weeks, only this time his stomach was turning.
On second thought déjà vu wouldn’t fit, he thought, because these dreams never were the same. His dreams over those last couple of weeks were about the same two people, Joshua and his wife Rana who looked just like him and his ex-wife. Over the weeks, he had found himself involved in their choices and now he was clear, they were affecting his.
He wondered what word was close to déjà vu, what word means (almost exactly the same?)
These were complicated feelings, and he was not good with feelings, but it was still the only word he could think of that best described this experience. He was sure Joshua would’ve simply called it a gut feeling. He did not like gut feelings, they did not feel good and he could not understand or control them. He considered himself a pure scientist who used his brains and not his guts to solve scientific problems.
He sat up in his small bed and the feeling increased. The last dream flashed just outside his mind’s reach. It was something about today, something dreadful, but he could not bring it back. That bothered him a little because the more he tried to recall it the further it slipped away.
The dream he could remember continued not much later than last night’s dream. It was like watching a new episode of his favorite show. It was as if he and his ex-wife were still in love and together, but his name was Joshua and her name was Rana. For the first time in his life, he found himself anxious for sleep, just to see what they would do next.
Joshua was a very different person than he was and his life reflected it. He was a laid off contractor who’s search for a job hadn’t gotten him very far, until now. He was not formally educated and he did not have the whole world depending on his next choice. Although his other-self had not made much of a career, he had to admit Joshua had made a
life. In that life, he was simply happy.
A wave of nausea came over him as that feeling grew in his stomach. He had to put his mind on task. The importance of today’s test forced the memory of his dreams to fade in a wash of anticipation.
It was time to get up.
His bed was comfortable but small. He had it built into the wall; in the back of his office, years ago after his wife left with the kids and it was clear he would be spending a lot more time here.
He got up, picked up all the covers off the floor and started tucking the sheets neatly under the mattress. Then he smoothed out all the stubborn wrinkles. After fluffing the pillows, he closed the section of the wall; concealing his bed behind the decorative paneling, and his bedroom was now his office.
Everything he needed was in his office. In the back of the room was a small kitchen that he never used. However, the bathroom, his private smoking room and the bar was a different story. For those restless souls on his team, who were like him, his smoking room had become a public rest area. It was necessary because now that Aughra was turning, there was no time to walk down endless hallways, through security and outside for a smoke. In light of the threats they had gotten, the city had given him a special permit for that smoking room.
The bar was his refuge when long workdays turned into long work nights. Two weeks ago, after Aughra’s magnets turned on; Kayla told him that he did not need any distractions, so the bar closed.
That was Phase one, when Aughra lifted millimeters above the ground and they placed the S-matter in the pods. At the end of that test he singlehandedly pushed on her black arm putting her, nearly seven and a half ton body, into a slow motion spin. His touch was the only energy, to this day, that had transferred into her and she was still spinning from it. It was a testament to the genius of his electromagnetic engineers. Without the near zero friction she hovered on, she would never reach the high RPMs required for the experiment to work.
That night the dreams had started and he began waking up each morning with this feeling in his chest and stomach. He tried to ignore the dreams at first, but they weren’t the problem.
The problem was now that he had spent so much time living this other life, in his dreams; he was starting to notice more of his own feelings when he was awake.
He had always ignored his feelings. This other person, Joshua, had a way of following his feelings and his reason. John hated feelings; they were useless, non-quantifiable, and confusing. Reason was simple, straightforward and it always led to some useful knowledge.
He put his clothes on, walked into the bathroom and cleaned his teeth as his thoughts drifted back to his dreams. Joshua and he looked the same, but their minds could not be any more different from each other’s mind. Nevertheless, he felt that at heart, they were the same person.
His plaque-neutralizer beeped and he pressed the self-clean program, placed it on the shelf then checked his hair in the mirror. He took another long look at the person in the mirror; he saw a few more grays coming in on the sides. That person seemed to be saying, you lost too much to stop now.
He turned as he shook his head and waved a hand in front of the door. The door opened automatically, and the bathroom’s sensor turned off the light for him.
There was a mix of excitement and dread about today’s experiment. He did not want to think any more about how he had spent the past years of his life; today he would take the next big step to achieve his life’s greatest dream.
His office and lab were dark and quiet but for Aughra’s humming. It felt like the calm moment before the storm came. He took a deep breath to clear his mind then opened the door and walked into the main lab. The pressure on his insides always peaked as he came close to her first thing in the mornings. Behind him, the door closed with a click and he stared up at her.
He marveled at his creation as he always did when he first saw her. She was composed of five basic technologies: At her center sat a perfectly round sphere as big as a dump truck, made completely out of pure titanium alloy. Aughra was exactly 42.0842 feet tall from the base. Her huge body spun hypnotically slow in the center of the room. The lab’s tall arching walls extended through several floors in the center of a high-rise building, enveloping her like a pearl in an ornate shell.
Projecting out from the sphere’s center were two scimitar arms. The first black arm spread out reaching halfway around her circumference, ending at a blunted point. On the opposite side was another white arm of equal width and length giving her the balance and stability she would need when turning at maximum spin.
The S-matter was contained in magnetically sealed pods placed within the arms widest areas. It was the only known substance capable of unlocking the secrets of their quantum entanglement, which was the goal of his life’s work.
The Antimatter Engine looked like a long semitransparent purple and blue tube made of soft Nano, Engineered Glass. It began as a bulge a quarter the way up from the sphere’s midway point, wrapped around her in a shrinking spiral that ended a quarter of the way up from her base. That special glass was another breakthrough that had made him rich and Aughra possible. It was a type of Chinese finger puzzle. The surface felt like gel to the touch, but when they applied force, it grew harder than titanium. The more force that was applied, the stronger it became. It was strong enough to force a small antimatter explosion in the direction he wanted it to go.
Below her base, designed to reduce the friction of her extreme spinning, were a group of nine huge ball bearings made of a steel alloy, which lifted her 3mm above the ground. Below the ground, a group of superconducting pulse magnets held it all together.
With this experiment Aughra was about to show everyone the entanglement force. John imagined the full process at work. Tomorrow night, at peak gravitational aliment with Nebula311, special magnetic fields around the antimatter will release. Free from its restraint the antimatter will hit the ordinary matter inside the chamber at the top of the glass tube, resulting in a controlled explosion. The incredible force will send raw energy down the spiraling tube and into the ball bearings causing Aughra to spin like a top, faster than any other machine.
As she spins, the two entangled particles of S-matter will expose the force that links them. For now though, she was silent except for the vibration he could feel deep inside his chest as she slowly turned.
He had devoted the past 15 years of his life to the creation of this machine. He hoped this feeling would soon pass, as it always did, but after this morning, he believed something really was wrong; though he could not wrap his mind around it.
It had to do with this experiment and the mysteries that surround the S-matter. He rolled his eyes despite himself as he thought of the official story. A space probe supposedly discovered the S-matter after a rogue asteroid passed close to the Earth 17 years ago, and then conveniently crashed into the sun.
3 The Lab
John tried to clear his mind but the damn feeling in his gut would not go away! In all his life, he never felt like this. Is this what intuition feels like, he wondered?
After watching Aughra for a while, he took in the lab with a glance. In the mornings, he always stayed near his office door and walked along a marked path to keep out of view. He was always aware that the whole world could be watching her too, through the live feeds near the lounge; but there was nothing like standing in her presence.
On every webpage and news channel, the image of Aughra reigned; though the stone fireplace Kayla designed came in a close second for global attention. It was supposed to be a heartening reminder of how technology has evolved, and how something as potentially dangerous as fire, when under the right circumstances, could be a great benefit to all humanity.
The third competitor, named the Real Time Sky Dream, was a large, high-resolution computer flexscreen that covered the ceiling. It kept track of the outside conditions by exterior cameras and reproduced the wanted sounds and images in clear splendor. They saw artificial sunlight by day and the beauty of t
he stars and moon at night.
It did accomplish Kayla’s desired effect. He remembered when Kayla had suggested the changes to the lab. He hired the best interior designer to help her make the place look more comfortable. He was a little surprised the military had approved and paid for everything, believing her idea would be perfect for calming the public. The new look made the whole process more human and Earthy rather than something being built by heartless robots on a far off moon.
The fireplace was his favorite addition. Its inlaid stones ran all the way up the wall and disappeared into the ceiling, looking like it should be part of an enormous old world castle. There was never an actual fire in the hearth. The electric heat never burned anything as it projected the perfect image of a blazing fire. The whole thing was a great illusion that even made him feel relaxed at times.
Others loved the high ceiling most. He looked up and saw the glowing image of a beautiful morning that matched the outside’s perfect weather. Tonight, an image of Nebula311 will look down on Aughra and the guest as he flipped the Phase Two Switch. If everything went as planned, it should be an uneventful evening…