Thirteen Forgotten Worlds (Seam Wardens Book 1)

by Brant Williams

  "Stop gawking, cadets, and focus on your practice!" Abby yelled. "Believe me. You need all the practice you can get!"

  And she was right. We did need the practice. True, we had all made great strides in our control, but we still had a long way to go to meet the competency level expected of a full Seam Warden.

  Five of the people started opening up storage closets and looking through boxes of equipment and practice weapons, while the other two came up to Reid – who just happened to be near me – and smartly saluted.

  Reid saluted back, but with somewhat less rigor. I surreptitiously twisted my body so I could see them and hear what they were talking about without being noticed. I knew it was rude to eavesdrop, but I was intensely curious as to who these people were and what they wanted.

  “Good morning, Reid,” one of the men said. He was tall with black hair cut so short it was practically shaved. A long scar ran down his left cheek, across his ear, and ended halfway down his neck.

  I shivered at the thought of what might have done that to him. Whatever it was, it had to be nasty. Usually, the Seam Wardens’ medical technology could heal wounds pretty quickly and with minimal scarring.

  The other man was considerably shorter, but stockier with powerful arms and broad shoulders. He had a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, something unusual among the Seam Wardens. They were generally clean-shaven.

  “Matthew,” Reid said, nodding to the tall man, then he turned to the bearded man and said “Silas.”

  “How’s it going, Reid?” The bearded man, Silas, said. He had a bit of a southern twang in his speech.

  “So, what’s going on?” Reid asked. “Why are your men searching the equipment closets?”

  Matthew shook his head. “Some messed up stuff going on,” he said. “Someone’s been selling Seam Warden tech to blanks.”

  Reid’s eyes opened in surprise. “One of us?” he asked. “What have they been selling?”

  “A whole bunch of things,” Matthew said. “Boom Sticks, mostly. A few energy packs, several bags with trans-dimensional storage capabilities, Seam Warden protective clothing, and even a few enhancers.”

  “Enhancers?” asked Reid. He looked shocked at the idea. I had heard of enhancers, but I had no idea why it would be so bad to sell them to regular people. “Do you have any idea who would do something so stupid?”

  "There are plenty of people stupid enough to do it," Silas said with a wry grin. "But we don't have any actual suspects at the moment. We're doing a complete inventory of weapons and other items that might fetch a good price outside of the Seam Wardens. Hopefully, we can see where the items have been taken from, and we can narrow down who had access to those places."

  Reid nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose it might give you a place to start investigating, but this sounds a bit like grasping at straws.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Silas said, “we wish we had straws to grasp at. That would be a huge improvement from where we are now. But the pressure’s on us from the top to get this handled quickly. The First Warden, as well as the Senior Wardens, have put their full efforts behind the search to find out who is responsible.”

  I had learned in my classes that the First Warden was like the President of the Seam Wardens. It was an elected position with a five-year term and no term limits, so someone could potentially be elected ten or more times if they started early enough. The current First Warden was in his third term.

  The Senior Wardens are appointed heads of each of the major departments in the Seam Wardens – First Responders, Law Enforcement, Monster Containment, Administration, Special Forces, Science and Exploration, and Diplomacy and Negotiation. If all of them were pushing for resolving this, it had to be critical.

  The next day we didn't go to the practice room after breakfast as usual. Instead, Abby took all of us out of the cadet wing and into the heart of the Seam Warden's headquarters.

  “Where are we going?” Gabriel asked after several minutes of walking.

  Abby smiled. “To the command center.”

  The cadets began murmuring excitedly.

  The command center.

  I had been in there only once before, on the first day I had arrived with Spencer and Tamara. I remembered some details, but I mostly remembered being overwhelmed at the time and not understanding what I was seeing.

  Abby used the biometric breath scanner to gain access to the huge, metal door. It rose into the air with a hiss of pressure, and we quickly filed in.

  We walked down a hall with the emergency suits and breathing masks. I remembered this place from the last time I had come, but this time we stopped before we got to the large room with all the screens and computers. Instead, she pulled us into a room labeled "Observation Room 1".

  The circular room was empty of furniture or ornamentation. The walls curved in a broad arc that was encompassed by a dome over the top. The surface of the walls and floor appeared to be made entirely out of a smooth, dark substance. I wasn't sure if it was polished stone or dark, tinted glass.

  Which brought up an interesting point – "observation room" was a rather ambiguous name. Were we there to observe something, or to be observed?

  The door closed behind us, and the lights dimmed. I realized with a start that I couldn't tell where the light was coming from. There were no light fixtures or any bright spots along the ceiling or walls to indicate a light source. The light seemed to be somehow diffused throughout the room.

  A ten-foot section of the wall lit up and showed what appeared to be a window looking into a different room. I couldn’t tell if the glass had turned transparent, or if this was just a video of some other place.

  The other room was full of complicated-looking medical equipment with monitors and tubes running everywhere. Reid stood in the middle of the room in front of a large, horizontal capsule. He grinned and nodded to all of us.

  “Good morning,” he said, brightly. “Can you all hear me?”

  “Loud and clear,” Abby said.

  “Excellent! Today we are going to go on a little adventure. I’m going to connect to a second skin and enter into Primor, one of the thirteen forgotten worlds.”

  I knew what the second skins were in theory, but I hadn’t ever seen one in action. We had acquired technology from Parse that allowed Seam Wardens to project their consciousness into what were essentially ten-foot-tall armored robots. It allowed us to explore worlds that had environments hostile to humans, whether it was the atmosphere or the creatures that lived there.

  In the case of Primor, it was definitely the creatures that lived there. We hadn't learned much about the particular species that lived there yet, just that it was populated with multiple varieties of carnivorous predators that were of animal-level intelligence and impossible to negotiate with. Because of the danger involved, the Seam Wardens rarely sent people there any longer.

  There was a buzz of excitement from the other cadets. We were finally moving beyond theory and into experience. I liked learning theory as much as – no let's be honest, way more than – the next person, but even I was ready to get a little more practical application. I just wish I had known we were going to see Primor so I could have studied up on it beforehand.

  "This tube creates a synaptic link between my consciousness and the sensory equipment of the second skin," Reid said. "It will feel to me like I am actually in the world. All of my senses, hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste will be available to me. When linked to a second skin, it really does feel like you are there in your own body. With the exception that this body has super strength, powerful weapons, and heightened environmental analysis capabilities."

  “But other than that, it’s identical,” Abby said with a grin.

  “For some of us, it’s not that much of an upgrade,” Reid said and winked.

  Abby smiled and shook her head, clearly amused. “Anyway…” she said, prompting Reid to move along.

  "Anyway," Reid said, taking the hint. "You are all in an observation room.
From there you will be able to tap into my Second Skin's sensors and see and hear what I see and hear. You won't be able to taste, touch or smell since you aren't connected to the neural link, but just observing through the holocam feeds, which are audio and visual data only.”

  Reid climbed into the tube and pulled on what appeared to be a black swimming cap. “This is the neural connector. Once I activate the second skin, the connector will link my consciousness to the second skin.”

  For some reason, the sheer simplicity of it seemed strange to me. I guess I had been expecting something big and bulky with lots of cords and sensors attached to it that took a team of scientists to connect. Simply pulling on what looked like a spandex cap seemed way too easy.

  Reid lay down in the tube and closed it. He touched some controls inside the tube that we couldn’t see from our angle.

  “I’m ready to engage in three, two, one." He flipped a switch, and our room went black for a moment, before completely disappearing.

  Or, so it appeared. It looked as if we were transported to an entirely different location. We seemed to be in a long tunnel with a curved roof that stretched for hundreds of yards in either direction. Several large, robot-looking things stood in what appeared to be charging stations.

  Suddenly, the room began to move, and I felt myself losing balance. I stumbled into Alexa who gently, but firmly held me up. I wasn't the only one to stumble either. Sierra and Zachary both did as well.

  Kevin and Logan began to snicker. For some reason, they hadn't lost their balance when the room started moving. And then I suddenly realized why.

  The room hadn’t actually moved. We were seeing everything from the perspective of Reid's second skin as it ran down the tunnel. The rounded walls projected a perfect, lifelike image so clear that it was virtually indistinguishable from actually being there. The sudden movement had taken me by surprise, and my eyes had assumed movement and my body adjusted accordingly. Which would have been fine if the room was moving, but since it wasn't, it just made me look like an idiot.

  Although I must admit, I did enjoy the feel of Alexa's hands on me as she steadied me.

  The second skin moved quickly down the passageway until it stopped just in front of what looked to be a jagged rip suspended in the air. This wasn't the smooth straight lines of the portal Spencer and Tamara had created when they brought me here with a gate box. This was a twenty-foot ragged tear in the very fabric of reality. One of the Seams.

  Inside the seam, I could see a vague outline and muted colors of what looked like a lush, green world full of trees and vegetation. Waves of strange shapes and semi-opaque colors floated across the entrance obscuring the view. The rough edges of the seam glowed a faint red that vaguely reminded me of blood, making the entire thing look like a gigantic wound.

  Completely encircling the seam was a transparent protective barrier. We had learned about this technology early on in our classes. The full name was Electromagnetic Repulsive Field, but most people called it ERF for short. This was the technology we had purchased from Parse by allowing their Watchers to observe our world, and it prevented anything from going in or out without our permission.

  Reid stopped in front of the ERF field. “This is SS012 piloted by Reid Brewster requesting entrance to Primor,” he said.

  “Copy that SS012. Request being relayed to command,” said a female voice. “Please stand by.”

  “Because of the serious nature of crossing through any of the Seams, we have scanners that can detect lifeforms in proximity to the seam on the opposite side," Reid said. "The technicians in the command center will check to see if there are any threats in the vicinity of the entrance before lowering the ERF. Once they are confident it is safe, they will lower the ERF, and I will cross through the seam. Command will then restore the ERF until I am ready to return."

  The transparent barrier flickered and then disappeared.

  “SS012, this is command. You are cleared for entry," said the voice. Then in a more casual tone, the woman spoke again. "Good luck, Reid."

  The second skin walked toward the seam and then through it. There was a flicker of light as we crossed through the portal, followed by a blinding light. There was a collective cry from the Cadets as the suddenly bright light hurt our eyes.

  "Keep your eyes closed and stay calm," Abby said. "The light sensors got flooded, and the emergency dimmers are taking a bit longer than usual to kick in."

  On cue, the lights dimmed to an acceptable level. It was still bright, but at least it was no longer blindingly painful.

  I looked around at a lush green world filled with giant trees soaring high up into the sky. Massive bushes and ferns dominated the landscape. In the distance, mountains and tree-covered hills were visible. A patch of blue between the trees seemed to be a lake or some body of water.

  When I was a kid, I had been fascinated by dinosaurs. I read every book on the subject I could get my hands on. The trees and vegetation I was now seeing looked like pictures many of the artists had drawn. It was breathtaking. I felt like I had traveled a million years backward in time.

  I kept spinning around trying to take it all in. It was hard to remember I was not actually there. I was really in a room back at the Seam Warden’s headquarters. The world around me was perfectly clear. If I had not seen the room before the screens were turned on, I might not have believed I wasn’t on Primor myself.

  Only the illusion wasn’t quite perfect. It was very close, but not quite right. Despite my eyes telling me I was outside, my other senses were not fooled. The smells were all wrong, and the air in the room felt stale. After several minutes being in here together, the room had begun to develop the distinctive odor of people-in-an-enclosed-space. Especially Caleb. He was a nice guy, but hygiene wasn't his strong suit.

  There was also no breeze. I could see – and even hear – the leaves on trees and bushes blowing in the wind, but we felt none of it.

  But the most subtle, and once I noticed it, the most powerful of the flaws, was that the sounds those of us in the room made had a hollow quality to them that made them sound different from the sounds happening outside. I hadn’t read much about acoustics, but the sounds somehow felt too close. It felt just enough off to be noticeable.

  “Welcome to Primor!" Reid said. "Take a look around and soak it in. It's not very often we send anyone to this world anymore. We've explored it thoroughly in the past and discovered that the only real resource it has that Earth lacks is over-sized, aggressive, predators. And it has those in abundance.

  “We still send someone into each of the worlds with a second skin at least once a year to make sure nothing major has changed. I volunteered to do so this time to give you a chance to see Primor for yourself rather than simply read about it.”

  Reid began walking away from the Seam and started traveling toward the patch of water I had seen through the trees.

  He emerged out of the forest and into a broad valley. There were bushes and smaller vegetation around, but once he was out of the trees, we could see for miles in all directions.

  Large, rolling hills stretched out for miles to our left. Ahead and to the right was either a huge lake or an ocean. Whichever it was, it was large enough that it extended beyond the horizon.

  Down in the valley, herds of animals grazed on tall grass and large bushes. They were too far away to see clearly, but I got the sense that they were massive creatures. I was again struck by the feeling that I had somehow been transported back to the Jurassic period on Earth.

  “You will notice that the climate and vegetation on Primor are not all that different from Earth. Or at least Earth as it was," Reid said. "There are many creatures here that you will actually recognize. Let me zoom in to give you a better look."

  Before I could process through the implications of what he had just said, the world around us blurred and shifted. I stumbled again at the sensation of traveling, and when I regained my balance, the perfectly symmetrical view of everything around us was
gone. One section of the room was in crystal clear focus, while the sides were stretched and blurred.

  “Sorry for the rough transition,” Reid said. “When I focus the cameras on a single, distant point, the observation room's fixed dome shape can't compensate, and you get this distortion."

  The view shifted again, but this time less jarringly. When the screen refocused again, I was staring straight at a herd of Triceratops.

  But I had to be wrong.

  Triceratops had gone extinct on Earth long ago. Why would they be in Primor?

  "Anyone recognize these?" Reid asked. "Don't bother answering because it was a rhetorical question. Of course, you all do. These are triceratops. They, like most other dinosaurs, are native to Primor.”

  I had a hard time processing this. I heard the words he was saying, but it wasn’t making sense.

  “As far as we know, the Seams have always existed on Earth. They open and close at varying times with different sizes of Seams for the different worlds. From what we have been able to piece together, it seems that at some point, millions of years ago, the seam between our world and Primor was much larger than it is now and allowed many of its medium-sized native species to cross into our world. These creatures that lived here and eventually died are what scientists today call the dinosaurs. Their fossilized remains have lost whatever effect the Seams have on altering memory so people can see and remember them.”

  Medium-sized? The dinosaurs that came through – T-rex, Brontosaurus, Triceratops and all the massive creatures we had found fossils for – were the medium-sized creatures? It boggled my mind to think of how big the large ones were.

  Godzilla came to mind.

  I studied the herd of triceratops, completely fascinated by seeing living versions of creatures that my entire life I had been told were extinct. Their color was different than what I had expected – brighter, more flamboyant. I had figured they would be like rhinoceroses with mostly gray skin. Instead, they were colored more like exotic tree frogs in reds, blacks, and even some blues. I wondered if the different colors had any significance – gender, or perhaps an indication of health or sickness?