Rationality Zero

by Guillen, JM

  There was a reason that Wyatt called her the “ice princess” behind her back.

  I sighed. This was going to be all about work. Fine. Apprise me, Anya.

  Her tone softened a touch. Michael, there is an aberration of an unknown type within two hundred yards of your current position. It has been motionless for at least the past half hour.

  An aberration, here in the airport? Suddenly, I was pleased that she was in work mode. Unknown type?

  I have been running it through the systems. No known classification.

  That's fucking brilliant. I am completely zero-geared, Anya. I don't suppose Wyatt chose to come with you?

  Asset Guthrie is not present, Michael. We are to meet him at a different location.

  I knew that was the plan, but I had held onto hope. Can you put in a request for tech disbursement? Otherwise, we really aren't equipped.

  That request has been filed and approved, Michael. She seemed pleased with herself.

  That's something at least. Where do I need to go?

  Ahead you should see the airport bookstore. There is a small restaurant next to it.

  I see it. I smiled at a young boy who was looking at me as I passed.

  Between the two of them is a grey access door. It is marked “Janitorial.” You will find it unlocked.

  Perfect. What's my time frame?

  The conduit will be available for the next four minutes and thirteen seconds. I would advise—

  Got it. Thanks, Anya. I broke into a run. People around me gaped as I suddenly sprinted, with no apparent cause.

  I didn't have time to worry about them.

  Four minutes, Michael.

  I got it, Anya. Thanks. I reached for the handle. Of course, it wasn't locked.

  For just a moment, I wondered how many times this location had been used. Conduits typically only existed in locations that had been previously set up.

  Then, I opened the door.

  I felt the subtle click in my Crown as it opened. Nothing else. No great flash of light or dimension-rending sound; simply the click of my Crown acknowledging the conduit. It was only coded to me of course.

  Then I stepped into the white room.

  It was always difficult to ascertain, exactly, how large the white rooms were. Wyatt claimed that they weren’t in any of the Facilities, but that they actually existed in some kind of non-Euclidian space, and that accounted for the odd sense of distortion one always had while within them.

  It looked like every white room I had even seen. It was a lab, with white tile on the floor, white walls, stainless metal tables and counters. There were several different workstations, each with various pieces of equipment that would carry forth humanity’s scientific knowledge by decades.

  There was no light source, yet the room was lit, brilliantly so.

  I had never been able to determine exactly what it was that the white rooms smelled like. They smelled clean, but not harsh like disinfectant. The scent was comforting, almost calming.

  This was probably by design.

  There were a couple of weapon cabinets, typically used to house menacing black firearms. The other cabinet held various bits of body armor and tools. There were a couple of duffel bags hanging on the wall, some luggage and briefcases on the shelf beneath.

  Some were normal; others were set to hold guns.

  Bishop, Michael. Asset #108. The voice in my Crown was decidedly neutral. Welcome, Asset.

  I glanced around, frowning. My choices were quite limited. It was understandable; no one wanted me charging around an airport with full Facility gear. Still, this was almost sparse.

  Perhaps I was just spoiled.

  The white room connected to my apartment is always fully spec'd. There’s a drawer with cash, credit cards, and various bits of ID: passports, drivers’ licenses, national ID cards. If there’s something special needed for a mission, there’s a computer and an ultra-high quality printer where I can download and print pretty much any piece of government paperwork possible. You don’t have to feed it any paper, it “prints” that too. Pretty fancy. They might be on the market in fifteen years or so.

  Usually, my supplies are practically unlimited.

  But this...

  My choices were short, to put it kindly. No guns at all, neither general class nor Facility specialized. No blades of any kind, either. Not even the smallest knife. No body armor.

  This was mostly passive weapons, axiomatic tools, and injectables. There was a plethora of them laid out on the steel table. Frowning, I turned and opened on of the cabinets. There were dampening grenades. I smiled. At least there was that.

  Designate, I need guidance.

  Her voice was December in my mind. This aberration is not our primary objective at this time, Michael. Use the dampeners to simply restore ambient Rationality. Take the creature if you can, but if the dampeners eject the creature to the astral tides, you are to let it go. No extraction team is prepared. In 88% of all simulations, ejection is the preferred outcome in this situation. This is a random event, and you are not to jeopardize your primary mission to resolve it.

  I bit my lip. I hated letting the creature loose. Understood, Designate.

  Then, she was gone, like a whisper on the wind.

  Looking around, I weighed my limited options. I grabbed four of the dampener grenades, knowing that for their size, they contained quite a punch. They weren’t explosives; instead they reasserted the axioms and laws of Rational physics, creating a burst of stability within a certain sphere.

  Quite handy indeed.

  There was a Neural Lacuna— a device designed to stun the memory of a human target, causing them a type of amnesia. There was also a set of axiomatic shackles. I almost took a photic baton, figuring that it would be simple to conceal, but then realized that engaging the aberration was not my goal.

  Then I saw a smooth, small disk, no larger than my fist. There were several dials along the surface, and I was certain it was already queued to me.

  The Tabula Rasa.

  That was a surprising inclusion. The Tabula Rasa was used to completely obliterate all matter within a certain radius, leaving a spherical void in its place. In an instant, there would be a sphere of nothingness, and then thunder as the air around the sphere slammed back into place.

  A bit of overkill, for one aberration, I thought. It could come in handy, but…

  Reluctantly, I left it behind at looked at the injectable cooler.

  Three minutes, twelve seconds, Michael.

  Injectables were small pressurized syringes of nano machines, a specialized type that were classified as “viral mecha.” They were designed to interface with the Solomon’s Crown, giving short-lived boosts to the human body. Oftentimes, these boosts were far more than were possible using simple chemistry, which is why the viral mecha were geared to be able to create small axiomatic changes within the human body.

  I took seven of them, checking the encoding to make certain I had what I needed.

  I poked around some more and my gaze settled on the Tabula Rasa again. I grabbed it, just in case.

  There really was nothing else.

  I had never been in a white room that was so spartan. I used one of the small, white injectables, making certain I noted the code on the side. There were dozens of different kinds, but this one was pretty typical. It augmented speed and grace, allowing shorts bursts of each, all at the cost of a little muscle soreness.

  Useful in a pinch.

  I thrust it against my bare arm. There was a tiny hissing noise as thousands of dormant viral mecha flowed into my bloodstream.

  Two minutes, Michael.

  Understood, Anya. Thank you. I walked towards the door. There's little to be had here.

  Acknowledged, Michael. I will be standing by if you require me.

  Do we have a visual overlay of the aberration’s location? Already, I felt the effects of the mecha as thousands of the tiny devices stimulated my neurons and endocrine system. Everything
felt faster; my head was clearer.

  I can bring that up now, Michael. I felt a subtle shifting in my Crown. Patching you the intel.

  Thank you, Anya. I stepped through the door, back into the busy airport.

  The Crown is intricately designed, and contains thousands of connections to each hemisphere of the human brain. As Anya patched me what I needed, my visual cortex created a burning red marker over my field of vision, one hundred and eighty-seven yards away. It wasn't moving, just as Anya had said. It simply seemed to hang in the air, shaped like an odd letter “J.”

  Advancing towards target. I had two of the dampeners in each pocket. Hopefully, the aberration was in some out of the way place, and I could trigger the devices without drawing too much attention to myself. If I was lucky, I could bolster ambient Rationality and the thing would be ejected back to the astral tides.

  Then, we could be on to find Wyatt.

  I'm reading target in the airport men's room. Can you confirm?

  Affirmative, Michael.

  That was somewhat out of the way, at least. I reached into my jacket pocket, and thumbed open the top of the dampening grenade. More cautiously than might seem typical, I crept into the restroom.

  There was no one inside. For the scantest moment, I thought I heard the howling of wind, but—

  But no.

  I checked under the stalls to be certain. It seemed as if I was clear. I flipped through the optic settings on my Crown, but still saw nothing.

  Wyatt will love hearing about the aberration that got caught in the john. I was teasing, but only to stave off my nerves. I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck, and my heart was pounding in my chest.

  Something was wrong.

  The glowing red marker was larger now, clearly designating the third stall down.

  Focus, Michael. Your adrenaline levels are—

  Yes. I’m sure. I cut her off, almost testily. I'm honestly wondering if you are reading a glitch, Anya. Are you reading any residual Irrationality, other than what the marker shows? Slowly, I walked towards the third stall down.

  Ambient Rationality readings are nominal to .0026%. She paused, but there was just a touch of uncertainty in her cool tone. Yet the reading remains, Michael. The data seems accurate.

  Understood. I placed my hand on the outside of the stall door, my thumb still on the dampener. I could set it off in an instant if I needed to.

  Carefully, I pushed the door open, my heart thundering.

  It was empty.

  Nothing, Anya. I peered at the strange bent marker hanging in midair. It was odd. Usually, when showing an aberration, it would give an outline of the creature. This was just a curved marker, somewhat in the shape of a letter “J.”

  Whatever it was wasn't physical in any way; the only way I saw anything at all was through my Crown. I peered closer, knowing that my crown was recording everything.

  Ambient Rationality fluctuating, Bishop. Rationality negative point seven five.

  Copy that, Anya. I stepped closer pulling the dampener from my pocket. The indicator was slowly moving, now that I paid it attention. It almost undulated in the air.

  Suddenly, it struck, like an angry serpent. Quicker than thought, it hooked around towards me burying itself in my chest. I screamed, expecting pain and gore.

  No. Nothing. I gaped at it, stunned.

  Michael! Use the damp--

  Then it pulled, as if hooked between my ribs, and the agony began.

  Michael! You— Anya was suddenly cut short, as if torn from my mind. She was torn from me, so suddenly that it was like losing part of myself.

  All I could hear was wind; howling, screaming wind. It was wind that had wailed since the beginning of time. It cried my name, and whispered things best forgotten.

  Cold.

  I fell.

  Stunned, I grabbed at my chest, my hands seeking where the hook had me.

  Nothing. No pain, no wound.

  Anya? She wasn't there; I knew it before I opened the link. Designate? Do you have my position?

  Nothing. There was only emptiness in my mind. The Lattice and everything connected to that network was gone.

  I blinked, looking upwards into a strangely tilted night sky. The stars overhead were mad, screaming eyes that looked as if they sought to burn away the world. The ground was a sharp, angled sea of jagged obsidian. I had landed hard and broken several of the crystalline structures. My leg was bleeding.

  The wind was fierce and cold. I would freeze in it, if I didn’t find shelter. At my feet was a bent, barbed hook. Still in shock, I reached for it. An otherworldly black filament stretched out behind the hook, into the unseen distance.

  I dropped it in horror, and logic returned.

  This was a trap.

  Only assets would have noticed the wicked hook-aberration. Specifically, only a Preceptor, with their hard-wired axiomatic neuralware, could have come close to discovering the abnormality. Something so small would never have been found with deep telemetry.

  It was left here. Someone knew we would be coming. Now, they had caught me, and I had been pulled—

  Where?

  I pushed myself up, still wobbling and checking my chest for a wound where the hook had been. I couldn’t quite believe I was whole. It seemed as if there wasn't one; the hook must not have been fully solid in my own Rational world.

  That was a blessing, at least.

  Anya, I'd love a response. I sent again, with little hope.

  Nothing, of course. I wasn't anywhere close to within range. I looked around in a stupor at my otherworldly surroundings.

  I stood on a vast plain, where obsidian and other unknown minerals jutted from the ground in gleaming, razor shards. In the far flung distance, outlined by violet stars and a bloated, angry moon, I could see several ziggurat styled pyramids, lost in the shadowed darkness.

  I could also hear something skittering in the darkness. There was an odd clicking sound, echoing from far to my left, as if something was scrambling along the stone.

  But that wasn’t all I heard.

  When I listened closely, I could almost imagine lost whispers within the howling wind, whispers of names and words so foul that they made me shudder to consider them. They were angry words, words of spite and barbed flame, and they seemed to drag through my mind, cutting as they did.

  No. I was imagining things. It was my imagination, desperately scrambling trying to make something whole and sane out of this place, seeking any touchstone that would let me hold onto Rationality.

  Rationality.

  At the thought, I put my hands back into my pockets. Three of the dampener grenades were still there, along with the Tabula Rasa. Only a brief casting about showed me the location of the fourth grenade, which I had apparently dropped as I came through. Just that thought gave me a small, hard smile.

  Came through.

  There was obviously some kind of cleft or crack at this spot that led from this world into the airport restroom. It was part of the snare. If the hole was still there…

  I ran the spectrum of optics in my crown, just to see if I could see the cleft, but the readings all came back twisted and wrong. Infrared showed shifting, ominous shapes around me, lost specters that drifted on the forsaken wind. The x-ray spectrum actually made my head ache, pain lancing through me as I looked into nothingness.

  “Damnit,” I swore softly to myself. This wouldn’t do. Something was clouding my mind so I couldn't see the way back.

  Which led me back to the dampeners.

  The dampeners weren't explosives, not in the traditional sense. No, they were anchors of a sort, reinforcing and strengthening the local axioms of reality so that they matched Rationality. This was of great use when dealing with Irrats or Aberrations, as the devices made it exponentially more difficult to alter the Rational world, at least within the dampener’s range.

  I furrowed my brow. If I had only thought to trigger one while in the stall, the cleft between places proba
bly would have closed. It was unnatural, and the axioms of normal physics wouldn’t allow it.

  But what would happened if I used one here, at a place that was so... other?

  There were mathematical equations that could answer that very question, but I didn’t exactly have all the resources at hand to perform them. The Solomon’s Crown was a miraculous device, but without my connections to the Lattice, it was quite limited. Anya could have rattled off the numbers by rote and Wyatt might have been able to figure them just in his head…

  I was not so blessed.

  Then, there was coldness, like a great looming shadow in my mind. I stumbled backward, raising my arm against something that wasn’t there.

  My heart was pounding in my chest. Nothing. I was alone.

  But something was with me. I could feel it, scrabbling around in the back of my head, all hair and gangled leg. It was in the places where the waking mind never went, hiding behind memory and dream, casting forth threads of terror.

  It was a spider, huge and bloated. Each leg was longer than my arm.

  “Show yourself!” I screamed into the wind, though it stole my voice. I spun wildly, looking all around me for the creature, with a dampener in one hand, and the Tabula Rasa in the other.

  I had no idea if they would be of help.

  I turned again, still seeing nothing. Yet I felt it, as if the shape of it cast a shadow in my mind. It was like a spider and a scorpion had birthed some abomination, and gifted it with feral intelligence. It had scrabbling legs, a hairy carapace, and a wicked pincered tail. It was as if I could see it on the edge of my imagination. It was a female, with only a maw on her face and eight shiny eyes.

  “Nothing.” I bit the word short, gritting my teeth and glaring into the gloaming darkness. “There’s nothing there.”

  My heart was pounding in my chest. My breath was coming in great, shuddering gasps. No matter what I said, I knew the truth.

  I was hunted.

  I knew that she wanted more than sustenance. I could feel it, feel her desire like warm oil pouring over me.

  More than flesh, more than food. She does not want, she desires.

  I almost retched at the raw force of the lustful sexuality that flooded my mind, burned in my veins. It was a physical sensation, like burning honey drizzled across my flesh.