Of Crimson Indigo: Points of Origin

by Grant Fausey

  “This place gives me the creeps,” he told the corporate suit. Krydal rubbed his arm trying to reassure him, but Jake wasn’t buying it. He was annoyed with her. There was nothing of interest on Sodin except tumbleweeds and rubble rats. So he knew Brennan was up to something. It was a bad play, and he knew a bad play when he saw one. At least, she was consistent. Wherever Brennan wanted with Sodin, he wasn’t saying. And neither was she. There was no point in turning tail and running; not yet, anyway. He considered dropping a freight container on the corporate liaison, but it wasn’t in his nature. He preferred the direct approach, a sunny beach and the girl of his dreams. He had neither.

  “Maybe Rooka and I should wait in orbit,” he insisted. “Burner home.” He wasn’t apposed to stranding these idiots either. The palms of his hands were sweaty, converging on one another. Indigo tracked past his younger incarnation to the edge of the platform, and stopped. The gooey mess left behind by the Anion clone was the earmark signature of his competitor, Samuel Nomad, a true entrepreneur in every sense of the word. He knew the location, the essence of the breach. Nomad had crossed the translucent boundary, giving its secrets away too quickly to repair. It was priority over madness. The runner had deliberately exposed himself, knowing full well either Crimson or Indigo would counter his move.

  “Gotcha–-” the young beauty reiterated, making a beeline for the location. The flash of the runner was visible for a moment in the flutter of electrical arcs. “We have a runner commander!”

  “Corporate?” asked Patton. He wanted every detail. She had more information than she had time to evaluate. The young warrior took refuge among the jagged rock formations, between the old woman and the forest ruins.

  “No … Dogger,” she answered. “I’m on it.”

  “Stay alert people,” ordered the commander. “We may have to alter our travel plans,” signaled Patton. The squad maneuvered into position, nothing had changed. Indigo did the same, treading lightly across the grates behind her, trying not to be too conspicuous. He was more interested in the whereabouts of the corporate suit then the small, nearly transparent creature keeping an eye on him.

  Brennan hurried along the well-worn path from the facility entrance to the hidden laboratory, jibber-jabbering to himself about responsibility. He was excited about something, or frightened. Indigo didn’t know which, only that he was afraid. The room was dark, draped in shadow. The administrator stood quiet, in contemplation. There was no telling what was inside; at least, not until his eyes adjusted. There was residue on the floor in front of him. “Liquefied flesh,” he said under his breath. Someone had obviously met an untimely end in the exact spot where he was standing.

  The facilitator shivered, startling himself back to reality. The sight of his own blood raised his blood pressure. He had no clue as to whose body it was, or what lead to his demise? If he stayed longer, there was every possibility his own life would be forfeit. There was no telling who or what caused the mess on the floor, but it definitely sent him over the edge. Brennan moved his ass because of it; headed straight for the exit.

  “Rooka—” said the freighter captain outside on the platform.

  “Right behind you, boss.” He was moving on all fours. “I got your back.”

  Brennan quickened his pace, emerging from the structure, only to be confronted with the pilot. Krydal tried to warn him, but the suit had an agenda of his own. He looked back at the structure, washed his hands of the matter. There was someone else there, inside. A runner perhaps, but Brennan wasn’t willing to admit it to himself, let alone, tell anyone else. He didn’t have the guts to investigate it further. He had a squad of the finest ITOL at his disposal, and he intended to use them. He would dispose of the evidence, keep the secret––even kill Krydal, if he had too.

  THIRTY-SEVEN: Bounty and Bounty Hunters

  • • •

  The bounty hunter tracked his way through the ruins, managing to stay one step ahead of the young warrior, but just barely. Krydal was clever and obviously knew him like the back of her hand. Samuel Nomad knew she would eventually catch up with him and put a stop to his little insurrection. The bounty hunter was on the run. He knew Indigo was within earshot of the pilot and lab rat. He climbed out through a broken grate, beneath the landing platform and looked up into the falling rain to get his bearings. The symbiont’s words echoed in the hollow of his mind, a sense of rage in the temporal geometry of their past lives: He was feeling the culmination of regressions and foresight in an altered state that brought a new sense of knowledge and courage to his existence. Jake had somehow managed to elude the sonance that would eventually trigger his blending with Nilana. He had to rekindle the spark of love with Crimson Krydal Starr. But he couldn’t do it with an old woman. The dynamics wouldn’t work.

  Brenda Hutton and Jason Maccon were near the site of the ancient archeological expedition. But the past remained untouched, oblivious to the future. The remains of the expeditionary force were as evident as the alternate reality. It was just hidden in the dirt, between the dark recesses of the evolving world and the dismal forces preying upon the cauldron of interconnecting dimensions present on Sodin. A hideous monster was awakening within the world. The heart of the moon shook: a sizable earthquake ruptured the heavens in a rising upheaval of shards of sediment that exposed the facade beneath the surface. Sodin was revealing itself in one massive turn of events. The celestial body was undergoing a metamorphosis, becoming operational … its state of dormancy giving way to a fully operational apparatus capable of unimaginable feats of ingenuity. The entire place was a living thing; a gigantic machine left silent for billions of years. Perhaps, left unattended since the beginning of time itself. Brennan knew of its existence. The apparatus had unveiled itself to him, just as it was programmed to do.

  “One future can not exist without the other,” said Renniska Brennan tripping over his own two feet as he pushed Jake and Rooka out of the way. “One universe will prevail.”

  The suit came up in front of the pilot halfway between the makeshift base camp and the entrance to the hidden laboratory; his face aglow with the essence of small electrical impulses, cultivated by the charged particles of floating sediment along the battlements. The corporate suit gripped the sidewall. A ring of light forming around his head in a dazzling display of fireworks that expanded from the center of the obelisk to a rock podium atop the pillars supporting the hidden laboratory. The machine was opening the biomass abyss to the rising waves of distortion, bringing forth Rallumn’s world into the convergence. The first waves of energy emerging from the temporal threshold expanded the portal across the sea of darkness as it breathed life into the ebb and flow of the conversion. Renniska Brennan was desperate to put some distance between the device and the shadowy figure taking shape within the planet, and he was carefully calculating the means of his escape.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” said the inquisitor, afraid.

  “What are you talking about? asked Krydal. The corporate liaison pulled the weasel close to her, practically strangling him with his own shirt collars as she clenched his tie. “What’s going on?”

  “What is this place?” asked Jake.

  “The end of all of us,” said the facilitator. “The Master-builders greatest achievement.”

  “What’s Rex doing here, Brennan?” Krydal spun the facilitator around in a one-eighty. “What’s going to happen, if it does work?”

  “We’re still here!” Rooka slipped in behind the administrator, held his ground against the corporate suit, face to face with Brennan. “It’s a portal to another universe,” said the facilitator, mesmerized by the spectacle unfolding before his eyes. “It’s the doorway to the worlds beyond.”

  “Beyond what?” asked the corporate liaison.

  “We gotta go!” said Jake.

  The ground liquefied under his feet. He couldn’t believe his eyes, they were transcending both time and space. Sodin was literally splitting apart, elongating into something much l
arger than a planetoid size moon. Indigo was a part of the metamorphosis, and quickened his pace hugging to the shadows. He was stilly weary from the turn of events. His nerves a rush of cool water running through his veins; under duress, the influences of the regenerative process beginning to affect him physically; his body changing, growing younger with each step he took. He was still an old man, a great many years had passed since his first encounter with Crimson. She was the true adversary of his broken heart. If only there was a chance to even the score, change the past; to do it all over again; he would take the opportunity to relive his life and make things right between them. It was his fate.

  Crimson knew she had let him slip past her to the safety of the other side. She remembered being an elite warrior under the command of Joseph Patton. It was moments after her meeting with Brennan that life reassigned her to the crew of the Firehawk and presented her a new program, uploading the operation into the gunship’s computer system. The mission was highly classified: A new type of operatives, under the ITOL charter. She was no longer to take orders from ISAF Command. It was the end of one life and the beginning of another.

  Another earthquake shook loose the shadows, tumbling the catacombs. Brennan steadied himself against the cavern wall, rolling with it. But Krydal didn’t let go. She was hanging on for dear life. “Why don’t you tell us what is really going on here,” she demanded. “Why is this moment in time so damn important?”

  “Why cover our tracks?” Brennan squirmed, but Krydal forced him to backtrack. She wanted the truth, not some damn cover-up story. “What’s so goddamned important about no one following us into the past?”

  Brennan knew Krydal could see the fear in his eyes, the icy cold breeze pushing him to the sea of dark matter rising from the edge of the abyss and didn’t answer. He was still looking for an avenue of escape, trying to get away. “The Industrials are perfecting creation,” he told her, “transforming the essence of our universe.”

  Jake connected the dots. “A universe within a universe,” he said, reluctantly, giving her the freedom she needed to see the truth.

  The body of Neffum Claris slammed into the platform in front of the bounty hunter, bouncing up in a splatter of goo that came to rest in a heap outside the complex. Indigo stepped out of the shadows into the light, made himself vulnerable to his beloved. Sodin was about to give birth to an entirely new existence––one generated from the culmination of two very different cosmic parents. It was the chance he longed for to change his life, to set the world straight and reconnect with his younger incarnation and the hand of his beloved, Crimson. He would reunite with her in a passion that so consumed them as young lovers. His old body would be reconstituted within the confines of a new existence; their lives merged in the bliss of resurrection.

  “Two futures to the same universe?” Krydal went straight for the jugular. It was all she could do to stop from pulling the trigger herself.

  “You gotta like her style,” said Indigo.

  “Camouflage disengaged,” said the old woman; her armor visible along side of an elevator riddled with laser holes. Her long, gray hair blew with the wind as she dropped to the platform, landing like a master gymnast next to the mangled remains of the dignitary. “I’m afraid your franchise has been revoked, Mister Assemblymen,” she informed the dead corpse. “Your company no longer exists.”

  “Impressive,” said the bounty hunter.

  “She’s not so hot,” countered the symbiont, Nilana.

  The old woman stepped off the platform, standing in mid-air. “Lower level, please, Brakka. Let’s see what we’ve gotten ourselves into.” The dragon-shaped machine growled, disengaged from stealth mode to reveal the old woman atop of the fighter as she stepped onto the docking ramp, immediately opposite the entrance to the hidden laboratory.

  “There’s a disruption in the boundary layer here,” she told the machine. “I can feel it.”

  “Stay were you are,” Rooka told the others. The lab rat climbed over Brennan with veracity of a seasoned mountain climber then stopped, sensing danger. He sniffed the air on the prowl, his heart that of a hunter. “Something isn’t right here,” he said bluntly. Something stirred in the shadows: a scent he had encountered before, but this time he couldn’t see it. The lair was dim; the hair on the back of his neck on end.

  “There’s someone else here.”

  “Indigo.”

  “Or worse.” Crimson stepped over a fallen girder, her ghostly image rippling in the distortion as she watched her younger incarnation on the other side of the boundary. A glint of light from the ground caught her eye. She picked up the trinket to investigate it.

  “Looks like a piece of a pod, or a runner pack,” she told her companion.

  “Explorer?” asked Brakka.

  “No … Dogger.” The dragon-shaped fighter took a defensive posture, its guns repositioning ready for combat. Crimson backed away carefully, scanning the area for any sign of the ruthless bounty hunter.

  “Stay alert,” said the old woman. “He’s a tricky bastard.”

  “Understood.”

  “There …” said the rat. “The floor moved.” Rallumn rose from the murky solitude of the abyss, coursing the biomass. The freighter captain moved instinctively; his true nature revealed, regardless of his past. The warrior within was blending with his previous lives, his own existence becoming Indigo.

  “Darkness rises,” said the pilot, whirling to face the wiry menagerie of twisted organic life and bio-matter.

  “So, prophecy is fulfilled!” clamored the entity. “He whom comes from the past also represents the future.” Renniska Brennan withdrew, only to become entwined in the slithering vines of the biomass. Krydal immediately went invisible, much to Jake’s astonishment. The lab rat’s eyes glowed red, forcing her to reconsider her position.

  “Rooka?” she said, questioning her own perception of reality.

  “Heed my warning,” said the lab rat, looming over her like some angry beast protecting its lair. “Withdraw form this place. All will be explained in time.”

  “That’s not Rooka,” said Jake. The pilot shifted position, coming up short of the ground transport wreckage, the replica of Rooka anticipating his next move.

  “Rooka…?” Krydal took a step back; the lab rat was withdrawing like he was separating a wild animal from his prey. She retracted her helmet revealing her face.

  “When did you feed your friend last?” She asked the pilot.

  The copilot was obviously not himself.

  “Yesterday …” chuckled the hauler captain. “But that’s not Rooka.”

  “I know.”

  The star jockey mustered his courage. Rooka had Brennan by the arm, dragging him up the steps of the platform leading to the threshold of the great machine. The administrator squirmed, trying to rid himself of the replica and get away. The inquisitor shuddered in the wake of the distortion field, his body expanding in the waves of temporal distortion across the surface of the portal.

  His feet shifted, slipping between the layers of convergence. The giant mining complex receded into the cavern above him, drawing him into the confines of another universe; his body separated from the others with no means of escape. He had no choice but to act; it was now, or never! The world as he knew it disappeared around him. Brennan was a new life form, born of the primordial ooze at the core of the giant machine.

  Jake felt the ground give way beneath his feet, the great divide expelling the planet’s core into the arms of the biomass, at the heart of the abyss. Sodin shattered, driven apart by the sheer size of the machine hidden beneath the surface. The landscape cracked and crumbled, driven apart in the upheaval of wind that swept across the mountains and plains unleashing in a plague upon the great deluge, cleansing both man and machine from the new universe.

  “It’s a fusion of time and space,” said the symbiont. “A mistake correcting itself.” The pilot drew in a deep breath, chronicled the strength of his forefathers and breathed new life in
to the fight against the deadly scourge of invaders that spiraled out from beyond the boundaries of human existence. The planet rig exploded, ripping itself to shreds in the delivery room of an infant cosmic universe. Once before, the ITOL had fought and died in a desperate battle across the border worlds, pushing the invaders back into the depths of the abyss. Sodin survived, drained of its life until it came in contact with the threshold of another universe and opened again to become the battleground of a new Genesis War.

  The great machine defended itself, collapsing the surrounding space in a wave of distortion that shattered the space-time continuum in one final act of defiance, blending the past, present and the future together into an abyss: A living memory that flickered clearly visible in Jake’s mind. He was the hero, a warrior of the Ronna Kaa. A thousand generations had passed, only to be stumbled upon once again. It was here that the Master-builders were defeated, driven back into legend.

  “You are one of humanity’s children,” said Nilana. “A true master of the universe. Now go, and save the future of humanity before the Master-builders bring a new balance to creation.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT: Mop-up Operations

  • • •

  Patton’s strike team teleported to the surface hitting the ground in a mop-up operation that ended in the wreckage of the Chariot. Crimson remembered the first time she scanned the wreckage, dusting off the embedded symbols. Patton had assessed the situation almost routinely, as if he knew what to expect before it happened. The memories of the old woman’s life were passing before her eyes, but it wasn’t her life. The universe was reordering events in her mind, blending the memory of one existence with her recollections of her alternate self. She no longer existed in two places at the same time. The Chariot was abandoned, and she couldn’t remember the incident that caused the wreckage. Everything was confused, disjointed. Years had passed since her encounter with Indigo, as if they never existed. She stared at the wreckage for the longest time, made a recording for posterity. Every move she made hinged on her ability to return alive, everything else was irrelevant. The past no longer had any meaning for her, no point of reference.