A Quantum Mythology

by Gavin G. Smith

  It took him a while to realise what he was looking at. The geometry was all wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ Lodup asked, stumbling over the words.

  ‘One of the changes they make to you before you can work here involves neurosurgery that enables you to perceive this safely, so that it doesn’t cause neurological and psychological damage.’ Hideo paused. ‘So they say.’

  The whole area was illuminated by cold artificial light. Lodup was having trouble coping with the idea of a place that required brain surgery before you could see it without going mad. Parts of it looked as if they’d been carved from massive pieces of rock that appeared to share characteristics with both soapstone and basalt. The forms were disturbingly organic.

  It had to be one of the tricks the ocean occasionally played on people – naturally occurring rock formations that looked like intelligent design. It was the sort of thing that convinced people they’d found Atlantis when in fact they’d just stumbled across an interesting geological curiosity.

  The odd-looking rock formed megaliths, off-kilter pyramids and ziggurat shapes, and there was something sepulchral, something tomblike about them. They formed labyrinthine streets and blind culs-de-sac of disquieting proportions which, if they were the result of intelligent design, had not been built for human physiology – not just in scale, but also in perceptual terms. The whole place appeared to be one massive nausea-inducing optical illusion.

  Lodup found there were tears on his cheeks without really knowing why he was crying. Blood was trickling out of his nose, and he was shaking.

  In the centre of the city was a circle of enormous stones, each easily the size of four-storey town house. They looked more like gravestones than standing stones. Like most of the ‘buildings’, they were covered with strange symbols, pictographs that he didn’t want to look at too closely, which appeared to squirm in his peripheral vision. The pictographs confirmed the conclusion he’d been trying to resist. This was a city. The submersible’s searchlight was playing over urban streets. The black-smoker chimneys turned the scene into a twisted mockery of an industrial cityscape.

  By far the most disquieting sight were the things he had taken initially to be statuary. The strange biological shapes consisted of sacs, tentacles and odd appendages that looked like nothing he had ever seen, but somehow he knew they represented organs of some sort. Other shapes looked like a cross between massive seed-pods and some kind of bottom-feeding sea creature. They were fused to the moulded rock. Pain shot through Lodup’s head. Somehow he knew they weren’t statuary. Somehow he knew these things had once been alive. Somehow he knew that he was looking at a city of dead things, a corpse city, and it was teeming with activity.

  Lodup almost lost it all over again when he heard the whale song. The creature passed the submersible at a leisurely pace, glancing at the vehicle. It looked like an orca, only fatter; its eyes were camera lenses and parts of its body were reinforced with a machine exoskeleton. The almost-orca was covered with plating that wouldn’t have been out of place on an armoured vehicle, but the strangest thing about it was the arm-like waldos.

  ‘That’s Marvin. He took out an experimental Chinese deep-diving sub recently. They’re not just good for security. They’re living magnetometers. They have—’

  ‘Crystals of iron oxide in their heads,’ Lodup said, his voice filled with a kind of horrified wonder.

  ‘They augment the crystals, make them more sensitive. The dolphins were better at surveying, they helped us find and excavate most of the city … but there was trouble.’

  ‘You’ve got dolphins down here?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  The orca dived towards the horrible city. Lodup saw other submersibles, many of them larger than the one he was in at the moment. There were smaller figures in the water, too – modified divers like him, he assumed – and large metal humanoid forms which he guessed were atmospheric diving suits, though they looked more like the robot battlesuits he’d seen in Japanese animations when he’d worked with their Navy. Stranger still were creatures that looked like Architeuthis – giant squid – only much, much larger, armoured like the almost-orca and sporting reinforced exoskeletons, with various mechanical devices attached to their multiple limbs. They appeared to be working as cranes. He watched one of them take some kind of cutting torch to a massive block of stone fused with one of the petrified seed-pods, light from the torch cutting through dark, now boiling water.

  A number of roughly rectangular metal constructs were tethered to the seabed but floating some fifty metres above it. Their shape reminded Lodup of an inverted dry dock, though they were open to the water. Several were hives of activity. Inside one, Lodup thought he saw something that looked like the shaped stones he’d glimpsed in the city, but he couldn’t quite make out the exact form of the stone, or what was being done to it.

  ‘The squid aren’t so much controlled by telepresence as influenced by it,’ Hideo told him.

  ‘What are those?’ Lodup pointed at some large spherical tanks from which pipes ran into more of the petrified organic-looking forms.

  Hideo laughed, but there was little humour in his voice. ‘All the sedative in the world.’

  Lodup stared at him. He did not want to accept the implications of Hideo’s explanation. He felt dread mounting.

  ‘I don’t think I want this job,’ he said quietly. He had not felt this frightened since he was a child.

  ‘I get that,’ Hideo said softly. ‘This is important, man, give it some time.’

  Hideo was manoeuvring the submersible towards some sort of large habitat which obviously wasn’t part of the horrible sunken city. The habitat consisted of a series of black domes made of small, bubble-like hemispheres. At first Lodup thought the habitat was moving in some kind of deep current, but on closer inspection, he decided the movement looked more like breathing. It was situated on open ground within the city atop constantly adjusting heavy-duty struts.

  As Hideo brought the submersible in low, Lodup tried to cope with the fact that he was now in an underwater vehicle moving through the streets of some alien city. Hideo played the lights over strange stone architecture and Lodup glimpsed more of the disquieting pictographic symbols. He also noticed some smaller things fused with the stone – humanoid figures with a piscean quality to them, locked in silent screams of agony, and several snake-headed figures. Towering over a smaller block of stone, one of the armoured hi-tech squid was moving between tomblike buildings.

  Ahead he could see light flooding out of the domed habitat. An ADS strode across the street in front of them as a submersible left the domes. Black-clad faceless-looking divers were clinging to the side of the other vehicle.

  One of the armoured orcas swam down to the habitat and suckled on a nipple-like protrusion coming from what looked like an inflatable bladder.

  ‘Gas?’ Lodup asked.

  ‘Food. It’s chum, effectively, with growth hormones, a high fat content and other supplements to augment bone. They have what amounts to an artificial lung, like us, although they do occasionally replenish their emergency internal gas supplies, but they do that in the moon pool.’

  ‘That place has ambient pressure? What the fuck’s it made out of?’

  Hideo leaned forwards and knocked on the submersible’s observation bubble. ‘Condensed adamantanes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Synthetic diamond, actually a diamondoid.’

  ‘The expense—’

  ‘Not if you can manipulate matter on a molecular level. You see those pipes?’ Hideo indicated pipes running out of the rear of the habitat; some were sunk into the seabed, while others ran through the city. ‘They pull in raw matter, anything from silt to rock, and break it down. The matter is then manipulated into diamondoids, helium to breathe and whatever else we need.’

  ‘The power—’

  ‘Stable geothermal
energy, with two backup cold-fusion generators.’

  ‘So we’re breathing … ?’

  ‘Mostly helium but more oxygen than you might think. Your body’s been—’

  ‘Adapted to deal with it.’

  Hideo nodded. ‘You put a normal human down here, if the pain in their joints didn’t kill them, then oxygen toxicity would.’

  ‘And some modification to the larynx so we don’t sound like cartoon characters?’ Lodup asked. Hideo nodded again. ‘But this level of technology, the difference you could make …’

  Hideo took the submarine under the habitat and brought it up into a huge brightly lit moon pool. The horrific city gone, Lodup found himself looking around in wonder as his vision darkened to adjust for the brightness.

  The area reminded him of American football stadiums he’d visited in Florida and California when he was stationed there. It was a massive domed chamber containing a number of jetties where the submersibles docked and there were cradles for the ADSs, some of which were open and being worked on. Banks of tools and other equipment were scattered about the vast space.

  He saw orcas poking their heads out of the water for their cybernetic systems to be adjusted. He started for a moment when an armoured mechanical tentacle reached into the habitat until people started to hook a large crate to it.

  There were small cranes on the jetties and more heavy-duty versions running on a network of rails overhead. One of them had lifted a large submersible out of the water for repairs.

  Lodup was craning his neck, looking all around.

  ‘We can get out now,’ Hideo said, grinning. ‘Welcome to Kanamwayso.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  Hideo got up and started undoing the top hatch. He pushed it open and Lodup felt the air currents change in the submersible.

  ‘They had to call it something. Mu and Lemuria sounded a bit geeky, I reckon.’ Hideo pulled himself out of the sub. Lodup hesitated for a moment and then followed, dragging his kitbag out after him.

  Outside the submersible it was cold and damp but that didn’t bother him. He climbed down and Hideo helped him onto the jetty. It was then that he started noticing the armed guards and gun emplacements resembling smaller versions of the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System rotary cannon used for missile defence on US Navy ships.

  ‘You expecting trouble?’ Lodup asked.

  ‘It’s mostly precautionary, but sometimes things happen,’ Hideo said evasively.

  ‘What things?’

  Hideo pointed up towards a large window shaped like an eye. Lodup saw a woman standing in the window, arms behind her back, looking down on the moon pool.

  ‘That’s Command and Control. I’m supposed to take you up there.’

  ‘That the boss?’

  ‘That’s Siska – she’s the overseer. We don’t see much of the boss man. C’mon, I’ll show you the way.’

  Lodup hoisted the kitbag onto his shoulder. He wasn’t even surprised that it was dry now. He found himself scratching at his face, which felt itchy for some reason.

  As Lodup turned to walk along the jetty, he found a very strange figure in front of him. The figure was wearing an expertly tailored and expensive-looking business suit and had the head of a black-scaled lizard.

  ‘Kasalehlia Lodup Satakano, my name is Siraja Odap-odap. I am the artificial intelligence that runs the systems in Kanamwayso, and I am at your service. This image of me is appearing only in your internal systems. The skin irritation you are feeling is the habitat’s protective nano-screen interfacing with you for the first time. This is for your protection, and the irritation will pass quickly. I will leave you in peace, but should you require anything, please do not hesitate to call on me.’

  ‘Er …’ Lodup started. The dragon-headed man bowed and disappeared.

  ‘Did you just meet Siraja?’ Hideo asked as he began to walk along the jetty. Lodup nodded, then followed Hideo. ‘Siraja’s cool, he’ll look after you.’

  ‘Isn’t Siraja Odap-odap an Indonesian god?’ Hideo shrugged. ‘How long have you been down here?’ With technology that could revolutionise mankind, he didn’t add.

  ‘Let’s put it this way – I used to hunt you lot in submarines.’

  Lodup stared at Hideo. ‘You’re not the oldest person down here, are you?’ The other man just shook his head. ‘But your English, your accent—’

  ‘I’ve watched a lot of TV. I avoid war films, though.’

  Lodup almost walked into a tall, well-built woman. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and the one-piece dive suit covering her muscular frame was the same as his. She was loading what looked like cutting gear into a toolbox attached to the flatbed of a submersible very similar to Hideo’s.

  ‘Sal?’ Lodup asked. The woman looked at him blankly. Lodup frowned. ‘Sal, it’s Lodup.’ He’d first met the woman when she joined Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 based out of Little Creek, Virginia Beach, on loan from the Royal Australian Navy Salvage Team. Both of them had been involved with the project to recover the Civil War Ironclad warship USS Monitor, and he’d worked with her a number of times since they’d left the service. ‘How long have you been down here? I thought you were in the Gulf of Mexico?’

  She continued to stare at him blankly for a few more moments, and then appeared to shake herself out of it.

  ‘Lodup!’ She gave him a hug. ‘How you doing, man? I wondered when they were going to recruit you. Bit of a culture shock, huh?’

  ‘Culture shock? I don’t believe all this shit.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it … Actually, you won’t, but—’

  ‘Who else is down here?’

  ‘Anyone who’s anyone is down here.’

  ‘You all getting paid—’

  ‘A lot, man, and I mean a lot.’ She whistled, nodding. It made sense, Lodup thought; if they could manipulate matter, they could effectively create anything they needed – including money and resources to recruit whoever they wanted. ‘Look, we’ll catch up later – I need to get going.’

  Lodup nodded.

  ‘C’mon, dude,’ Hideo said.

  A thick blast door separated the moon pool from the rest of the habitat. On the other side of the door, Lodup was surprised to find that the corridors were carpeted and heated by warm air blowing through them. This was disconcerting at first – the warm wind felt a little like being breathed on, and they hadn’t quite managed to eliminate humidity. The carpet was particularly springy underfoot.

  ‘It’s a grass analogue, would you believe?’ Hideo told him. ‘I’m not sure how it works, but it helps scrub for carbon dioxide build-up and takes some of the pressure off the habitat’s lungs.’

  Hideo took him up a flight of stairs and along a corridor to another blast door.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, man, okay?’

  ‘Em, yeah,’ Lodup said, still trying to assimilate everything he’d seen. ‘Thanks, man.’

  Hideo patted him on the shoulder, then turned and headed back the way they had come. The blast door slid open and Lodup stepped into C&C. It wasn’t quite what he was expecting. Instead of banks of machinery and screens, he found a large, open-plan, split-level room decorated in subdued dark colours. On either side of the door was a pair of huge ornate brass cannon, their barrels carved into the fanciful shapes of Chinese dragons. A long elliptical hardwood table stood just in front of the oval window overlooking the moon pool. A number of people were seated around the table, reclining on comfortable leather couches. Most of them had their eyes closed.

  The woman he’d seen earlier was standing on a raised level between the table and the window. She wore dark combat trousers and a simple T-shirt. Lodup guessed she was Cambodian, though she was surprisingly tall, and her spare frame suggested a lot of wiry muscle. Her skin was dark and weather-beaten; a scar ran down the left side of her face. Her long, black hair
was tied back in a simple braid. What surprised Lodup the most were the holstered pistols, on each hip. Her belt had pouches for extra ammo and a pair of sheathed, curved knives.

  Standing in the shadows provided by the subdued lighting was a squat, powerfully built man with a flat-top haircut. His eyes were bright blue, but Lodup didn’t like the look of them, too cold. His arms were crossed over a T-shirt that was just a little too tight for his muscular torso. A complicated-looking sub-machine gun with an underslung grenade-launcher hung across his chest. There was a sidearm at his hip and his utility belt held a selection of less lethal weaponry in various pouches attached to it. Lodup recognised the type. He’d worked with Special Forces operatives in the past.

  ‘My name is Siska, and I’m the overseer at this facility. This is Yaroslav, my head of security.’

  ‘Are you expecting trouble?’ Lodup asked.

  Siska studied him for a moment. ‘As you might imagine, there’s a great deal we can’t tell you. That said, I will be as honest as I can be with what I’m allowed to divulge. There are external threats. There are other organisations with comparable technology who are interested in Kanamwayso. There are also certain environmental challenges, but the single biggest problem we face is that we are dealing with a population of over five hundred powerfully augmented humans and a significant number of augmented fauna. This place changes people. It affects them in ways we cannot predict.’

  ‘Are you saying this place will drive me mad?’ Lodup asked, thinking back to the disquiet, the fear, he had felt during the descent when he first saw the alien city.

  ‘I’m saying it will affect you, but it’s nothing that can’t be reversed when you return to the surface to receive your payment.’

  Lodup looked over at Yaroslav. ‘What are you? Ex-Naval Spetsnaz?’ Lodup asked. Yaroslav said nothing. Lodup shook his head at the hard-man act.

  ‘And he fought in the Great Patriotic War,’ Siska said.