by Abhishek .
* * *
Vivek’s story
Alexandria, Egypt
March 16, 2017, Thursday, 1130 hours EET
As Vivek, Lifana and the Japanese kicked wildly to stay at the top of the body of water, they breathed frantically in the tiny space left between their heads and the roof of their cells. The old Technician remained oddly calm. Lifana didn’t know how to swim. She surfaced for a moment before plunging back into the water, gulping down air and water at the same time. Kiyoshi no longer struggled to stay alive. He knew he lacked the strength and felt that the rising water was a portent; that perhaps, his role in his endeavour had come to an end. He knew that his trusted comrades would carry forward his legacy. His muscles relaxed as he closed his eyes and sunk into the water. All of a sudden, somebody surfaced in front of Vivek’s cell. It was the bald soldier who had emerged from within the ark with Mathias. Vivek watched curiously as the soldier shot a bullet at the lock and cracked it open before pulling Vivek out of his cell and into the corridor with a higher ceiling. Vivek breathed in large gasps of air and felt relieved to be out.
“How do we get out of here?” Vivek asked the soldier when he had regained his air. After freeing Lifana, the soldier replied.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? We can get out of the way you escaped earlier to reach the ark! We will swim through this mess!”
“No use doing that. Even if we reach the top, we will die. A supermassive sandstorm is blowing upstairs. It’ll gnaw into our body like millions of sheets of rough sandpapers.” His face made him look stoic, almost ready for death.
“So that’s it? We are trapped?”
aniel, stoical through his military training, didn’t say anything as he dived back into the water to try and free as many as he could. Trapped between a raging sandstorm and a fast rising all-consuming watery grave, it was only a matter of time till everything ended with a whimper.
Interlude
Elsewhere
At the same time
The Socialist translated slowly, immersed in abject defeat. Even though his realistic portion was ready for such an outcome, the prospect of a transcendence occurring seemed too large and all too enticing. However, the projection did not last for long. A sudden energy surge had to be stopped by shutting down the duplication device, lest the fabric of space and time in both universes would have torn. The four chosen ones, duplicated to prevent any loss of energy and information in their universe, could not stand the transportation. Even though the net energy in their universe remained the same, the four shrunk to almost nothingness as the energy they contained was released into the cosmos as abstract units and particles. They were on the path to recovery in the infirmary, being fed vital bosons.
As the Socialist passed the energy field of the cordoned off area, he knew that more efforts will be made until they succeeded in bringing back the brainstones and asserting their power. Yet, he felt that the effort made was not right and was futile. Something else had to be done.
He felt an oscillation in the remote device he had been wearing. His locating device must have detected a massive footprint from the brainstone fragments. Immeditely, he translated this to his laboratory as fast as he could, leaving a path of warped space and time behind him.
Whilst he entered the lab, he knew that, as flawed as the duplication process was, perhaps the timing hadn’t been right. They should have waited for a footprint of such magnitude before the projection. Moreover, the projection itself was not pinpointed correctly, destroying the order of one of the spheres of mass in the sister universe before the transportation was called off. Any more lingering and the fabric of the continuum would have ripped open.
All these thoughts evaporated when the Socialist observed an unsually large spherical orb of light pulsing from his mouldable energy model of the sister universe. Now that he was conscious about it, he could feel the potency in the vibrating hum in his body like never before. Everybody in the universe could feel the energy of the brainstones, but this time it was different from the occasional surges. It seemed amplified immensely by something else.
On closer scrutiny, the Socialist noticed the sphere of light was not one but two orbs in close proximity, or rather right next to each other: there was no measurable difference between the coordinates of two of the pieces. He noted the coordinates in his memory lattices quickly. Instantly, he translated to one of his many apparatuses. This machine, through which the energy and vibration of the brainstones passed through, displayed the strength of the energy and was capable of tapping into it just slightly, controlling the action of the fragment given that the operator of the machine was skilled enough. The Socialist had no doubt in his abilities. He released certain bosons and fermions into the energy trace that was detected and matched their frequency and angular momentum with that of the field of the fragment. For a brief window, the Socialist was in control of one of the brainstone fragments. He tweaked it up immediately so that the energy discharge was even larger and more prolonged. He decreased it whenever the vibration within him seemed too much to tolerate but tried to amplify the footprint so that he could pin point its location. He would soon translate this to the commander, keep him informed and then launch a more precise... duplicated projection.
The Socialist turned off the machine when he realised that his actions would yield no fruit. The next projection would not happen until another batch of travellers were chosen and the energy was fuelled into the device through the concentration chamber. No. This would not work. He recoiled from his laboratory in order to think deeply as his educated consciousness knew that something was wrong. Sending select individuals for extracting the brainstone fragments hidden in a vast universe consumed too much power and time: a highly inefficient system. Now that two of the elusive fragments were together in a single place, they had to act fast and decisively.
Forming a diminutive group for expropriation would not work, the Socialist knew. What they needed was an all-out invasion into the sister universe. A well-coordinated attack for extraction; brute force needed to be even more brutal, now.
Kapittel 66
Ram’s story
Asr-Gawa, Lok Vve controlled Soffut district
March 16, 2017, Thursday, 1135 hours EET
Workers, broadcasters, coders rushed past Ram. He walked slowly through a workstation, fascinated with how the amazingly efficient organisation of Lok Vve created an illusion of chaos and pandemonium. Everything seemed awry but he knew it just seemed so because everything happened simultaneously, in perfect synchronisation. Ram felt acclimatised to the imperatives of the organisation and the code of life followed by the general worker. A sudden booming sound from somewhere or a clangourous noise from one of the large machines or a worker dropping a cumbersome container, turned Ram’s head. The faint glimmer of some extraordinary computing chip or a glowing power cell drew him. Although he found wonder on some of the most commonly known things, Ram felt settled. The sound of his foot echoed through the empty stairs, each floor and lobby appearing deserted and dilapidated. But he knew what he saw was only the dirty crumbling shell concealing determined people driving a force of change and revolution that would one day unleash itself upon the deteriorating Asurian economic system.
“I see you know your way around now,” a voice called from behind. Ram swivelled to see Garm walking briskly towards him from down the street to join him in his walk. He had told Ram a lot about the way of life at Lok Vve and smoothening his way into the institution.
“I guess so. It doesn’t seem so... other wordly after all,” Ram grinned.
“Lok Vve has the potential to change people because our credo is something that everybody understands, appreciates and finds natural. Lok Vve can change people very quickly,” Garm said.
“Change? But I haven’t changed.” Ram stared at him with a bewildered expression.
“You have begun to change too. Do you think of Vivek or Mathias any more now that you’ve entered
Lok Vve?”
“But’s it’s hardly been a day since I...” Something struck Ram in the back of his mind. He finally realized the true essence of power that lay within Lok Vve. The power to attract. Away from the drudgery of the bleak, collapsing Asurian way of life, Lok Vve attracted people because of their ideals of change, freedom, unpredictability and promises of innovation. Ram felt part of a movement here and understood this distinctly rebellious mentality was what the system of Lok Vve harnessed.
As he looked Garm straight in the eye, Garm’s face morphed horrifically until he suddenly found himself staring into the eyes of the pale bald man in that frightful asylum filled with deranged people. He epitomised the dark side of this revolutionary movement. As he had done before, the man started mumbling ‘De komme’ repeatedly, gradually increasing his volume until he started screaming with an intensity Ram hadn’t felt before.
Ram closed his ears shut with his hands and walked backwards as the booming voice of the man engulfed him.
“What do you mean?” Ram yelled back, shutting his eyes. “Do you mean... No, what... De komme... they come? Do you mean ‘they come’? Who? Who? Who comes? WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”
The man stopped shouting. A cold blanket of silence descended. Ram slowly opened his eyes and oddly felt under the effect of some psychedelic substance. Everything around him started to distort, stretch, flashes of light appeared here and there, time accelerated and slowed down, day changed into night and day again. The man in front of him started floating towards him ever so slowly, suddenly changing to Vivek, then Mathias, then Vivek, then Mathias, until he towered over him.
Ram opened his eyes and felt his chest tighten. He sat up in his bed, wiping the sweat off his brow. He looked around in the dark bed room and felt extremely lonely. He had seen only the skin of this massive institution his father and aunt had left him in. In the darkness of his room, Ram curled up into a ball and bit his lips as he sunk deeper into the strange fabric of his bed that shifted and contorted to encase his small, round frame.
Kapittel 67
Daniel’s story
Alexandria, Egypt
March 16, 2017, Thursday, 1135 hours EET
Placing complete trust in the seemingly divine powers of his amulet and the staff, Mathias almost ignored the surviving group of Jargantaans shooting frozen orbs at him. He crouched low on his haunches as the cold glass roof relentlessly pressed down on him. The rapidly increasing water level lifted up the fuselage of the ark too, threatening to crush Mathias between the roof of the ark and the glass roof if he didn’t move quickly. Mathias pushed up his hands against the roof and winced under the pressure transmitted through his blood vessels. Although it did give him some more space, it was only the ark that sank in the water. As soon as he let go, the ark floated back up and squashed him against the tempered glass, flushing out all the air from Mathias’s lungs before sinking just slightly. Breathing heavily and left with no options, Mathias crawled to the edge and tumbled down into the Jargantaan infested waters. “Keep close! Follow me!” Daniel waded through the water into the cavernous space of the lowest tier.
“Are you out of your mind? Those animals will kill us if they see us!” Hamasaki protested loudly. Daniel turned, almost plunging icicles into Hamasaki’s chest and cuffing him with the frenzy in his eyes.
“Go then. Go back into your cell. But when you do, try catching your breath for as long as you can and look into Kiyoshi’s cell. See if he says ‘well done’,” Daniel stopped in the antechamber. Hamasaki shot one last glance towards the prison cells, craning over his shoulder. He gulped when he couldn’t even see the apex of the arched doorway.
“Let’s go...”
“No we will not!” Daniel declared firmly but with a strange calm. “You will go in there because you, being the fool that you are, should drown to death.”
“I am sorry!” Hamasaki shouted at the top of his voice as he bent his neck, unable to stay afloat in the antechamber. To his relief, the soldier turned and swam forwards. All of them followed suit.
As they reached the back of the main hall, Vivek, who had Lifana latched onto his neck, helped her grab a protuberance in the rock wall to stay afloat.
From the back, Vivek approximated nearly a dozen Jargantaans swimming in the rippling waters and shooting at Mathias whom he could not see. No sooner had he noticed vapour rising from the waters than a blurry beam of red light shot out from near the ark’s fuselage, incinerating a Jargantaan to bits and adding fresh water vapour to the humid air. Vivek gaped at Mathias who seemed to have acquired almost godly powers with that amulet of his which emanated some kind of fierce energy. Whether it was controlled fully or partially with Mathias’s mind, Vivek could not tell, but he was in no shape to think about it either. He wondered what strange secrets the boy held.
“Stay here all of you. I’ll come back,” Daniel commanded them in hushed tones and dived into the greenish waters, instantly vanishing from view. He surfaced only near the small but mighty waterfall gushing out of the hole bored by the craft.
Shouldn’t have done this. That infernal thing helped us only by delaying our death! Daniel shook away his thoughts and dived back in. He swum underneath the waterfall, feeling the tons of pressure forcing him to the bottom. He struggled to swim upwards, towards the hole with the hope of somehow swimming through it and out into the open... but his breath left his throat. Frantically swimming sidewards, he flailed his arms and broke the surface of the water, gasping deeply and audibly for breath.
No outlet. No way to leave this hell house.
As Mathias surfaced and sank back into the ever increasing waters intermittently, he saw everything below through a hazy veil of green. The tables, the chairs and the heavy containers that were previously opened were floating. The world he had seen before seemed to be drenched in green and stripped off all gravity. Amid the chaotic ensemble of machines and furniture, he spotted the fluttering bits of the tattered conduit, hanging over the huge torus of the teleporter. As he kept watching it, his breath left his lungs on seeing the lights on the body of the torus still aglow. Maybe... just maybe there was a way out.
As soon as Mathias penetrated the surface, he was pulled down by a hand holding his ankle in an iron grip. Immediately, the unsuspecting Mathias felt firm hands wrap around his torso, pulling him down into the murky depths. He tried to wriggle free from the Jargantaan who had snuck up from behind him. Suddenly, a thin beam of light obliterated the man’s left hand. Immediately, he let go before Mathias turned to face him and the amulet, now directly in front of its prey, encapsulated him in its red glow, burning him into ashes that drifted away with the currents becoming a part of the water.
Mathias resurfaced again and, through the ever-thinning group of Jargantaans, his eyes met Daniel’s. Mathias let out a sigh of relief on spotting Vivek and Lifana and merely glazed his eyes upon the rest—a young shivering boy, four soldiers and (Mathias grunted inaudibly) Hamasaki-san breathing heavily while struggling to stay afloat. Since words themselves would drown in the powerful noise of gushing water, Mathias, still with the staff in his left hand, gesticulated at Daniel to bring all the others down at the teleporter. He repeated his instructions thrice and, after a nod from Daniel, he could only hope that he had understood. This was going to be another one of those ambitious escapes from impossible situations, Mathias thought, but he knew that after all that had been and whatever was going to be, this seemingly inane plan of his had every chance to work.
Concentrating on the remaining Jargantaans, Mathias tried to amplify the workings of the amulet, to try and annihilate these creatures as fast as he could. Suddenly, he could not say whether it was because of his thoughts or something external, the amulet’s glow increased to a blazing intensity. However, it seemed to lose some control and fired in directions it was not supposed to. Some of the beams struck the stone walls while some boiled the water. The Jargantaans who came in contact evaporated almost instantly but so did the unfortunate Ja
panese soldier.
“MATHIAS!” yelled Vivek who seemed scared out of his wits as the beam singed few strands of his hair. But Mathias was far from listening to anything. His mind, it seemed, rose to unimaginable proportions suddenly, his cognitive skills sensing everything around him with a million thoughts running through his head at light speed. His mind stretched into everything he had ever read and learned, sometimes even glimpsing the four- dimensional universe he had dreamt about, before locking into a near frozen state. All of a sudden, he couldn’t think about anything, all the vehement feelings were replaced by a void of knowledge. Whilst his mind switched between these disparate states of omniscience and blankness, his amulet reflected these states by firing uncontrollably and stopping completely. It was almost as if someone or something controlled him for Mathias knew it was not him.
Gradually, this unknown puppeteer seemed to release his hold on Mathias’s consciousness. He regained his senses and fought an intense urge to rest as he suddenly felt spent. When his head struck the glass roof above, he breathed deeply, committing himself to the matter at hand and forgetting about this frightening helplessness he had experienced. He motioned frantically to the people on the other side of the base, who were staring at him in utter perplexity. By now, no Jargantaans had survived the amulet and the staff’s combined wrath, but as one danger seemed gone, another seemed looming in front of them towards a watery death.