by Abhishek .
He felt a familiar rage bubbling up from within when he remembered the baryonic meltdown that had taken place here at the largest Makto plant ever built. The plant had enough Makto to last them another couple of hundred revolutions, producing vast amounts of energy for a rapidly growing Asr-Gawa.
I wish I could go back. Go back and kill every Lok Vve member behind the meltdown.
As he reflected about the past, a bright future awaited him at the end of the corridor. Baldr authorised his identity and entered the hall of his lifetime creation.
Kapittel 69
Mathias’s story
Elsewhere
March 16, 2017, Thursday, 1212 hours Earth EET
An incredible sense of helplessness pervaded through me. Fear, I knew, came in many faces, but I had felt this kind of fear only partially when I jumped from somewhere high. I was rushing downwards, or upwards I could not say. There was no way to control my fall as I tried to reach out to some handhold or a foothold in vain. I beheld my body rushing through darkness before my body started to distort gruesomely, as if a thousand invisible prisms arranged themselves around me in a pattern beyond my level of understanding... or was it truly beyond me? Was it just a projection of my inferior three-dimensional mind? As I looked around, flashes of light and shifting shapes appeared out of nowhere, twisted and contorted before shrinking into nothingness.
Suddenly, I was rushing along the sides of a rapidly inflating sphere. A void appeared in the middle that kept inflating like a bubble inside a bubble. Just before the void was about to engulf me, I shielded myself with my arms and looked downwards. In the next moment, the bubble stopped expanding and the base bent into another bubble. I was sucked into the second bubble shortly before the narrowing connection between the two severed completely like tearing a piece of plasticine. I rushed through the bubble and, suddenly, I blinked my eyes to behold an entirely different perspective. It was almost as if my mind had broken through the confines of my perception into something higher, something advanced. I remembered my queer dream and realised that it was happening right now! I perceived four-dimensional objects as they were in their true form and not just cross sections. I resigned myself to the mechanisms of the torus-shaped tunnel pulling me into another dimension through the four-dimensional curvature of space- time. I looked around and glimpsed the different realities of our universe intertwined with one another.
As the torus deflated, for less than a second, I thought I noticed people. Different people. Not only did I notice normal humanoids, I noticed a thriving population of shapeless beings not made of the conventional mass. They probably consisted of... energy. For that brief moment, my amulet glowed brightly and all of the people turned, as if to face me. A connection developed between us as we felt a powerful vibration deep inside our consciousness. I wanted to stay there for longer, reach out to them, and communicate with them through this bond transcending the unfathomable expanses of space and time.
In the next instant, I plunged into a ball of white light and then darkness, feeling cold metal pressing against my cheek. My brain seemed drained out of all energy and I passed out into the recesses of my existence.
Asr-Gawa
March 16, 2017, Thursday, 1213 hours Earth EET
Nanna sprinted along the scintillating bifrost bridge. She never liked the prismatic colours emitted by the crystalline energy conduits. She felt as if she was walking on something imaginary, as if any moment, the bridge would vanish and she would fall into the churning moat of Valhalla. Nanna always preferred robust, solid thoroughfares. But right now, she hardly looked down. She finally noticed Heimdallr standing near the threshold of the teleporter complex with his back facing her. He seemed to be waiting patiently for someone inside. Nanna slowed down her pace and brushed her coat evenly. She regained her composure appropriate for her level of authority and walked briskly.
Heimdallr heard his sister’s footsteps, turned and nodded, passing a message. As Nanna walked into the teleporter complex, she looked at five bodies lying on the floor, exhausted. A girl in a white tunic stood by Heimdallr’s side, overshadowed by his imposing stature. She was dripping wet and looked timidly at Nanna before looking back at the five men lying in a pool of water. Nanna glanced at a screen on the other side of the room that flashed
UNAUTHORISED ENTRY- 5 SUBJECTS | 4 SUBJECTS - IDENTITY NOT CONFIRMED
Finally, the youngest of the five, a boy Ram’s age, groaned and pulled himself up on all fours, belching out water. Suddenly, a metallic object slipped out of his shirt and dangled loosely under him. Nanna’s breath caught in her throat as she recognised the symbol. The brilliant blue light emanated by the gem encrusted in the amulet died away, the amulet assuming its crude appearance once again. Heimdallr and Nanna turned away from the wrought metal amulet and exchanged glances. It was the bearer of the hammer. He had arrived.
Even the girl seemed transfixed by the amulet but with eyes that conveyed something else. She seemed to have seen it before. As she stared wondrously at the dangling hammer, she moved in as if to examine it more closely. Nanna walked over to the boy, her light footsteps making the softest ripples in the pool of water on the floor.
The boy stood up on his feet and looked dubiously at Nanna initially, his muscled going taut for any possibility. But then he looked her in the eye and his muscles relaxed once again, as if a feeling of familiarity and warmth transmitted between them.
“Ram is here,” Nanna told him before he could speak. For a brief moment, she regretted saying this so abruptly to a stranger, but then boy simply nodded. “You... are Mathias? Mathias Thorson?”
The boy nodded again. His jaws clenched, looking purposeful. He knew he was in the right place.
* * *
Kapittel 70
Asr-Gawa
March 16, 2017, Thursday, 1225 hours Earth EET
Nanna felt like sailing suddenly into capricious waters. When she had joined the ranks of Lok Vve, she had finally felt that she was doing something that would satiate her need for a change. Being of a revolutionary mindset, she finally felt she was breaking through the walls of stagnation, until the storm she was blown into when she first saw her nephew, Ram. Now that she was configuring the holographic projector, she felt a shower of a thousand shrapnels within her, a surge of raw passion and enthusiasm. Everything was happening now. The future would be decided now and she was right in the middle of it. She licked her lips unknowingly. The figure of Dr Shanbhag materialised. Nanna said the words as if she had rehearsed, “He has arrived!”
* * *
As the five people were covertly brought by a capsule to the quiet inn where Ram and Shanbhag were hiding, the questions hung in the air. All of them were too exhausted from their marine ordeal to ask questions. That is, all except a relieved Lifana who kept up the Asurian chatter she was doing on the holo-communicator with her boss. She was relieved beyond expectation, delighted to be back to her own world; having been extracted without warning. She had actually given up all hope of returning and this was a delight she never thought she will be able to enjoy. As the capsule docked, Nanna asked everyone to stay quiet as she first flipped open a small cube from the folds of her dress. The cube immediately whirred in her hand and made a droning noise before becoming silent. She nodded to herself and then asked the people to step out.
“What was that?” asked Mathias. “Looked like some kind of shielding device.”
“You are indeed sharp,” exclaimed Nanna. She smiled after a long time. “I was making sure that no probe would detect you all since you do not have the brain lattice, except Lifana here.”
“Brain lattice? Is that used to control people?”
“Partly, but mainly to detect everyone. However, the main reson was to ward off the pandemic.”
“What pandemic? Lifana mentioned something like that.” Mathias turned to Lifana as they entered the sanctum of the inn.
But before Lifana could open her mouth, someone pounced upon Mathias, his eyes shining
with tears and his arms all around him. Mathias and Ram fell onto the floor, which promptly recognised the overall load as different from the footsteps and engulfed their bodies around their own shape, forcing them to keep still.
“MATHIAS!” boomed the usually reticent Ram’s voice. It was less than 72 earthly hours since the boys had been separated, but a lot had happened since then. Mathias had returned from sure death in the watery grave and Ram had discovered his father, and now a cousin brother. He sobbed uncontrollably on Mathias’s shoulder and Mathias was equally emotional though he seldom was demonstrative about his emotions.
“Mathias, how did you come? What happened? Do you know I have found my father?” Ram was crying and talking freely.
Chandra Shanbhag came and ruffled Mathias’s hair. “I have already heard so much about you Mathias. So glad to meet you.” But he looked worried.
Ram leapt up and embraced Vivek. Vivek also relaxed after a long time. It seemed like they were lifelong friends.
Mathias got up and shook hands with Shanbhag. Lifana came up and said, “This is my senior who taught me so much of your language!”
“So you went to Earth in my place?” asked Ram. “No wonder you landed with Mathias and Vivek.” Lifana smiled. “It was so frightening, with all the Jargantaans!”
“Jargantaans? Again? Oh no. And who are they?” asked Ram.
Daniel and Hikaru were quietly standing at a corner. Mathias introduced everybody. It took quite some time to tell everyone their adventures, and when it came to how they came through the teleporter under the water, the mention of the mysterious Technician really intrigued everybody.
“I cannot recollect any technical resource missing from Asr-Gawa,” said Nanna.
“Neither can I,” said Shanbhag, “not for a long time.”
“The Japanese museum guy! I never thought he was involved
or that he knew so much!” exclaimed Ram. “I liked him! He understood the past so well.”
“Yes, I was also totally taken aback at finding him at our hotel room in Alexandria. It was eerie. He and his troops nearly killed us so many times, and it was due to the Ark of Noah, I mean Bor-nu, and Daniel’s help that we managed to escape.” I was shivering.
“Do not underestimate yourself Mathias,” Daniel was generous in his praise. “You really figured out the way out and your amulet is the most wonderful weapon I have ever seen.”
“You are a bright boy, Mathias. Ram has told us a lot about you. The way you have figured out those ancient verses and clues is marvelous. Also, the effort to use the teleporter to get out of that mess was magnificent,” Nanna joined in.
Ram’s story took less time but was very interesting for Mathias. He was especially intrigued about Lok Vve.
“So is Odin really evil?” he asked Nanna. Vivek also expressed the same curiosity about Lok Vve and its formation.
“It depends on what you believe in Mathias. As the human that I used to know closely, Odin is not a bad person at all. He is old, and very knowledgeable, and from the time he did the surgical intervention in his optical nerves, he is definitely the smartest man in Asr-Gawa. He has to manage the political landscape and also continue to work for the betterment of the planet.
“But what you say Mathias, makes me worried now. You mean to say that there was a project to import Makto from Earth and it has been stopped by you?”
“Yes, and that project would have caused Earth to drop out of its orbit and spin into the Sun!”
“So there goes another way for Asr-Gawa to survive the energy crisis. I must say that gaining at the cost of the existence of Mandaa was never palatable to me, but that was not my job. I just wish we find some other way of saving both the worlds.”
“Hey Mathias,” suddenly Ram turned towards Mathias. “You know what? We are related after all! Cousins!”
What?” Mathias was flabbergasted. Another revelation.
Chandra Shanbhag smiled and nodded. “You and Ram are cousins, Mathias. Ram’s mother was Asurian. That’s where he gets his green eyes from. His late mother was the sister of Nanna. Nanna is also your aunt by her marital alliance with Baldr, your uncle.”
“Well, I did not need anyone to tell us we are related, Dr Shanbhag,” Mathias said. “Ram and I have always been brothers, and we always will be!”
The discussions went on and finally the people were too tired to talk. Nanna was very interested to learn about the Japanese and Shanbhag about Mathias’s amulet. But they decided to turn in and talk about how to get to Odin after a good rest.
Kapittel 71
Mathias’s story
Asr-Gawa
March 16, 2017, Thursday, 1840 hours Earth EET
“It’s so hard to get an audience with Odin, sometimes I forget he’s actually my father-in-law,” Nanna smirked when she finally turned to face us, sitting on a small ledge on the opposite end of the teleporter station. I touched my moist skin. Even after a good bath in a sanitizer and well coveted sleep, I smelled of salt and seaweed and quivered slightly, feeling cold and oddly clammy. Was it just my nervousness of arriving in the world I was originally from or after living on Earth all my life, had I grown intolerant of the subtle environmental differences in this planet? I knew it was the former. I looked around the sprawling area of the teleporter complex that was made largely out of an alien material that looked like an unusually tough but light and translucent polymer. Even in front of the control station with the massive panel of gauges and displays Nanna stood in front of, the torus shaped gateway to this world towered over it all, an all-powerful device that could tunnel through realties themselves. Since I was present only in another reality, I was probably sitting right in my institute, right in my dormitory, on top of my own bed. Yet, I was farthest I could be from any point in my universe. But my dormitory was no more. A pile of rubble and ash with Mrs Dawson lying somewhere crushed under a slab of concrete. All that, for reaching this place. I shivered slightly, feeling as if I had accomplished something—like locating the town I belonged to on a map that didn’t even have my hometown’s name charted on it. As homely as this place should have felt, it felt exceedingly distant from what I perceived as home. I looked at my hand and turned it in the air, hoping to possibly glimpse through a fleeting, random fluctuation in between the dimensions, a small little slit through space time, a tiny microsecond window through realties. Suddenly, my amulet glowed brighter and I could have sworn that I saw my hand distort slightly before Vivek spoke and shattered my stream of thoughts.
“Have you found a way?” Vivek asked her.
“Not really. Our system of administration here is highly hierarchal. Even though I hold one of the topmost posts in Asr-Gawa, I do not hold the privilege of direct contact with Odin. I live in the same palace he does, but I can hardly see him around. None of us even dine together anymore....” Nanna seemed to trail off. She shook her head and continued, “I can take you all to Valhalla with me, but it’ll be extremely difficult to get you inside unseen. Your Mandaa identity has a high chance of getting detected,” she looked at Vivek.
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
“I guess I’ll have to take you with me to Valhalla as that seems the only way. But protocol requires you to go through the Mandaa Assimilation process. From there, I’ll fast track your process and direct you towards attaining an audience with... your grandfather, Mathias.”
“What do you mean ‘the Mandaa assimilation process’? What do you do to Earthlings who arrive on this planet?” I pushed myself to the edge of the ledge.
“It’s a process we have had consensus on after a lot of deliberation. Mandaas aren’t supposed to come here. You see, in order to maintain the balance of mass among the dimensions, if a mass gets transferred to another dimension, something from the other dimension of an equivalent mass must come to this dimension. We try to target something inanimate and it works nine out of ten times. But there are aberrants.”
“So... do you let them go back to Earth?”
Nanna smiled, almost apologetically. “We don’t. It’s simple. We leave them here in different parts of Asr-Gawa and allow them to assimilate themselves into this society.”
I looked at her, momentarily dumbstruck. “You realise this is abduction? You cannot just not let them go back home! They cannot just stay here for a fallacy in your teleportation mechanism!”
“But if we let them return, we risk exposing our presence in your world. It is imperative for the safety of all that Mandaas do not learn directly about our existence. You do not understand what the ramifications of such a revelation would be!”
“What would it be?”
“For all I can say, an additional burden on our shoulders. How will we explain the process of Makto extraction from their planet? We cannot waste time enlightening them about the bigger picture, about the multiple entangled realities and our impact on their development as a species. There is a time for everything, Mathias.”
I frowned at her. I was about to challenge her further about the Asurian burglary of silicon off Earth when her projector started to glow again.
While Nanna was talking to someone on her projector, Heimdallr and I had eye contact. All of us who had arrived from the teleporter were seated in silence, swimming in our private pool of thoughts. Heimdallr motioned me to approach him while he stood gazing out of the sunlit doorway of the teleporter complex.
As I walked towards him, the entire city came into view. My legs felt limp at the tremendous feat of architecture. It was as if I was looking out at the projection of a city on the domed roof of a planetarium.
“Amazing, isn’t it? The land couldn’t accommodate a population as big as 4.6 billion, so we warped the land itself.” I looked at Heimdallr’s face and I was almost disappointed. Hailing from a civilisation so massive and advanced, I had expected him and every other Asurian to be... different. Perhaps I expected him to have a bigger build, or an inflated head, or an equine body or a glowing face that emitted the knowledge and enlightenment that he had absorbed from his spectacular society. But he seemed ordinary in every respect. Only his clothes seemed to be shifting around his body, a fibre I had seen on every other Asurian’s attire. That was all that made him different.