by Abhishek .
I narrowed my eyes and focussed on a dark object floating in the centre of the bubble. When it struck me, I let out an audible gasp, still looking at the bubble, my mind racing to try and grasp the inhumanity and pure scientific apathy behind a project of such a scale. There submerged in the bubble was a fetus in its most elementary developmental phase, a child being clinically grown in this hell of a place in the cold lifelessness that prevailed in the absence of the warmth of a parent.
This was how I was grown? Inorganically?
Even as I thought about it, I felt uncomfortable spelling out the word inorganic. A certain sense of revulsion shimmered through me, like thinking about the sewage under a great city or pollution over an immense factory. Thinking about my existence felt like winning a game without even playing it. My insides felt cold just at the thought of it. All that Baldr had told me was now in front of me.
If this was how I was conceived, should I even be called a human?
The fog cleared away completely, revealing the monstrous expanse of the entire incubatory complex. Up till the other end of the campus where a circular building marked the end of the complex, children were being mass-produced like in a factory. Not normal children. Children who were mentally and physically far superior to the present race. A species of humans that were genetically designed for a purpose. As enthralling as it seemed as a scientific possibility, there was a certain eerie lifeless quality to it when it actually took place. They might usher in a new era of increased intelligence and physical ability, but keeping in mind Baldr’s demeanour, this race was meant as a replacement for the existing one: rapid social Darwinism. And as it struck me that I was the first of these higher beings, icicles crystallised and tore out of my stomach.
As my whirring brain found calm in the silence of my cell, the thoughts that had been shooting around the nephrons in my brain found order and control. Yet, a kind of fatigue diffused through me. My limbs felt wobbly and my head felt light.
Suddenly, the door of the cell hissed open as it decayed from the middle outwards. Two gigantic blue clad Jargantaans walked in with stern, white faces and muscles thick as elephant limbs. Behind them the door grew back from the edges, the glass like substance being fed into the frame until the gap in the middle closed completely into a thick barrier.
One of them towered over me before smothering me with the unforgiving power of his wrists that felt stronger than the toughest iron shackles. I tried to scream but no sound could escape through his huge palm. I tried to wriggle free, my body jerking in all directions spasmodically but nothing could be done.
The other man joined the Jargantaan who had been checking the panels. The new accomplice typed in a certain password on the other side of the panel. A small drawer opened automatically with an ominous click. The Jargantaan looked at me and grinned before picking up a teardrop shaped ampoule with tweezers from a freezer chamber. He lifted it up delicately and rotated it with a vicious look on his face, as if he wanted to show me my death before I closed my eyes to eternal darkness.
The bulbous part of the ampoule held a drop of a pitch- black liquid suspended in the middle, swirling in the midst of invisible forces of electromagnetism and polarity. The Jargantaan moved the ampoule to a point of insertion on the upper end of the dreaded panel whose mechanisms controlled the time of my death, a chilling quality of machines to determine their creator’s destiny.
The Jargantaan inserted the nib of the ampoule and pressed a small cylindrical rod on the top of the bulb. Slowly, the drop started to move. It moved ever so slowly towards the nib. A tear rolled down my cheek as it made its way towards the panel. Finally, the drop was sucked in. In a matter of seconds it would mix with my blood.
As my mind slipped into the deepest recesses of my head, I knew this couldn’t be it. I still had a long way to go. At that moment, the most poignant emotions and memories flooded into my mind in a colossal deluge just before the blast.
Suddenly I heard a metallic clink.
I opened my eyes in time to see the two remaining Jargantaans shot by miniscule projectiles before the dark, accipitrine shape of Huginn swooped down onto the panel, landing nimbly just like a live bird. On the floor, I caught glimpses of the tiny projectile deep inside the chest of the Jargantaans heat up to white hot. The gigantic men convulsed violently on the ground as their entrails burned rapidly, forming a cavity of charred organs and flesh.
Huginn hovered skillfully inches above me while biting into the metal straps that held me. He seemed to have brought both my amulet and also Bor’s staff with him. I stretched my limbs and coughed out dirt and debris from my mouth. Vivek’s face floated in my head, turning my face uncharacteristically grim. I had hardly been deceived so much in my life. But every smite of the hammer on the steel kept on the anvil only sharpens the metal further. My mind felt colder than the coldest steel at that time. I knew what to do.
“Find out the gene signature of Odin,” I commanded the bird while staring into the gaping hole in the wall, grey smoke still snaking through the air and occasional sparks of electricity bursting out of hidden circuits in the demolished façade. I quickly wore the amulet and grabbed the staff and started to feel comforted and more powerful, as absurd as it sounds.
One minute of being submerged deep in thought, I heard Huginn reply, “Odin is on the second floor in a cell located in a sub-corridor.”
“I wouldn’t know that. Keep giving me directions, Huginn.”
“Certainly, Herr Mathias.”
I jumped lightly on my feet before bursting into a sprint as I zoomed out of the room into a long corridor, Huginn flying close behind me.
As soon as I crossed the threshold, a wall of shimmering blue light sealed the orifice in the wall. I stopped and looked at it in curiosity, ignoring the jarring sound of the alarm that I could strangely feel right inside my chest, like a strong vibration, as if the frequency had almost locked on to my natural frequency to make sure that I heard the alarm and knew there was something wrong.
I touched the wall of blue, moving my finger cautiously near it, as if I were the Homo erectus and the blue curtain fire. As soon as my index finger plunged into the curtain, I couldn’t feel any texture except a sudden burning sensation. I recoiled immediately. I looked at my singed finger and then it hit me that this was contained plasma, probably meant to deviate any fire that started inside as fire was plasma too. I marvelled at the technology that went into simple safety measures in this realm.
A buzzing sound entered my ears, like a thousand bees flying towards me. A sense of foreboding drenched me. I turned apprehensively and saw a thin sheet of such plasma, only lighter in colour and intensity, rushing towards me from the other end of the corridor. It was sanitising everything in its path by evaporating any impurity, flammable content or organic material in its almost invisible fiery wrath. My eyes widened and without wasting a breath, I started running away from it.
I sprinted down the length of the corridor, crossing several rooms that had been sealed. Inside, I caught glimpses of bewildered groups of people arguing in panic about their enclosure. They watched in astonishment as I raced across the corridor with a deadly cloud of plasma right on my heels.
“Turn left.” Huginn called out over the din. Immediately, I skidded, pivoting on my ankle and sprinted down a short corridor. Instead of stairs leading to the floor below, a steep ramp of swirling colours, predominantly green, bridged the gap. As I came closer to it, I noticed the ram shape-shift, forming a small step near the ledge to take me down. I shook my head and jumped straight down. As I sailed through the air, I regretted my decision. Jumping a floor never did me harm but this time, I landed awkwardly on my legs which felt as flimsy as plastic. A sharp pain shot through my hip and I buckled, tumbling on the floor and sliding to a stop.
I rolled on my stomach, feeling my hip. The point where the marrow extraction had been done was still tender. I cringed and writhed in pain as I tried moving my muscles. My legs were still supple and flex
ible, so just a minor sprain on them but the excruciating pain from my hip coursed through my body without the soothing effects of any anesthesia. A vein popped up in my reddened forehead as I finally managed to stand back up supported by the staff. The buzzing sound burgeoned in a crescendo.
“Herr Mathias, the plasma intoxicator and flame defender is heading your way. You must move,” Huginn tried motivating me in vain in his mechanical, voice. It followed a code, it wasn’t human and it didn’t help. Nothing would. I was on my own once again after Meerut and I would not look back at the darkness trying to swallow me whole.
I moved slowly at first until I broke into a fast jog, groaning and crying in pain, with the staff alone to support me.
“Turn right, Turn left, go straight, turn left. Odin’s gene signature is coming from here.” I kept following Huginn’s directions and found myself in a small corridor. I peered in through the transparent panel on a heavy metallic door and saw the shrunken figure of Odin hunched over in a corner. There seemed to be more people with him, and I wished desperately that those were Ram and Shanbhag.
Through the blackness of the room, he sensed me and looked me straight into my eyes with wise but remorseful eyes. I motioned to him that I’d get him out right now, but neither of us knew how.
I scanned the metal wall but found no lever, no ledge, no handle or keyhole. Suddenly, a third noise joined the cacophony: footsteps. To my right, the wall of plasma had almost closed down on me. Only a matter of a minute and it would engulf me in its fiery embrace. To my left, dozens of Jargantaan officers stopped at the sight of me and broke into a run, determined to tackle me down and kill me as their orders prescribed. Sandwiched in between two mouths of death, I stared at the ground, then closed my eyes feeling my chest go taut in asthma. I waited for it to end this time for good.
My trusted amulet was not firing up. I wondered what would be the way out. As I tried to concentrate hard, Huginn started firing metal pellets at the Jargantaans. A few collapsed but most of them kept running, slowing down a bit at the incoming heat from the plasma wall.
Suddenly, my amulet started glowing a strange colour: yellow. I did not know how I knew but all of a suddden I understood inside my head. Somehow the amulet had captured the nuclear signature of the Quantum Tunneller which I had gone through earlier. The beams that shot out almost singed me and the metal wall started glowing in front of me. I advanced my arm holding the staff and that too joined in the fray. The area on the wall emitted a dull glow shine and I realised this was my chance.
I plunged into the wall and found myself in that uncertain space again. The disembodied feeling was disconcerting but this time, with my amulet glowing and the staff in my hand, I felt a strange kind of confidence. Maybe because it was the second time.
I passed through the wall just in time as the plasma wall passed through. As I turned to my side, I was horrified to see Odin, looking dishevelled and disoriented, crouching at a corner. He seemed to be fighting demons in his mind, and gesticulating and speaking to himself. Ram and Shanbhag were sitting by his side, looking scared out of their wits.
“Are you fine?” I asked one of the few questions that seem so foolish and perfunctory.
Odin looked at me with a frenzied look I had never seen before, a fear in his eyes that made his eyes glimmer so much, they could have melted away as water. He reached out and grabbed the thin clinical cloth I was wearing.
“I’ll kill you all! You’ve been misused! I’ll kill you all before you can do anything harmful to Asr-Gawa!” He yelled at me in an old raspy voice, his face a grimace.
“It’s me grandfather! Mathias! Mathias!” I held his shivering arms and tried to make him comfortable to my touch.
He stopped yelling and stared at me in the deadly silence of the dark room. His grip slackened and his arms fell limply by his side as he broke into a slight cry. “It was my fault. Why did I do this? Why can’t I control the barriers of my intellect? I never understand!” He screamed and kept punching the conduit on the back of his head while feeling his lost eye. “I knew I won’t be able to control it! Kill me before I see what I have brought upon this universe!” He was about to reach out for me again before I slapped his hands away. Flummoxed at my conduct, Odin remained quiet. I helped him up. “Grandfather. We need to get out of this place. Do you know how? Where is a teleporter that we can access? Please help us!”
Odin kept staring at me. “The teleporter will be blocked,” he said, coming back to his senses. “The sea. We need to cross the sea,” he said and looked away with a faraway look, almost bracing himself for something dreadful.
“So this place is on the same planet? It’s on... Asr-Gawa?”
Odin didn’t answer. He gave a curt and reluctant nod. So many more questions, I thought, but I decided to save them for a later time. Ram came and held my shoulder and nodded.
“The sea? The one that we can see from the border of Asr-Gawa? Well, okay. You guys sail ships or what?”
“We don’t have ships. We stay away from the sea as much as we can. It’s too violent and tumultuous for anything to survive. We’ve not yet developed the technology to traverse the vast ocean. It has never been required.” He looked back at me with an expression which was hard to fathom. His eyes had the twinkle back in anticipation of a challenge and I sensed the steel the man was made of. “It’s infested with creatures we don’t even know exist, only heard of them in folklore and had a couple of sightings and gene signatures. That’s it, Mathias. But now we have no other choice. We have to do what’s never been done before. We have to set sail on the treacherous ocean today.”
Kapittel 84
Washington, DC, USA
March 17, 2017, Thursday, 1105 hours EST
(Eastern Standard Time, USA)
The panting sound of a young portly analyst jogging in NASA’s Headquarters in Washington DC filled the corridor. He pushed open a door and burst into a room. “Sir! Sir! I have someth...”
“What is this? You can’t just barge in here like this, Samuel! What are you up to?”
“Sir, this is very important. You’ll want to see this.”
The man seated in the high-back swivelling chair regarded Samuel with sharp eyes and a raised brow.
“Please excuse me, gentlemen. I think Samuel just spotted here an impending alien invasion of Earth from Andromeda,” the men chuckled while Samuel bit his lip.
“What is it? Tell me.” The boss asked Samuel as he closed the door behind him.
“I just received these reports from University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel.” He handed a tablet to his superior.
“Okay... so... New Horizons. Pluto. Bunch of data about its tectonic, geographic activity. Orbital motion. Yes, the flyby was very, very successful. We all know that. What are you telling me?”
Samuel shook his head in exasperation. “Sir, if you look closer, you’ll notice that the tectonic activity of Pluto is out of this world. The planet has been literally inflating and deflating in such a pronounced manner in the last 24 hours that a homemade telescope would be able to figure it out.”
“What? How? What’s happening?”
“We don’t know sir, but it’s something we have never seen before. These photos from the satellite show that the space around the planet is warping, as if there is some extra concentration of energy or mass in the planet. We have no idea what’s happening to the dwarf planet.”
At that moment, billions of miles away, Pluto couldn’t handle the strain any longer. In a cataclysmic celestial moment, the rocky and icy body of Pluto exploded into hundreds of thousands of gigantic splinters. One of these pieces smashed against the New Horizons satellite and operating centre on Earth received no signal from it henceforth.
* * *
Heimdallr’s story
Asr-Gawa
March 17, 2017, Friday, 2247 hours Earth EET
Cold darkness had started to seep into Asr-Gawa. A lone person ran through the empty streets of one of the dis
tant districts near the periphery, hiding occasionally in the shadows of a nearby building. Mortal fear gripped Heimdallr. As resentful as he was of the crumbling Asurian government, as covertly as he managed his position in Lok Vve, he had never risked open rebellion against the system. It was only a matter of time until they sent an electrical impulse through his brain lattice and immobilised him. He couldn’t even fathom what would happen after that to him. Heimdallr turned into one of the dark alleyways and ripped apart a disposable camouflage neoprene-like material. Five metallic fins closed a secret passage into the basement of the adjoining abandoned building. He pressed the surface of a tiny black rectangular plate he had fixed into the wall. The device glowed green as it analysed Heimdallr’s genetic signature from the sweat of his palm. The metallic fins folded outwards, exposing up the gateway. Heimdallr descended into the warm bowels of Asr-Gawa while the fins sealed the gateway behind him. Another camouflage cloth unfurled over the fins. In the inky darkness, Heimdallr groped the wall to his right. It was right there, somewhere. Impatience wrenched his gut in an iron grip. With every second, he came just this much closer to getting caught.
His finger found a small panel. He rubbed it with his thumb very hard and in the next instant, tiny nozzles installed all along the edge of the floor fired jets of luminescent paint, coating the entire upper surface of the stairwell and the basement in a uniform coat. Traditional sources of light couldn’t be used here. Everything running on the government supplied Makto- powerline was traceable. He had to take every precaution to keep his safe-house completely inconspicuous.
In the numinous bluish white glow of the paint, he descended deeper underground until he arrived at the cavernous room. Every compartment in the walls was stacked with nutrition supplies, medication, and an array of different gadgets. He had known such a day would come and had prepared for it in full.