by Lee Bond
Blinking the distracting radio chatter away, Peemes answered. “Er, yes. It never does anyone good, sir.”
“People come to these doors and what, knock on them?” Erg clapped his hands and laughed at that. Yet another sign of the irrationality of the Unreal Universe. Only truly broken fools would travel so far to knock on a door leading into a great mystery.
It was positively suicidal, really, and even more proof that the Unreal Universe didn’t want to be around any longer.
Erg’s good nature soured as he reflected on the ridiculous irony of that thought. No. He wasn’t suicidal. He was a CyberPriest. He was vanguard for Absolute Nothing. He and his brothers would destroy their enemies, erase this absurd Unreality and then swarm across the whole of Existence, erasing the other, proper, true Realities that hovered just on the other side of the void.
If there was anyone better suited to plumb the depths of this mystery before then, Erg would find him –or her, or it- and destroy them.
Peemes decided it was best if he simply stopped looking in the direction this most unwanted visitor stood; something about the way he looked was turning the his guts inside out. “Yes, all the time. Usually, whether they know it or not, right after convicts have been turned loose inside.”
Erg looked over his shoulder, took in the fanciful machine pattern on the huge Geared Door. “This Door was just open?”
“About a day or so ago, aye.” Peemes always wondered how it was that these … parishioners … somehow managed to miss the Opening. Always. He knew from these little meetings that some –not all- were aware down to the minute when the Doors were to open, and other Wardens supported that knowledge with their own anecdotes. Visitors knew, and arranged their entire year around the moment when the great Geared Doors swung wide and yet somehow, no matter how prepared, they failed to arrive on time.
That tiny impossibility was just one of the many secrets kept from the greater world, for in The Dome’s entire existence and for as long as the Doors opened to accept them as had done wrong to King’s Sons and had been properly processed, never once in all that time had any parishioners or the curious come as the Door was open.
Erg stepped as close to the human as he could. “Have you seen inside, Warden Peemes? Have you looked on the wonders inside the walls of The Dome? Have you witnessed the perfection of the gears and cogs, the clockwork, the pistons and the hydraulics? What does The Dome countdown to? What is its purpose?”
Peemes tried to stammer out an answer, tried to find his tongue, but … nothing. He was paralyzed. Waves of simmering anger filled Peemes and all the FrancoBrit could hear were scythes, great, whispering blades that buzzed right through his brain. “I … I … I …”
Erg stepped back.
The Warden found himself able to speak and he did so while massaging his throat and stepping back another five feet. “No. No warden nor official of the King’s Law has ever done. Nor would we, given the chance. We look away, backs turned. The Door closes, we go about our lives, waiting for the next batch to come our way. And still you lot come, still hope, still knock. Not that it matters. Nothing ever happens.”
“Then why, pray tell,” Erg’s true form was trembling in tune with the earthquake-like vibrations rumbling through the ground now, “Are you even here?”
The funny thing was, Warden Peemes was beginning to wonder that very same thing himself. Every Warden had to deal with these random visits. Some of his friends at the other Doors claimed they’d had to deal with Offworld maniacs, visiting royalty from other solar systems, men and women and aliens powerful and bizarre in their own right. He’d listened to their stories with astonishment, and to be honest, a fair pound of relief; his Door only ever attracted normal folk, regular everyday people who’d heard of the Doors and The Dome and wanting a look for themselves.
Well, excluding Scourge, but that bad seed had gone in all the same, hadn’t he? Barely counted, really.
Peemes reflected that if he survived this encounter with his wits intact, he might every well win the Storytelling Contest. The way this … man … was staring at him, humming under his breath and rocking back and forth in tune to the ceaseless motion beneath their feet had Peemes terrified to his very core.
“We … we come to talk to people such as you. To explain. To … let you down gently.” Peemes ran a shaking hand through his hair. Through the implant, Troop Commander Sminkington was bellowing quite loudly, demanding over and over again to know what they should bloody damned well be doing.
The visitor’s eyes were shining pools of madness and the … the … whatever it was that swarmed through the air around him was starting to its teeth again. “Some … some of you … are … what … snared by The Dome. We … we never used to, and those of you who come starved yourselves, or banged yourself bloody, or killed yourselves on the doorstep. Trinity asked us to start this up.”
Peemes nearly wept for joy when his men arrived on the scene; Sminkington was going to find a badge for Brave Action attached to his file first thing, yes he was. Peemes was ashamed he’d let things get this far out of hand, but he also knew that any of the other Wardens would’ve cocked things up well worse than this, and so took a smidge of solace.
The Warden approved of the troops’ accumulation of arms. In addition to weapons capable of dealing death to half a thousand different species of Man, some few bore the splashguns that liquefied them as came out; sometimes men and women who’d won their freedom from Arcade City showed up, weeping and wailing and trying to dig their way back in, back to the hell they knew. Sometimes … sometimes they whispered of Kingsblood or Vicious Elixir and sometimes … they needed dealing with in that special way.
Peemes cautioned his men with a gesture. This was no maddened wardog, he’d not fallen out of The Dome at some other Door. He was something else altogether. The Warden pummeled his stupid old brain for summat trying to whisper its way up through this dread fog flowing out from the oddity at the Door. Hadn’t something happened, near a hundred years ago? About a strange man who’d shown up then –as now- looking to knock?
A glimmer of that tale caught fire and Peemes tried to hold on to it, to fan those flames higher, but…
Erg laughed. He laughed so loudly that he had to throw his head back to get it all out. He had it now. Before, the last time he’d stood before this particular door on that particular day, he’d been an ordinary CyberPriest, bound to the Unwritten Scriptures, unable to think outside the paradigm of their particular anarchism. But he was changed, now. Unlike his brothers, he was capable of adaptation on a different level. He could initiate threat.
Last time, he’d laid his hand on the cool metal plates of the Geared Door, a supplicant begging for entry. He’d been an inelegant beast back then. Well … Erg admitted he was still inelegant when compared to the rest of the ‘perfection’ found in the Unreal Universe, but that roughness, that crudity, that strangeness had grown. Matured. Transformed beyond all boundaries.
The imperfect mechanisms of his CyberPriest body, intentionally held out of sync with each other and the greater Unreal Universe, finally fell into rhythm with the eternal pulsing, pounding, ticking and tocking orchestra behind the walls. Parts of him were spinning in time with the gears now. It was fantastic.
This time … this time would be different.
Erg1 laughed again. “Would you like to see something amazing?” he asked the terrified guards. “Something you’ve never seen before in your entire, pathetic lives?”
“If … if we say yes,” Warden Peemes hated the petrified quaver in his voice, “if we … if watch and when nothing happens, will you … will you go away and leave us alone?”
Erg considered the request. An easy promise to make. There was no doubt in his mind that the door would open and every doubt in theirs that it would not. The CyberPriest tipped his head in agreement.
Warden Peemes and his men shuffled forward, weapons drawn and aimed at the sightseer’s back, each one of them muttering under th
eir breaths at how stupid this was. Some were quietly insisting that they call in a Trinity airstrike. There was no great shame in it, they said. Other Wardens had already done so, not more than two hours ago.
“Shut it.” Peemes hissed angrily. “No one does nothing. You lot ain’t been ‘round this door as long as I’ve been. I can feel the vibrato of the gears, and sometimes when I lay my hand on it, I can feel something shifting inside. I’ve got what my old mum would call the second sight about strange things because of it and I tell you now, this fellow is not someone to mess about with. Look! Here he goes. Now let us pray that when he knocks, and nothing happens, he plays nice and flies away or does whatever it is he’s going to do and leaves us all to go back and drink some tea and cry on our biscuits.”
***
Erg1, once known as Kant Ingrams, closed an open hand into a fist. He raised it and knocked. Once, twice, three times.
The sound of locks and bolts being flung open rapidly filled the air. Behind him, soldiers and Warden started shouting in fear. Bullets and energy beams and curious pebbles of interesting design spackled Erg’s back.
Erg watched the Door’s fascinating design of cogs and gears, latches and levers spin and move of their own accord, marveling at the intricate beauty of the whole thing. Never had he seen anything like it in his entire life, and his entire life encompassed the whole of the future that they now lived in. Steam curled out from the small gap between the two sides of the Geared Door as it swung wide.
This seemingly slipshod, ramshackle imperfection of gears and cogs and odd spinning shapes that made no sense to the eyes was anything but imperfect. It was the sole exemplar of perfection in the Universe, and when he strode through to the mystical lands of Arcade City, it would be as a thief, to steal the King’s secrets. Then, when all was understood, Erg would return, to teach his brothers all he’d learned.
Then –and only then- would the Unreal Universe be turned to ash.
Triumphant, Erg the CyberPriest turned to confront the skeptical Warden Peemes and his frightened squadron of children with guns.
Gone. They were all gone. Shifted, if Erg’s sensitive cybernetic eyes were not mistaken, into ash and dust already mingled with the windswept sand of once-Cardiff’s westernmost coastline.
Erg spun and stared into the depths of what lay behind the Geared Door, unseen by any eyes –any surviving eyes- other than those consigned to a miserable life inside Arcade City. He stared and marveled.
As expected. A machine. Vast. Massive. Working towards some inscrutable, unknowable purpose. Something this big, something this large, something this powerful … whatever the King was working on would be stolen from the monarch and turned to the greater purpose of the CyberPriests.
Erg stepped over the threshold and let the Door swing shut behind him.
***
“Where did he go?” Faraday’s concern was a raw whirlwind of fear raging across the ‘Priestly communication band. George Stevens, who should be Anode, sat staring at the monitors, shrugging his shoulders like a moron. All cybernetic sign of Erg was gone, vanished into the ether as if he’d never existed.
“Looks like he went in.” George said simply.
Faraday slapped George’s hand away from the controls and fiddled with them. “The Doors don’t work that way. They never have! After Erg went there the first time, we studied them from a distance. The only safe way. For nearly three hundred years! You’d … you’d remember all this properly if you weren’t a stupid, wriggling monkey-larva! Then, when he finally touched the damn thing and Trinity stole him, we focused on those prisoner dumps. Ninety wretched years of watching the worst of the worst chucked through those big Doors! And thousands of visitors trying the exact same thing! Some of them were just as powerful as us! None of them ever got in. Or made a dent that lasted more than ten seconds! The only thing anyone not a prisoner has ever successfully managed was a boot in the rear by a Warden. We decided to leave it the hell alone because when we destroy the Unreality, it’ll go along with. No one gets in that the King doesn’t want in his little playpen.”
Faraday clenched his jaw. “And I’d give my left scanner to know how he pulls that magic trick.”
“I do remember some of this.” George replied testily. He didn’t know why he was hanging around the ‘Priests. Now that he wasn’t bound to the Enlightningment, there was simply no reason. Being called ‘monkey-larva’ was the icing on a cake made of disrespectful terms and hurt feelings. “I was a ‘Priest, remember?”
“And you will be again!” Faraday broke George’s machine in half and scattered the bits around the room. “We’ve always avoided The Dome. It makes us weird!”
“I never went.” George said smugly, nudging one of the broken pieces of the computer he’d built to track Erg.
“The only one who ever did so ‘properly’ was Erg.” Faraday sat down on a chair, put his head into his hands. “Once or twice every few thousand years. He’d catch sight of The Dome and he’d stand there on the shore staring up at it like it was some great egg getting ready to hatch. The rest of us sort of … looked at it from far away. Only thing in the entire Universe that makes us nervous. Well, that … and … you know. Her.”
“Don’t remember that. And I guess the bitch doesn’t really worry me anymore, huh? I’m monkey-larva now. She won’t bother herself with things like me.” George started eating a sandwich, rather victoriously. That was one of the things he liked the most about being not a CyberPriest. Food. Food was delicious.
“We’re screwed.” Faraday muttered. It was absolutely true. Already down one proper brother until or unless ‘George Stevens’ could find his way back to being Anode, being stripped of Savior 1.0 and having damned Naoko Kamagana out there abroad doing who knew what with modified CyberPriest powers, they couldn’t afford to have the only one of them capable of bringing the fight to the enemy trapped behind The Dome. “We’re going to have to find a way to bring The Dome down.”
“That …” George choked on his sandwich, spluttering for a long few seconds, “that doesn’t sound like a good idea. Not to mention, highly unlikely. We’ll be noticed.”
“No choice.” Faraday said stridently. “Call the others. Get them here. Tell them not to use the usual methods. With Kamagana out there, teleportation is risky.”
“Call them yourself.” George groused grumpily. “You’re hooked up to the comm network.”
“Yes.” Faraday hissed. “I am. And so is the bitch. If she doesn’t know already, she’ll bloody well will soon enough. If she finds out we’re all going to be in the same area at the same time, there’s no telling what she’ll do. I’d much rather have her wreaking havoc on those stupid EuroJapanese gangsters than coming out here and bothering us. Now do as I say!”
George went to pick up the pieces of the machine Faraday had so callously broken. “Fine. But stop breaking my stuff.”
Faraday shot George Stevens a look of pure, unadulterated venom and left. He needed some fresh air.
***
“Well, you won’t like this.” Slate said to Trinity.
“What?”
Slate couldn’t believe his eyes. Or the recordings. Or the quantum level histograms. Or the AI. Everything about this operation stank to high heaven. “The Door opened. Again.”
“It what?”
Trinity’s tone gave Slate pause for concern. In the course of his servitude to the AI, he’d heard the machine mind be everything from outraged to bemused. But never frightened. The Enforcer repeated himself, adding, “And then it melted this Warden Peemes character and all the men he had with him. Into sand or dust or something.”
“The CyberPriest?”
Ah, Slate thought delightedly, so that’s what they’re called. “Went in.”
Silence filled the Suit. Slate watched the last few minutes of the … CyberPriest’s time outside The Dome. There was definitely more to the being than met the eye.
“Go down there. Do what the ‘Priest did.”
“I’m sorry?” Slate knew he hadn’t misheard, but the command was … ridiculous.
“Do it or I’ll kill you.”
“By your command.” Slate angled himself for The Dome and set about risking his life, wondering where the bravado he’d gripped only minutes ago had gotten off to.
“Of course.” Trinity paused. “I’m sending more Enforcers. One for each Door. Wait for them.”
That made more sense. A full onslaught from all sides. “As you command. How long?”
More silence.
The silence stretched on for some time. Longer than before. Longer than any Enforcer could remember, which –Slate thought- wasn’t good.
Eventually, when Trinity came back online, Its voice was full of exasperation. “Standard methods of relocation are currently unavailable. I cannot say how long. Amuse yourself. Do not engage The Dome until everyone has assembled.”
Slate waited until he was certain Trinity was out of the Suit before accessing the controls for Quantum Tunneling.
They were blacked out.
Ugh. If he wanted to ‘amuse himself’, it would be in the local star system only, and getting to anywhere interesting meant doing so under his own power.
What the hell was going on in the Universe?
15. Following the Threads
Tech Expert Tendreel Salingh had taken to her new job with utmost pleasure. It was a far cry and away from the belittling and demeaning post aboard the TMS Sparrow. Though she could her hear father’s booming voice insisting that there was no such thing as ’little’ work, that all tasks contributed to the greater tapestry that was life, Tendreel couldn’t help but think of all she’d done for the Army as a waste of her valuable time.
Tendreel Salingh loved her father with a passion, but she also knew the Myco was a doddering fool who’d never once been asked to scrub latrines on a spaceship. Tendreel had no ability to see how ensuring that a toilet bowl for a species that had failed to find practical use for their waste was clean had anything to do with the glory of life.