by Tyler Hanson
She looked up, her sight blurred by the heat and the smoke. Flames crept onto her skin; the energy inside of her released itself to keep her burns at bay. A dislocated shoulder retracted back into place with an audible snap. Gashes along her forehead sealed shut, punctuated by blue sparks.
Where did the winged man go?
Zen wandered through the chaos and the cries, navigating the enflamed deathtraps that were once simple offices. She passed a crater in the wall, revealing the outside sky, high above Manhattan’s paved streets. Screams transformed into whimpers behind her, and she turned in time to see people fall from open windows, their fingers interlocked.
A beam creaked above. Two grey-haired men in suits were trying to escape down a nearby hallway. The side of the beam closest to Zen fell, crushing one of the men with a sickening splat. The other side of the beam remained suspended for a heartbeat, but it starting to creak again as it, too, relinquished its battle with gravity.
In a dash, Zen moved between the other man and the falling beam.
“Go!” she yelled, wincing as the red-hot metal blistered her bare hands.
The man nodded his wordless thanks and ran past her. He survived six more steps before the floor opened and swallowed him, sending him spiraling into jets of flame.
Zen growled in frustration and dropped the beam. Her patience was fraying.
She shouldered her way through the drywall to her left and into a new room. A gigantic piece of metal, likely part of the airplane, lay burning. Its surface bubbled from the heat of the burning fuel around it. Emblazoned on the jagged debris were disfigured letters, spelling the word “MERIC.”
Before she could continue her hunt for an escape route, a hand grabbed her hair from behind, its grip a steel vice.
“Still alive?” a gravelly voice whispered into her ear.
Black claws curled around her neck. She tried to react, to fight back, but the damage she’d taken had sapped much of the energy left in her cells. The winged man lifted her into the air and tossed her through a burning wall. Hot ash sprayed from the collision, but its erratic movement softened into snowflakes as it was exposed to the air from a gaping hole in the outer wall. Smoke swirled around the building and obscured the sky. Heavy footsteps sounded behind Zen, and an object dropped next to her face.
The black remote.
A small LED light near the top flashed with urgency. The time between blinks grew shorter and shorter as it picked up speed.
The winged man strode past Zen and jumped through the window, disappearing into the smoke, humming his tune.
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
Zen clutched at the remote, trying to find a way to stop the blinking, but nothing she pressed produced a response. She clutched at a nearby desk to pull herself to her feet.
The device blinked so rapidly that the light seemed static. A severed power cable hung from the ceiling near the desk, emitting intermittent sparks. Zen reached for the ragged end and clutched at it, drinking its energy.
Her muscles clenched and tightened. She could feel cramps forming throughout her body, but it wouldn’t make a difference how far she pushed herself if she didn’t survive. She had to survive. That’s who she was.
The survivor.
The air crackled around her as electrical energy escaped her body, tracing black lines into the walls, floor and ceiling. Her ears filled with roars and screams; her mouth and nose filled with blood and oil. Zen closed her eyes, seeking some semblance of inner peace.
“I’m sorry, David,” she whispered, her old Southern accent creeping back into her voice.
The remote at her feet reached a steady red before it flickered off, bathing the room in silence.
Then the rumbling began, far beneath her feet. From the basement.
Vibrations traveled up the floor and walls, rattling Zen’s bones. Her stomach dropped from the sudden shift in gravity as the building began to plummet. She tried to escape via the same route as the winged man, but she tripped and fell in her hurry. The building imploded toward the center, and the outer floors slanted inwards, sending her sliding into the nucleus of her new hell.
The wind howled. Debris piled on top of her, its weight and pressure barely withheld by the blue energy encircling her body. Sirens wailed far in the distance, but they grew louder with each passing second. As the world faded under rubble, Zen heard another voice scream in terror.
This time, it was her own.
Aquifer’s Report
01.04: “Presentation”
Karnataka, India
April 15, 2006-B
“You’ll be fine,” Ananya said in Hindi, straightening Nadi’s necktie. “You can do this in your sleep.”
“Ananya, I’m always fine,” he responded with a toothy grin. “I’m just not used to sharing my life’s work with the people who can take it away from me. Isn’t that what marriage is for?”
“Like you’d know,” Reyansh called out from his chair, spinning on its swivel several meters away. “Girls have to like you before you marry them.”
Nadi pulled a pen from the breast pocket of his black suit and flung it behind him, smacking Reyansh in the ear.
“Ow!”
Nadi cinched his tie with a smirk. “Whoops, slipped out of my hand.” He glanced at Ananya. “How do I look?”
Ananya waved her hand at the nearby restroom door, and he wandered inside. The mirrors against the sink ran from the ceiling to waist-height, but Nadi could see enough to assess his dress. The reflection that stared back at him was a thin, lanky man in a black suit with a corresponding black tie. He had bronze skin and professional, well-parted black hair. His face was clean-shaven, an aesthetic choice that emphasized his youthful awkwardness.
Still, that was just part of his charm.
He exited the restroom and said, “Even better than I expected.” Ananya nodded in agreement, brushing back her dark brown hair.
“Eh, I’ve seen worse,” came Reyansh’s voice.
Nadi turned toward the mustachioed man, meeting his glasses-framed eyes.
Holding up the offending pen from earlier, Reyansh asked, “Can I keep this, then?”
Nadi chuckled, the shudder in his voice betraying his nervousness. “You two should be out there with me. Your hard work has been just as essential to this project. I couldn’t have gotten as far as I did without the knowledge and expertise of my friends and coworkers.”
Ananya smiled. “The sponsors like your face, for whatever reason. They feel like you can best”—she made a frustrated gesture with her hands, trying to find the right words—“encapsulate the scope and value of this project.”
“Basically, the smart people are too smart to explain it to anyone,” Reyansh chimed in. “You’re dumb enough to spell it out for everyone else . . . it’s a compliment!” He raised a hand to brush aside Nadi and Ananya’s glares.
A notification on the far wall of the room chimed. Reyansh slid from his chair and trotted to a row of computers and monitors along the wall.
“Time’s up.” He shot Nadi a smile. “They’re here.”
The three gathered around the monitors and watched the scene far above their heads unfold.
________________
A convoy of black cars traveled along the dirt roads of Western Gurur, kicking clouds of earth behind them as they moved. Surrounded on three sides by kilometers of flat, empty fields, their destination was clear: a compound composed of clusters of white buildings. A row of the structures pressed together to form steps; from each of those steps flowed a thin layer of running water. Metal railings surrounded the individual buildings along with the entrance to the compound itself.
Their journey complete, the vehicles entered Gurur’s Waste Water Treatment Plant.
The line of cars pulled into side-by-side parking spaces, one after another. Security guards in suits and sunglasses emerged from the passenger’s seat of each car and circled to the back. Five doors opened in unison, and five very d
ifferent individuals stepped out.
They grouped together in stark contrast to the others beside them, surrounded by their security teams, and chatted amongst themselves as they walked into the compound. Their voices only carried above the flowing water by a few decibels, and they found themselves yelling to be heard by the time they were inside the largest of the buildings. Workers on catwalks surrounded the posse as they crossed the warehouse floor.
The group stopped near the center of the facility; before them was a small, box-shaped office with nothing on the outside but a plain metal door. One of the guards stepped forward and used a key to unlock the door; opening it, he gestured for the others to go inside. They complied with kind nods and pleasantries.
Inside the office was a wooden desk and metal chair, but nothing else. Part of the back wall bulged inward to form a rectangle. The same guard stepped up and waved a keycard in front of the metal protrusion. A gracious beep alerted them to a large panel, which swung forward, revealing an elevator door. The guard pressed the “down” button and the door slid aside, providing access to a spacious, rectangular elevator car.
The group piled in, continuing their idle conversations as the elevator descended. The engine connected to the device whispered, and they would have been hard-pressed to notice its movement. A panel indicated they had begun on floor “G,” and a speaker emitted a distinct tone with each new level they passed.
1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4.
The car halted and the doors opened once more, revealing a pearl-white laboratory as large as an airplane hangar. The laboratory hosted the examination and assembly of various mechanisms, including a green device resembling a jet engine and a series of floating, revolving discs which were held aloft by a man gesturing with a white glove. Near the center, a tarp laid beneath a smooth white box the size of a car engine, sandwiched between two empty glass, trough-shaped containers.
In front of this final display, the strange cabal lined themselves, standing still. Their chatter ceased, patient yet expectant.
________________
“Let’s do this,” Nadi proclaimed, and turned toward an exit behind him.
The white, seamless door opened from the wall close to where the five guests and their security staff waited. He exited, beaming with confidence as he approached the group.
“Nǐ hǎo,” he said as he bowed to a short, plump Chinese man, who returned the gesture. The man wore a stylish suit with a red tie, as well as circular red glasses. His hair was full, but stringy, and it came together as a black messy bundle on his head.
“Guten morgen,” he said to a pale white man with piercing blue eyes, firmly shaking his hand. The man was dressed in crisp military attire; the decorations identified him as a German military officer.
Nadi paused in front of a dark-skinned Ethiopian woman in a gold and black dress, waiting for her response. As soon as she extended her hand, he offered a gentle grip and moved it up and down.
“Inidēti nehi,” he said.
He moved to stand before a tall, older Indian man wearing a navy-blue suit and sporting a light grey beard. Nadi formed the Añjali Mudrā, placing his palms together with his fingers pointing upward and his thumbs close to his chest. The man responded in kind.
“Namaste,” Nadi greeted him, and they both bowed.
Nadi turned to the final person, a young Israeli man in loose-fitting white cotton pants and a flowing white cotton shirt. “Shalom.” He offered his hand, but with a wry grin the man stepped forward and squeezed him into a tight hug.
“I told you that you’d make it here,” the man whispered with glee in Hindi. They pulled away, and the Israeli man stepped back to join the others. “Show them what you told me,” he continued in English.
Nadi addressed the group with a smile, also switching to English. “When I was a child, I was obsessed with the American Ray Bradbury Theater television series. It flirted on the edge between magic and technology, and while it was sometimes bleak, its creative uses of science in seemingly impossible ways inspired me.”
He began to pace in front of them, exuding his mounting anxiety. “See, I grew up Kerala. For those of you unfamiliar, it’s a small coastal city south of here. I was a child who grew up wanting to see change, to see progress, but I only ever saw people leaving for better places. Even as my friends fluttered off for new cities and countries, the loudest stories that made it back to my ears were ones of poverty, disease, and famine . . .”
Nadi paused for a moment, taking a breath to calm back down. “I found this unacceptable. What I began to strive after, more than anything, was a future where the benefits of new technologies could be shared with all. I wanted such advancements to result in better living, better health, and better communication. And then I wanted to put those projects in the hands of every world leader to give to their citizens. At the risk of sounding cliché, I thought such a world could be considered a utopia.”
He shook his head. “But the real world impedes progress. Law, licensure, funding and politics get in the way. I moved from university straight into Technopark, but the company was too restrictive. Much to my good fortune, my university friend Noam introduced me to this private facility reserved for unconventional technologies.” Nadi nodded to the Israeli man. “Thank you for that, Noam.”
Noam grinned in response.
“As you all know,” Nadi continued, “the caveat to working here is convincing investors that your project merits enough value to the world’s governments to warrant its cost. If the project fails, it only wastes money from private coffers, so no government’s budget is negatively affected.”
He scanned the group, aware of the length of his monologue. They didn’t seem particularly interested in his personal history. Most were making polite eye contact, though they telegraphed subtle glances toward the white box on the tarp.
“But you aren’t here to hear about me. You’re here to see if the report that I sent you was true. Why don’t we get to it?” Nadi reached a hand into his inner jacket pocket and retrieved a white wireless keyboard. “This won’t reach the public market for a few more years, but our scientists are happy to share the technology if it allows for refinements.”
He typed with one hand, holding the keyboard with the other. “Consider the countries you find yourselves most attached to or responsible for. Whether they be areas like East Africa, rural China, or vast stretches of the Middle East, the one factor to which they most often must adapt is drought. Even self-proclaimed ‘civilized’ countries like the United States find themselves at a loss when dry spells strike the West.”
Nadi tapped a final button on the keyboard. The pearl-white box expanded to reveal a grid on each visible surface, the lines formed by thin cracks. Beneath the open spaces was a white mesh, similar in design to the mesh that covers industrial speakers. The box began to make a low hiss, like a leaking gas stove. Nadi ignored it, continuing.
“Imagine walking into impoverished regions of your country, areas without any realistic resources to spare, and placing this box near a dried-up river, tributary, or water tower. Where the citizens could once fish and drink and play, everything has died. Now they rely on government handouts to survive. What if you could press a button”—He extended his hand to the clear trough to his left—“And give it all back?”
The hissing stopped, and a gush of displaced air blew upward from the tank, rustling the spectators’ hair and clothes. The previously bone-dry container was filled to the brim with crystal-clear water.
The audience murmured with surprise. The Indian benefactor looked at Nadi. “How did you manage this?” he asked.
Nadi bent down and set his keyboard on top of the box. It lay there at a haphazard angle, darkened by the scientist’s shadow as he stood to reply.
“The device takes advantage of a process called ‘pair production.’ Are you familiar with it?” The older man shook his head, so Nadi continued. “Boiled down to its simplest concepts, pair production is the creation of
new particles from radiation, pulling apart the core components of energy itself and stitching it together to make something more tangible. Thanks to the funding and resources we’ve received from your generosity, we’ve learned to translate the photons within light. Trial and error allowed us to piece together the equation required to take those photons and convert them into the most basic particles that form water.”
Nadi pointed both of his index fingers to the box at his feet. “The PAUS in front of you emits a broad electromagnetic field. When activated, we can program three-dimensional coordinates into the onboard computer. The shapes created from those coordinates, such as the shape of the trough, are then isolated within the EM field. Every photon in range of the field is translated into pure water like that.”
He snapped his fingers to emphasize his point. The group stared at him with blank faces.
Tone down the tech talk, he thought. They aren’t here for a physics lesson.
“Basically, it turns light into water,” he clarified.
“Ohhhhhh,” the group replied.
The Ethiopian woman nodded at Nadi.
“Excuse me; my English is not the best,” she apologized. “Did you call the device paws? Like . . .” She held her arms up, bending her wrists so that her hands formed cartoonish kitty-cat paws.
Nadi grinned. “No, ‘PAUS’ is an acronym,” he replied. “It stands for ‘Photon And Ultrasound System.’ Though I won’t deny that I may have been biased when I named it. Who doesn’t love a cute nickname?”
The group chuckled, their good spirits at odds with the stoic security guards surrounding them. The German officer raised his hand, and his accent sharpened his consonants as he spoke.
“You referenced ultrasound. Does that mean you completed phase two?”
Nadi sighed, offering a tight smile. Stepping back into the center of the demonstration, he retrieved his keyboard. Once the device was in his hands, Nadi said, “Zugführer Kalt is referencing a request he made several years ago. Back then, I was entirely focused on the pair production process, creating fresh water and placing it into areas in need. However, Kalt argued the additional value of transporting the water after it was created. He wanted us to research some way to reposition the fluid, post-production. I, of course, was completely on board with the idea.”