The Urimine Effect

by Matthew Fortuna

uncontrollably, trying her hardest to retain some sense of self control, but it couldn't be helped. She held on for dear life, and, when she was suddenly thrown to the ground to the sound of a crashing door, held on for fear of losing her wits all together.

  She curled up into a ball to comfort herself and keep the overwhelming fear from bursting out into the black space around her. The dark pushed in on her, spilling into her soul dark secrets that threatened her.

  She knew she should get up and look around and find some way to excape and find Marcus, but something irrational inside of her explained the insignificance of trying to escape the fear.

  The beast seemed to have left her a long time ago, but she stayed put, afraid of causing some kind of disturbance that would bring it back. She stayed still, lying on her side until she fell asleep from exhaustion.

  Marcus traveled, traversed, and backtracked more times than he was willing to compute. He'd used up enough energy to put him on his emergency reserves by the time he made it to the floor where Yin was sleeping.

  A small window looked into a sleeping chamber, just big enough to room two people on the two tier matresses hanging from the wall. Inside, Yin was whimpering to herself, her paws covering her ears and her legs and chin tucked in tight to her chest.

  Marcus tapped his lense against the glass to get her attention but she just curled up tighter, pressing her paws more firmly against her ears. He tried again, but with the same result. He floated in the hallway where Yin was being held just as his battery meter hit critical. With a last ditch effort, Marcus sent a message to the synth-card in Yin's satchel before falling to the ground, his systems finally giving out.

  Yin's head felt as though it would explode and she screamed at herself in frustration, the sound never making it out of her thoughts. She cringed inside, willing it all to stop, willing to face a thousand unknowns just so this irrational fear would leave her alone. She tried crying to herself, but with no success.

  She felt a light on her eye lids and looked down at her satchel, her fear temporarily forgotten, and pulled her hands away from her head to rummage through her bag. She drew her synth-card out, surprised to find a message on the screen. She opened it up and read through the warning Marcus had written:

  'Yin, my battery systems have died. I've found your location, but I cannot help you anymore. You will have to find your own way out.'

  Yin stood up unsteadily on her back paws, resting against the upper bed in the chamber for support. She held the synth-card up to light up the room, locating the door in the process. She feared the worst when she tried the handle, but it twisted open without a problem. She pulled the door back into the room and quietly flicked the light down either side of the hallway. She stepped out when she was confident the way was clear. Her back paw brushed up against something on the floor, sending it rolling back into the wall on the other side. Marcus had powered down just as he'd said. She carefully reached down with both paws and wedged him between the synth-card and the crook of her arm. There was no way to navigate the halls without him.

  Yin checked Marcus's message again. She shoved Marcus in her bag and started down the hall, keeping her synth-card ahead to follow the readings. Again her thoughts began to wander as she kept a steady pace toward the point on the radar, thinking back on the straw in the entry hall that, even now, littered the floor. This time though, it was thicker, almost taking up an inch.

  Yin passed through several more flights of stairs, doors, and corridors before she finally reached her destination.

  The signal cutout once she reached it's point on the map and she found, hidden amidst the straw, a bag full of synth-cards, food packets, and magni-cartridges. Yin sat down and grabbed a magni-cartridge. Her first priority was to get Marcus back online. Everything else could wait until afterwards.

  She plugged him in and waited, sorting through the synth-cards until she found one that still worked. It was pre-war like the other ones, but something about it was different. She turned it on and was greeted with the customary startup screen, but most of it was illegible, written in a language that Yin couldn't identify. She threw it back into the bag and tried another one. This one turned on like the last, but it lacked a language database all together. She put them down and grabbed a food packet, tearing it open and chewing on the hard substance inside. She watched Marcus like a hawk, sitting back patiently as the charge bar slowly refilled. There wasn't much else to do.

  She sat in silence for almost half an hour, patiently keeping tabs on Marcus's condition until he was fully charged. She unplugged him, and pressed the on switch on the inside of his shell before closing up. It took just a few moments for his systems to reboot before he began lifting off the floor, flickering his light on Yin.

  Yin pulled Marcus into a hug before he could register what was happening, relieved to finally have him back. Marcus just sat in her arms, misunderstanding the situation as a protective measure against some danger he couldn't see.

  "Marcus, why'd you do that to yourself?" Yin asked.

  "I don't understand the question." Marcus said.

  "You ran your battery down to nothing to find me." Yin said.

  "It is as I have been instructed. You are my designated user, and I have an obligation to see to your safety. The resources sacrificed to achieve that goal are inconsequential."

  Yin just held him tighter, causing her to miss the light that began making its way toward them through the dark.

  "Hello?" A voice called out, breaking Yin's hug, and sending her into a defensive crouch while Marcus turned his own light toward the voice.

  "Who's there?" Yin asked.

  "I'm a friend, if you promise not to hurt me." The voice said. It turned it's light down toward the ground, illuminating a pair of pants and a set of human boots.

  "I'm not going to hurt you." Yin said.

  "Good. I really don't want to fight anyone right now."

  "Why?" Yin asked.

  "I've been in here a while." The voice held out a hand, human, offering a handshake. "My name's Terren."

  "You're a human." Yin responded, looking at the hand dubiously.

  "Yep. And you're a Meregal. One of God's finest creations." Terren turned his light off and pulled something else out of his pocket, a lamp, that he powered on to give the corridor better lighting. "Are you going to shake my hand?" He asked.

  Yin offered her paw, feeling his fingers envelope hers completely.

  "Do you know how to get out?" She asked.

  "Not really." He said, "But I'm willing to find out if you'll help me." He stooped down and examined Yin's paw more closely, brushing the fur away from the claws to get a better look at them. "How do you carry anything with such small, inflexible digits?"

  "I'm not sure," She responded, pleased to finally have someone interested in something she thought was interesting, "I find ways around the human's things, but it can be a real bother sometimes."

  "That's interesting." He said, "Do you mind?" He asked, turning her paw over.

  "Not at all." She was worried about that strange creature coming back, but something about this human seemed different to her.

  "If you find it so difficult to deal with the human's things, why don't you use Meregal technology instead?"

  "Because there isn't any." She said, "The first thing I've run into is this giant machine we're in right now."

  "Giant Machine?" Terren looked up, startled. "I thought I was in the subway maintenance tunnels underneath Keido."

  "Where is Keido?"

  "It's colony twelve on the planet Bennet."

  "I thought the humans didn't use space travel."

  Terren looked at her for a moment, as if deciding if she was telling the truth. "We perfected black hole transfer almost three hundred years ago."

  "Then why is it so hard to understand we're in a giant machine right now?"

  "Because your questions don't make any sense."

  "Okay. Fine." Yin let out the tensi
on she'd been building up. "I was just outside of a large glob of some kind of space metal that opened into a micro-sized world. When I went in, something large grabbed me and threw me into a crew cabin of some kind. My friend, Marcus, found me and I followed a set of coordinates he'd sent me until I ran across these synth-cards and, in turn, you."

  Terren whistled to himself, "I'm having a hard time believing you, but I've heard of something like this happening before."

  "When?"

  "Every few years or so. It's kind of like how people used to get all excited about Alien sightings back during the twentieth century."

  "People knew about aliens back during the twentieth century?" Yin asked.

  Terren laughed, "No, not really."

  "Well that's strange."

  "Again, I'm going to disagree with you. It was bound to happen eventually." Terren said, "When people start to progress, they begin looking beyond themselves, to the world around, and, sometimes, to the world they hope to live in."

  "That's very phillisophical."

  Terren shrugged, "Anyway, you said you were in a giant machine."

  "Oh, right. I found a giant glob of metal underneath an airplane in the middle of a field outside of the Meregal city of Jasper."

  "Meregal city? Jasper is the largest inter-species space port in known human space."

  Yin waved for him to continue.

  "It was reformed under the supervision of their leader, Queen Pen, during the ressurection of the fourth great war."

  Yin sat in silence when Terren finished.

  "You said you were from a