Sparks of Chaos (6 page)

In the foreground stood what he guessed were about ten stylized modernistic tree shaped buildings of varying heights of ten to twenty stories tall. They had thick trunks of several stories that grew wider at the top with what looked like about three stories of rooms artistically decorated with some filigreed metal ornamentation. They looked like a cross between an African acacia tree and the sky houses on the old space-age Jetson’s cartoons. Off in the distance was an enormous skyscraper type of building that easily dominated the landscape and had to be visible from miles away. It literally glittered with bright shades of gold, silver, copper and crystal in a spiral pattern.

Why he would be surprised by any of this was the biggest surprise of all. After all of the things he’d been through why would he expect any of this to be normal? Chase had to admit though if he was forced to spend eternity in some place; it might as well be awesome. Turning to Armstrong he said “What is this place?”

“I think it might be wise if we go inside to discuss this”

They walked across the plaza towards the tallest of the tree shaped buildings. The area around the buildings was artistically landscaped with a park like atmosphere to it. He noticed something weird and almost chuckled out loud at the thought. It was all weird; there hadn’t been a single normal thing happen to him since he woke up. Nevertheless it was weird or at least strange, sort of like the time he saw a two headed turtle in the creek near the park. He saw it when he was ten years old but couldn’t quite catch him; he even rode his bike down there every day for two weeks but never saw him again. Funny that he would think of that now, but the weirdest thing here was how quiet it was. There were no birds or even insect noises and he hadn’t seen another person. It was eerily deserted, a beautifully strange place with no one there.

Chase followed Armstrong along a small pathway to the tree inspired building. Armstrong made a small gesture with his hand and again a doorway appeared and opened to an elevator. Quickly reaching the top in what seemed to be a second, the door opened. Standing there to greet them was a large heavier man about Armstrong‘s age wearing the same formal looking black suit that set off his steel gray hair. “Hello Chase, my name is BLI Tedford; I have been waiting for you.”

Taken aback, he automatically shook the man’s hand, and said “Hello.” Looking around the large room with floor to ceiling windows he saw from this height even more of the alien like futuristic city. It was hard for his mind to even classify what the room looked like. He was a middle-class teenage boy, he hadn’t any experience with how the ultra-rich lived but this looked like something even a multi-billionaire would dream about being able to afford. The furniture was a blend of exotic looking woods that he couldn’t identify, materials he had never seen or felt before and exquisitely beautiful. A gold, blue and brown color scheme made the entire room look as though someone had taken a year working to get it just perfect.

The two older men stood silently for a moment to allow him to drink in the entire atmosphere, then pointed to a couch for him to sit so they could begin orienting him to his new life. He sat down with what he hoped was a sophisticated nonchalance that would hide the overwhelming sense of dislocation he felt. His whole world had been torn apart and the floor had fallen out from under him. Just when he hoped it would stop so he could catch his breath, it would start anew. He just knew these two were getting ready to rip the rug out from under him again.

“We know that you have a lot questions,” Tedford stated.

“That’s the understatement of the century; I have so many I don’t even know where to begin.”  After an awkward silence he took a breath and asked, “Where am I and what is this place?”

Armstrong answered him by saying “This Island is called Surga and is located in a remote part of the South Pacific where your boat went ashore.”

Tedford interrupted by explaining “Mr. King named the island that, because Surga is the Indonesian word for Haven and he selected the name for a reason.”

“It was getting dark and I was probably hallucinating by then but we can’t be on the island I landed on. It was a desolate looking rocky mountain in the ocean.” Chase said with confusion.

“Oh I didn’t say we were on the island, we’re inside it.” Armstrong explained without even a hint of surprise or sarcasm in his voice.

“How could we be inside the island? This place looks huge, we are sitting in a twenty story building and the sun is shining outside.” Chase said completely confused now.

“You will have to excuse us, you are the first person we have ever explained this to and it is proving to be much more difficult than we expected,” Armstrong explained. “Originally we wanted to explain this before showing it to you. We’re still not sure which way is best.”

“I don’t care which way that you do it, just explain it somehow, none of this makes any sense,” he snapped at them with exasperation.

Tapping his wristband, Tedford said “Surga,” whereupon a vivid three dimensional display popped up on the table between the couches where they all sat. It showed a view of the island and the ocean as seen from above and using his hand he adjusted the display to fit the table size.

The BLI’s presentation was so lifelike that Chase felt compelled to stick his fingers into the ocean to see if the water was real. Sheepishly he asked, “What is this?”

“You can think of it as a computer but the table here is only a display, the control is in the band on my wrist and the computing power is centralized elsewhere. This is a tool we are going to use to explain our island to you,” said Armstrong. Continuing, he directed his gaze back to the display and said “This is a live picture of the island which you’ll notice is large, with sheer high sides and solid rock with no vegetation or fresh water. It would be completely incapable of sustaining life.”  Zooming out he told him, “It is also very isolated, with hundreds of miles to the closest inhabited island. It was the perfect location for Mr. King’s needs and he had one of his corporations purchase the island.”  Zooming back in on the island he said, “That of course was only the first step.”

“One of the inventions Rex had created was a material made of something called femtofiber, which had millions of fibers per square inch and was both harder than diamonds and stronger than steel.” The display changed and began showing Chase a demonstration of the femtofiber material and how it was stretched to cover the island. The display then showed a complete tutorial on the process of how the femtofibers were then enlarged to make a dome of the island; the dome was formed to take on the appearance of the actual island’s topography. With the help of the Taskers, the dome was attached to the island itself and then all the inside of the island was shrunk and eliminated down several levels below sea level.

Seeing it happen graphically on the table display made it much easier to comprehend what they were explaining. It showed in detail as the underground layers were being built as space for factories, storage and housing for the workers. The topmost subterranean level was reserved to create an elaborate but elegant subway system of round magnetic pipes. These were used in conjunction with round cars gyroscopically balanced to keep the riders steady as they zipped from any one point on the island to any other. Armstrong said, “It functions as a personal point to point subway system that we call ‘The Snake’, it allowed us to build the island without the need for roads as transportation.

The femtofiber dome itself was coated with what the voice in the tutorial explained was mega-ferroelectric particles that allowed for the creation of a light source that could mimic lighting found in the outside world. It was a very advanced version of research that was currently still being developed at US universities. The ferroelectric particles were crystalline based structures that were also part of what was used on the interior lighting and the display that he was looking at. There was also a fully functioning environmental system that created its own weather system inside the dome. The weather system was quite elaborate including clouds and different weather conditions for each of the regions.  

The island was roughly rectangular in shape with rounded edges and the display showed it graphically divided into nine roughly even zones of three rows by three with a smaller zone in the center which he was informed was the city area where he currently was sitting. Armstrong waved his hand to pause the display and explained, “You will have an endless time to explore all of the zones which each have their own personality and climate. As a matter of fact you will get an opportunity to place your own mark upon these zones. It has been decided that you will be given an important task, actually two of them.”

“Wait, how could you fit all of this inside this one small island?” Chase asked.

“Oh yes of course, that is a rather major point, let me continue with the tutorial,” he said waving his hand to continue the presentation. The presentation went on to show that the interior of the island was roughly equivalent to the US state of Oklahoma in size. This was accomplished by shrinking the size of everything including the inhabitants to a much smaller size to keep everything in proportion.

“I have been shrunk to a tiny fraction of my size?” Chase screamed in surprise. “I don’t feel any smaller.”

“Of course you don’t,” Tedford chuckled. “Everything is relative so you won’t feel any different. One major difference though is that to compensate for the size reduction the rate of time was increased.” Seeing the confused look upon Chase’s face he continued, “Time moves at twenty five times faster inside the island as outside. For every day that you live outside you experience approximately twenty five here.  

“Wow, all I can say is everything here is insane. What are you going to tell me next that you’re all aliens and not human at all?” Chase said.

Armstrong looked at Tedford before saying, “I think that may be enough for today, I am going to leave you two here in your new home.”

“Our new home?” he asked.

“Tedford has been chosen to assist you and he will stay with you here. This building is yours now. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it,” Armstrong told him. “I’ve got to leave now.”

Chapter 14

Chase had awoken the next day in the bedroom of his luxury high-rise mansion. The place was enormous, three huge floors with wall to ceiling windows with a great view from twenty floors up in the air. One of the most stunning features was the roof. It was more of a fantastic and magical outdoor patio area filled with plants and assorted greenery. There was a large swimming pool, eating, sitting and party areas and even an outdoor fireplace. The space was really big, he guessed it was even larger than a standard American football field. He had just come up here with Tedford who had given him a tour of the place.

He was alone for now, as Tedford had left to get him his lunch. Walking along the top of his new building he was able to look down and see how incredible the sight really was. The whole vista was quite alien like in appearance.  You would never guess you were
in an artificial environment
inside of a mountain.  There was something at the back of your mind though that nagged at you that something wasn’t as it should be. Hard to put your finger on it exactly but it was just off somehow.

Looking outwards, he wondered if he would ever get used to seeing this. He supposed if he were here for thousands of years he certainly would. Off in the distance he thought he could see several people moving around. He wasn’t certain as they were quite far away. It was the first time that he realized just how much better his eyesight really was. He would have to ask Tedford, he truly had no idea how many people lived on Surga.

Reflecting on everything that had happened to him and the amazing bombshells he had learned yesterday he felt it was a mixed bag of hope and despair. All in all if he had to balance it out, he still felt it fell on the positive side of the ledger. Most importantly it was better than being dead, that was for sure. Getting to live forever was pretty cool he thought. He looked and felt great and was always going to be young and good looking. Although it didn’t look like there were any girls here to appreciate it. He also had his own mansion.

He wasn’t sure what to think about having to live on the inside of this island for what he guessed would be forever. Never getting to go home again wasn’t too great. He’d never get to see his friends or his family and everyone he knew would think he was dead. He wished there was some way he could let his parents know he was alive to spare them all that pain. They said there was some work they wanted him to do and the idea of working didn’t sound so hot but he imagined that sitting around here without anything to do would eventually get boring. It was hard to imagine that he was teeny tiny, like in those movies he saw when he was a kid where people got shrunk to the size of bugs. He didn’t feel like a bug.

Hopefully Tedford would come back soon with his lunch and he would find out what these jobs were that he was supposed to be focusing on. The old guys were okay; he actually kind of liked them. They were a bit crabby at times but it was probably smart for him to get along with them. Ultimately it made the most sense to keep his eyes open and learn as much as he could before he did anything. There was no way for him to escape, he didn’t know how to get out of the island and even if he did, how he would get home from here? The government would probably lock him up forever to study him since he would never be able to explain what happened to him, not to mention that he was freakin’ tiny. Chase’s self-introspection was interrupted by Tedford’s return with lunch.

In between bites of his sandwich, Chase asked Tedford, “I saw what I thought were some people down below, how many people are on the island?”

“Those were not people, they were machines. We have not had a chance to expose you to them yet, they are called Taskers. I will call for one for you to see, would you like anything else for your lunch?”

“I would like another of these sandwiches, I can’t identify the meat but it tastes like a flavor firecracker exploded in my mouth,” Chase said.