Spheria (37 page)

“You sound ungrateful. I could just shut your project down.” The screen went black as a large iron door closed in front of the camera.

Every eye in the room was now staring at the real Dana.

“What in God’s name have you done?” demanded Graham.

“N-n-nothing,” Dana stammered.

“Where the hell is Max?” demanded Graham again, even louder.

The door to the room flew open, and the head of campus security entered. Captain Brennan scanned the room, and upon seeing Dana, stated in a calm voice, “Miss Carter, please come with me.”

Dana stood abruptly, pulled her hand out of her purse, and raised her pistol. She aimed it toward Brennan. He simultaneously drew a Taser and aimed it at her.

“Back off!” screamed Dana. “I'm leaving now, and nobody needs to get hurt.”

“People have already been hurt,” said Brennan. “Drop your weapon and nobody
else
needs to get hurt.”

“No. Nooo! I will shoot if you don’t get out of the way.” Her gun was small, the perfect size for her hand. Her index finger was wrapped solidly around the trigger. It twitched in time with her heartbeat as she wrestled with her adrenalin.
 

Brennan was trained for situations like this and would’ve already discharged his Taser. Except the jolt would make Dana clench her hand, thus firing her pistol. He couldn’t risk a shot going off around people if he could help it.

Then she saw them. Through the open door, Min stood, holding onto a wheelchair in which sat Max, his foot tightly bandaged. Their expressions turned from curiosity to fear as they saw her looking at them.
 

“Damn you, Min!” she shouted and, changing aim from Brennan to Min’s head, squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She squeezed it again, but her index finger was pushed away. Poked deftly between the gun’s trigger and the grip was the tip of a pool stick. Before Dana could comprehend what she was seeing, the gun was flicked out of her hand. It flew through the air and crashed into the screen on the opposite side of the room, shattering it.

“What the…” she began to say but was cut off when the 50,000 volts began to surge through her body. She twitched and fell to the side. Graham guided her limp body to the floor with the pool cue he’d used to stop her from firing. Brennan ran over as she lay helpless, bound her hands in cuffs, and flipped her over.

Everyone looked down at her as she regained her senses. Max sat there with Min by his side. A single word was uttered from Dana’s lips, “How?”

Min tapped her glasses. “Spy gear. My glasses have a camera in them. I recorded your whole spiel before you tried to kill us. Sucks for you that Max talked you into spilling the beans.”

“Well done, Min,” said Graham.

Dana responded, “I'd have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling interns.”

 
“Get her out of here please,” said Max.

“My pleasure,” said Captain Brennan. He dragged her to her feet and led her out of the room.

“Sorry we were late for the meeting,” Max teased, “but our ears were burning.” Min giggled.

Graham frowned. “You know, Max, I love this project as much as you. But nothing is worth murder. Poor Olivia was a victim of some sinister plot to exploit your technology. That’s exactly what I was trying to prevent from happening. What started as an engaging quarterly report has turned into a disaster. I don’t need to give this any more thought. I’m pulling the plug on this project. There will be no more funding, and I want all of its assets to be liquidated for market value.”

Max stiffened, his jaw opened, and his eyes widened. “Please… sir.”

“No,” said Graham. “This isn't negotiable. I know this isn’t your fault, but it happened. There is too much risk involved here. Dana was a trusted friend, and she betrayed me, betrayed all of us. How can I trust anyone to run this project now, given the stakes? The military is out to get this technology, and they can be very persuasive.”

“You can trust
me
,” pleaded Max.

“I wish I could. I really do. But the only person I could ever trust is myself. All of you, please make preparations to shut everything down. I’ll remain here another two weeks to make sure it is done.”

“Mr. Neilson,” said Min. “Is there any way to change your mind? This project means everything to this team. You told us how important this is for human knowledge.”

“Sorry kid, this may set the world back a bit, but the knowledge will come in time through other means.”

The room speakers startled them as they once again announced: “Incoming event.”

Graham looked at the ceiling, and then at Abina, who still held the remote. “Play it,” he said.

She clicked a button on the remote and all the intact screens in the room lit up. Each of the eleven monitors showed a close-up of a different Worker. This created the impression that the observers were surrounded.

In unison, the Polyans began to chant:

Oh mighty gods, hear our words.

Please return Sa∙ma from the Rift.

For we are lost without him.

We pray to you.

Our lives are yours.

Take us instead.

For freedom... For freedom.

Chapter 51 - Hand of God

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.” - John Adams

“Abina, pause the playback,” commanded Max.

The circle of Polyans froze in place.

“What’s going on here?” asked Graham.

“I’m not sure,” said Max.

Jean answered, “They’re… praying. This is the first time we’ve ever seen such behavior.” She lied.

“This is groundbreaking!” exclaimed Ravi.

“Why did this happen?” snapped Graham.

“Abina, replay the last two recordings,” said Max.

Abina hit some buttons on the remote. The screens went black, and then in green numbers, a timestamp flashed. It was from about thirty minutes ago. A view of Spheria faded in as the letters faded out. Nobody in the room could believe what they saw. The enormous tower that the Polyans had constructed fell sideways. The top hit the land on the other side of the Rift, forming a span. A group of Workers huddled in the nearby field began to cross toward the other side.

“What?” asked Graham. “I thought you said it’d be impossible for them to get to the other side.”

“Um,” said Jean, buying time. “Uh. That was what I said. And, I believed it was true.”

“Their resourcefulness is quite astonishing,” said Ravi.

“Just like humans,” muttered Graham.

The screens went black again, and the green numbers showed a time about 20 minutes ago.

The same field was now cluttered with a huge mass of Polyans, moving every which way. The Soldiers were slaughtering the Workers, ripping their legs off and abandoning their carcasses. Fa∙ro stood prominently in their midst, doing most of the damage. At one point a smaller Polyan flew through the air and landed on Fa∙ro, knocking him over. The Polyan took something from him and froze. Then a herd of Zalisk charged into the battle, decimating the Soldiers.
 

The small Polyan, who was now recognizable as Le∙ma, ran. Ga∙zo pursued her and Sa∙ma onto the bridge. What ensued was a fantastic set of acrobatics resulting in Sa∙ma, the bridge full of Soldiers, Le∙ma, and Ga∙zo falling into the Rift.

The screen went black. The team stood dumbfounded.

Min was the first to break the silence. “Genocide.”

“A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections,” said Graham. “Ingenuity. Fighting for freedom. Deference to a higher being. These creatures are indeed sentient. How could I shut them down? How could I punish them for our transgressions, crimes in a world beyond which they could possibly conceive? That would be akin to God snuffing out our universe because His angels fought. We can’t let their prayers go unanswered. Max, can we rescue Sa∙ma?”

Max replied, “He’s in the Rift. If we get creative, we could probably come up with some way to save him.”

“No, wait,” said Graham, briefly recollecting his life experiences. “We’re the gods here. Let’s act like gods. Let’s only partially answer their prayer and give them a sign at the same time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rescue the little one instead.”

#

The circle of twelve Workers continued to chant. Every other Polyan joined in, forming circles around circles. No one noticed the bubble rising from the Rift. Inside its semi-translucency was an opaque geometrical form. Even more unusual, instead of floating straight up toward the Source, it floated over the congregation.
 

It came to hover above the center of the circle. As it cast its yellow hue upon the crowd, someone spoke out, “It’s a miracle.”

The mass looked up. At that moment, the bubble burst and Le∙ma fell into their midst.

“Praise the gods!” said one.

“They’ve chosen our new leader,” said another.

“Hail Le∙ma, our Lumen Master,” said a third.

They all bowed to her. And together spoke, “Lumen Master, lead us to salvation.”

Epilogue

Sa∙ma watched the walls of the Rift rushing by as he plummeted sensors first into the dark depths. He flailed his legs and found he could control his orientation. He righted himself, leaned, and gradually approached one wall of the vast chasm. He tapped it with a leg, which caused him to flip out of control. He could see the brightness from above, narrowing into a mere slit, alternating light, dark, light, dark. He slowed his spin again using his legs and realized that he had drifted to the opposite side. He continued falling there waiting to meet his end.

Then he saw something below him. Something, for lack of a better description, shiny. It was on the wall and growing larger as he approached it. He began to drag a leg against the side, this time not tapping, so that he didn’t get flung away. This seemed to slow his descent. He added another leg to the wall and slowed even more. The shiny thing was much larger now and appeared to be some kind of irregularity in the side of the chasm. It was directly below him and getting bigger. Then he was upon it. Somehow, a gash was cut into the side of the Rift, and it converged into a small ledge.

As he passed the ledge, the two legs he was dragging caught and stopped. The rapid deceleration slammed his body into the face below the ledge, but he managed to hold on. He hung there, perplexed, before pulling himself up onto the outcropping. It was triangular in shape, with one point leading into the Rift wall like a shallow cave. He went in but found that it went nowhere.

A loud scraping sound caused him to turn around. He looked up to see the remains of the tower falling toward him. It rotated horizontally in the center of the Rift and made a lazy spin clockwise. When its ends scraped the sides of the Rift, it made the loud grating sound again. Then both ends caught firm, the whole thing came to an abrupt stop, and the center sagged down. A couple of beams in the middle snapped, weakening it, but it hung there forming a giant V-shape. Several Soldiers lost their balance from the sudden stop and fell off. They went careening past Sa∙ma into the abyss below.

Sa∙ma felt the walls around him, and they were somewhat rough. He began to contemplate a way to climb up to the tower. Maybe it could provide some means to scale out of the tomb.
If only I had some red stone
, he thought.

From nowhere, the falling body of Ga∙zo, who was spinning out of control, slammed into the center of the tower. The remaining beams snapped, and the tower folded completely in half. The two sides fell, bouncing against the walls, with Ga∙zo hanging between them. As the wreckage passed Sa∙ma’s perch, Ga∙zo noticed him and glared at him. His look of terror was replaced with one of fury. Then he was gone, a mere speck in the darkness below.

Sa∙ma sat for a moment, pondering his fate. He returned to the inside of the cave and rubbed the walls. They were smooth. He tapped on the walls and swore that part of it made a different sound, almost like it was hollow. He banged on that section harder, but nothing happened. He slammed his body into it. Still, nothing happened. He noticed some small rocks littering the surface of the ledge. He picked one up and pounded it into the wall but failed to even make a dent.

To pass the time he began playing with the rocks. He stacked them different ways over and over, making various sculptures. He finally left them as a depiction of Fa∙ro, as if signaling a warning of what lay above.

He spent days sitting on that ledge. This he knew because he could count the bubbles rising past. He watched their iridescent colors and faint glow, and witnessed the dimming of his own core. His life force was running out; he wouldn’t last much longer. He escaped the fate below, but would die here anyway, sitting on this ledge.

Maybe he had lost his mind, or maybe he was morbidly curious, or maybe he couldn’t bear the solitude any longer. Regardless of the reason, he walked to the edge, looked down, and leaped off.