The Desolate Guardians (7 page)

I wondered, too, how she was getting between
universes. Did she have someone helping her? On this topic, she
would say nothing at all.

It was many hours before she declared that
she was ready to travel.

A few minutes later, she turned on her
headset - and I found myself looking at a vast but close-cropped
verdant landscape filled with low ferns and patches of moss. The
sky above was a simple blue, like the kind I remembered vividly
from my time before this dismal office prison.

Before her, a bright ball of flame danced a
path forward. Somehow, despite not having a face, I could tell it
was happy to be alive again. A few moments after guiding her to
that plane, it puffed up - and vanished in a sliver of light.

She must have revived it and had it lead her
to this place before turning on her camera - what didn't she want
me to see?

"Where are we?" she asked.

I ran a few tests on our connection, and
compared it to the matrix I'd built. I measured out an appropriate
spot and added a new circle to our file. "You're pretty far out
past the walls. How'd you get out there?"

"I don't know, since we can't communicate,
but the flame did say it was aware of many cracks in the bubble's
shell," she said quietly, her tone concerned. "I've got myself
pretty tightly wrapped up here in a makeshift environment suit. I
have it on good authority that, after the world where the people
I'm looking for met the flames, they ran into trouble with some
sort of fungus that ate them from the inside out."

"It certainly looks like it has fungus," I
noted, studying what I could see of the thick, low jungle flora.
"What now?"

"I don't know. I'm hoping to find some clue
where they went." She looked around. "Or maybe… if he's been here
before, it should be nearby…"

"Who?"

"Nobody." She moved along a small natural
path between the thick bush-like fronds. Following a small light
green creek that was comfortably clear of any growing things, she
worked her way along mossy rocks, breathing loudly inside whatever
facemask she'd rigged up.

I think I saw them before her. "What's
that?
"

She came up short, peering into a clearing
ahead.

Several dozen people stood all around the
clearing, facing random directions. They wore plain brown
nondescript clothes with no identifying symbols.

None moved.

They simply stood there, a scattered crowd,
each staring directly ahead.

I couldn't make any sense of it. "What are
they doing?" I zoomed in to get a closer look.

"I don't think they're doing anything at
all…" she whispered. Despite her low words, something still noticed
her.

At once, every single person in that silent
crowd turned and stared directly at her.

She froze in place, thinking the situation
through. "They're not invisible…"

"Huh? Why would they be invisible?"

"I encountered some kind of gigantic
mechanical construct that controlled legions of dead humans
converted into invisible walking corpses," she whispered, too
matter-of-factly for my tastes. "They were a hive mind, but this
isn't them. This is something else."

"Cordyceps fungus," I realized, thinking back
on stuff I'd seen on the entire Internet I'd absorbed. "It's a
common fear - a fungus that can control your mind. You see a lot of
self-written horror stories on the Internet that involve some
variant of it."

"Maybe," she murmured. "Got a lot of time on
your hands, then?"

I wished I could grimace. "Um, yeah. I've
sort of seen the entire Internet. I get bored here."

"Office building, internet time, computer
skills… some sort of I.T. person?" she guessed. "Probably late
shift, judging by how much you get away with."

How the hell? This woman didn't miss a thing.
I suppose that was a necessary skill for survival, doing what she
was doing… whatever that was. "Something like that."

"Any other ideas from the Internet?" she
asked, still not daring to move.

"Um… um… zombies?"

"No, zombies aren't real. They fundamentally
don't make sense."

"But you said you met invisible corpses?"

"Clearly controlled and animated by an
outside source," she whispered. "Those weren't zombies. They were
corpse-puppets."

"Oh. Um… lockstep."

"Lockstep?"

"They move if you move. That's a common one,
too."

"Maybe - but how?"

"Maybe they're not human," I suggested,
excited to use my Internet knowledge, and worried that it might
actually be true. "Maybe they just look human. They could be
robots, aliens, illusions… anything. They're not smiling. That's a
good sign."

"Why?"

"Because smiling things are the
worst
," I breathed, feeling sick as I thought back on all
the stories I'd read.

"Think it through," she instructed. "Logic it
out. Why are smiling things the worst?"

"Because…" I thought about it for a moment.
"Because they're aware of you, and aware of how they make you feel,
and they've got an agenda."

"These people aren't smiling," she said with
a tone of affirmation. "So…"

"So they're not aware of you…" I realized
aloud. "At least not directly."

"Right. So we can reasonably assume they're
only responding to stimuli. Now what did I do that caught their
attention?"

"Well, we've been talking this whole time, so
it isn't noise…" I grabbed a portion of her stream and rewound
it.

As I did so, the people in the clearing moved
again, each taking two steps closer, their eyes blank.

"I didn't do anything," she whispered.

I couldn't believe it, but - "I think it's
me.
They moved first when I zoomed in on the feed, and then
again when I rewound some portion of it."

"How could they possibly be aware of that?
Unless…" She took in an unhappy breath. "These are some of the
people I’m looking for. Energy beings in the guise of humans. I was
told the fungus
ate
them."

"So the energy being part of them is
responding to things I'm doing on the computer here?"

"Maybe. Discontinuous electromagnetic
signals, different from the ongoing chatter of our feed. Or maybe
they're connected by some sort of greater whole that's aware of
you. Stop doing things on the computer." She took a step to her
right.

None of the strange blank-eyed people
moved.

"I can't leave just yet," she told me,
unhappy about it. "If there are any clues here, they've got
them."

Stepping further into the clearing, she
approached the nearest brown-clothed person - a man with long,
scraggly black hair and blank eyes. Touching him with a
plastic-gloved hand, she gently patted his pockets.

He made no move, and gave no reaction.

Ever so slowly, she moved to the next, an
older grey-haired woman. She, too, stared blankly ahead. With one
trembling hand, my ally reached into a pocket of her jacket and
drew out a small metallic square.

Without warning, the old woman turned her
face and addressed us directly. Her voice rang out hollow and
multi-tonal. "We don't like your kind."

To her credit, my ally remained calm, her
hands up - the small metallic square hidden behind two of her
fingers pressed together. "I'm just going to leave… no hostility
intended."

A small blank-eyed child to her left spoke in
the same voice, as if a crowd was communicating through him. "Go
now."

With the camera shaking visibly from her
tension, she crept slowly out through the gathered crowd of silent
stares. I heard her make a noise of anger, and she threw one hand
at the air briefly as she left.

"What is it?" I asked, concerned.

"I just…" She looked around, and then settled
her gaze on a distant deer. It bent over the light green creek,
sipping quietly. "I have to make sure."

"Come on, get out of there! What if you get
infected?"

"I don't know, but I have to see this
through. I have to know if there's a chance to save them." Moving
along the creek, she followed it upstream, and higher. In just a
few minutes, she reached a higher outcropping. "Look."

From her vantage point, I saw a tremendous
plain of patterned greens and greys that stretched out to the
horizon. Set dead center was a staggered collection of office
buildings - we were looking at a recognizable city, sprawled out in
a vast pattern of suburbs. The only thing out of place was the
green… patches of mossy green grew splattered along the tall
buildings. "It's Richmond," she commented. "Humans."

Jumping down from her rock, she moved along
the forest until she found something specific - a bird, sitting and
staring blankly at nothing. Its lungs moved in and out visibly as
it breathed, but it made no move to escape from her.

A little further down another trail, she
found a normal young man in jogger's clothes, staring blankly down
his trail.

Instinctively, I zoomed in to get a better
look at him - and froze - but he made no move and gave no response.
Odd…

Heading back to her original location, she
sighed into her facemask. "I have to try this."

"Try what?"

"Didn't you see the deer? It's the details
that matter."

"The deer… the deer was moving and
alive."

"Exactly." Heading for the creek, she scooped
up some of the oddly pale green water in her gloved hands and
carefully brought it over to the brown-clothed people. Tipping her
hands, she poured some into the mouth of the male with the long
black hair.

Nothing happened for one minute, two…

The entire clearing, people, bushes, and
mossy ferns, seemed to convulse as if struck. Many multi-tonal
voices cried out.

The man she'd given the water blinked and
fell forward weakly. "I'm free…"

Around them both, everything living began
moving. Even as I watched, what I'd thought were bushes began
uprooting and slogging toward them. The blank-eyed people moved in
like a wave.

"Let's go," she ordered him, tugging him in
the direction of her point of entry.

"How long has it been?" he asked between
ragged breaths.

"I don't know."

I watched as they stumbled and ran up along
the creek. The oddly colored creek remained the only path ahead, as
all the life around them clustered frenetically closer. It seemed
that nothing living wanted to get near the stream.

"What happened to you?" she asked, using her
shoulder to support him. "Can we save them?"

"It's a brain," he breathed, eyes wide. "It's
a giant plant-based brain, and we were all forced into being a part
of it. Haven't you noticed the distribution of the plant nodes
around here? They're neural cluster equivalents. And that creek is
full of toxic material it's excreting back along a vein of
sorts."

"How big is it?" she asked, her voice
haunted.

He groaned at some pain in his chest. "The
whole planet."

"God…"

"That's what it calls itself, yes."

She turned her head and looked at him for a
moment as they ran, but I wasn't sure what she was thinking. "We
can't save the rest, can we?"

"It'll never let you near them again," he
coughed. His stance weakened, and he half-fell. "It doesn't even
want to let you take
me.
"

"We're almost out," she insisted, practically
dragging him. "It's right -"

She stopped without warning, and dropped his
hand.

"What are you doing?!" I shouted. "Go!"

"He's dead."

"But you're not! Get out of there!"

"I'm already here. I'm safe. If he'd lasted
just a few more seconds… god
damnit
, I almost had him." She
looked slowly in a circle at the plant life and blank-eyed people
clustered along the edges of the toxic creek. Although I couldn't
see her face, I could practically feel the anger flowing from
her.

The view included a gaping irregular oval in
space next to her. Beyond, several children of varying ages waited
and watched.

She said it once more, this time to herself.
"God. Damnit."

I saw her reach up, and then… the feed went
blank.

Her audio resumed maybe twenty minutes later.
I leapt to the comm. "Are you alright?"

"I need to figure out what this little metal
thing is," she replied, her tone as calm as before, like nothing
had happened. "Can you investigate on your end?"

"Sure," I told her, wondering how she could
just be
alright
after enduring that situation and having a
man die inches from safety.

Once I was left to myself again, I couldn't
quite bring myself to work. The thought of all those people on that
planet being absorbed into a giant plant brain ecosystem… were they
in pain? Were they conscious? They had to be… the man had said
I'm free
with such relief…

Was there nothing we could do for them?

I thought about what that first lonely soul
had said, the man whose untraceable message had started me down
this insane path.
Just death…
just death was better than
worse fates.

I had an idea, but I tucked it away for some
future situation. How twisted was existence when the best thing you
could do to help was to ask a race of sentient flames to go
somewhere and burn people alive rather than let them remain
mentally imprisoned forever in a megalomaniacal plant that thought
it was God?

I filed away those dark thoughts and focused
on figuring out where I was in the structure of realities.

If I don't get out of here soon, I think I'm
going to go insane…

After what seemed like endless hours mapping
connections between systems, I'd finally done it.

I'd figured out where I was.

I'd also discovered something very strange
about the sphere of protected realities we were in: there was
another smaller sphere in the center that I couldn't contact or
connect to. I'd worked through the night verifying it, but I didn't
feel tired at all. I was too excited to share the news with my
strange colleague, and possibly get rescued from my inescapable
office.