The stars were not themselves. Even those who held their posts had changed. They were dimmed, and in between them and the relays of their memories were mists from a foreign land. The great observatories would not have seen the shift, but the eyes of the interloper traced their every jagged scar.
Solomon pondered his steps, feeling the woof of strings between his feet and his boots, and the web they tread that shook the threads of Alpha Centauri, though he opened an airlock door within his own dear Albion. But first in his mind was the Wheel, and the mystery that had been revealed to him while he wandered in disembodied mania. The curse of dreams; to wake and watch as you forget what you desperately need to still know.
Seven thousand years, says Eno, and Imogen promised three days of victory against four days of sorrow. Solomon pondered his steps.
The shuttles used for rapid transit bustled soundlessly between Albion’s many towers. Blood flowing over bones, Solomon thought. Albion the Miracle, Albion the Machine. Albion the Womb, Albion the Tomb. The pyramid makers of Raydonjad called it the Universal Soul. Imogen spent her last breath on the matter, revealing to her last pupil that she played a role in its making.
“I am diminished,” she told him as she faded, “in knowledge and in form. But the seeds I was given to plant will grow, and so nothing is lost.”
And then she told Solomon that Albion was both none and all of the things people claimed, but she herself had seen it as a tree that was planted in a lush place where it could grow.
“I watered the sapling with my own blood, Solomon. Guard it for me, and see it taken to the desert when Eno longs for home.”
“Plant the tree of life near the land of death,” Solomon said silently out loud.
Omri had be waiting for him for twenty minutes by then, an ideal time for him to start heading to the Artifexus. He turned back to the ship and drew himself towards the hull. Ironically, the control pad on the outside would not register bare hands, so Solomon focused on a point beyond his palm with kinetic force and heat, then pressed the entry code and passed into the airlock. Those on duty in the observation office were busy in conversation, ignoring the screens that would have shown them what they expected to see while Solomon meditated unnoticed. He looked at them with frustration.
Though his anxious heart was filled with tension, he still felt a slight pleasantness while approaching the Artifexus. It pleased him that the largest facilities in Albion were still dedicated to the study of the vessel and the space it travelled through. He had been alarmed to see how much work had been done to repurpose the arenas meant to train civilians in basic combat tactics to help repel an invasion into expanded leisure facilities for the political and commercial elite. At least they had the sense to keep research a priority.
The entry to the Artifexus hid its size. One had the sense they were maybe entering an industrial showroom when approaching its front doors and were shocked on entry to see that the foyer rose to a staggering height of twelve standard ship decks. And even the foyer was understated, given that the facility stretched on throughout the entire mid-section of the port side of the ship, with long hallways leading to isolated storage bays starboard.
Solomon looked up at the beehive of office and laboratory doors that surrounded him. People bustled urgently between each, giving him hope.
“Mr. Solomon!”.
He turned to the frantic voice. She was young, perhaps thirty. A child, he thought. Perhaps a gifted one though. Her spectacles were halfway down her nose. She pushed them up as she hurried towards him, almost dropping the stack of data pads she carried. She skittered to a halt and looked through the pads. She handed him two.
“The one with the black border will be for you to use in-lab,” she said hurriedly, “and the gold border is for your personal use. You’ll have access to databases other pads won’t, though the on-site device still...”
“Your name?” he asked sharply.
“Darci,” she said.
“Darci, we’re short on time.”
“Yes, sir. If you follow me, sir, I’ll take you to Director Omri.”
She led him to a lab with the title ‘Particle Studies’ written on the doors. Melody was hovering over a series of screens. There were large windows beyond the lab overlooking a collider.
“The problem is these aren’t exotic particles,” she was saying.
“They’re foreign particles,” Solomon injected. He nodded to Darci, dismissing her, and stood with his hands folded behind his back.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Mr. Solomon,” said Omri. She bowed, politely if awkwardly. “I’ll have to introduce you to the staff later. Would you please observe the test that’s underway?”
“If I must.” He went beside her and looked at the screens.
An aide came by with a tray and offered him a bottle of water. “Juice, please,” he said. He came back with a bottle filled with a thick, blue liquid. “What is this?” Solomon asked after his first sip.
Omri looked at him with more than a little frustration. “It’s an exo blend. Mr. Solomon...”
“I’m watching the screens, Omri. But I already know what your results will be. I’ve done this very test myself, along with the next four you’re likely to follow up with.”
Omri turned her back for a moment, then turned to face him, looking partially downward. Her eyes were red. “I don’t suppose you saved your results?”
“In my computers back on the Temple of Fiends, which the armies of Ulro now occupy. It will be good for you to tun them yourself, even if they’re inconclusive. I’ll chime in when I have something to offer.”
“Thank you.” She turned back to the displays and directed her staff to move on to the next stage of the test. “The data we’re getting makes no sense. But that’s gotta be because we’re testing particles from a whole different dimension.”
“Sort of. It’s created by the Tangents. I found the lost passages from the Book of Tides to be use in interoperating my findings.”
Omri squinted and spoke slowly. “I don’t think I have that information.”
“I can provide you with it.”
“Any particular ‘Tangent Lords’ I should be looking at?”
“Actually,” Solomon stepped closer and pointed at a selection of waves on the screen, “Barrus guards the gate, but Haleon demarcated their different regions. I did find some symbolic clues in the text that helped me come up with a model for how Haleon’s daughters triggered the breaches in the Verge. They’re using harmonics, but in the sense we commonly understand them.”
“Well, it would help if I had more to study from their spacetime then a few particles.”
“I should have those samples soon. I only hope they get in here in time. What we need is time, and we’ll only by time if we mount a defense. We need to convince Salamanca to support the General’s initiatives.”
Omri folded her arms and tapped her toe. “I think I can manage that.”
“Good. The last thing we need is for our mobilization to be hampered by Salamanca’s posturing. In the meantime,” he pointed to the lower right portion of one screen, “search Eno’s core operational systems for this energy signature.”
She squinted at the pattern. “What do you mean?”
“Isolate this wave, then contact people in engineering and get their help searching for it. Look in propulsion, hydroponics, gravitation, weapons, medical. Anywhere we benefit from technologies that we can’t fully explain. Get comprehensive readouts of the energy signatures where those systems produce this pattern, and you’ll have a reference point. It won’t be much…”
“No. That will be huge. My mother told me that if I’d been born on Earth, I would be blind. And you said Eno is the key. So, if we can use her systems to see how these waves interact with our physics… Mr. Solomon, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Miss Omri. This is just a crumb. When the real samples arrive, then you can thank me.”
“If I may ask, what are these samples? Is it something Harbinger One is bringing back?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Okay. We’ll start with this. What about the collider? Are we wasting our time?”
“No. As I said, I lost my data. Run these tests. They’ll provide you with some preliminary failings. But when you start finding this pattern operating in Eno, focus your efforts on analyzing that information.”
“Okay. I mean, yes sir.”
Solomon chuckled, then gave Omri a mock salute.
Having done what he cared to do, he left the director and walked the long halls to the storage bays. His old codes had all been deleted, so to access the silos he had to disperse himself and pass through the doors as a cloud of yliaster. Once inside a cold storage chamber he began inspecting the various vials and ampules, greatly fatigued from his transition.
“These will not hold your kind,” said Kos, high priestess of the Shadow Children.
“No. I’m just taking stock. We’ll have to innovate the means to hold disembodied radiance in stasis.”
Back in his apartment he watched the window while his companions experimented at the bar. A splash told him one had jumped in the jacuzzi.
“Solomon,” said Rithul, the scout.
Solomon turned and saw the dark silhouette moving through his exterior wall. The Child held a small device in its invisible hand.
“What’s this?”
“From Needle. I found it in the General’s house.”
Solomon played the recording and laughed at the sound of his voice chanting praises to the Lords of Ulro. Even more amusing were the echoing growls and sultry whispers meant to sound like the voices of the Tangents.
“Do we worry?” asked Kos.
“No. Sensus knows better than to trust a stooge like Needle.”
The fake Tangent voices were the stuff of movies. But Solomon’s laughter was short-lived, as the poor copies did impel him to think back to the real voices, and the cruel things they promised should the wall between the realms be broken down for good.