They had briefly experienced the presence of August, and as a result, his safety, but with a ghastly being hunting him for ethereal reasons, he couldn’t stay.

He was a liability, and he knew that, so as much as he wanted to protect his sister with his own two hands, he couldn’t.

As for what his plan was, who knows; he could not kill the fetish, nor could he run forever, but he did have a plan, that much was certain. His motivations were the last of the remaining survivor’s worries though, as the place continued to shake as if being hit by tremors.

They’d make their way out of the offshoot and back into the halls, and so, the open ocean was visible again. They’d see him, he was just as big as the monster, pure gold, having the thing in a headlock, he was dragging it down into the depths.

They’d lose sight of him as soon as they had seen him, even as he shone. The vibrations would stop soon after.

They would cling to the glass walls, peering into to the depths, hoping he’d emerge, but he never did. As such, they’d all continue on with their journey, in silence.

The hall was a long one, and without the technology they were accustomed to, the walk would take a while. And it would feel especially long for Bob and May.

They would all find reasons to distract themselves still, and the most fruitful distraction came from the small genius. He’d finally get a chance to admire August’s handy work, and maybe, he’d even prove his theory correct.

The cube, he was so attached to, was no longer the one he knew, it was a solid block of gold, yet it was so weightless, that it was almost non-existent.

As for the connection he boasted with the thing, it was gone. It was obvious what he had to do to get it back though. He’d have to touch it with his augmented finger.

He knew that, and that’s exactly why he held the thing in his opposing hand.

It wouldn’t hurt him, he knew that, but his heart beat suggested otherwise. He reached for it a couple of times, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch it.

He had to though, and after a few breaths, he touched the thing. He’d feel an electric surge throughout his entire body, and by the time it was gone, he had been given a tad bit of trivia.

He pulled his hand away as if the thing had hurt him, and he almost threw it like it had, but he calmed himself.

He’d stop, and they’d all stop with him, though, none of them said anything. He placed the cube to the center of the hall, and backing away, they all followed his lead.

He’d then use his understanding of physics, chemistry and the images burnt into his mind by his photographic memory to test the thing.

The journey was long, so perhaps he could shorten it. The cube began to grow in size as he imagined his desire in his mind’s eye, and by the end of it, they were looking at a golf cart from the dark ages.

They all stood there for at least a minute, not knowing what to do. As for Bob, he was just dumbfounded, what the hell was he looking at. He approached the vehicle, entering it, and imagining it starting, it did.

He almost sprung from it, getting halfway out before he realized he wasn’t hurt. Then thinking to drive it, it moved without input. The thoughts that had been delivered to him had not lied, though he wished they had.

It was impossible, the thing was creating matter, if not, its density was incomprehensible and downright impossible. So how in the world did he watch the thing morph in real time, and where was all that matter coming from.

The presence of August was a good thing, but for Bob, all it had done was create more mysteries to solve, and too bad for him, the answers weren’t all that pretty. Nevertheless, they’d all get into the contraption, at the small man’s beckon, and soon after, they were cruising through the halls.

They were at least a thousand feet below sea level, covered in the blue tinted light of the ocean, driving a golf cart to a spatial anomaly so that they could go to another dimension and bypass space and time to make it to the mainland in a timely manner, an interesting predicament to say the least.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Their minds were far removed from the specifics of their situations still, as they were more concerned about what was behind the large blast door at the end of the endless place. It wasn’t the first one either, in fact, it was one of many. They seemed amazing at first, as they must have been impenetrable enough to keep the outside world excluded, but perhaps that was only a bastardization of their purpose.

All four had similar feelings as the grandiose of the place shrunk into uncertainty, and they wondered if they really had to leave the island.

Their feelings would all come to a head as they finally reached the structure, and they should have known how big it was, but seeing it up close was a different experience all together.

They looked up at the thing, at least two stories, as heavy and as immovable as the island itself. Their breaths and heartbeats would fill the silence, and soon the steel tight tension would snap as the door opened on its own.

The culprit being the cube’s presence, or rather, it’s creator’s.

They’d all leave the makeshift vehicle, and it would return to its unassuming stature. It would have been left there seeing as they did not understand it, but it’s not like they understood anything at all, so they kept it.

The door was open, but that didn’t mean that they were ready to enter. The space behind the door wasn’t dark though, thankfully, so that gave them some hope. That didn’t mean that the light present was constant still, in fact, it fluctuated throughout colors and intensities.

They had arrived. And it looked as if that fact was what kept them from entering, especially after what August had said. They had fought hard to get there though, so they had to enter.

So, they did. I have no idea what they expected to see, but I’ll tell you what they saw.

The ground below them, while solid, was porous, a metal catwalk and a railing lining it, a stairway to either side. As for what was on the lower floor, it was a more sterile version of what was above.

There were tens, no, hundreds, no, thousands of tubular vats that lined the warehouse like place that stretched for more than a block.

As for what was inside them, brains, human brains, all in a state of suspended death. They were all anchored, wired, and connected to each other. They all had a matt black metallic base with a crowning glass vat about two feet tall.

They were all raised up by virtue of their bases though, as the things were high overhead walking through the forest of people.

As for what they were connected to, tubes as large as human heads ran through every other row and from the base of the towers, wires connected to them. Those tubes were then connected to two separate elaborate contraptions, built naturally and artificially to serve their purposes.

Those contraptions were even more magnificent than the one that had caught their sights first.

The one to their left, all the way to their left, populating the whole wall that had a cross sectional area as large as four football fields stacked atop each other by their long sides and then multiplied by five horizontally, was the natural one.

I’ll explain the housing, and then what happens to be natural about the ‘machine’. It was a wall of glass coffins, each being spacious enough to hold the human body in both super positions of the Vitruvian man laid flat on their backs.

Yet they were plastered like bugs to the walls. As for what was natural about the thing, well I did mention that they were coffins. In each of the many glass enclosures, were bodies, that of the ‘forest’s’.

They were of all ages, sexes and races, there was no factor that kept them from being admitted to the thing. As for why they did not resist, their heads were flayed open like roses, wires and tubes leaving them. Those wires and machinations were then connected to the large pipes that ran through the place. The ‘people’ needed sustenance after all.

So, the natural one was interesting, but the artificial one was better. To the right, all the way to the right, it was not a wall, and there wasn’t much of a floor.

It descended from beyond the ceiling, from a void, or rather, from a hole that was present, a giant copper, almost bronze tube with wires dangling from it like vines from a tree, a veil of water surrounding it.

There would be, ever so often, a pulse of chromatic energy moving throughout the fall. The pipes that ran through the place, their other ends would connect to the machine. They’d fall off into the abyss like construct that had steam billowing from it like the entrance to hades.

It was a quantum computer, one as big as a multi storied building. That was the ‘NET’ was it not, that simple fact was the point of my incoherent rambling.

That place, to all their knowledge, only housed the localized version of the ‘machine’ known as the NET, so that all their technology could function, even down to the nanobots.

So, imagine their surprise when they saw what they did.

They stood there, minds frozen, yet running a hundred miles an hour after a solution that never was.

Their hearts worked overtime and their guts found weights to drag them down, yet, they couldn’t help but to be filled with the warmth of pride.

It was the culmination of human ingenuity after all, the apex of their creations, becoming said creations.

I suppose they thought themselves gods, yet, even with all their power, they couldn’t save themselves from their own arrogance.

It got better still, they trapped it, controlled it, did they not, the anomaly.

It was beyond the field of human mutilation, behind a giant glass wall as tall as the entire place, the source of the light.

It was a butterfly made out of the shattered remains of reality itself, fragments interacting and intersecting at impossible junctions, all mimicking broken glass.

It did look like broken glass, yet it didn’t reflect anything at all.

They’d make their way to their destination, passing the towers by, and they’d see it, what the anomaly truly was.