Chapter 13: The Gate of Eternity

Drifter marched on through the night, avoiding a courtyard speckled with campfires and torches on the way. Inside it, a group of men crouched around the fires, eating some roast meat larger than pigeons or Vollans. Drifter did not stay long enough to count feet or look for fur. He circumnavigated the courtyard in the dark and journeyed forward.

As dawn was breaking he was making his way through a strip of town playing on the 'Native sector’ theme. Stone statues of natives with feathers in their hair stood at street corners, faces broken and limbs missing from the Greenspark fall. Many of the buildings had been framed in heavy timbers to add to the ambiance. Those had burned the hottest and converted into heaps of charcoal with crumbly, burnt bricks inside of it. Ironically, those with cement logs painted to look realistic had survived better, the false trumping the real.

Drifter walked on until noon, when the sector’s style was fading from tourist traps to research labs and large, office buildings with tiny, fancy cafes between them. By now, Drifter’s leg was starting to pain him again and he was feeling the edges of weariness. He could have eaten, but he was not yet truly hungry. He had gone days before without finding anything much to eat. It was part of his survival skills to travel on little for many miles. But he did not want to push himself so far that it slowed his progress. Better to take small rests now than collapse later on.

Finding a place where a building had half-fallen and created a sheltered nook, Drifter sunk down with his back against the stone. Pulling his flask from his side, he took small sips of the tepid water. Except for a Redflash lizard disappearing into a crack, nothing moved nearby.

He scanned the rooftops and alleys carefully, wondering if Bard was still following him. Above him, a slab of overhanging stone protected his head from any 'accidents’ coming down. It had been surprisingly audacious of the boy to attempt his death with the pile of bricks. Crude, but enterprising. He had almost decided to stun the boy with a stone in return. But something turned him away. Bard didn’t know any better. And he would probably be far behind Drifter now, having to find food and water to survive.

Capping the flask, Drifter leaned back and let his eyes fall half shut. He floated for a time in between sleep and wakefulness, letting his body rest. While it rested, his mind roamed free, turning on memories new and old. He tried to avoid the older remembrances, but they kept reappearing in his thoughts unbidden.

Images of people he had known before the Greenspark, places he had been and things he had done. It had none of the pain or suddenness of the memories the phantom had forced upon him. They drifted through his mind easily, mixed with thoughts and ideas from his immediate situation in life. But they still made him feel uncomfortable when they became sharp or personal.

Finally he broke the thread of waking dreams by shaking his head and standing up. All the images slid away down a dark funnel to where he kept such things hidden. It was time to continue on.

Evening came on as he traveled through the ruined city. Red stains touched the edges of toppled pillars and arches, creating illusions of blood and roses. Shadows lengthened out, taking the shapes of long-dead gunfighters and natives with their hair in the wind. As the night came on, Drifter found memories resurfacing even as he walked, forcing themselves on his mind.

“Do you want a son or a daughter?”

“Whatever makes you happiest.”

“I think it will be a boy. He kicks so hard. But I am happy with whichever we are given.”

“We’re so lucky...”

“Life has been good to us...”

The voices became a sort of hallucination, played over the sharp reality of night in the broken sector. Drifter watched for lights, heard the scuttles of rats and other creatures and walked with his normal level of alert wariness. At the same time, images and sound played lightly over his subconscious. His mind wavered between the worlds.

The boy that lived next door, a happy lad of fourteen, had been riding back from the park on his bicycle. He had a slingshot on his wrist. He had been throwing stones at birds with it all morning. None had been hit, but he was still happy with the day’s fun. His bicycle broke down half-way home, the chain coming apart with a stick in it. Leith slowed in his car and asked if the boy would like a ride...

The slingshot got left behind, on the seat, in a rush to get up into the house for dinner…

The boy never had a chance to come back for it.

The cityscape closed around Drifter, hanging over him in darkness. No sound of voices or light of fire broke its solemn procession of standing and fallen shadows. He was forced to climb over a heap of rubble at one point, then cross a wide crack in the pavement on a slab of stone like a narrow bridge. His feet were sure on the slick material, even with a slight halt in one leg.

He worked at a garage, patching tires, fitting new wheels and fixing damage on wrecked cars. His boss liked the work, made sure that he was comfortably paid. The only person there who didn’t like him was the secretary. He would hear her high-heeled shoes tapping on the cement floor and scoot further under the malfunctioning vehicle, hoping the sound would pass on by...

One day he smashed his thumb, working with heavy tools. Smashed it so hard that it broke the knuckle. The secretary walked by just a second later and gave him a hard look, as if he had done it on purpose. He could almost hear her chiding him 'clumsy, clumsy!’

Dawn was breaking, yellow fluid floating on the edge of a cement horizon. Drifter saw a break in the buildings ahead of him. He walked out on the edge of a great, open area which rose in a low slope towards the sky. Scraggly trees burnt into black twigs curled up out of the scorched ground like skeleton hands. Blackened stubs indicated where bushes used to stand. A cement path wound up towards the peak of the hill from somewhere far over to Drifter’s right. It was patched with black, where hedges had overhung it.

Up at the top of the long, low rise were the frames of a few buildings. A faint line showed where a fence circled around them. Drifter could not make out the Gate from this distance. But he felt it up there, waiting, as if it were a friend beckoning him to a long-awaited tryst.

Bowing his head, he started up the dusty slope. He seemed like part of the desiccated scenery, another shape that blended in with the tree trunks and earth. The visions had left him and he felt empty, until he stood at the edge of the hill.

A fence was still intact in places, but the aluminum staples had often melted where trees grew close, allowing the webbing to fall down. The buildings had hedged the clearing in on the right, frames and rubble indicating their position. In the center of a place that had been clear of bushes and trees before the disaster stood the Gate.

It was taller than Drifter, perhaps ten foot at the peak. Arched and wide enough for two people to have walked in side-by-side. The stone the arch was made of was silky black, smooth and hard as glass. The door was also solid black, set smoothly into the frame. Down where a handle or knob would usually have been, there was only a large key hole, like an illustration from a children’s book. There was nothing else to mar the flat surface of the door.

Drifter drew a deep breath, moving across the intervening space as if impelled. He stopped in front of the gate, eyes roving over it carefully. There was nothing around the gate and frame, no wall it was set into. The arch was perhaps a foot thick, maybe a little more. When he walked around it, the back side looked just like the front, except for that there was no key hole in it. When he fixed his gaze on the key hole he could not see through it. It was dark inside, impenetrable.

“I’ve made it,” he told himself, splaying a hand on the cold, smooth door. “The Gate of Eternity.”

He straightened up and drew the bronze key from the cylinder in his belt.

---

Bard felt much better when he awoke, even when Loran made him get up early in the cold morning. She had bundles of food with her, wrapped in white cloth like Drifter’s had been. Loran made Bard eat some bread and cheese, drinking more of the medicated broth with it. She ate little herself, impatient to be on the way.

With a bandage and salve on his bitten toe and his stomach finally satisfied in every way, Bard was ready to move on. They started walking, the bundles split between them for easy carrying. The boy soon found that Loran was just as difficult to keep up with as Drifter, despite her more delicate build. Her strides were long and steady, not slowing even after an hour of walking. The pair moved on through the morning, then into the afternoon. Though Bard kept his eyes open, he did not see Drifter ahead of them at any point in the day. They rested, briefly, at noon and ate from the packages of supplies. Loran had bottles of water in one package, heavy to carry but pure for drinking. As they traveled, Bard and Loran shared their stories, the woman explaining about her gift of prophecy and how it had saved a handful of people from the scorch, while the boy told her about Dick Chelsea and his own upbringing in the Academy sector.

That night, they rested and slept for a short time, but then pressed on in the darkness. Loran seemed to have an internal compass guiding her around the worst obstructions and on the straightest paths. Bard was not sure if they were on the same trail as Drifter had followed, but the woman inspired him with a mixture of confidence and awe that he could not argue with. He felt that she was special, a sort of sorceress sent to help him out of his troubles. Loran was beautiful, confident and had a mysterious energy hovering around her. The boy appreciated her kindness as much as he felt overshadowed by her ascendancy.

When they reached the destroyed park of science it was with a suddenness that startled Bard. They were coming through a narrow pathway left between two piles of wreckage, Loran in front and the boy behind. When they got to the end of the alley, Loran made a small noise of satisfaction. Bard came around her and found himself looking up the slope of a low, empty hill with the dead trunks of burnt trees standing across it. At the top, the frames of a group of buildings stood facing them. They had come out on the edge of a parking lot in front of the hill, with a scorched cement path leading from the lot up towards the peak.

Bard stood staring at the top of the slope for a long moment, breathing hard as he realized that they were finally at the end of their journey. Loran touched him on his arm, directing his gaze up the hill towards their left.

A shape hooded in dark blue was most of the way up the hill, making its way towards something in front of the buildings. Bard gave a little start as he recognized Drifter.

“It’s him! But he’s still ahead of us.”

“Come.” Loran began walking quickly towards the path. “We don’t want to miss the opening.”

They hurried over to the cement path and half-ran up it, Bard panting heavily by the time they reached the top. Loran was also breathing hard, but did not flag as they came to the top. Raising a hand, she cautioned her companion to go carefully. After crossing a sagging bit of fence, they moved around the ruined scientific buildings until the Gate came into view. Bard peeked around the edge of one structure cautiously, though Drifter was so intent on the Gate that he would not have noticed them if they had stepped out boldly. He was standing in front of the dark arch, in profile to the watching pair, key held ready in one hand.

“Shouldn’t we stop him?” Bard whispered timidly.

Loran shook her head and pushed back a hank of dark hair, watching with an intense gaze.

Seeming to steel himself, Drifter moved his arm forward and inserted the key in its hole. Bard could hear it clink into place, sliding snugly into the mechanism. With an energetic twist, Drifter turned the key to the side. The door made a deep noise of acceptance. 'Chunk!’

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It began to swing open without any aid. Drifter fit his fingers around the edge and pulled it further. From their angle, Bard and Loran could not see what was inside. But they saw the loner’s eyes widen with surprise. A neon blue light glowed from inside the gate, expanding outwards. The bystanders found themselves moving away from the building to get a better angle to see. But before they had gone far, the blue light exploded outwards in a shock wave of electric sparks. Drifter’s arm flung up in front of his eyes to shield them as the shock hit him. Sparks danced over him in a random pattern of intense blue. Without a sound, he collapsed to the ground as the sparks and light faded away. A moment later, the doorway seemed to be empty, gate hanging open without a sign of light behind it. A small, black object tumbled out onto the ground. Then everything was still.

“Drifter...” Bard gasped, making an involuntary movement forward. Loran put her purple-clad arm out to slow him.

“Wait.” Her voice was icy. Instead of going directly towards the gate, she began to lead the boy around it in a half-circle. When they reached a point behind the inert form of Drifter, they could both see into the portal. Neither of them had been expecting what was inside.

It seemed to be the entrance to a wide, dark hall running from left to right. The hill was bare of anything but the lone doorway. But there was a heavily tiled floor and black stone walls surrounding the passageway inside it. Built onto the open door, on the inside surface, was a set of shiny silver rails, arranged into what looked almost like the barrel of some fantastic gun. These led back to a machine set to the right of the entrance, in the center of the hall. It was made of silver metal, black tubes and gleaming rails. Bigger than a person, it hulked there like some sort of ancient monster reimagined in steel. On one side of it was a huge storage bin of black plastic, taking up the rest of the path so that a person could have barely squeezed past to traverse the mysterious hall. The bin and the machine were coupled with a short, flexible tube.

The object which had tumbled out onto the ground was a cube of black material, perhaps six inches on each side. From the angle of its fall angle, it looked to have been sitting on the rails and been somehow dislodged when Drifter swung the gate open. What had created the blue shock wave was a mystery. The whole gate was a mystery, with things inside of it which were not reflected in the world around it.

“It’s a gate to somewhere else. Somewhere not on this plane of existence,” Loran murmured, dark eyes narrowed as she inspected the machine and doorway. “Some sort of teleporter...or portal.”

After staring at the machine open-mouthed, Bard’s gaze had reverted to the figure lying prone before them.

“But what about Drifter?”

“Ah, yes.” Loran seemed to come back to the immediate world with a shock. Moving forward cautiously, she came up to the still form. No flash of light jumped out to meet her as she neared the gate. Bending down, she lay a hand on Drifter’s chest for a moment. Frowning, she knelt to listen at the same spot. After a moment Loran arose with a shake of her head.

“He’s...dead?” Bard whispered.

“I can detect no life,” Loran said sadly, shaking her head so that the black hair tumbled down around her face. But after a moment she pushed it back and went over to stand just before the gate, peering in.

“Be careful!” Bard warned, still hanging back. He did not want to see another person destroyed by the power from within. Though he had tried, halfheartedly perhaps, to kill Drifter himself just a few days before, he found himself strangely shocked that the loner was dead now. It had seemed to impossible to destroy him, as if he was a part of the land and the air that could move through any danger unmolested. Now he lay there on the ground like a broken doll, inert.

“I think that it was a trap of some sort.” Loran bent to look in the passage, before pulling back out. “A one-time trap, for whoever opened the door. Well, he got what he was looking for. Eternity. Even if he did not spread it as generously as he wished.”

Bard shook his head, brain whirling. “But...who built this? How can there be a passage inside and nothing out here? What does it all mean!”

“Perhaps...” Loran stooped to pick up the black box which had fallen to the ground from within, gingerly at first and then holding it in both hands. “This little thing can tell us.”

Blinking, Bard looked from the cube to the machine it appeared to have come from, then down at Drifter on the ground. Everything had happened too fast for him to fully grasp yet. He felt like a layer of the world had just been torn away to reveal a second skin beyond, one he had never suspected was there.

The woman moved over to lay a hand on his shoulder, looking into his face. Hers was lit with an inner light. The glow of an inventor on the edge of discovery or a detective about to solve the crime.

“We’ll find out the truth now, Bard. Everything. I have a feeling that this gate and its contents somehow tie together with the Greenspark fall, the phantoms and everything that has been happening. But we must have patience and go carefully. We are dealing with forces far out of our control.”

The boy nodded, numb to the point where he wished everything was just over and he could sit still somewhere to think it all out. Looking past Loran, he pointed at the ground.

“And Drifter? I mean...shouldn’t we...?”

The woman looked up suddenly, gazing around them. At the same time Bard became conscious of the sound of deep breathing and the soft flapping of wings.

“I think his friends have come for him.”

Half a dozen Chardogs and at least as many Charwings had come up without Bard or Loran noticing. The birds glided around in the air, watching with their beady eyes. The beasts sat on their haunches, waiting patiently. It was daylight, not their favored element, so they were not going to push an attack on the humans. But they wanted past and would wait until night if necessary to get there.

“What about the gate?” Bard turned to look at it. “Should we go through it and see what is down the passage?”

Loran shook her head, already wrapping the black cube in a length of white cloth from her robe. “No. We must leave now, before the creatures press us. Come.”

She grasped his arm gently and towed him away, cradling the cube under one arm. They avoided the night creatures by going around the buildings again, before descending the path. Behind them, they heard the flap of descending wings and the heavy pad of paws.

---

The creatures gathered around the inert form, birds landing on the baked ground and dogs crouching nearby. For a time they did nothing, just stood and looked at him with bulging red eyes or cocked heads. One Charwing hopped forward, perching on Drifter’s chest to look into his face. They seemed to be waiting for something, expecting him to sit up and speak to them as he would have before.

As they stood in this manner there was a movement inside the gate. A hatch opened on the bottom of the machine and something crawled out. Shiny, silver with many little arms around the outer edge, it looked like a crab made of steel.

It had no features, nothing but a round plate as a body and the six arms ending in half-formed claws. A second followed it a moment later, with dozens more pouring out afterwards. Like ants they strung out across the ground in a steady stream towards the still body. The beasts of the night saw them coming and took fright, the Charwing flapping noisily off to land a few yards away while the rest drew back the same distance on the ground. They turned and watched as the crab-like forms crawled over Drifter and around him, enveloping him in small, shining shapes like a swarm. The body heaved and lifted, carried on two dozen tiny bodies of steel. With minute clicking noises they made their way towards the gate and disappeared inside.

Disappointed, the creatures of the night faded away.

---

Bard ran a hand over the smooth, featureless black box. It seemed to be made of metal, though what sort he could not tell. If it was tapped with the point of a knife it gave off a hollow resonance. But it weighed more than appearances would dictate. When he hefted it in one hand it soon tired him and he had to set it down again.

“What could it be?”

They sat on the edge of a courtyard surrounded on all sides by rubble and ruin, white pillars and iron rebar sticking up from the crumbled tide at random intervals. Loran had the skirt of her robe flattened around her and the box set on the edge of it.

“I’m not sure.” She touched it delicately, with the tip of a finger. “But I know someone who might be able to find out better than we could.”

“Oh?” Bard looked up hopefully. The shock of the scene on top of the hill had not yet worn off and he felt lonely, as if the city were tangibly more empty without Drifter in it. Finding another person, almost anyone else, would help alleviate the feeling.

“Yes.” Loran nodded. “Unfortunately, he is far from here--”

Bard’s shoulders drooped and he made a small noise of disappointment.

“But. I have a way to summon him and we can go to meet him half way. In fact.” She scooted the box aside onto the ground and stood up. “I think it would be wise if I called in more than one friend. Many of us are seeking answers and I believe we have come very close to the core of the riddle.”

“How will you summon them?” The boy asked, peering up through his round glasses with the noon sun glinting off of them.

Loran clasped her hands together and bowed her head. “I have my ways.”

Not waiting for him to ask further questions, she turned and strode away through the heaps of rubble until she disappeared from view. Bard knew that he was not supposed to follow her. He sat staring at the black box, wondering what sort of secrets it held. They were still not far from the hill with the Gate on top of it. But he did not want to think of what had happened on top of the hill or what the creatures might be doing there now. Instead, he concentrated on the box, considering who could have built it and why. The machine it had come from looked like a dispenser, or something which the box would shoot out of. Could it be a sort of signal flare?

But Loran believed that the gate had something to do with the Greenspark fire. Something clicked in Bard’s mind. It was such an enormous thought, such a leap of logic that he was almost afraid to complete it. When he did, one word came to his mind, burning bright.

Greenspark.

What if the Greenspark fire had not been a natural anomaly? It could be a weapon instead, something made by man to destroy wide swaths of civilization. But who on earth would build such a thing and use it against the whole world? It would take a person extremely embittered and cruel to create a weapon like that, someone who loved destruction and pain. And then to launch it against most of the world, as far as Bard new, make it sweep over all large continents and countries. The boy stared with glazed eyes at the box, picturing the huge area of ruined Apex and the many other countries that must have suffered. Then the people, individual people who had their families destroyed, minds driven to the edge of sanity by the Greenspark fall. Like Drifter. So pained by the effects of the weapon that he had sought to end the world as it was known.

Loran came back as Bard stared at the box. Crouching across from him, she looked into his eyes.

“So, you’ve come to the same conclusion as I.”

The boy met her gaze slowly, voice trembling as he spoke, “but who? What person would try to blot out all life in a terror of pain and flames?”

“We’ll find out,” Loran promised, “Elisha is on his way. We must go to meet him. But there is more to this than first meets the eye, Bard...”

“What do you mean?”

“That gate is not merely a room holding a machine to spit fire. It’s a portal of some sort. Whoever built it has powers beyond our understanding. Not only that, but we still have another mystery mixed up with it. The relics.”

Bard blinked, seeing a side of the question he had not considered before. “The key. It’s a relic, but it fits the lock of the gate...which means whoever built the machine either used relics for his scheme, or--”

With a nod, Loran stood up. “Created them.”

“But...but, how could the gate have opened from the inside? How could this box, this tiny cube, make something like Greenspark fire fall from the sky? And why is it still here, why did it fall out of the gate?” Bard jumped to his feet, hands clamped into fists. “I don’t understand! There are too many questions. What if our idea isn’t right at all and this box doesn’t have anything to do with the Greenspark?”

Loran touched him lightly on the shoulder and he felt calmness flow from her like a reviving stream. No matter the madness of the questions, she was staying focused.

“That is what we are going to learn. And you are right, it might have nothing to do with the Greenspark. But that is not what intuition tells me.”

The boy bowed his head, fitting his glasses back into place with a gentle push of his finger. He wished, intensely, that Dick were there to explain things to him and lead him through the arguments logically to a conclusion. His guardian had always been good at making complicated things obvious to him.

“So what’s our next step?”

“We travel back west,” Loran explained, “Elisha, one of my friends, was still over in the Arc sector where we built our bunker. He’ll be coming to meet us.”

“And he can tell us what the box is for?”

“I’m hoping that he can open it safely. He is a sort of tinkerer, an expert in all things mechanical, electrical...and explosive.”

Bard sighed and picked up his sack from the ground, along with a few of the bundles that could not fit in it. “I see. In case it does have Greenspark fire in it. Okay. But it will take days to meet him if he’s coming from the Arc sector.”

“As to that,” Loran said with a small smile, “he has transportation. And I have a plan.”

She gathered up the few bundles left and tucked the black box carefully into one of them, before cradling it on her arm. Then she began to lead the way towards the west, striding with apparent ease around the rubble of society.