Chapter 93: Decadence.
We saw the outline of the pyramid from several kilometres away. It’s structure piercing the sky whilst surrounded by what little was left of a modern arcology. Sitting prettily in what used to be London.
It was so big and so tall that it remained clearly visible despite the torrential downpour and the impenetrable blackness of the skies above. Its tip piercing the very heavens like the raised fist of a titan. Challenging the divine order of the world.
‘Like Prometheus stealing fire for mankind.’ I mused. ‘How very fitting.’
“Why are we even here?” One of our party members groaned. A girl Dusty’s age who had bullied her growing up.
‘Glossy or something.’ I recalled.
“No one asked you to come.” Dusty answered. Her voice flat and emotionless.
“You took the entire war party across the sea!” She protested haughtily. “And, what? You expect me to just let you go with all my soldiers? Just like that?”
The soldiers in question gave her looks as flat as Dusty’s voice.
All of them were young as well. Part of a generational cadre that would have inherited the duties of their forebears over time as old warriors either perished or grew too old to be effective and retired to teach the newer generations.
That future would never come however. All of them had been freed of the dangers of war by the arrival of myself, Dusty and Slab and they knew it. Throw in the general veneration for Telepaths that most people had here and the fact that I pumped all of them full of additional Types in preparation for this trip and one got a rather different picture than the one Glossy was used to.
In that, most of them would jump off a cliff if I so much as hinted at it. Without the application of mind-control or even the slightest hint of presence manipulation.
The fact that father-in law had been running his mouth non-stop about me and Dusty’s relationship only solidified matters further.
As far as these men and women were concerned, I was at the top. Unchallenged. With Dusty and Slab beside me as lieutenants.
If Ms. Glossy had been looking at them, she might have retracted her words and donned meeker, more cautious attitude.
Yet the sight of Dusty, who she used to so freely disparage, at my side set something inside of her ablaze. Her mind unable to cope with the fact that she was not in power. That she was no longer the most important person in the room.
“Okay. Calm down. Everybody calm down.” I said. Interposing myself between them.
“Ms. Glossy. I assure you that I didn’t come here on a whim. This is a very important trip for us.”
“How so?” She asked. Placing one hand on her hips and another on the throwing axe at her side.
“There’s nothing here. The few English villages left are all under the coastal regions or way off in the distance. Towards the west of Wales or closer to the Scottish Highlands. No one sane lives beneath the ruins of the big cities. This is where the old Metros were and where the first survivors started planning their continued existence. The Kaiju tore every Metro and every bunker here apart generations ago. You won’t find anything useful and you won’t find any people either.”
“I am aware of that.” I spoke softly. “I was more interested in your technology.”
She scoffed. Showing an attitude that was very much at odds to the one she’d had at our first meeting. Before seeing Dusty at my side.
“I told you. There’s nothing here. Look around and you’ll see that. If you really are as strong as the visions you showed us would have us believe, then you’ll feel all the plants and the mushrooms and the roaches skittering about. London is nothing more than a swamp filled with fetid, bacteria-ridden water. There are parasites here that are so infectious and resilient that they’ll even turn Enhancers inside out.”
Well, she had a point there.
Indeed, some people would say that about the London in my world too, but that was beside the point.
I pointed to the pyramid.
“There are computers there. I can feel them too. Hidden deep beneath the structure and still running on some kind of geo-thermal energy source.”
“So?” She asked. Her eyebrow raised as if she were speaking to someone with a traumatic brain injury.
“So, I want it. I want everything there is to find there. I want to take it with me when we leave and I want to understand the hardware. Even from here, I can tell that it is leagues above what I’m used to. In my earth, each generation of CPUs and GPUs marked a roughly five-fold increase in the power of machines. On this earth, what I considered top-shelf, military grade stuff should have been outdated for children’s toys and bargain bin phones. So, I want to take your advanced tech and make into our advanced tech. That and this earth was way ahead on the fields of artificial intelligence and space exploration. Both of which mark great leaps forward in scientific knowledge. Again, having these will be a massive help to everyone.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Why would you bother with such things if you can give people powers? All you have to do is have kids and keep giving everyone else advanced powers if you want to protect the earth.”
“Earths.” I corrected. “Plural. And I’m already planning on doing that, but I can’t be everywhere at once and I don’t know how I feel about having kids just to thrown them head-first into a conflict I could have ended. The main enemy right now, are the gnomes. Who, I’ll remind you, can travel between dimensions and between planets within dimensions with laughable ease. Part of what makes gnomes so dangerous is their superior technology. I mean, humans in my world may as well be flinging fecal matter around when you compare us to a society that mastered space-travel. Even at short distances. We need every advantage we can get. Not just for my world or this world, but for all the worlds humans inhabit.”
She narrowed her eyes further, even as the others nodded.
“That’s a waste of time and a stupid endeavor on top of it. The pyramid was one of many places where the old-world powers researched bioweapons. The people here single-handedly ended the reign of humanity and drove their descendants underground. This is a place of death and decay and cruelty. Nothing good can come from exploring it. I know because plenty of war parties over the years have tried. All of them went missing. Never to be seen or heard form again. No one even knows what happened to them.”
“The slug ate them.” I answered.
She looked confused.
“Sorry?”
“There was a slug-like Kaiju living around here.” I told her. “Its spawn lived in harmony with the giant mosquitoes of the Blood-Queen. Living mostly underground. In the flooded tunnels that used to be the Metro system. My Intruders saw to it and all the other slugs already. We don’t have to worry about them.”
I read her mind and saw that she was about to start disparaging me and Dusty again, so I just shared those memories with her and the rest of the war party.
She fell on one knee and fought back a bout of retching.
The others did so too.
With only Dusty and Slab remaining unaffected. Due to their familiarity with such things.
“Dead.” She wheezed. “They’re all dead.”
‘That they are.’ I thought. ‘And good riddance.’
“Okay then. Now that that’s settled, we can keep moving towards the pyramid.”
I turned to face the vainglorious megaproject. Almost reeling as the decrepit ruins of London came into view once more.
The rest of the city had been levelled. Old homes, skyscrapers and factories as broken and dishevelled as the habitable domes that had been built around and over them.
Yet the pyramid stood alone. In defiance of all the natural beauty that had so effectively reclaimed one of the biggest urban sprawls the world had ever seen.
The fact that the building had remained standing all these years was nothing short of miraculous in my eyes. Proof that the engineers that built it had put their heart and soul into making a grandiose monument to their society.
Indeed, the engineer in me was giddy.
Dusty’s world had always been an interesting topic before this. What with their clear fall from such lofty heights. From the stories Slab told us, it was clear that they had been one of the most advanced, if not the most advanced of the many earths the people of the Labyrinth came from. It was also clear that such power had been mismanaged, to say the least. Their own prodigious insights into genetic modification proving to be their undoing.
It was an odd contrast to my own world, where the Rifts had essentially kickstarted the apocalypse.
Doubly so, because the people that used to live here had had Esper powers BEFORE everything went bananas. In other words, they had engineered themselves into superhuman status solely for the practical, everyday benefits inherent in the condition.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
‘And all that without the use of powers, like how I do it. They did it with cold hard science. Starting from the bottom and developing new innovations with consistent research and study.’
On the one hand, I could not feel prouder of them.
As a fellow human, the idea that we could progress this far, this quickly, was nothing short of inspirational. It was a call-back to fantasies I’d once had of being an astronaut and being part of the first efforts to colonize other planets. To boldly explore new ideas and facets of reality, with the eventual goal of making life easier. More pleasurable. More fair for everyone on earth.
There had been a few years where that dream seemed like a definite possibly, but then the Rifts started getting worse and worse and everything sort of fell by the wayside.
It turned out that monsters were spawning in space, the moon and other planets, as well as on earth. It was just that they suffocated as soon as they popped out.
Any efforts going towards colonization would have to contend with them, as well as with the extremely hostile conditions that came when you didn’t have an atmosphere to fall back on.
But that was not the case in this dimension.
Through the Cobweb, I could sense living organisms on the moon and on mars. Not human, or even intelligent in any way of course. But the mere fact that they started the process of forming a viable biosphere spoke volumes of how majestic this civilization had once been.
They had kickstarted life. Similar to that of the carboniferous period on earth. All within the span of a few decades on their part. Not only that, but they had done such a good job at making the process automatic and sustainable that the literal end of the world didn’t put a dent in their development.
On the other hand…
‘They turned this earth into a graveyard. All while creating bigger and better monsters to use as weapons. Who were these people fighting, I wonder? Russia? China? The middle east in general? What kind of foe could have justified doing this?’
I looked to the side again. Using my own physical eyes to see all the spots where gigantic mosquitoes and house-sized slugs had keeled over dead.
The corpses were starting to smell now. To the point where the very air around the pyramid reeked of week-old refuse and sewer byproducts.
In any other ecosystem, the scavengers would have been on them like… well… like flies on a corpse. Yet that did not seem to be the case in these parts.
Maggots were not slithering on the carcasses of the dead kaiju offspring, despite their eagerness to get at anything else.
Something about the bodies seemed disquieting to the simple creatures. Some aspect of their makeup they could not explain.
I searched the minds of a few hundred thousand critters more closely them. Connecting my mind to theirs until they too learned to love and adore me.
Their instinctual desires and fears flowing back into me as I dove into their nervous systems.
‘Odd.’ They cried out at once. Giving voice to the same sentiments from a hundred different countries and regarding a hundred different kinds of kaiju corpses.
I started to think it was some kind of genetically coded resistance to scavengers. That the bioweapons tis world’s humans designed had some chemical in their cells that rebuffed any life that might seek to break down their bodies for protein.
‘Odd. Weird. Danger.’
‘Not food. Danger.’
‘Not safe. Danger.’
‘Odd. Odd. Odd.’
‘Not from here.’
That last imprint finally clued me in.
The local wildlife was not put off by the corpses of the Kaiju. No. They were horrified and scared of what had killed them. Of the lingering energies that remained.
The people of Dusty’s clan had either ignored or outright welcomed the feeling of wrongness as they hacked and cleaved apart the Blood Queen’s brood. But these animals knew on some base level that the flesh was tainted.
‘And so they stayed away.’
I shook my head to dismiss the notions and bade the team to keep moving.
The closer we got though, the more melancholic I felt.
London was supposed to be one of the most iconic tourist destinations out there. With too many landmarks to count and history rich in both triumph and tragedy, spanning centuries upon centuries. From William the conqueror to the bombings of the Luftwaffe, the city had seen everything.
‘And now it is like Paris. Little more than a garden for ants and butterflies to play in.’
I began thinking back to the older generations of humans again. The ones that had called this place home.
What would they think of the world they left behind for their children? What would they make of Glossy cursing their names as we went over to plunder what little was left for our own benefit? Would they have changed course, if they knew? Would they have given up on weaponizing genetics even further?
I mean, they had already improved upon humans to the point where Enhancers, Shifters, Projectors and to a much lesser extent, Telepaths, were being born naturally.
What more could they have wanted?
Those musing continued to plague me as we kept encountering the rusted-out husks of tanks and armored personnel carriers. The odd helicopter or two sticking out of the broken outlines of buildings and factories.
I saw rabbits. A lot of rabbits. And pheasants and foxes and beetles and all kinds of small critters. All treating the city as if it were just another forgotten patch of forest.
I felt owls in their nests through my Cobweb. Indulging in their dreams as their minds retreated inwards. Their feathers dry as bones in spite of the continuing rainstorm.
More than that, I felt worms. Millions of them. Slithering in the mud and between the cracked remains of broken roads.
‘That is all they left of their empire.’ I thought again. ‘Mud and worms and broken stones.’
Then I thought of Monique’s own world.
Of how similar it had been to my own in terms of technology and social structure. Of how easily it had all fallen. Of how the outcome was the same.
Death and decay and despair for all that were left.
‘Come to think of it, Charlie’s world in engulfed in a world war too. Though a far more conventional one. He got into trouble because that Whitmer crook wanted him to take his son’s place in the draft. I don’t think I ever asked him what that war was about.’
Maybe some archduke got himself shot by a young rebel there too. Or maybe it was simply a matter of conflicting national interests.
‘Or maybe some inbred royal called another inbred royal a (Gnome). It doesn’t really matter, now that I have time to reflect on it. The outcome is the same for the people at the bottom. Cowards start wars and brave men and women have to finish them. It is their children who will fill the graves and dig the ditches. It is their children that will fall and bleed and die and fertilize the poppies on Flanders’ Fields. Not the wealthy. Not the sons and daughters of generals like that Lemay (Gnome)hole. The Desmonds of the worlds will always be sequestered away in some bunker or another. While someone like my grandpa is asked to push the big red button and launch the nukes.’
It was then that I recalled the Drake’s words.
How he had pointed out the window and shown me the fate of democracies.
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘That was different. This… this was folly. These people could not see the forest for the trees. They weren’t focused on actually helping people unless it suited them. They were self-centered and dismissive of other people. I am not like that. I will allow democracy to happen while also keeping the bad actors away. I genuinely care about everyone. I want everyone to be happy and safe and well-fed. I would never send someone to fight a war on my behalf. I would never give up on diplomacy when it was still an option. I want to help people. I want to save people. I want to be a hero. I would never… I would never…’
But then I thought of Anezka and her world. How her people had been even more advanced than the ones in this earth. How they bought and sold humans like cattle without the slightest care in the world. How they, like Anezka, implanted machines to take over people’s minds and enslave them.
Could I simply leave them be?
‘Also no.’ I decided then. ‘Standing by and letting it happen when I could have stopped it is no different than condoning it. It would be like doing nothing to help Boris’ sisters or doing nothing to keep the people of Hong Kong from being nuked. It simply isn’t an option.’
I would have sighed, if this body wasn’t so damn stoic all the time.
“Sully?” Dusty asked from the side. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I was thinking.” I said. Still running down the untamed wilderness.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
My knee jerk reaction was no. But that was a stupid instinct for people who couldn’t read minds and / or lacked trust.
A new set of eyes would be most helpful.
“It’s just… I’m wrestling with some questions Dusty. I have all these questions and all the answers through looking into the future and I still don’t know what the right choice is. Am I supposed to dominate Anezka’s world into turning into a democracy? Would that be justified?”
“It depends.” She answered. Casually picking up my struggles at once without waving away my concerns.
“If the people are happy and making things work, then I don’t see a reason you’d have to get involved. Keep in mind that I don’t know too much about that world or even Anezka besides what you’ve told me. It could be that she was an outlier that just so happened to be very enthusiastic about slavery. If she’s not, then I don’t see how democracy would help matters. Again, keep in mind that it depends on a lot of context I don’t have. For example, we’re not a democracy right now. My father, or you, I guess are in charge. None of us question it because you are good leaders.”
“That only works for a small amount of people though.”
“Does it?” Slab asked pointedly. “How are things faring in your world after you stepped in? Are the people better off or worse?”
“Better, I think. Based on the futures I saw.”
“Then I don’t see how further intervention wouldn’t be a bad thing.” He said.
“I agree.” Dusty followed up. “If I trust anyone to make the right choice, I trust you. Mostly because I know you think about it and it bothers you that there isn’t a perfect position. On the other hand, someone like Glossy always thinks they’re right. Evidence be dammed.”
“Hey!” Glossy snapped. “That’s not true!”
“Yes it is” A man called Kevin interjected. “You’ve always been like this. It’s why Finn hesitated to give you the command. Despite how strong you were.”
“It’s true.” Another man, one called Glasser, confirmed. “You’re about as stubborn as a mule. That wouldn’t be a problem normally, but you’re also half as smart. Now that you’re no longer the strongest among us, there’s no reason to follow you.”
“So please keep quiet.” Kevin followed up. “Sully and Dusty were talking and you’re butting into their conversation.”
Glossy fumed. Internally wishing for all our deaths, but remaining too proud to show how hurt she was.
‘That will be a problem later.’ I thought inwardly. ‘Her world has been turned upside down, but not for the better. Everyone else has everything they’ve ever wanted, but that means they don’t have to put up with her anymore. She will have to change or else suffer through what she put Dusty through.’
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We reached the bottom of the pyramid some time later.
Noting once more how little of the wildlife had spread around the outer shell of the structure.
All the other corners and crannies had been thoroughly re-conquered by nature. To the point where one could not look at any given direction and not see a large, all-encompassing blanket of mossy greens and vibrant leaves atop a thick canopy.
Yet the pyramid’s metal shell remained barren.
Free from vines and mushrooms and even animal nests.
The Telepath side of me couldn’t make sense of it.
The place seemed normal and there were even large holes in the structure where Kaiju and their offspring had breached the perimeter.
On closer inspection, some of those holes were big enough that two or three trucks could have gone through side by side without ever touching each other.
Furthermore, the floor had been covered in a thin layer of soil mixed with rainwater and viscous mud could be seen inside the exposed halls and corridors.
But there were no worms inside that mud. Unlike everywhere else in the skeletal remains of the city.
“I have a really bad feeling about this.” Kevin said quietly. “My skin broke out in goosebumps a few dozen steps away from the entrances. I… I can’t explain it, but I think we shouldn’t be here.”
“Nonsense.” Slab admonished him. “The world has been reclaimed. This is our birthright. There is no place that is beyond our reach.”
“No, Kevin’s right.” Glossy said. Sounding calmer than I had ever seen her before.
“I don’t think we should go through. I… I can’t explain why, but something feels off. Wrong, somehow.”
Dusty began thinking some very rude things then, but I put a stop to it at once.
“They’re right.” I told the group. “They’re both right. I feel it. No through the Cobweb, but through [Predator’s Instincts].”
They all went quiet at that. Their gazes locked onto the impenetrable darkness.
“How bad is it?” Slab inquired. Suddenly going for his weapon.
“Enough that I’m going to start summoning Intruders as backup.” I told him truthfully. “My Cobweb is saying one thing, but my Shifter side is telling me I’m being deceived. Whatever is down there, it is evil and hungry. Get ready for anything.”