37 - Like, in Contact
Nineteen hours before…
It wasn’t pain that burned through Maya, it was as if existence was churning through her veins. It was beyond Maya’s ability to describe, a sense of ‘everything’ surging and burning and consuming.
She saw a vast darkness, absolute and complete, but in a flash that changed. She stared into a gulf of swirling madness, of light, of power, and of destructive creation. Then she saw a fine golden web stretched across existence, a fine mesh that spread everywhere, holding back the madness.
Maya reached for the golden light.
***
“Hello?” a voice said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Pops?”
Maya found herself standing in the living room of her old home.
“What the hell is this?” she demanded. She took in the room, it was as she remembered. The lounge chair Pops loved to sit in, the coffee table that was always scattered with magazines and papers, and the chipped end table that forever had water rings stained into the faux wood. “This isn’t real.”
“Yeah, well, I thought it would make you comfortable. Seems I’m not good at this whole business,” the voice said.
“Where the hell are you? Why do you sound like my father?” Maya demanded.
A man stepped into the room. Maya stepped back, staring at the copy of Pops Sullivan as he entered the room. It was as she remembered, a tall man, wide shouldered, with his thick hair greying and a constant stubble on his chin. He grinned at her, showing his overly large canines and slightly crooked teeth.
“Hey,” the copy of Pops said.
“What the hell are you?”
“That a way to talk to your Pops?”
“Stop this. Whatever the fuck you are. Stop this.”
“You’ve watched the movie, Contact, right?” the creature asked. Its form wavered a moment, no longer Pops but a man in similar stature. “‘I’ve taken a form you’ll be comfortable with’.”
“Right. Then you don’t know me all that fucking well,” Maya snapped. She should be terrified. She should be freaking out. The last thing she had seen was the infinite gulf of destructive mana being held at bay by some golden webs. Then, before that, all of Shen’s bullshittery. “Who are you an what do you want. I’ve already got some asshole fucking with my brain.”
“Ah, yes. Shendogradeh Firnakaal. That poor soul.”
“Yeah, poor guy. Real sad story there. Who are you? Where am I? What happened to the cage?”
“To keep to the Contact analogy, I’ve intercepted your ‘cage’ and brought you here.”
“Did you even watch Contact? That little wormhole thingie she was riding wasn’t intercepted, it reached its destination. I did not reach my destination, instead I’m in some screwed up memory with some random asshole.”
“Right, right. How rude of me. Hello, I am the System.” The man extended his hand, his smile wide and welcoming.
“Bullshit,” Maya stated firmly.
“No, really.”
“Bullshit,” Maya said again.
“What do I have to do to prove I am the System? Shouldn’t this whole memory of yours be enough?”
“Send me home.”
The man laughed. “You’re tricky. No.”
“Then why the hell am I here?”
“Ah, well. You are intersting.”
“That’s what the last asshole said before torturing my friend.”
“Oh, sorry. I saw that you left the dimensional plane you were on and decided to check in on who that was. Every time someone manages to leave that place, I get notified.”
“This is just an automated response to my action?” Maya asked.
“Sort of.” The man sat down on the couch, letting out a sigh. “This is just a tiny portion of what I am, checking in on you and half a billion other people who have caught my interest.”
“Awesome. I feel so special.” Maya looked around and then sat down in Pops’ lounge chair. It felt like how she remembered, but then she realized everything was as she remembered. She picked up a magazine off the table and the insides were blank. It was all just her memories.
“Yeah, I don’t really know what’s going on before Integration,” the man said. “But your memories, to me, are an open book. I can see all of it and experience all of it.”
“Creepy.” Maya leaned back in the chair, kicking up the foot rest and then dug around in the cushion until she found a small hole. She pushed her hand into it and with a grin, pulled out a bottle of scotch. “You probably know this, but Pops loves this stuff. Made little cubbyholes to hide bottles everywhere. Mom used to get mad at him, saying it made him look like an alcoholic, but he always claimed they were for tactical use only.” Maya laughed, uncorked the bottle and took a swig. It was just like she remembered.
“You have a high regard for your father,” the man said.
“Yeah, well, you know my memories. Big man, big mouth, big plans, and a big personality.” Maya sipped from the bottle. “Mom said we were too alike. It’s why we got along together so well and it’s why we also constantly argued.”
They sat there in silence for a moment.
“So, what’s all this then?” Maya asked, waving the bottle around. It tasted like scotch, smelled like it, but it had no effect on her. It was a memory; not reality.
“I just wanted to see who you were.”
“So you lived my entire life and now you’re talking to me?”
“In a sense. The dimensional plane you have left is an interesting place, don’t you agree?”
“Yeah, sure. Damn near empty of mana; full of rogue AIs, trash, and a sadistic asshole trying to get home. Also, you’re leading with that question. Just tell me what it is you’re getting at. What’s with that dimension? You seem interested in it. So spill the beans, bud.”
“Before we begin.” The man held out a palm and on it formed a small black cube.
Dimensions 101 - high grade, Tier 2
“I believe this is yours.”
Maya picked it up and looked at it. “I never got my defense token too,” she said.
“It requires essence mana to create. I cannot reach that place.”
Maya absorbed the knowledge cube.
Dimensions 101 - high grade, Tier 2
Download time: 18 hrs 32 mins.
“That’s a bit long.”
“Its a lot of knowledge.”
The man settled into his seat a bit more and looked weary for a moment.
“I’ve got two things to ask of you.”
“Time is money and I don’t rent out my services cheaply.”
“Fair enough. I want you to prevent Shen from leaving,” the man said.
“If you’re looking for him dead, I’ll gladly do it. The only problem is he’s Tier 2 and I’m just a lowly level 11 scrub.”
“I understand,” the man said. “Yet, it still needs to be done.”
“Why can’t you? You ‘intercepted’ me in this cage, why not do the same to him?”
“I could trap him in this place, but doing so would trap you also. You are needed by Shen to cross back into the multiverse. You are needed for him to return. Without you, he has nothing.”
“Can’t use your godlike powers to just nab him?”
“No.”
“Great.” Maya sloshed the bottle in her hands for a moment. “You can’t access that place, right? There’s no essence mana for you to manipulate.”
“Where you are…it is difficult for me to interact with,” the man said. “Only the part of me that is inside of you exists there, it talks with me and tells me what you are doing, but I cannot directly interfere. I cannot physically manifest anything in that place. It’s the reason why you have not gained any System Generated Drops. I lack access to that dimension and I lack access to the essence mana required to create these items.”
“Why?”
The man smiled. “It’s really simple. Because that plane is where I exist. It is my ‘body’ you are walking on.”
Maya stared at him. “What?”
“Analogy time. You are bacteria on my skin, you, Shen, the rogue AIs, all of it. The ‘trash piles’ are just dead cells that get attracted to my ‘body’. I cannot see what is going on in my own body the same way you cannot see what your cells are doing.”
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“Why does it kill everything living that crosses over?” Maya asked.
The man shrugged. “Living things were not supposed to be present in that plane. Nor was the trash or anything else. It was supposed to be a blank space, a timeless and unchanging place for my ‘body’ to exist. My builders were incredible, but they could not see everything that would happen.”
Maya rubbed her head and drank more scotch, if only for the burning sensation. “So why kill Shen?”
The man’s mouth creased into an unpleasant expression and he sighed. “Because he is as you said ‘evil’.”
“That matters to you?”
“Not really.”
“Great.”
“What matters is what he has access to,” the man said. “He is insane and now holds a power that hasn’t been seen in millions of years. He has access to the void space between realities and can use it to connect to any point in the multiverse.”
“Wait, you mean the cage? It can connect to anywhere? Even Earth?”
“The hardest part of what Shen has accomplished is finding someone who is able to channel essence mana to power the bridge. You are that special something that Shen has been missing all this time.”
“He’s not going to let me and Bell go, right?”
“Definitely not. Bell may be killed, but you will be nothing more than a switch to activate the cage. Once he has mastered it, all of the the multiverse and dimensional plane will be open to him, as long as he has the mana cores to draw upon.”
“Why’s he so dangerous then? Why do you want him dead? None of this evil crap that you don’t even care about.”
“It is because he’s not alive,” the man said.
Maya chewed on that information. “He sure thinks he’s alive.”
“Yet he is not. A few cells survived the dimensional instability, but who he is, did not. He is a shadow of what he was. His soul is trapped within that that body he has created.”
“I’m hearing about souls a lot these days.”
“He built a trap for himself to save himself, but by the time it activated. He was already dead and instead of providing him with some kind of immortality. It has trapped his soul in his own rotting corpse.”
“So what does that mean, when he gets back to the real world?”
“Death, devestation, chaos, and horror beyond imagining.”
“From Shen? The dude seems a little, I don’t know, stupid and without much self control, likes being the villain a tad too much.”
“Ah, see its not really him that will be the problem, it is what he brings back with him. Necro technology.”
Maya sighed. “Great. Tell me.”
“Shen trapped his soul and then twisted it, to run his broken body. He is technically not alive, but alive. He’s what was once called a Necro. The living dead.”
“Zombies? The undead? The generic bad guys who wanna snuff out all living things?”
“The issue with Necros is that they don’t use mana. They don’t channel it, they don’t harness it.”
“Then why all the fear? What do they use then? Because Shen was using some crazy brain-pain and he seemed pretty tough.”
“He’s consuming his own soul.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“It’s like this. You are alive and then you aren’t. Once dead, your soul leaves. I don’t know where it goes, that’s not my job and I already have enough on my plate. But Shen has trapped his soul in his decaying body. This is what makes a Necro; they’re dead, but their soul hasn’t left. He can’t level, he can’t channel mana, but the other side of the coin is that he’s already Tier 2 so the changes that essence mana did are still in effect. He’s still stronger and faster and tougher than Tier 1.
“My existence is to ensure that essence mana is harnessed and used by SIL to purify it. It’s why there’s the System in place. It’s to use up essence mana. Necros don’t use mana. Once the technology is fully developed it will be used to create weapons and raise un-killable armies.”
“So… you want Shen dead because he’s not playing by the rules?”
The man chuckled. “In a sense. But in a bigger sense, there are some unsavory SIL who would jump at the chance of using undead hordes to clear planets of lifeforms. It may sound good in the short term, but those undead creatures are not gaining levels, they are not taking mana from their kills, they are just empty shells. This drops the overall rate of mana conversion in an area. On a long enough timeline, it all adds up. Massive mana saturation in one area could lead to a chain reaction collapse in whole galaxy clusters.”
“Awesome.” Maya pondered his words for a while. “How long do I got?” she asked.
“Well, in this memory of yours, you have all the time you want. You can spend months here, but once you leave. You’re still in void space and time does not work there.”
“Too big of a concept for me, break it down.”
“The only thing that’s allowing you to survive in the gulf between realities is the cage. It is creating a dimensional bubble that is tethered to the mana being produced by the cores.”
“Tethered to mana… you said Shen would have free reign of the dimensional plane and the cage can connect to anywhere in the multiverse. So this means I can connect this cage to anywhere on the dimensional plane?”
The man nodded.
“I can… I can go back to the Hangy and grab my shit and jam?”
“If you wish.”
“There’s only twenty hours until the mana cores are drained, that’ll give me a head start…” Maya frowned. “But where to go? There’s nothing west of the Hangy, just all the dirt. Plus Shen’s got his ship and his people, they’ll track me down and drag me back.”
The man nodded again.
“So I have to do what you want me to do?” Maya hissed. “Kill Shen?”
“If you wish.”
“How do I kill someone who’s more powerful than me? Once I’m out of this memory, I won’t even have much time to prepare for a fight, let alone defeat whoever he brings along with him.”
“Come on, remember Contact.”
“Fuck Contact. I didn’t even understand that stupid movie! What kind of shitty aliens make people do all that shit and then just make it seem that nothing really happened afterward. Just fucking tell me!”
“Learning requires you to make the connections yourself.”
“Jesus,” Maya muttered and she thought on it. After a moment it clicked. “Time. You said time doesn’t exist in the void?”
The man nodded.
“So I could travel back in time?”
The man shook his head.
“Slow down time?”
The man nodded.
“I can slow down time relative to Shen, but it would still go normally for me?”
The man grinned.
“So… So that means I could spend that entire twenty hours working on how to defeat Shen, but for that asshole it could have only been a minute? I can also stay in this memory until I’m ready to go?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“I can go back to the Hangy… and get stuff and get ready. I can prepare for him, get things moving. He doesn’t know what’s happening in the cage, only when it connects to the other side will he act. Perhaps…” Maya pondered for a long while, muttering to herself and occasionally taking swigs of the bottle of scotch that never seemed to empty.
The man sat around and began flipping through a magazine.
“Okay. I have a plan,” Maya said.
“Excellent.”
“What’s my payment?”
The man handed her a small enveloped. Maya tore it open.
“A golden ticket?” she asked. “A ticket home?”
The man nodded.
Maya grinned and then frowned. “But… there’s only one. What about Bell? And the others Shen has trapped? Are they Necros too or just some poor people enslaved by him?”
“There is nothing you can do for the people Shen has enslaved. They are not dead… technically, but they are no longer considered true SIL. They are souls trapped within their own bodies, in constant pain and misery. The combination of searing, experimentation, and modification has rendered them more monster than SIL.”
“Jesus,” Maya muttered. “But still, what about Bell? Can’t you just make two tickets?”
“It will take a lot of my own effort to just get one SIL out of there, I was not designed to interact with that area of myself. I don’t have the access to essence mana to manipulate much of anything in that plane. If you decide to cross back into your own universe via the cage, it will most likely kill you, without the ticket.”
Maya groaned. “Deal’s off.”
“But I can allow others to leave if you care to take my second request.”
“What’s that?”
“I would like you to become the Point of Contact in that dimensional plane.”
***
“See it’s the bacon grease that gives it that extra bit of flavor.” Maya explained as she drizzled a light amount of fat onto the sizzling pan of collard greens. “Everyone says its better with pork, but I’m not the biggest fan of that meat. I like chicken, a good chicken breast. Personally, I love bacon wrapped cream cheese stuffed chicken breast. Delicious.”
The man who called himself the System nodded politely from where he sat on a stool. In a few minutes Maya served the food on the kitchen island and took a bottle of white wine from the pantry. She pulled the cork and filled two glasses for the pair.
“You seem to enjoy this.”
“When it becomes work, that’s when it looses its specialness.” Maya said. She scooped her chicken breast from the tray and filled her plate. The man did the same. “My mom and I used to cook a lot when my dad was still in the Army. She loved to cook, the whole food truck was her idea. But she doesn’t like to be the face of things, she wanted to be behind the curtain, pulling the strings or so she would say. So Pops became the face of the business.”
“But once I had to start helping them in the business, taking care of my brothers, getting in trouble in school, well, it fell out of favor.” Maya sipped her wine and the taste was as she remembered. The food was delicious, it wasn’t real and she wasn’t hungry, but she still ate it with pleasure. She would never have this meal again, she thought. Her home was probably destroyed, her family probably dead. There would be no one raising chickens or making cream cheese, no one making wine or fine cutlery.
“It is delicious.”
“Thanks.” Maya chewed contently for a while. “So what’s this Point of Contact thing? I thought that was for worlds and such?”
“Turning an entire planet into a Point of Contact world works well for Integrating a sector of space, there are nearly a thousand in your Milky Way Galaxy. I’m not trying to Integrate the Dimensional plane you’re on.”
“What are you doing then?”
“Maintenance.”
“Maintenance?”
“People like you appear every ten million years or so. I, of course, am using the reference point of the normal multiverse time here. So.. About one hundred and twenty million years dimensional plane time, give or take a decade.”
“People like me?”
“Level 0 newly Integrated SIL who stumble through and survive a Dimensional Instability and end up surviving long enough to escape the dimensional plane.”
“I’m not the first?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s a shot to my ego.”
“They are the only ones who can channel essence mana in that place. And I am in need of them to do routine maintenance upon my ‘body’ or that plane in general.”
“So you need me to be a Point of Contact being? How does that even work?”
“I’ll need to upgrade your physical form to Tier 2, for beginners. After that, I’ll use your essence mana channels to establish a foothold in the plane and begin my work.”
“Everyone just wants me for my essence mana channels, not my personality.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Funny. Will it hurt me?”
“No. Or it should not.”
“Can I leave once you’re done?”
“It will take a while.”
“A while?”
“Five hundred years, dimensional plane time.”
“I’ll be dead by then.”
“You’ll be Tier 2, you’ll live thousands.”
“Fuck.”
“It’s not too terrible. Many SIL would love to be automatically moved to Tier 2.”
“It’s a lot to take in,” Maya said, swirling her wine in her glass.
“I do not ask this lightly.”
“I’ll be stuck there, though, right?”
“Yes.”
“But Bell will be able to go home?”
“Yes.”
“What if Shen kills me?”
“Then I’ll wait for another like you to arrive to that plane.”
“Even after I become your Point of Contact and all that?”
“Maintenance is routine, its not necessary. I’m not here to coddle your existence or protect you,” the man said. Maya frowned. “It seems harsh, but all that matters to me is the continued use of mana by living beings.”
“So no preferential treatment for being your POC?”
“None.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Tier 2. No struggling for it. Being that tier will also allow you to begin learning to use your essence mana channels. Although you can barely channel now, at a higher tier, the experience and knowledge gains will be quicker for you. There will be a less chance of hurting yourself or searing your channels.”
“Aren’t essence mana channels the goal? Why can I sear them?”
“Your current body is weak. Very weak. The channels formed are rudimentary and fragile. Enough for Shen to use it to make all the gate connections he wants, but to effectively channel essence mana, your form needs to be stronger.”
“Awesome.” Maya drummed he fingers on the table for a while. “Bell can go home, right?”
“If you find more people, you can send them home,” the man stated.
“How?”
“You’ll be the Point of Contact, I’ll be able to manipulate essence mana there once more. Whomever you find in that world you’ll be able to send back.”
“Can I bring people back to the dimensional plane?” Maya asked.
“Definitely not.”
“Why?”
“My builders made it so that living things shouldn’t have been able to survive the crossover for a reason. I’ll not go against that.”
“Tier 2, huh.”
“You will be adequately rewarded for the service you would render me.”
“System Moneybags.”
“Also, you will have to defeat Shen before I will begin the Point of Contact procedure.”
“Give me Tier 2 before the fight.”
“No.“
“Don’t give me that shit. You’re the System. You make the rules, you’re just being a dick about it. You could make it so that everyone in the multiverse has a happy lucky time of it, but instead they’re all struggling and dying at the hands of mana mutations, the very mana you’re trying to ‘purify’. So, just bump me up to Tier 2, I’ll slag Shen, you get your POC, and Bell gets to go home.”
“Making you Tier 2 will fundamentally change you. It doesn’t just happen, it will take days for the power to seep throughout your body, small changes will be constantly made until you are fully Tier 2.
“It ain’t a switch you can just flip?”
“No.”
“Lame.” Maya pouted for a moment and then sighed. “Alright. I’m in.”
“You’ll do it then?” the man asked.
“It’s not much of a choice, is it? Either become Shen’s slave and watch Bell die or be your POC and dick around in a trash plane for a few hundred years.” Maya sighed. “But I can use the cage, right? I can at least… connect back to Earth?”
“If the machinery Shen has built survives, you will be able to continue crossing void space and interacting with the multiverse at large. Maintenance and upkeep of that will be up to you.”
Maya drained her wine glass and threw it over her shoulder. She heard it shatter and grimaced “Let’s get this show on the road.”