Chapter 12 - Net
(in which there is a room)
> "The best way to catch a fish is to let him think he's escaping."
> --anon.
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They stood over the doppelganger's motionless corpse-bits.
"So much for a peaceful first contact," Altair chimed from Iraklijs' pocket as he knelt.
Giil realized what had just happened. "Thank you! I owe you not only my freedom, but my life..." her voice echoed through the crystal.
The remains did not move. In fact, they first lost their solidity and fibrosity, forming puddles; then their metallicity, leaving shiny residue while becoming transparent. These puddles looked just like the nanites that comprised the 'sea'.
Iraklijs mumbled something incoherent.
"No problem," Ekut said, then paused. "The hypothesis of the sapience of these things is now disproven. What kind of thinking creature wouldn't even react to a bullet fired over its head?"
"Even if it wass ssapient... it clearly tried to kidnap or sstrangle Giil. We would have been jusstified in blowing it to ssmithereenss..." Zkeh hissed.
"I don't think that the others are going to like this when they see the corpse. Or maybe they have a hivemind and already know we killed their own. We go," Tsip said.
"The kseldani is correct," Ekut said and snapped a few photos of the inorganic, bloodless carnage, before turning around.
Iraklijs stood up, fresh like new, and patted Giil on the shoulder. "Get up, m'reptile."
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As they walked, Iraklijs thought. Thought deeply about his outburst of rage. It took him like a riptide taking away a swimmer. Yes, the target it was aimed at was well-deserving of its full brunt. This time, at least. But what if Giil had angered him similarly? Indeed, she nearly did when she insulted Zkeh and Spots. He shuddered and winced as he imagined himself doing to her what he did to the doppelganger. The thought made a tear roll down his face.
The thought looped. Involuntarily.
...
With each repetition of the distorted daydream, with every unwilling stomp of the boot onto her tortured form, Giil's features grew more and more like the doppelganger, and the mummy, combined. Shriveled, metallic form. Facial features from his crew. Four eyes all bulged to the size of fists.
And a black fog crept over the edge of his vision as he stared at it, and fractal patterns began coalescing on her scales.
I'm sorry i'm sorry im sorry imsorry
...
"Why are you grinning and drooling like an idiot?!" Ekut's shrill voice shattered the cycle of intrusive thoughts, and the fog was blown away not by a breeze, but by a hurricane. Iraklijs fell onto his knees again, and cried again, and mumbled incoherently again.
"It's in my head," he whimpered. "It lives there now. In my thoughts. It made me think about murdering Giil. It's the fog."
Altair did not leak that, thankfully. The other dour stopped beside him and stared.
"...I fear for the worst here," Ekut said.
"What?" Iraklijs shook his head.
"I have a theory that the 'fog'... is some kind of nanites in your brain. That control your mind when you lose grip. What if they are self-sufficient? What if they are contagious? This won't be solved with a mere decontam shower, then."
A grimace pulled itself over Iraklijs' face.
"What else could it be, really?" Ekut said. "Magic isn't real. Neither are 'psionics', as if there is a difference according to your human fiction. What else could affect the mind so specifically, at range, autonomously?"
"If it iss in Iraklijss," Zkeh hissed, "then it iss in all of uss, including Giil."
"So I will... live in quarantine for the rest of my life?" Iraklijs said. Suddenly, his will to live dropped massively. Only a faint glimmer, the hope of going back with samples and data, lingered in him. He wished to die. To think that this was the end of his career. His whole life's purpose. While all six bullets loaded in his revolver had been spent, the ammo box in his pack glimmered enticingly.
"...perhaps not. The Chimeras are above everyone with nanotech. They could probably quickly develop hunter-killer nanovaccines. You-- we will live in quarantine for a while, yes," Ekut said. "How long, I don't know... the Chimeras keep quiet about their tech. The paranoid gadarti."
His will to live was rekindled. "Right. Let's go."
Tsip placed a hand on his shoulder. "Clear your mind."
"I can't. I... wait... what if instead of clearing my mind, I occupy it? I'm not going to turn on music when listening to noises is useful. But I guess... ah you'll all see."
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While they made their way along the monotonous, seemingly-endless corridor, Iraklijs began humming the theme to some centuries-old TV show of the kind that passed as science fiction to the people of the pre-Contact era. It was certainly effective at preventing intrusive thoughts.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
What it wasn't effective at was preserving the sanity of his comrades. The nasally humming resonated in the halls, prompting all present to cover their ears. Human musical sensibilities did not resonate well with aliens, especially when the 'music' in question was frankly awful anyways.
Yet they tolerated it. For their friend's well-being.
And the corridor did not take long to end after that. There was a large, closed door, but one that did not look impenetrable despite its solid featurelessness. Ekut checked the map of the facility on her datapad, as filled out since the group's imprisonment in the sphere. It was imprecise in terms of the relations of things in a 3D environment, which is why they had needed to get the vestibule's location at the well beforehand, but for this short distance it sufficed well. 200 meters was the length of the stretch of corridor that they passed. It sure seemed longer.
"No other way, it sseemss," Zkeh said, then looked from side to side, took out his mattock, and hooked its head's flat end under a tiny gap in the door. "Help me pry, you all..." he pointed to the end. "Usse your whole weight..."
"Isn't there a risk of it breaking?" Ekut said.
"No... it iss made of orrazghhta, the hardesst and toughesst compossite known... we even export it to neighborss, and licensse production to otherss... our pride... Also, thiss mattock is blessed by my family'ss sshaman... Now help..."
Everyone, even Giil, grabbed the handle of the massive tool and, alongside Zkeh, used their whole weights to pry.
The door screeched as they did so, and a worry of an alarm flashed through Iraklijs' mind, and only then did he realize that the door was simply stuck, and had immense friction. It took Herculean effort to lift it even half a meter, and when the handle (rather than the solid orrazghhta blade) began flexing, they glanced at each other, crouched down, and cast Altair's light into the darkness beyond the opening.
There was what appeared to be a massive chamber beyond, with a cathedral-like ceiling akin to the vestibule but much taller. And like in the vestibule there were fractal patterns embossed on it... but here, they shifted, they pulsated, and they rotated. Any other features of the room weren't obvious from this low vantage point, but there was no movement and no sound there.
They crawled under the pried-open door and very carefully looked around.
There was a veritable forest of tubes of varying thickness, going in looping spirals that emerged from the floor in a haphazard arrangement that made the whole room look like an immense technorganic thicket. Inside the tubes was clear fluid with reflective chunks. Nanite slurry and living metal. Pulsating and swirling. The entire structure roiled and tumbled within itself like the surface of a storm-ravaged sea seen from underwater. The whole arrangement reminded Iraklijs of the Blue Web of the iywkaa Craterworld, except the Web was not three-dimensional, and was actually organic. Unlike this abomination. And Iraklijs was sure that it was indeed an abomination; its branches moved and swayed and convulsed in a way only something alive could.
He felt himself like he was in the presence of something godlike. Something older than humanity and older than all other civilizations.
And he could swear that it had seen him right then.
This was a good decision.
...
"Iraklijs! Stop!" Ekut's voice echoed, sounding distant as if heard from the bottom of an abyss.
"He... sstop him!" Zkeh's faint growl echoed, followed by the clicking of sprinting claws that grew fainter and fainter, accompanied by reptilian panting.
He, himself, could feel the strain in his muscles. But nothing else.
The clink of a grappling hook that missed his chest by ten centimeters failed to snap him out either.
A tiny, crystalline, resonating voice could be heard protesting something as he felt the fabric of his pack against his hands.
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"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Ekut yelled into Iraklijs' face as he lay limply on his back.
"I..."
They were back in the hallway, just outside the vertically ajar door. His whole body ached. Tsip held him down with a firmness he did not expect from a kseldani who was not of the brute caste.
"Yes, you! You just walked off with your mouth wide open, then when Zkeh tried to catch you, you ran faster than I've ever seen a human run!" she snarled.
"My legs do feel like they're about to fall off... I... I think the mindfuckery got to me again," he groaned. "But I feel alright now."
"Ugh. Why you and not me... or anyone else, though?" she said and looked away.
"I don't know," Iraklijs said. He then, acting on an urge, took Altair from his pocket. It was still as good as it always was. Yes, the faces were as smooth, and the points as sharp, as ever. Were the gears always this black, though? Yes they were. The faint thought that said otherwise faded away then.
He smiled and put Altair back in its proper place, the lantern-harness. It was silent now, but shone just as brightly. This was a good decision.
"Ssomething just feelss off here," Zkeh said. "I cannot put my talon on what, though..."
Ekut turned to him. "I thought chohjozra had those built-in split personalities? Switch to the analytic one for this."
Zkeh shook his head. "I am unussual... hatched without any... I wass bullied in sschool and osstracized at work for it."
The three other explorers exchanged glances. Despite working for years, there were many things about each other that they did not know. Altair did not translate any parts of the exchange for Giil, as it would otherwise do. She said something that sounded harsh and dejected.
Iraklijs slowly stood up. He felt fine. More fine than the situation warranted, perhaps. "I... don't think anyone wants to go back to that place," he said.
"Well, the only other way is to turn around and see what's on the other end of the hallway," Ekut said. "Should we close the door somehow?"
"Leave it. Just go."
Zkeh stared at him with a subtle distrust gleaming in his eyes, and briefly opened his mouth, but said nothing. The distrust seemed to be suppressed but not quite defeated, like a cat's displeasure mollified by the touch of a human hand.
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The now-murky Altair sent waves of distorted pseudo-warmth through Iraklijs' brain as he held it out. It sounded cozy.
The crystal's internal gears and clouds were now black as vantablack. They smelled pretty.
The crystal's formerly-warm light was now cold like an antique fluorescent lamp. It felt loud.
Yet nobody noticed its transformation. Why would they, when their minds were at their clearest since they first got trapped?
Iraklijs thought of it, and it called back. Called back with something better than language, something deeper and more profound. Something on a deeper level than even BCI communications... he had plenty of those, and they still felt somewhat like speech, only mental. Even beings who spent their whole lives with implanted BCIs, like the iywkaa or the Mh'azhi, felt mostly the same about it, as his iywkaa coworkers and his cousin (who joined Yig a decade ago) confirmed. But this... this was different. The not-words echoed through his whole ego, on a level that felt more intimate than even directly activating the neurons that comprised his brain. Iraklijs was a Christian, yes, yet he felt that this communication was even more direct and immaculate than the voice of the Lord Himself. And all the better, it was mutual. All the tiredness that he had over the day, of running and crawling and fearing, seemed to subside.
Ekut meticulously scanned for any hidden doors, swinging the bulky device around, to no avail.
Iraklijs half-thought.
...
A hatch silently revealed itself on the ceiling of the tunnel. Iraklijs felt a pressure to not say anything, and simply point to it.
"...where did that thing come from...?" Zkeh said. "I do not remember sseeing it lasst time..."
"I did not have my scanner out, and Altair wasn't so bright then," Ekut shrugged. "You know what, let's check out what's inside it."
She shot a magnet-plunger inside and reeled the group in. It was pitch black and completely featureless, aside from moving, embossed circles on the walls and floor. The circles were, perhaps, ten centimeters wide and one centimeter tall.
Iraklijs felt he was controlling the circles in the same way he controlled his blinking. Yet a not-feeling, like a restraining bolt, prevented him from considering this in any way unusual or worthy of comment. It would make Altair upset, after all. This was a good decision.
According to Ekut's scan, the corridor was straight, pointed right towards the vestibule, and was 300 meters long. "We seem lucky," she said.
"Too lucky," Zkeh said, and glared at Iraklijs.