Chapter 6 - A Third Meeting
(in which there is speed, and tunnels, and liquid)
> "Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home."
> --James Joyce
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The curved floor of the chamber was difficult to even walk on outside of the center, and with Altair being dormant, it was hard to tell under the focused beams of the flashlights whether there were any non-uniformities to probe.
"Do we know for how long we were dragged?" Iraklijs said.
Spots clicked and looked at nothing in particular for a few moments. "...compared the dates of the logs. Five minutes or so."
"Not much. If we find a way out we should be right back there..."
Ekut coughed. "Considering this place is a fucking maze? Not so fast."
Silence followed.
Zkeh used the structural analyzer he effortlessly lugged around on his back to try and find any sort of weak spot or hidden door by trial and error, but the process of scouring the spherical room was tedious and arduous.
"We sshould have opened fire on that blob back then... Sspots, permission to sshoot anything we ssee that movess?"
Before Spots could say anything-- or perhaps the bquaa intentionally waited for her to chip in-- Ekut shook her head vigorously. "NO."
"But--"
"NO!"
"I mean--"
"IF YOU DO IT, I WILL--"
Spots outdid the sudden cascade of shouting, using a synthesized airhorn. Everyone including Tsip covered their ears. "We will stand by our policy of non-hostility first. Risk is too great otherwise."
Zkeh hissed but said nothing else.
Thirty minutes passed, and everyone began growing desperate.
"Buried alive," Spots intoned. "How even get carried here in the first place? Has to be an exit. We as a group will be able to find one. Don't give up."
A feeling of doubt crept further over Iraklijs, despite Spots' miniature speech. "Please wake up... please," he mumbled, clutching the little pyramid in his hands.
The human stared and stared into its depths, and saw that a black, cloudy malaise began to overtake its surface, like soot. He began to cry quietly. Was it really over for his long-time friend? But how could a synthetic being fail to resist an affliction that an organic mind could shrug off, even with great difficulty? The answer evaded him.
...
Ekut knelt down and stared at the floor. "There's black soot raining down from somewhere on the ceiling," she paused. "It's... slimy."
Iraklijs suddenly brightened up and rubbed his gloved finger against one of Altair's faces. The black malaise smudged away. He chuckled out loud, prompting stares from the rest. Altair was indeed simply dormant... most likely. That was not what occupied Iraklijs' mind, however.
On the ceiling, at the top end of the sphere, was a growing black circle, shifting and changing, dribbling down globs of black goo that quickly pulverized into aerosol around halfway through their fall. Everyone instinctually stepped away from the spot directly under the circle, remembering the incident in the toxic ruins at Pellumawida.
It grew like a black hole absorbing surrounding material, and then suddenly peeled back into the hallway above, creating a more mundane kind of hole.
Gleaming like a wad of radioactive slurry in Pellumawida, a blob identical to the one that seized the group slid through the opening and dropped in.
Spots gurgled something incoherent as it fell, thankfully slow enough for Ekut to react by whipping out her grappler and shooting a plunger into the distant abyss above. "GRAB ON! NOW!"
It was all a blur of frantic movements. Zkeh nearly dropped the priceless analyzer, but it all went without a hitch otherwise, and after a quick zip all five were standing at the rim of a circular pit, with the rope safely recovered. The corridor was tall and wide, broader than even the mothership's halls. The ceiling vibrated slightly, while a single groove ran across the middle of the floor. There were many hatches lining the walls, each of which looked firmly shut.
"...does anyone have any damn clue where we are?" Iraklijs said, his voice warbling in desperation.
"No," Spots shook their head.
The hole wasn't closing.
Instead, there was a noise like that of a hundred powerful desk fans at once emanating from inside. The explorers took a few steps back, pointing their flashlights at the air in front of them, casting the beams into the desolate depths of the hall.
Rising from the hole was the living metal monster. A helicopter rotor, formed out of its matter, propelled it upwards.
Nobody even had time to react...
Because there was the quiet zap of a laser carbine, and there was a clunk, and there was a crash. The severed rotor detached, hit the ceiling, and fell back in alongside its owner.
"Run," Tsip said.
As soon as Iraklijs stepped onto the groove in the middle (by accident; he knew to not step into weird crevices through experience and others' experiences), he felt some kind of force yank him forwards by one foot. He yelped in surprise as he was dragged forward, accelerating along the straight corridor. Trying his best to not lose balance and become a meat crayon, he placed his other foot on the track, thus stabilizing. Soon, the speed became constant, around 20 km/h according to the BCI's internal speedometer. Apparently, the 'force' propelling him was no force at all, but actually minute contractions of the groove's surface. Antigravity was impossible, after all, and even precursors had to obey physics.
At first he screamed in fear, but then realized this was... kind of fun? The wind whined against his face as the hatches zipped past. Iraklijs figured that this was some kind of underground road, if not a highway, serving as transport for the blobs and whatever else was there.
The others hesitated for a moment, but decided to follow in an orderly manner... as orderly as they could in such a panic, anyway. Like a twisted version of a figure-skating train, they held onto each other's arms and arm-like appendages as they zipped forward, with Spots at the front. Iraklijs was ten meters in front of the train.
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All of this happened in, perhaps, thirty seconds.
He turned around. "I was beginning to think I wouldn't see you again!"
"Too," Spots said.
"How are we gonna slow down?!" Ekut said.
Iraklijs looked at the hard floor to the sides of the track, which was now peppered by various knob-like obstructions of unknown purpose, narrowly missing the bottoms of his pants.
"You know, when I was in the holotheater livecrew as a kid, they told me to 'break a leg'," he chuckled nervously.
He heard Ekut gulping loudly.
The walls and hatches suddenly gave way to a messy network of pipes, big and small, so twisty and curvy that it more resembled a gigantic brain. And much like a stereotypical depiction of neurons, these pipes were semitranslucent, with colorful lights dancing inside that nevertheless gave no light to the corridor. The ceiling smoothly transitioned to this intricate sight too, leaving only the floor dark and uniform. It was like a strip of opaque and thus dark material embedded in a seemingly infinite lattice of glassy pipes.
Iraklijs had just started recording a video when he saw that the road... ended in the distance. He couldn't yet tell what it ended in.
All he could think about now was Ekut's question. The one that was even more urgent now.
...
...and this time, there was no answer. Ekut realized that too.
The translucent wall in the front was getting closer and closer. "JUMP OFF OR YOU'LL SPLATTER!" Iraklijs yelled as he pushed himself off from the track and tucked his knees to his chest as he tumbled to the side, clutching his precious backpack in his arms.
A pain akin to a dozen hammers beating on his back resonated through his spine as he bounced along. Iraklijs clenched his teeth and relished the way the hammers slowed down as his excruciating tumble came to a gradual stop.
While he was catching his breath, he saw that the rest of the group dealt with the tumble in a somewhat more orderly manner: Zkeh leaped off to the other side and hastily repositioned himself to take the brunt of the impact as the others held onto his back. His coat was ripped, but thanks to his bulk he managed to stay upright and avoid the destruction of the equipment strapped to his back or injuries to his friends. The chohjozra slid across the knobs on the floor with a horrible scraping sound, and some of his talons snapped with gunshot-like cracks.
Now there was silence once again.
"...is everyone okay?" Iraklijs asked, carefully feeling various parts of his body to verify that nothing broke, then opening his backpack to verify the same. Indeed, both his bones and his tools were fine.
"I think that this is one of the least bad outcomes," Ekut said as she dismounted from her savior, who stared at his now-mangled claws. He was clearly in pain.
"My toess hurt," Zkeh snarled. "...disslocated a few..."
While he seemed outwardly calm, anyone who had spent a lot of time around his species could tell he was in agony. Chohjozra were simply good at hiding pain and emotions in general.
"You still walk?" Spots said. "Very bad if not extremely bad."
Zkeh grunted and moved from side to side, then did what appeared to be a few slow, flowing exercise moves. "Asside from the pain... yess..." he reached into his pack and injected a painkiller syringe.
Spots, Tsip, and Ekut were obviously unhurt, the former two being gelatinous and the latter having good reflexes, which saved them from any notable injuries.
"Now where are we?" Iraklijs stood up.
Suddenly, a voice chimed from his pocket. "We're in a hallway," the pyramid echoed.
"Altair!" Iraklijs beamed. "I thought you wouldn't wake up! Do you remember what happened?"
"Negative."
"...I don't think we can waste any time explaining," he sighed.
"No matter the case, for some reason my internal power supply is mostly discharged. Expect three hours of downtime."
Iraklijs smiled and tucked Altair back in.
Ekut walked around, looking at the brain-like walls. "I have a few theories. First, that this is some kind of immense computer, but then I don't know the purpose of the dots. Second, that these pipes are actually part of the same transport network that we just zipped down, and that the glowing dots are... something. Third, that the dots are the sapient Silents, and that this is some kind of upload-hive," she paused. "All of these theories have their own flaws. I recommend that we don't even touch the pipes and just go to the end of the tunnel. The blob might be about to follow us."
Zkeh groaned and got up. The others nodded, They crept to the end, where the strip of the 'road' ran right into the lattice.
There were two man-sized tunnels going vertically down, curving in a biological manner reminiscent of intestines, though markedly less meandering. In fact, up close, this whole area resembled the bowels of some immense beast, vitreous just like the planet.
A single circular hole served as the entrance to both tunnels at a merging point, seemingly the only one as they quickly diverged.
Ekut stared at them. "No time, blob will come after us. Pick a path and jump in."
Iraklijs sighed. "Let me scout ahead first..."
He sent out a small quadcopter, identical to the one that was vaporized in the chasm, and guided it into the opening.
As soon as the drone entered the tube itself, no longer being in direct line of sight with Iraklijs' head, it suddenly lost control and clattered down the left tunnel. The human simply grimaced, realizing that the pipes must be fully absorbing the signal waves. "Again...? Look, these things are precious. If we were gonna go down those tubes, we might as well retrieve the quad. Everyone, go to that one."
"I feel I would get sstuck in it..." Zkeh hissed.
Spots looked at Zkeh, then at the tube, then back at Zkeh. "No you won't. Just big enough. No time left!"
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"This is actually kind of fun," Iraklijs said as he slid down the narrow canal, surrounded by the lattice. The 'road' was not visible even when he looked at the spot where it must have been, and he surmised that perhaps the lattice was not so large in size after all. Unlike in the hallway, the light actually was cast onto objects near the pipes, and everyone's eyes struggled to adjust to the brightness.
But it was a foreboding and cold kind of light; this unhomely feeling was helped by the extreme frigidity of the hard, glass-like tubes.
He was at the front of a chain that Ekut was at the back of; she had used her grapple to hook onto the entrance. They were no longer feeling pursued. If the blob was intent on following them, it would have already caught up. Most likely, it thought that the group went the other way.
"There it is," Iraklijs said as the tunnel reached a bend, turning horizontal. He picked up the drone and inspected it. "Looks fine. Thank God."
Ekut chuckled. "Why thank the entity that would be responsible for trapping us in the first place?"
"Because... because... oh whatever, not now," Iraklijs mumbled.
Tsip looked over his shoulder, staring into the distance. "Exit. Ahead."
There was a small black circle in the distance, at the end of the now-straight tunnel. According to the rangefinder, it was indeed an opening and not just a wall.
Silently they crawled, and just as silently they arrived. Behind the hatch-less opening was a small ledge, and below the ledge was a pool of some clear liquid that shimmered in an unnaturally bright manner under the glow of the explorers' flashlights. There seemed to be no end to the area it was in: the ceiling and walls, which assuredly lay somewhere in the distance, were obscured by some kind of mist, seemingly more mundane and benign than the black fog.
"This isn't water," Spots intoned. "Nope nope nope."
"Why," Tsip said.
"Water doesn't glimmer like this. Spots isn't sure if you've even seen a body of water before. In any case, nobody take a swim."
Iraklijs looked at his puffy clothes and weighty backpack. "Thanks for the tip, I was gonna just jump in and do the backstroke."
"Also, water would be frozen in this environment," Ekut said. "We should treat this stuff as toxic, corrosive, or both."
After an awkward pause, Zkeh hissed sadly. "Do we just go back?"
"Looks like it," Spots said and turned around, only for Iraklijs to tap them on the shoulder.
"Floe!"
And there was indeed something resembling an ice floe, except rectangular, perfect, and made of shiny metal, somehow slowly moving across the liquid's surface despite the lack of a visible current.
Ekut squinted. "Do we really want to..."
Zkeh's ear-fins perked up. "I hear ssubtle infrassound vibrationss... ssomething tellss me it iss the blob coming for uss."
Ekut sighed, then looked behind her. There was indeed a dark blotch visible in the depths of the lattice. She became frantic.
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Before long, they were all safely perched on the floe. It tilted slightly under the group's weight, but overall remained stable, gently propelled forwards by some unseen engine.
It was as if they were not, in fact, in an underground complex, but on the surface of some kind of ocean planet, perpetually draped in a thick blanket of pea-soup fog. The beams of the flashlights appeared as luminant cones that faded off in the impenetrable mist.
"Are you sure this was a good idea?" Iraklijs said, looking down at the unnaturally clear 'water'. He took a sample using a handheld analyzer the size of a datapad. Instead of chemicals, the quick composition breakdown simply showed "NANITE SLURRY 100%".
He was about to set the analyzer to in-depth breakdown mode when he heard an echoing voice behind him. "Are you sure this was a good idea?"
There was a thing of mirror-like metal, standing like a velociraptor, akin to Ekut, but on human legs. Its tail had a hand like Zkeh's, its arms were tentacles like Spots', it had Tsip-like antennas for ears, and its face... was that of Iraklijs, in a way that more resembled a death mask.
The others were still there, thankfully, but nobody knew what to do except point fingers and weapons.
"Are you sure this was a good idea?"