A telephone made of black bakelite rang out in the dead of night.
The phone on the night stand rang out again. This time somebody started to move in the bed next to it and then reach out their hand to find a light switch next to the telephone. The few dozen watts used by the incandescent bulb were plenty for a light which initially only blinded. The light reflected off the surface of the black bakelite and cast the whole bedroom in dirty yellow tones.
Before the phone rang again, a hairy arm reach out to lift the receiver.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?!” an upset yet sleepy voice asked.
The hand moved the phone on the nightstand to reveal a small mechanical clock with a thick glass pane covering the dial. The clock was showing the third morning hour.
“Comrade major general.” A diplomatic voice in the phone said. “Code: red epsilon.”
“Red epsilon?” the anger in the voice was gone at a moment’s notice.
“Red epsilon confirmed.” The voice in the phone repeated. “A car has bee dispatched.”
The phone call terminated. The man in the bed threw the blanket off and got up. He stepped towards the uniform hanging on a coat hook next to the door and started dressing. Only a few minutes later he was pulling on his boots and then stood before the mirror to finish buttoning up the overcoat.
He put on the uniform cap and then grabbed a small bottle of pepper vodka and a glass which stood beside the mirror. He filled the glass with vodka and drank it. He then examined his reflection in the half-lit room. Gray beard a few days old, graying hair visible from under the cap, a big nose and small eyes close together, the cap sitting on top of a high forehead. He filled the glass again and downed it. In the middle of the night, pepper vodka was a better than any coffee for dispelling any sleepiness.
“Major general Anatoly Volkov. Commander of the 47. secret base with special subordination. 12th main directorate. This is your day.” He sighed.
Anatoly Volkov was an experienced officer. His father had been a polkovnik of Red Army in the Great Patriotic War, his grandfather had been an officer in the czarist army. And now him as the final link in this glorious chain. Having sat here for six years now, having accepted the rank of major general and taken a post in a rear base at some irrelevant republic and turned his back on any chances for a glorious service in Afganistan.
Somebody up high in the defense ministry of the Soviet Union had put their eye on him. Somebody has chosen him and made him an offer that he could not refuse. To head a secret base with experimental aims numbered 47, hidden under the direct purview of the 12th main directorate. A base the activities of which stymied even the scientists in their white overcoats, never mind the military officers or people in Moscow. To risk dying of liver disease in a couple of decades in utter oblivion in the name of a chance that should the mad academics not blow the base up and come up with something truly useful, he could have a promotion skipping several steps to becoming not only a general, but a general with actual power and influence.
He turned his attention to the dark window in the bedroom, behind which a rainstorm was beating down. Despite the wind and rain he could see the glass panes shudder when on the other side of the window and behind and black hedge row, a convoy meant for him approached along a potholed village road.
He shut off the lights and walked through the empty and sparsely furnished house, which looked almost unused. He opened the wooden front door and stood on the front porch under the asbestos fiber cement roof in front of the small brick building. There were street lights outside but strangely, they did not offer much illumination, as if all of it diffused into the darkness barely after leaving the mercury vapor bulbs. He did however see how three willys-type military vehicles made in the Ulyanovsky car factory had stopped right before a little paved path from the front door to the street. Out of the three, the front and rear ones had canvas roofs while the middle one had a metal roof.
One of the doors of the middle vehicle with the metal roof opened and a soldier emerged, producing an umbrella. He opened it and then walked towards the cottage along the paved path.
“Comrade major general!” the soldier saluted him. “We have code red epsilon. Your presence is required!”
“Do you know what is the cause of the alarm?” Volkov asked.
“The base sent a message that red epsilon has been born. That is all.”
“Very well.”
Volkov sighed and followed the sergeant to the vehicle, keeping under the umbrella the soldier held for him. It seemed to be a special model because it was hardly influenced by the rain and the strong gusts of wind. He got into the front seat of the car. The sergeant closed the umbrella and got onto the narrow back seat. As soon as he had closed the door, the convoy started moving towards the various checkpoints that needed to be crossed to exit the Officers’ Village. The village that was carefully hidden between the forests and additionally protected by minefields looking like nondescript grazing fields.
Six years had he stayed here. This was only a little less than the Officer’s Village here had in age. To be honest, suffering for a quarter of a century in a forgotten military base was not the only danger to doom his future. In the middle of the previous decade, the Officers Village had been to the North of here, closer to that nameless town. But then something happened. A base had produced the initial research, Agroprom had verified that all looked good, but the test fields next to the old Officers’ Village were a disaster. The plants became extremely toxic, winds carried the toxic clouds into the Officers’ Village and before becoming inert, poisoned some of the higher officers and the liquidator squads sent to burn everything away.
Containing the event locally did not succeed and it is still talked about as the Death Field Incident. The officially propagated story was that the compounds usually found in the rocket fuels entered biological processes and accumulated. But in reality, nobody knows what caused it or who is to blame. It is only known that the problem originated right here, from the 47th secret base. A file he had seen once labeled black gamma. The word black indicating that the experiment process has exited the base and info on local testing is allowed to be discussed in print.
Soon the convoy reached the first pair of gates, occluded by a two-story gate building. On a parking lot near the building 4 tanks stood ready for action, likewise there were heavy machine gun nests on the edges of the building for the 14.5 millimeter KPVs.
The convoy stopped at the gates and familiar security protocols were carried out. All vehicles were examined with bright flashlights, undersides of all vehicles were checked and of course the paperwork, which became soaked in heavy raindrops as soon as Volkov opened the door. Soon, the cars continued on the twisting road towards the next checkpoint. That had even more rigorous security, including identity verification and tanks running 24/7, treating any approaching vehicles from either side of the gate as possible threats. The tank turrets were only turned away for a brief moment when the all-clear was issued and they were allowed to pass.
According to the official paperwork, the security forces in the Officers’ Village and the nearby mechanized infantry battalion was subordinated to him. But in reality, he, despite nominally being the commanding officer of Object 47 had never even once managed to issue an order to any soldier here or guarding the Village. It was obvious that they were subordinated to a different unit of the 12th main directorate with a different command structure.
Major general Volkov looked outside the side window, trying to glimpse the roadside trees. After clearing the second gate they were finally outside the Officer’s Village and the local garrison and now heading towards the base.
There were things in the night. And the bases and roads built here were uninvited guests in this world where the nights were cold and dark. Not even on Siberian nuclear test sites had he encountered a world as hostile as this. He could not even explain what shape this hostility took, but everybody felt it, starting from the lowly recruits and ending with him. A heavy feeling of pressure weight on him. The darkness of the night and the weight of the rain, irreverent of fire and the electric light. The Forbidden Forest next to the base, the black forests around the Officers’ Village which looked like each night they got closer to the village. Stepping onto the mines and ripping buildings apart with their roots. An Unknowable Land, as men and vehicles sent there never returned. And even in carbon night, one could still sense the direction of the Nameless Town reminding them that what they were dealing with here was not exactly a typical corner of the world.
The Death Fields’ Incident was not the first or the last event in the endless archives of the base. If nothing else then these archives at least made one think why exactly had this place been so important to conquer and hold for the past 800 years. The importance of this place could even be considered desperate if one were to consider the past 300 years. And it had been even more important to keep the value of this place secret from the mundane world. Von Schwann only concentrated the forces hidden in here, he created the foundations that others later built on. Including the great Union of Socialist Soviet Republics which had made prominent advances in this field when compared to both the imperialists and fascists.
Outside the car window the faint lights on the lead vehicle started to illuminate the fields by the Cottage Raion. This was the last settlement to cross before they reached the base. A sleepy cottage district filled with locals where nothing seemed to change. The locals were a strange folk all of their own. The did not sense the endless darkness of the night nor the haunting frost. They were not afraid to get lost in the night and ending up dead by morning. Not even the Forbidden Forest nor the Nameless Town was something particularly special or threatening to them. They just were. Part of a corner of a world they had lived with since childhood. Which they had learned to live with. Perhaps that was the reason they were not scared of the nights here. That may have been the reason they did not need armed convoys and powerful spotlights cutting into the darkness to do things in the night.
But them, the soldiers, their bases and research institutes, were strangers. Forcefully scattered here. And it could be felt. It could be felt how this place continuously alienated them. How the nature here was at best tolerating the wounds cut into it and not without scorn.
How was is possible that a location had such a strong spirit? What had happened here? What had the von Schwanns and their physical and spiritual descendants done here that it twisted this corner of the world into such a misshapen abhorrence? The base had an entire faculty dedicated to researching the history of the town and the Institute and despite hundred of volumes, help and resources from the Institute itself and a fully reconstructed timeline, it was still impossible to answer what had happened.
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Whether anything had happened at all. Locations and named changed but the nature remained the same. People, the Institute and all the unexplainable mysteries of the world remained the same. This corner of the world traversed history, it had done that for centuries, yet at a surface glance, hardly anything had changed.
On such short yet long drives to the base or to the village, especially in dark nights like this when the grass on the fields and on the side of the road took on a layer of white frost, Volkov sometimes started to doubt whether the rest of the world, the world outside the town and the surrounding area, even existed at all.
Radio connection with the other bases was impossible to establish, the best they could achieve was one or two seconds of connection despite the massive amounts of RF power poured into the air. Even local short-wave radio was affected, allowing few hundred meters of range at best. And copper cables which had taken considerable manpower to lay down, either spontaneously tore apart or were chewed through by unknown forest critters nobody had ever seen nor heard.
Rides just like this when no passenger said a word. Even the radio transceivers put into the cars stayed silent or were filled with white noise. When no trouble occurred and on the sides of the road one could often see flashed of lone pairs of eyes one could not classify as human or animal. On nights like these, Volkov felt that he himself as well other Soviet citizens who had come here were now trapped here, as if in a bog. And even if they managed to get out and leave this place, then they would be leaving it as something lesser than they had been when they arrived. They left for a world that was colder and more distant, a world which was less than the world they had come from. This here was a Borderland. A Zone.
The convoy stopped at a rusty gate on a wide gravel road bordering the Forbidden Forest. From the right window, he could see the trees of the Forbidden Forest, while from the driver side window, there was a concrete fence and the trees of the Southern Forest where no man had gone to for a long time now. And even if anybody had, none had returned. The full power high beams of the Russian willys vehicle diffused before they reached even the barely visible tail lights of the vehicle right in front of them. Likewise, did the full power lights of the front vehicle barely illuminate the gate and chain link right in front of it.
Guard in a rain slicker examined the soaked paperwork and then signaled the guard post to open the gates and switch on the spotlight on top of the gate.
Volkov already knew the road ahead. In this this carrion darkness one could only imagine how the road turned into an incline 500 meters ahead, and then reached the blast doors of the underground shelter and embedded machine gun nests on either side of the massive doors. The darkness did also not reveal the massive field of concrete slabs. Bordered by steel towers with powerful gas discharge spotlights. This was the landing field for helicopters along with hidden elevators into the underground hangars. Also, on the border of the Southern Forest, there was another incline into the underground tank base. Further in the east there was a small artificial lake created from pumping the surface water out from the lower levels of the base.
Supposedly, major general Volkov was a commander of this base, yet many key parameters of the base were being kept secret from him. This included the details on the scientific and technical personnel, number and list of the research departments, even the full area of the base, number of sub-levels or even depth. Also electrical and other technical specifications. Only means to ascertain the extent or activities of the base was either to look into the documents kept by the history department or to wait until a research department had something to show, so he could be present and confirm that something had indeed been achieved. Or when another incident takes place. Usually, incidents revealed more than achievements, because the reports on those were also understandable to non-technical people.
The convoy rode deep into the underground base and stopped in gigantic motorpool.
“Major general.” A man with polkovnik shoulder boards smiled, as he opened the front passenger door of the willys.
“You had something to show me?” Volkov asked.
“Follow me, please.”
As major general Volkov followed the nameless polkovnik, he had time to examine the motor pool yet again. It seemed to be about ten meters tall, and shaped like a circle, with a radius of at least a hundred meters. In he center of the area, there was a circular section which contained the main staircase, the elevators as well as the guard post, gate controls and other facilities. The open area was divided up into nine or ten sectors, some for storing military vehicles, others for repairs, and one for guests, as this one also contained non-military vehicles like KGB spec limousines for high ranking members and guests as well as black Volgas to serve as motorcade vehicles.
They stepped into one of the elevators and as the elevator doors closed, the polkovnik removed a key hanging around his neck and opened a special panel next to the door, revealing a panel of several locks. Volkov could count at least 20 of them. The man put a key to one of the locks and turned it, after which the elevator started to descend at a rapid pace.
“Where are we going?” Volkov asked.
“That’s classified.” The polkovnik said.
He only smiled at Volkov, giving him an eerie feeling with his round face with no a hair on it, other than faint gray sideburns.
“I as a long-term commander of this base demand that you tell me where we are going!” He now said with militarist demeanor.
“You are not understanding me.” The polkovnik replied. “You are the commander of the surround base, but not the commander of object 47, which is surrounded by the base. Your assignment is to ensure the continued secrecy of the object and to reports its findings to Moscow.”
“Who is the commander of object 47?”
“Object 47 is an autonomous object. You are not subject to any other info beyond this detail. Just as a side note: threatening me or demanding things will not be of any help to you.”
The elevator started to slow down and finally stopped. The doors opened and Volkov stepped into a narrow hallway with metal walls and ceiling. Temporary power lines and few lights were attached to the walls. At the end of the hallway, he could see somebody on a ladder, welding something on the ceiling.
They walked along the main hallway, passing several adjoining hallways which looked almost identical to the main corridor. Same sections of steel making up the tunnels, same wiring, even same diffused illumination with a greenish yellow tint. Finally the polkovnik stopped in front of an adjacent hallway to the left. This one was different as there were two soldiers with assault rifles stationed there. Beyond the soldiers, there were several layers of thick plastic curtains.
“This way, comrade.” The polkovnik said.
Volkov stepped past the soldiers and parted the plastic drapes. He stepped in and headed towards the next pair, followed by yet another one. Beyond that last pair, the tunnel ended. There were no steel sections here, only a large circular room of stone, which looked like it had been explosively excavated. Steel beams and trusses supported the walls and the ceiling and in the middle of the room, there was a male figure in a white lab coat bent over some racked scientific equipment.
He raised his gaze towards the ceiling almost 3 meters high. There was a large circular metal frame about 7 meters across on the ceiling, with an uncountable number or thick wires connected to said frame, running down the walls and disappearing into the stone floor. The frame acted as a support for three pitch black spheres, resting on the frame and against each other, rolling around on it. Each sphere seemed to be smaller in diameter than the steel ring, but because there were three of them, trying to get through at once, all they could do is bunch up and roll around in the opening.
There was something curious though. As he looked at the spheres rolling, there was no sound. Neither could he tell, whether the three spheres were rolling clockwise or counter-clockwise. At one moment he thought they were clockwise, the other moment, its seemed the opposite. Honestly, he could not even tell if these spheres were physical or corporeal at all, they looked just within reach, parts of them was clearly lower than the steel circle on which they rolled, yet he could only see the outline of each sphere, he could not make any guesses as to the material of the spheres or where their edge was. They did not look like three-dimensional objects, rather like something that was drawn for an animated cartoon.
There were also faint multi-colored sparks, seemingly created from the spheres rubbing against each other. These sparks fell downwards but always faded before reaching the room underneath the spheres.
Volkov raised his hand in order to try and touch the spheres, but he could not reach.
“That is inadvisable.” A voice said.
Major general lowered his hand and his gaze, looking at the old man with gray hair reaching his shoulders. He had a similar mysterious smiles as did the polkovnik.
“Professor Joonas.” The man reached out with a bony hand, looking at Volkov over his thick glasses.
“Major general Volkov.” He replied, shaking the professor’s hand. “Why is it inadvisable? Is it dangerous?”
“Oh no.” The professor replied. “Well, we don’t know yet. But you have no hope of touching it, no matter how much you may try. These spheres may seem like they are there, but they are not.”
“What do you mean by that?” Volkov asked.
“Allow me to show you.”
Professor Jonas set an empty vodka bottle on the floor and put a large Chinese firework rocket with a guide stick into it.
“Are you insane!?” Volkov protested, looking at the professor bending over to alight the rocket. “It will bounce off the ceiling and explode in this very room!”
“Please trust me.” The professor replied.
He lit a match and used it to ignite the fuse, then retreating with quick steps.
The fuse burned up and the rocked headed towards the ceiling, but instead of bouncing off the ceiling and creating a chaos in the room, the rocked flew through the ceiling and headed towards the spheres finally disappearing from sight. When the rocket finally disappeared from sight, he could swear again that the spheres were slowly rotating and rolling on the metal circle and were not some backdrop to it.
The next moment, the firework exploded in silence, filling the black space beyond the metal circle with a massive multicolored display. When it faded, it looked as if the spheres rolling on the frame were again just about close enough to touch.
“Okay.” Volkov said, having calmed down. “What is it?”
“We don’t know.” The professor said as he shrugged. “The best theory until now has been that it is some sort of gate or a window. But a window to where, that we do not know.”
“How is it possible that this window does not suck the air or us into it?”
“We have contemplated that question.” The professor said. “Our theory is that it is not space in the conventional sense. Our world is three-dimensional. It has length, height and depth. The world you see up there has more dimensions. We only see it because photons are photons, they don’t care about the number of dimensions.”
“Yes. But what is it?”
“Comrade, I am an honest man.” The professor said. “If I say I have no idea, then I have no idea. I say it is an accident. It is an aperture in space-time which should have never happened. We don’t know what goes beyond this window, whether one can go there or survive the experience. We don’t even know how it happened. From our side it is only a 200 megawatt window.”
“A two hundred… megawatt?” Volkov asked.
“Yes.” Professor Jonas nodded. “It may sound like a big number, but the reactors at the bottom of the object...” he suddenly fell silent, realizing that he had revealed some classified information.
“I would like to think that this is the mechanism behind the world. That’s what the Universe really looks like. These are the building blocks of a space that curves in a straight line. These are not of the same matter as we are. These are not even the same space as we are. The fact that the rocket reached in there and successfully exploded does not mean that the natural laws in there would not be dissimilar to what they are here. As it was found in a simple and yet specific manner like this, I hazard to guess it is a temple.”
“A temple?”
“A temple.” The professor repeated. “A temple where all spatial beings come together for worship. A temple where all sentient beings in the universe come together to pray towards their common cosmic powers, their cosmic gods.”
“You do know that the Soviet people is an atheist people and is sufficiently enlightened by the scientific and technical progress to be able to disregard the lies of religion and the myth of god?” Volkov asked.
“Soviet people do not recognize Christianity or the Muhammad religion.” The professor said has he raised his finger and regarded Volkov over his glasses. “But if it disregards cosmic forces and gods, who undoubtedly have themselves personally touched this place and general area, then it is more blind than Christians and Muslims combined.”
“Do you really think that I would believe that there exist some kind of gods that float in open space between the stars and play their own games?”
“Why not?” The professor asked. “Finding this window was no coincidence. It is even possible that this chamber here is no coincide. Somebody has created it. And this somebody had to precede us.”
“And how do you imagine me reporting to Moscow of all this?” Volkov asked. “That gods exist!? That extra-terrestrials exist?! That both have visited and touched this corner of land? I’ll be laughed out of the army and sent to the psychiatric clinic!”
“That is entirely your problem!” The polkovnik said sternly as he stepped into the chamber. “Your assignment is to report our discoveries and findings to Moscow, especially the unofficial ones. It is up to you to what extent and how honestly you fulfill your duties. Maybe now you understand why the secrecy of this object is so important. On one side, the information found here is so unbelievable that for a layman, it lies far beyond fiction and schizophrenia. On the other hand, we cannot allow a single unrelated person running around disseminating this classified information, no matter how unbelievable or schizophrenic it may be. Your little visit in out object is over, comrade! Please come with me!”
“I still have many questions.” Volkov said. “You cannot force me to leave!”
“We all have questions.” The polkovnik said. “Questions which are never answered because they are too stupid to understand the real answers. We all have a lot of work to do. You have two options: to come with me voluntarily or to wake up in your own bed, not knowing whether all this has been a dream or a reality.”
The major general emitted a deep sigh, took a last look at the spheres rolling around above his head and followed the polkovnik into the dim metal hallway.
“One little remark if I may.” The polkovnik said as they walked back towards the elevator. “If what you just saw starts to appear in your nightmares, please let the medical personnel in the base know. They know what to do.”