Neural Pulse, Pt. 6 (Fiction)
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Jing and Mara discussed what we should take. My friend isolated one of the construction robots while the xenobiologist unhooked half the tools from his belt. They located the machine’s joints and rivets. They planned how to dismantle it so the pieces would fit in the container.
I watched standing, shifting my weight from leg to leg. During the exploration, I had floated with the current, but the waves had deposited me on a beach, and I was freezing. We had descended to the second sublevel of a deserted outpost. If the station noticed the training ship was missing, they would file a report against me.
Mara ripped several plates from the robot’s casing, and Jing detached an arm. When the machine lay dismantled like a personal ship in the back alleys of some outer-rim colony, the woman searched around with her flashlight beam until she located the container.
“Enough material to study, advanced or not.”
She ordered us to haul the loaded container to the ship and return with two containers programmed to follow us. Meanwhile, Mara would dismantle the materializer.
We hurried up the ramp. I was getting hot. Jing panted over the radio. Droplets of sweat tangled in his eyebrows, and his mouth hung open like a dog’s on a summer day.
As we approached the first sublevel, Mara’s voice broke up. We had failed to anticipate that the aliens would have built two basements tens of meters underground. We lacked repeaters. Before the indicator on my lens alerted me that I had lost the signal, I asked Mara to check her oxygen level and other vitals. She obeyed with the tone of a child irritated at being reminded of some chore.
In front of our ship, Jing and I emptied the container and stored the scrap in the cargo bay. I wanted to climb to the cockpit and check the radio. Would a message be waiting for me, where one of the station’s bored controllers demanded I identify myself? Every passing minute increased the risk of being discovered. The adrenaline flowing through my veins sharpened the ship’s outline and the landscape’s features. The days I had spent going out drinking, or flying over ash-grey moors on so many exploratory missions, had passed in a blur, but this mission I would remember.
Before Jing programmed the other containers to follow him back, I said I would go ahead and help Mara. I hurried over the sandy earth that carpeted the dome. The maintenance robot crossed my path on its rounds towards the mounted sarcophagus, and I dodged it. I ran down the ramp. The indicator on my lens notified me it had acquired Mara’s signal, although silence followed.
In the second sublevel, one of the construction robots lay gutted, and the other two waited arm to arm, but the basement ended in a bulkhead double door. I stopped mid-stride. I looked back at the ramp, wondering if I had somehow found a third sublevel, but the path ended here.
I was approaching the door when my flashlight illuminated the back of Mara’s golden suit and helmet; she was hunched over an adjacent panel. I thought she would notice my beam washing over her, but when she noticed me standing beside her, she startled. The reflections sliding across the visor hid her features, confining the woman within a shell.
“Did we somehow miss that the basement ended in a door?” I asked.
“In that case, Kirochka, we should get our eyes checked. While I was studying the wiring on the upper floor, I discovered it ran down to this sublevel and connected to this wall with an absurd power spike, as if feeding it. I felt along the wall until I touched several buttons, and after pressing some combination, this door and the panel revealed themselves.”
“What do you mean ‘revealed themselves’? Was it a hologram?”
“I suppose you could call it that.”
“Why would they conceal the door?”
“Maybe I’m projecting our intelligence onto theirs, but likely to hide another room.”
A wave of electricity surged through me. When I leaned towards the panel, my helmet brushed against Mara’s, and she took a step back. On the panel, a mosaic of five hexagonal buttons—marked with symbols made of intertwined multicolored curves—accompanied a display screen. I pressed a few buttons. The display reproduced each symbol.
“How will you figure out the code?”
Mara showed the pry bar she was holding.
“You’ll have the privilege of providing me with the alternative.”
I forced the panel until it came loose and hung by a tangle of colored wires like synthetic hair. My friend gripped an instrument I didn’t recognize. She clipped its pincers onto some wires in the panel’s guts. Sequences of code and text swept across the instrument’s screen, and Mara analyzed them.
Jing let out an exclamation. He stood before the ramp, then ran towards us. As his white beam washed over the double door, the xenobiologist unhooked the thermal camera from his belt.
I peered over his shoulder at the screen.
“A hologram was hiding the door.”
Jing pointed out, amidst the blue hues, two mirrored shapes a meter and a half tall—almond-nail-shaped struts supporting nothing. His mood soured.
“Empty.”
Mara straightened up and held the loose panel against the opening. She alternated between looking at her instrument and the panel as she pressed a button combination, while the display reproduced the chosen symbols. She stepped back. My helmet muffled a sound of gears. Mara and I waited shoulder to shoulder as the door’s sliding leaves slid into the rock.
In the center of a basement the size of a bedroom, between two metal struts, levitated a creature like some superorganism floating in an abyssal depth. Its layers of translucent, undulating skin intersected each other. A tangle of energy. Across its surface, pink and purple patches flowed like watery reflections.
We approached, aiming the ovals of our beams onto the struts to avoid letting the wash of light blur the creature, or artifact. Did it belong to those who had excavated the outpost and built the robots? No, the installation must have grown up around it, as if through this totem some god had ordered its servants to settle here.
“What does this thing suggest to you?” I said.
Mara grinned from ear to ear, showing white teeth worn down as if from chewing her nails daily.
“I have no idea what it is.”
-----
Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s song is “Acid Rain” by LORN.
Jing and Mara discussed what we should take. My friend isolated one of the construction robots while the xenobiologist unhooked half the tools from his belt. They located the machine’s joints and rivets. They planned how to dismantle it so the pieces would fit in the container.
I watched standing, shifting my weight from leg to leg. During the exploration, I had floated with the current, but the waves had deposited me on a beach, and I was freezing. We had descended to the second sublevel of a deserted outpost. If the station noticed the training ship was missing, they would file a report against me.
Mara ripped several plates from the robot’s casing, and Jing detached an arm. When the machine lay dismantled like a personal ship in the back alleys of some outer-rim colony, the woman searched around with her flashlight beam until she located the container.
“Enough material to study, advanced or not.”
She ordered us to haul the loaded container to the ship and return with two containers programmed to follow us. Meanwhile, Mara would dismantle the materializer.
We hurried up the ramp. I was getting hot. Jing panted over the radio. Droplets of sweat tangled in his eyebrows, and his mouth hung open like a dog’s on a summer day.
As we approached the first sublevel, Mara’s voice broke up. We had failed to anticipate that the aliens would have built two basements tens of meters underground. We lacked repeaters. Before the indicator on my lens alerted me that I had lost the signal, I asked Mara to check her oxygen level and other vitals. She obeyed with the tone of a child irritated at being reminded of some chore.
In front of our ship, Jing and I emptied the container and stored the scrap in the cargo bay. I wanted to climb to the cockpit and check the radio. Would a message be waiting for me, where one of the station’s bored controllers demanded I identify myself? Every passing minute increased the risk of being discovered. The adrenaline flowing through my veins sharpened the ship’s outline and the landscape’s features. The days I had spent going out drinking, or flying over ash-grey moors on so many exploratory missions, had passed in a blur, but this mission I would remember.
Before Jing programmed the other containers to follow him back, I said I would go ahead and help Mara. I hurried over the sandy earth that carpeted the dome. The maintenance robot crossed my path on its rounds towards the mounted sarcophagus, and I dodged it. I ran down the ramp. The indicator on my lens notified me it had acquired Mara’s signal, although silence followed.
In the second sublevel, one of the construction robots lay gutted, and the other two waited arm to arm, but the basement ended in a bulkhead double door. I stopped mid-stride. I looked back at the ramp, wondering if I had somehow found a third sublevel, but the path ended here.
I was approaching the door when my flashlight illuminated the back of Mara’s golden suit and helmet; she was hunched over an adjacent panel. I thought she would notice my beam washing over her, but when she noticed me standing beside her, she startled. The reflections sliding across the visor hid her features, confining the woman within a shell.
“Did we somehow miss that the basement ended in a door?” I asked.
“In that case, Kirochka, we should get our eyes checked. While I was studying the wiring on the upper floor, I discovered it ran down to this sublevel and connected to this wall with an absurd power spike, as if feeding it. I felt along the wall until I touched several buttons, and after pressing some combination, this door and the panel revealed themselves.”
“What do you mean ‘revealed themselves’? Was it a hologram?”
“I suppose you could call it that.”
“Why would they conceal the door?”
“Maybe I’m projecting our intelligence onto theirs, but likely to hide another room.”
A wave of electricity surged through me. When I leaned towards the panel, my helmet brushed against Mara’s, and she took a step back. On the panel, a mosaic of five hexagonal buttons—marked with symbols made of intertwined multicolored curves—accompanied a display screen. I pressed a few buttons. The display reproduced each symbol.
“How will you figure out the code?”
Mara showed the pry bar she was holding.
“You’ll have the privilege of providing me with the alternative.”
I forced the panel until it came loose and hung by a tangle of colored wires like synthetic hair. My friend gripped an instrument I didn’t recognize. She clipped its pincers onto some wires in the panel’s guts. Sequences of code and text swept across the instrument’s screen, and Mara analyzed them.
Jing let out an exclamation. He stood before the ramp, then ran towards us. As his white beam washed over the double door, the xenobiologist unhooked the thermal camera from his belt.
I peered over his shoulder at the screen.
“A hologram was hiding the door.”
Jing pointed out, amidst the blue hues, two mirrored shapes a meter and a half tall—almond-nail-shaped struts supporting nothing. His mood soured.
“Empty.”
Mara straightened up and held the loose panel against the opening. She alternated between looking at her instrument and the panel as she pressed a button combination, while the display reproduced the chosen symbols. She stepped back. My helmet muffled a sound of gears. Mara and I waited shoulder to shoulder as the door’s sliding leaves slid into the rock.
In the center of a basement the size of a bedroom, between two metal struts, levitated a creature like some superorganism floating in an abyssal depth. Its layers of translucent, undulating skin intersected each other. A tangle of energy. Across its surface, pink and purple patches flowed like watery reflections.
We approached, aiming the ovals of our beams onto the struts to avoid letting the wash of light blur the creature, or artifact. Did it belong to those who had excavated the outpost and built the robots? No, the installation must have grown up around it, as if through this totem some god had ordered its servants to settle here.
“What does this thing suggest to you?” I said.
Mara grinned from ear to ear, showing white teeth worn down as if from chewing her nails daily.
“I have no idea what it is.”
-----
Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s song is “Acid Rain” by LORN.
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