Chapter III25.VI.2022
There was a round, blissfully clean room with the ribbed, warm to touch metal floor, similar to one on the dark path. It was covered by a glass dome which served as a screen, a fake window, displaying the room floating in the evening sky above thick clouds. The illusion broke immediately, when Tayne noticed absence of any Sun in that sky – yet, also like on the dark path, light in the room still was bright and came from all directions, leaving no shadows. Light flavour of lavender filled the air here.
A long yet low darkwood table stood in the center, cluttered with all things from paper notes to holoscrolls, with a vintage mid-millenia laptop positioned in the middle. Pillows, armchairs and beanbags were scattered all around the table, and Yasimir quickly grabbed one of the armchairs, positioning themself behind the laptop.
"As you can see, Naia, we made significant progress in our research since you and Komi left," – Yasimir continued their fast-paced chatter. – "The dark path is just one of the inventions, though it was the one that I helped to create. Our lab creates dimensions at will with automated tools now, and we currently prioritize two goals: mapping the entire close Metacosmos and stress-testing the laws of its physics. And talking about the former, a while ago we discovered a new growing realm in a place previously empty – truly a unique occurance! – with trail data pointing towards the Lua system. Now, let me find one recording…"
Yasimir delved into their laptop; Tayne wandered around the room for a bit, touching the walls, before eventually plopping down on a beanbag; and Caithe settled on an armchair immediately. She looked incredibly inspired ever since she saw Yasimir, and now she utilised the break – unrolling her scrollphone to actively write something in.
"Terribly sorry!" – Yasimir finally stopped their clicking around, – "found it! Look, here's the map of the area!"
And in a click of a mouse the room fell into pure darkness. The only things left visible was Naia's dim body and Yasimir's face, lit up by the laptop screen. Yasimir made a couple more clicks, and the screen's light also went out – but instead other pictures began appearing around the room, that looked woven from silver moonlight. Yasimir stood up – now they were more or less visible.
"So, this is your star system in proportion," – Yasimir began, pointing at a ball of light hovering just above their laptop, representing Lua. – "Rendered thirteen standard days ago. There's Hena'an," – they waved their hand towards a tiny sparkling dot, that slowly approached Tayne's head. She turned towards it, following the movement as the planet passed in front of her eyes, accompanied by an even tinier moon – Feda'an. No detail were visible on either of those – the quality of this render had a limit.
"Now i'll turn on the Metacosmos," – said Yasimir and tapped a button.
An arrangement of red dots popped up all around Hena'an, following it; another red speck appeared inside Lua, shining through it. A larger amoeba-like formation also popped up, colored in hot orange and located near the end of Yasimir's table in the ecliptic plane.
Yasimir started waving their hands even more, pointing at one object after another. "These are the dimensions within the Metacosmos, the red ones are the escape dimensions, and this orange one is… an old experiment, let's say it like that – it has no relevance to the problem. The color depicts how far the dimension is from our universe, its depth in the Metacosmos."
"Like, in the fourth dimension?" – asked Tayne.
Yasimir smiled: quite a good approximation, actually. "There are more dimensions than four, but something along these lines, yes. That's a completely normal picture, it's," – they consulted the screen, – "yep, still standard day sixty one of this year, the interesting part happens a day later, let me just skip to it…"
They pulled some slider with a mouse, and Hena'an quickly jumped away from Tayne to somewere near Caithe. Then it continued to traverse space like normal. And then…
It was as if Hena'an spit out something. A dot, turning in a line, then in a branching fractal, then in a deformed amoeba, it arose above the ecliptic plane, changing colours from red to orange to yellow to lime green and growing, growing, growing… It slowly ascended to the ceiling, and then Yasimir sped up time – and in a single Hena'ans year (around ten standard days – Lua was a small star, and Hena'an orbited it closely) turned deep blue and spreaded several meters across, slowly coming to a halt both in growth and movement.
Caithe looked at this cosmic curiosity with terror.
"Something or someone managed to seed the Metacosmos with this… thing," – stated Yasimir, – "and don't be tricked with its relatively small size on screen. It's located extreemly deep, near the very limits of what we consider close Metacosmos, meaning way larger actual dimensions. This is a whole another universe, with asteroids, planets, stars, it's only ten times smaller in volume than the Cosmos itself, yet populated way more compactly. No Archon, no machine, not even our newest reality guns can create anything of this size. And to top it all off, it comes with sentient life."
"How advanced of a life?" – quickly asked Tayne.
Yasimir laughed. "Fortunately for us, not that advanced! They only hold around a thousand systems, around three hundred planets, usage of those being severely inefficient. Their technology is basically ancient, their data protection is laughable, and they aren't even politically united! Maybe could've competed with us in the tenth millenia, but certainly not now," - they paused for a second to catch breath, as they talked faster and faster in excitement. - "Yet there's a catch…"
Tayne interrupted. "You studied it all that quickly?"
"I said, their data protection's laughable," – Yasimir closed something on the laptop, and the render disappeared, giving back the way for the sunless sky. – "They have a primitive analogue of our Cosmarium, that we entirely downloaded in the first day, then it's just the matter of sorting it all automatically. All protocols were ready for if we found something like that with the Realm Door…"
Yasimir took a break to drink some water from the table. Tayne was so hooked up on the story, that she havent even noticed Caithe hiding her face in the palms mid-speech, whispering something in fear. Naia noticed, though, and reached to comfort her.
"So, about the catch," – Yasimir continued, – "even with their generally low development, they still surpass us in one specific field. The Metacosmos. And while we spied on them, they already knew about the Cosmos. On the fourth day of their existance, they sent a starship through the Metacosmos, that managed to almost entirely avoid our renderers and entered the Cosmos around six standard hours ago. While the department still discussed if we should initiate the first contact, the ship entered Hena'ans atmosphere, and then… well, then we evacuated you here."
"And what have they done next?" – quietly asked Caithe.
"Well," – Yasimir's voice dropped, – "they hit the village with a powerful EMP, then destroyed your house and carpet-bombed the garden, leaving the atmosphere and exiting the Cosmos shortly after," – Yasimir took a deep breath and went silent for a few seconds. – "My condolences."
Naia, who was silent throughout the whole conversation – they already knew the first part of it in vague detail – leaned back and closed their eyes. Their house… Well, the microbots will probably roughly restore it in a day from an old matrix, but it won't feel natural for Naia to live in there for a while. Weird, considering the nature of their own being as an assembly of microbots with digital consciousness, but still… And the garden, too… That hit the hardest, as the garden almost was the second self for them.
«What if i stayed in bed for an hour more?» – thought Tayne, and her heart missed a few beats.
"Why for stars' sake was it our house?!" – she exclaimed.
"We don't know, that's part of why I reached for you…" – started Yasimir, but quickly got interrupted:
"Do you have pictures of the ship? Can I look?" – Caithe sounded very quiet and more serious than ever.
Yasimir expected that question… though maybe not from Caithe. "We do," – they instantly opened a file and turned the laptop around.
Caithe got up and looked. Scrolled through a couple shots. And her face turned pale white.
Yasimir began realizing what truly happened. "You recognise it?"
Caithe silently went back to her beanbag and fell on it face down.
"Wait, you, like, really recognise it?" – Tayne also got up and looked at the ominous, dark metal cruciformed starship, shot from above, probably from some sort of a satellite. It hasn't triggred anything at first, as Tayne mentally scrolled through popular media on aliens and history of space travel…
But then she remembered a drawing that used to be put up in their room, on a wall behind the bed…
"This," – Caithe almost whispered and talked very slowly, – "is a Devastator. And not just any Devastator, but the Emperor's Wrath. The private battleship of the Watchdog and the Garbage Collector, social janitors for the High Emperor Yinlogon, who rules over the Starscape. And all these were characters in a book i'm writing. How…"
"Yeah, how?!" – exclaimed Tayne. – "Yasimir?!"
"Yasimir what?!" – they still seemed calm, but their voice started to crack with anger. – "It wasn't me who wrote the book! Naia, we talked to you about this…"
"And i talked to the kids about this," – Naia sounded just… broken, shocked with the sheer impossibility of the situation. – "I told the kids everything they wanted to know, and since Caithe cant even enter the Metacosmos for long enough, why should I have thought this to be a possible outcome with her current skill level?"
"I told you several times – its not about the skill level! The Metacosmos responds to our brainwaves, and it normally only does that when we consciously force it while asleep, since anything else is too noisy to have an influence, but Caithe and Tayne…"
And then reality shattered.
In a single instant, half the dome exploded into pieces, scattering glass all around, tearing beanbags and blowing paper off the table. Only Naia with their digital brain were barely fast enough to react to this – and they did, by throwing Caithe behind an armchair and covering Tayne with their own body. Shards bounced off their body, leaving no marks on the powerful forcefield. But Yasimir, being out of Naia's reach, withstood the hit of the deadly wave and slowly collapsed on the knees, hissing in pain.
Behind their back, where the glass exploded, a gaping hole was now opened to the whirling black mist of the outside – and a giant dark metal construction appeared from that mist. A wall of a starship, made from metal sheets welded together, covered in rivets, handrails, screws, hazy illuminators, it was sliding across at the speed of a train, yet gradually slowing down.
"Run…" – whispered Yasimir, but then realised – they have nowhere to run – got up through pain and reached for the laptop.
Without saying a word, Naia zoomed over there, grabbed the laptop, grabbed Yasimir and put them near the other half of the glass wall – covered in cracks, but still relatively stable.
"Open your damn path and we're out," – said Naia – and Yasimir reached the wall, drawing a line on it with a shaking hand, leaving a trail of blood on the glass.
Then Naia zoomed to the stunned kids still sitting on the floor, turned around – and saw the wall coming to a halt, with a three metre-diameter vault door that was already opening right against Yasimir's table. A symbol was engraved on that door, depicting two pentagrams overlayed on top of each other with a grinning skull in the center and words «Emperor's Wrath» written around in a circle.
And before Naia could do anything, a blast of what seemed like boiling white fire was spat out of the door, reducing Yasimir to a pile of ash and burnt bones. Naia could only hope they did their scanning recently.
Right after it came the second blast, directed at Naia – this one they sent back with a single hand movement.
"Stay back and get cover," – Naia spat out to kids, as their normally white body was turning deep red. – "I'll end these bastards."
The door seemed to be stuck half-open after being hit by a fire blast which Naia deflected, yet the wall still managed to pull a mechanical ramp from beneath it. And the first soldier who stepped on it – a person in a deep black armored suit with a windowed helmet and high boots – got decapitated the second they did so. So did the second and the third, and their heads and bodies slid down the ramp, stacking in a pile on the floor, all while Naia seemingly did nothing.
Holograms can't normally do that. But Naia was no ordinary hologram.
Nobody else was willing to come out, and Naia went to the offensive – still without taking a step forward. Screams of agony filled the space for a brief moment, as people on the other side were being torn apart with powerful forcefields.
"Two dozens," – Naia stated emotionlessly. – "I sense some more, will be back. If you need me, call on the scroll."
And so Naia charged through the door, entering the enemy fortress. They passed the entryway, hovering above the pond of blood, grabbing a flamethrower from one of the bodies on the way - and went further, accompanied by a thousand invisible, inflexible paper-thin forcefield blades. They really wanted to just cut the ship in ten thousand pieces right now — with the only thing stopping them being realisation they need the ship to return to the Cosmos.
Oh, and that this will probably exceed their energy limit.