The Desolate Guardians (5 page)

He said nothing.

"What happened here?" she asked, changing
tack. "What happened to the sky?"

"Nothing happened to the sky," he countered.
"All those skies are just fine. We just happen to've got royally
screwed
here.
It didn't work, obviously."

"What didn't work?"

He slowly looked up at her, and the camera's
view narrowed slightly. "Aren't you from Command?"

It was her turn to say nothing.

He stood abruptly. "
How did you get here?
Who are you?
"

"You haven't heard back in over a year,
right?" she countered.

The view shifted down for a moment, then back
up. "I just thought… if I held out long enough… they'd come… and
then there you were…"

She regarded him with that same conflicted
expression I'd seen her use on the corpses. "I'm sorry. I don't
know anything that might help you, but I've met others still
surviving. You're not alone."

The view went black as he closed his eyes
again. I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard a single slow intake of
breath.

"Can you tell me what happened here?" she
asked again.

He kept his eyes closed as he explained.
"Tech test. It was a bomb, or something like a bomb. I couldn't
tell you what it was for, only that we got sent in to clean up the
mess. It fractured space, turned this place to shit."

"So the sky's not changing at all," she
guessed. "It's bubbles of different realities moving around at
random."

"Yes ma'am… but not at random." He opened his
eyes again to find her studying him with an intent gaze.

"So there's a pattern, and that's how you've
survived."

He nodded. "Most died in the first few weeks,
but at least a hundred of us figured out the pattern. But that was
a year ago, and one mistake gets you killed."

"I'm sorry."

"Appreciated. But nothing you can do to
change it." He looked up, judging the sky. "Purple slice is next,
gotta tie ourselves up." In response to her asking look, he
explained further. "You gotta tie yourself up or you'll claw your
own eyes out, or worse. The trick is making the ropes escapable,
just not too quickly. Purple slice doesn't last long, but you don't
want yourself getting out early, and you don't want to still be
restrained when the brain-eaters come. That's the piss yellow. Not
pea-soup yellow like the flames' sky."

"Brain-eaters?" She frowned.

"Yes ma'am. And after that, the white… I hate
the white… that godforsaken Preacher…"

"I have a better idea," she said, looking
toward the direction from which she'd come. "Why don't you come
with me, and we can both go home?"

Yes. Say yes! Thinking to look up his file, I
quickly accessed and scanned what I could. He was twenty-two, and
from… that reality. Damn.

"With respect, ma'am, I'm already home." I
heard a certain bitterness and resignation in his words. "And… I
have to be here for the black."

"The black?"

He remained quiet for nearly ten seconds,
long enough that I thought he wasn't going to answer… until he
snapped out of his own thoughts. "I have to be here for the black,
ma'am. I, uh… I…" He paused again. "I don't have the words to tell
you about the black, but I think you should go, if you've got a way
to get, before it comes. Guys are all dead, but the equipment still
works, and I gotta be here to use it when the black comes. I know
this place is hell, but there's a whole fractured world out there
full of my people, and I got to… I got to… I'm staying as long as
there might be one kid out there, or one family, or whoever, trying
to make it. Russian guy, too, and Yngtak lady, though I don't know
why she cares about us. I think she stays because of the black, and
what might happen to other places if we don't stop it each day. So…
I can't go with you. Sorry, ma'am."

Throughout his bitter and hopeful speech, she
just watched him, her eyes a mix of disappointment and
understanding. "Alright." She looked up at the sky. "Do the flames
come back again today?"

He recited practiced phrases out loud.
"Gravity, death music, shapeshifters, flood, flames, invisible
slicers, silver nooses, flood, flames, crazy, brain-eaters, the
Preacher, tree ghosts, flood, silver nooses, crazy, dream-stealers,
the black… nope. That was their second time already today. Come
back tomorrow."

She grimaced. "I can't. I've only got a
single day here. But I need to talk to them - if I could just find
out where they came from, that'd point us in the right
direction."

"Whaddya need living flames for?"

"Some people I'm looking for went through
their world, or one like it," she replied cryptically.

"Some people, eh?" He searched around in the
mud for a minute or two, before lifting a muddy red crystalline
shard. "Well, best I can do is this. It's a dead flame. But
careful, though, if it gets hot it'll come back to life."

She took it carefully, and placed it in a
pocket. For the first time, I saw her smile. "Thank you."

"Of course. All part of the job." He laughed
weakly. "It's just good to hear some English for once. Russian guy
talks over the radio sometimes; no idea what he's sayin', but I
think by now he just talks to talk. There's nobody coming, is
there?"

She hesitated. "You… never know."

"Ah, sure."

Wait, did he say radio? What did I have
access to here? Quickly running through the systems at my disposal,
I searched for any sort of radio apparatus. He did say the
equipment was still working. Could I transfer audio to that
reality, and then have it broadcast by a radio tower there?

As he began tying himself up, and she stood
up to leave, I quickly put together my little scheme. "Hello?"

I saw them both jump as static came from a
radio somewhere on his person.

Testing my unused voice, and trying to clear
up the signal, I spoke again. "Hello, can you hear me?"

He immediately lifted the radio in sight,
close to his mouth. "Command?!"

"No, sorry," I replied, electrified at
actually making contact. "I'm… actually, it's probably best if I
don't say who I am. I don't know who might be listening. But I
think I can help. I've got a lot of information here… I could
probably try to find the flames' world."

I saw my mistake in their reactions.

"I'm watching through a camera in your eye!"
I explained quickly. "I noticed her showing up in logs and
messages, and I set a search trigger to try to find her in real
time."

"Me?" she asked, looking him in the eye with
a curious glare.

"I know we don't know each other," I said,
choosing my words carefully despite my fear and excitement. "But
you seem like a good person, and something terrible is clearly
going on, and I'd like to help."

"You don't know me at all," she said
quietly.

"Where are you, man?" my camera-bearer
asked.

"I'm - well, again, I don't think I should
say. But I'm not in your reality. This network spans dozens of
Earths."

The woman nodded. For the first time, this
close to the camera, I noticed that her eyes were light brown. She
seemed lost in thought. "I suspected that something like that might
exist. If nightmares can cross dimensions, it makes sense that
people can, too, and it's the nature of bureaucracy to spread."

Bureaucracy… she'd chosen the right word, and
guessed well. I was nobody important, but I had the ability to
help, because nobody knew who I was or what I had access to in the
vast structure of my organization. It was a running joke online
that nobody knew what I.T. really did… and that joke, being true,
was the sole reason I'd learned any of this.

"Do you know what happened to Command?" he
asked.

"I can try to look it up. Do you know which
reality it's in?" I almost laughed. I would never have believed I'd
be asking that question if I'd told myself about it two weeks
ago.

He closed his eyes, and the camera, for a
long moment. "Damn. I don't. All I know is, the comm girl was named
Sarah."

"
That's
what you know?" the woman
teased.

"Eh, get off," he protested, looking away and
probably blushing.

Stepping closer to his eye view, she
addressed me directly. "I'd appreciate your help finding -"

"Shit!" His cry interrupted her. "Purple
slice! The crazy!"

Her eyes went wide, and she took off running
without a second's hesitation. He fumbled with his ropes, either
trying to tie them in time or get out of them and run, but I could
see his hands begin to shake. The view began misting over as he
started whispering to himself. "Oh God, oh God…"

I watched in horror, helpless. Would my
interruption get this young man killed? No - there had to be a way!
"What's your name?" I asked, trying to keep him focused while I
desperately sorted through files and specs.

"Jonathan," he answered, his voice trembling
and straining. "Jonathan Cortin. I'm dead, man. Goddamnit, not the
crazy, not like this… any of the others would have been better… go
out firing at that goddamn Preacher…"

"Don't lose it just yet," I insisted,
examining the specs for his internal eye camera. "Jonathan… I can
knock you out."

"What? How? Do it!" he screamed, bending over
and staring at his hands as he resisted curling them into claws.
Tears dropped down to the wet grey earth beneath as he pressed his
forehead into mud.

"I can overload your eye camera, and it'll
knock you unconscious for several minutes," I told him, thoughts
racing. "But that's it. It'll be offline, and if Command is out
there, they won't be able to access it and they won't know you're
alive. You'll also… go blind in one eye."

He screamed at the top of his lungs, a
guttural and rage-filled sound. "Have you seen 'em? I'm losing an
eye either way! Do it!"

Steeling myself against the pain he was about
to feel, I sent my quickly typed code instructions to his eye
camera.

The resulting yell filled
me
with pain
just by pure empathy… and then the stream went black.

I made no move for nearly two minutes, simply
struggling to understand everything that had just happened. Other
realities were real, something terrible was going on, the only
semblance of organization out there had been absent for a year… and
I'd just burned out some poor kid's eye to save him from scratching
his own face off.

That was not the idea of helping I'd had in
mind, but… at least he'd live, and keep holding the black at bay,
whatever nightmare that entailed. Only now, there would be no hope
of rescue or reinforcements. He was on his own… because of me. And
I'd probably doomed that woman, too.

I'd made a mistake.

Meddling had been a mistake.

Who the hell was I to be messing around with
interdimensional affairs?

It had all happened so fast...

Getting up, I unhooked my awareness from the
computer I'd been engrossed in, and decided to go home. Would
anyone even notice if I left early? Knowing Human Resources,
that
would probably be the offense that finally drew
attention… but I couldn't stay. Not after what I'd done.

Moving out through the stacks of servers,
each darkly lit by a rainbow of diodes and info lights, I headed
for the door.

The hallway was dark and quiet. There was no
need to light the building when I was the only one here… I'd never
tried to leave before my shift was over, and it felt incredibly
eerie to trespass through a space I shouldn't have been in.
Cubicles sat open and empty, filled with pictures of families and
children. These people would have been my coworkers, had I ever
spoken to any of them or even been in the office during the same
hours. I'd only been here once in daylight - a bright, shining, and
warm day of basic corporate policy training.

I pressed against the exit door, intent on
going home and resting - and I came up short.

The door refused to budge.

With only the red EXIT sign's crimson light
to see by, I studied my escape.

It'd been welded shut.

With a very,
very
strange feeling that
I knew what I was going to find, I went around the entire building,
testing every exit.

They'd all been welded shut.

Peering out the windows desperately, I saw
only parking lot and grass, lit weakly by the ceiling lights I'd
turned on. The rest lay shrouded in thick fog.

As I stared out, I thought about breaking the
windows… until I saw something moving in the fog, something which
sent me reeling back in terror. Turning all the lights off as
quickly as possible, I watched it shamble by without noticing me -
a massive jellyfish-like creature twenty feet tall, moving on
various tentacle limbs.

Where was I? What was
happening?

How did I get into work?
How did I usually
come into work?
I recalled a very odd sensation at the start of
each shift as I entered the server room. Was I… was the server
room… in another reality? It might have been necessary for
interdimensional connectivity. Had I been unknowingly working in
another dimension all this time?

The server room door!

Rushing back to the server room, I examined
the very peculiar door that I'd always assumed was for security
purposes. It was large and metallic, and could definitely have
hidden circuitry or devices or whatever it was that connected
realities.

I waited.

Once the proper time came, I attempted to
leave.

The doors remained welded shut, and the
situation outside remained mysterious and deadly.

Had I broken something by trying to leave
early? Or by fooling around with the system?

Had someone noticed my transgressions and
purposely done this to me? Had I been left to die?

My world would only know that I'd disappeared
without a trace… no sign of foul play…