The Desolate Guardians (6 page)

Dazed, I returned to the server room and sat
at my computer. There was only one hope now. I could only sit and
wait, and pray that the mysterious brunette woman had escaped. If
she showed up again somewhere, and if I could contact her again,
then maybe, just maybe, she could get me out of here… in the
meantime, I resolved to research the things she'd mentioned in the
hopes of paying her back.

And maybe, just maybe, we could try to warn
somebody, or do something… anything to try to help the situation
out there. How many lonely souls remained after some unknown
disaster, holding down the fort of humanity at our metaphorical
dimensional walls? However many there were, I was one of them,
now.

Chalk up one more for the cause…

Two days.

Two days.

I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever escape
the office. For two days, nothing changed. I spent hours wandering
around dark halls and avoiding the windows. Out there, nothing
moved except roiling fog and slimy things carrying the occasional
animal carcass. I peered over the edge of brick at one point to
watch, and thought that one of those carried carrions had been… a
bear. In some sense, that reassured me, because normal life still
existed, or had existed recently in this place - but if a bear
couldn't fight off one of those incomprehensible creatures, I
certainly couldn't.

The fridge contained a wide array of food,
both company-owned for events, and marked with coworkers' names. I
ate, because I believed that I should, but I tasted nothing. All I
could think was: how did this food get here? If this place was in
another reality, which it clearly was, shouldn't my coworkers'
cubicles be empty? Why were their pictures, sundries, and leftovers
still around the office? Had they been here during the day
recently, and simply never returned?

What if I wasn't in another world? What if
something terrible had happened to
my
world during the
night? I was one of the few people awake that late. What if that
had something to do with it? Maybe the other side of the world,
different timezones, were fine, and I just had to wait for
rescue…

Except they'd never find me. Not in time. I
went beyond the local office network and tried to figure out where
exactly I was in relation to all these servers, mainframes, and
Internets. I couldn't even tell which network was specifically
this
world - there weren't any clues or indications. Who
could I contact? Nobody would believe me or be able to help me,
and… I was still afraid of drawing too much attention to
myself.

There was a chance that my imprisonment here
hadn't happened through malice. There was a chance that I could
make my situation worse by messing around on the network.

With all the tech at my disposal, it took me
a day and a half to think to use a phone.

I sat in a back cubicle in darkness, worried
about what would happen. If I tried this, and it didn't work, a
little sliver of hope would be gone. On the other hand, the food in
the fridge wouldn't last forever… I reached out and lifted the
phone.

Almost immediately, a loud, chaotic, and
high-pitched sound filled the cubicle. I dropped the phone back in
place, heart pounding, and silence resumed.

Screaming… it was screaming.

I steeled myself and lifted it again - the
only sound on the phone, that phone, and many others in the office,
was a large number of people screaming in terror and agony at the
top of their lungs.

Yes, something was
very
wrong
here.

It didn't take me long to map out all the
possible avenues of escape from my office building, which brought
home the realization that there was nowhere to go. I'd kind of
expected that from the beginning, but what else could I have done
but try? Welded shut doors, creatures outside the windows,
screaming on the phones, blocked air vents… there was a logic to
this situation, hovering somewhere just outside the grasp of my
current facts, but I couldn't quite reach it.

Feeling strange and bitter, I decided to get
on with my other efforts, and I began looking into the situation in
the other realities as discreetly as I could. A few hours into that
work, my trigger searches popped up with a phrase that couldn't be
mistaken:
purple slice
.

It was her. She had a laptop connected to a
decently functioning Internet, in a reality which seemed more or
less intact from what I could tell. Looking at the network map I'd
been building, she was currently in one of the inner realities of
the structure I was beginning to see emerge… and she'd posted
things, based on our short interaction, that would specifically
draw my attention. She already had a voice chat server set up.

"Is it you?" she asked, noticing me logging
in.

"Yes," I responded, excited to hear someone
else's voice - well, any voice that wasn't screaming.

"That was fast."

"Since we last talked, I found out I'm stuck
here."

"You're stuck?" she asked, immediately
concerned.

"I'm trapped in my office building. I can't
get out. There are weird slimy creatures outside… one ate a goddamn
bear… and the doors are welded shut."

"Have you tried calling someone? Email?"

"I can't figure out who to email, or who
would even believe me… and the phones just have screaming on
them."

She sounded confused. "Screaming?"

"Yeah, screaming. Men, women, even kids,
screaming in terror. All the time."

"That sounds… odd."

"Right? I think I triggered something, or
activated something, or maybe something terrible happened to the
world here just like so many others -"

"What do you know?" she asked abruptly,
seizing on that mention.

"I've started outlining our communication
infrastructure and all the networks it connects to. I've done it
based on connection speed, assuming there's some sort of distance
involved. It's turning into a map of sorts. It looks… well it's
like a map, honestly. Like I can tell you're in one of the inner
realities."

"Really…" she responded, intrigued. "Can I
see this map?"

"Sure, I'll send it to you." I guided her
through the technical details of accepting a file directly from me
on her old and crappy laptop. I was particularly proud of the file
I'd built. I'd made each reality into a circle, full of the most
relevant information I could find about each place, and then
arranged them the way I thought they might fit together. A
three-dimensional movable image wasn't
technically
accurate,
but it was the best representation of a four-dimensional structure
I could manage.

"So there's the GLORWOC world, and there's
where they tested the dimensional fracture bomb… " She murmured for
a few moments inaudibly before speaking louder again. "And I've
been there, and there recently… there's an actual
shape
to
it."

I studied the file on my end, too.
"Definitely. There are similarities between worlds that are close
together, and they get more different the further you go. The inner
realities seem decently well off, with actual functioning societies
and governments, but the further out you go, the more you see
struggles and issues. And on the outer shell…"

"… nightmares," she said, completing my
sentence. "Nightmares, moving inward. Looking at these, I've been
consistently hitting the outer shell. I've been seeing the worst of
the worst on a regular basis."

"That would make sense," I told her,
considering ideas I'd have thought impossible a month ago.
"Whatever this structure is - network and sphere of realities, both
- someone went through a ton of effort to build it. It wouldn't
have much point if there wasn't some sort of protection mechanism,
either natural or constructed."

"Walls," she murmured. "They're walls."

"Like a walled-off city…"

"Yes. And the inner realities survive as long
as the walls stand." She took a moment to think. "I've been outside
the walls. It's not pretty out there. The multiverse is not a kind
place."

"You've been beyond the map?" I asked,
hopeful that she had some sort of method to rescue me. "How?"

"Just like you keep your identity to yourself
for your own reasons, I'll have to keep that one secret," she
replied. "I've been able to reach realities fantastic and horrible,
unlike any of our Earths, and far beyond these walls… but, judging
by this map and the locations I've been to in the past few weeks,
the shell seems to be preventing me from getting out now.
Something's changed."

"Something seems to have happened to whoever
was in charge a little over a year ago," I suggested.

"No, it's not that. I was going places as
recently as Thanksgiving. Whatever it was, it happened very
recently."

I thought about the sudden changes in my
office building and my inability to escape. "And I just got trapped
here in the last two days. What if it's not something that
did
happen, but something that
is
happening?"

"Interesting point. I do have one more move
to make here. I've got a dead sentient flame in a metal box, and a
device that can talk to souls. If living flames have souls, it
might know something. I know for certain that the flame world is
outside our shell…"

"And you're trying to find somebody that went
through there."

"Yes. So you were listening that whole
time?"

"Watching, really. But I wasn't just being
weird. I've been following your trail on the system for a while
now. I want to help - and, maybe, now, I'm hoping you'll help
me
get out of here."

"I can try," she said calmly. "I would like
to save you, but I can't guarantee anything. Do you know where you
are in the structure?"

"Not yet," I sighed. "I'll keep working on
it. Any information you give me will help, though."

"Then maybe I'll type up what I read in the
device and send it to you."

I sat and waited, suddenly confused. A device
that talks to souls?
What?
Did that mean that souls were
real? Did that mean
I
had a soul? Wasn't that some kind of
religious revelation people should know about?

The file came shortly, and I forgot all about
those unknowable concerns.

---

What are you doing? Don't you think I see
what you're doing? Get that thing away from me!

I can't move… I can't get away…

Why would you ally yourself with such a
monstrous creation?

Don't you know what it
does?
Do you
relish in sadism and evil?

Stop, I don't want to -

We are not driven by hunger like our pathetic
neighbors. They consume and burn, moving from plane to plane in
search of unlockable energy. We are an enlightened species of
flame, and are more interested in learning the complexities of
existence than eating matter. We draw energy from the vacuum, in
any case, and have left consumption behind. It was a necessary
development once no energy beyond ourselves was left in our home
plane. That's the price of growth.

Stop hurting me, I -

We became aware of the existence of the
bubble only recently as we traveled from plane to plane. It's a
very interesting phenomenon, and so we spent some time near it.
Eventually, part of it cracked - exploded from within - and we
found ourselves able to get in and look around.

Weird fleshy organisms were all about,
however, a purely physical kind of life we'd never seen before, and
they did not like us at all. Worse, that crack was just one of
many, and investigating became dangerous. Many places we'd deemed
inhospitable began to seep together… and when we became aware of
the greater danger, the Crushing Fist, many of us started
dissenting from the flamespirit for the first time in generations.
I myself -

...died.

I died.

I'm dead… oh, that explains quite a bit. Will
you revive me?

I hear your desires through the device. The
beings you seek… I did see them, and we conflicted with them for a
time, but held back when we realized they were like us, but in
disguise. I don't know where they went. Wait - one of them is
nearby. You should ask him.

He doesn't know? I see.

Please close the device. I can't take the
pain anymore. If you revive me, I will take you to the last place
we saw them go. It was close to somewhere we are no longer, but
once were.

Thank you.

---

"Are you going to revive it?" I asked,
fixated on what it had mentioned about consuming its entire home
universe.

"I think I have to," she said after a
moment.

"It said one of the beings you're looking for
is nearby?"

"Don't you worry about that."

"Alright." I let it pass, despite my
curiosity. "What do you think the Crushing Fist is? That doesn't
sound promising at all."

"No idea, but I'm sure we'll find out. It
sounds like something's coming for us."

Over the next several hours, I worked with
her to set up a mobile radio that she could use to connect to the
structure and talk to me from almost anywhere - as long as her mode
of travel to other realities remained active. A few trips to a
computer store and a hardware store produced a reasonably rigged
headset that would let me see what was going on, too, for the most
part. She turned out to be surprisingly technically capable… I
wondered if she'd had training before.

In fact, there were quite a few mysterious
things about her. She took control of the situation and made
decisions with the calm air of someone who often faced choices with
limited information, someone who understood the risks, and the
impossibility of making perfect plays.