Ragnarok

Chapter 36 - Spiral

Rei knew they must have descended down into the bowels of the planet for several miles; the spiral walkway had led them into a short hallway, which then began to bend in upon itself again, curving always to the left and ever downwards. The cosmonauts walked in nervous silence. Judging from how they kept giving quick, darting glances all around them, they felt like rats in a maze, a maze that at any moment might collapse upon their heads.

Finally, the tunnel came out into a larger, hemispherical chamber, with the domed ceiling looming high above them. The glowing walkway led about 10 paces into the chamber, then abruptly stopped. Rei walked to the edge of the lit area and hesitated, as the remaining cosmonauts shuffled in behind her.

As the last form entered the room, there was an abrupt glare of light that seemed to come from their left, forcing their dazzled eyes to turn away. Rei felt an odd sensation of warmth on the side of her face, coming from the same area the light was. Squinting, she peered out at the strange light source, its blazing brilliance seeming somehow familiar to her. With a shock, she realized she was looking at the Sun, as viewed from Earth.

"Uhm, Rei ..." came Micah's disembodied voice from slightly behind her. She turned, and saw that the room had changed as soon as the Sun had appeared. Instead of a great, empty dome, she was now standing on a stretch of sun-cracked brown mud, surrounded by poorly-constructed shanties. A few of the buildings had frighteningly thin figures curled up in front of them, as if the buildings were filled beyond capacity. At first she thought she was somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the figures outside the buildings were far too pale. Many of them had shaved heads, and as Rei looked closer, she could see numerical tattoos on their skin.

"Derr'mo," one of the Russian cosmonauts breathed over the comms, as around the corner, a fierce-looking man in a black uniform marked with the Iron Cross strode down the sun-baked ghetto street. He was accompanied by a dozen or so similarly dressed soldiers, but there was no doubt as to who was in charge. He looked around him disdainfully, apparently not noticing the space travelers goggling at him from the opposite corner of the muddy boulevard, then pointed to the house that had the most starved figures lying on the ground outside of it and started barking orders.

The soldiers set about their task with brutal efficiency, kicking the scrawny figures with their black jackboots until they finally got up their feet, their eyes looking dead and sullen as the soldiers shuffled them to one side, then went inside to grab more. The commander simply stood back and watched, taking notes in a small pad that he pulled out of a breast pocket.

"Uhm, Rei, why are we in the middle of a Nazi death camp?" Micah whispered next to her ear. Rei could only shake her head; she had no idea what Ragnarok was playing at, showing them atrocities that were nearly two centuries in the past. If he was going to go this far back, why not show them the Spanish Inquisition? Or the various aboriginal genocide campaigns that the American colonists had launched?

Maybe it's because we don't have actual video recordings of those, she thought to herself, not wanting to watch as the Nazi captives were dragged out of their ragged shanty, these inside dwellers looking no less dirty, starved and haunted than the ones who had been outside. Rei cringed as an girl no more than ten years old, her eyes as dead as those of the adults who tried fruitlessly to shield her from the Nazis' guttural comments and leering eyes. The commander beckoned to her, and though she trembled with every step, the camps had clearly broken her will to disobey.

The commander gave a short speech to the assembled captives, apologizing for their poor treatment and mourning the fact that they could have avoided all of this, if only they had been willing to share the names of their fellow conspirators. He shook his head. "You have brought this upon yourselves, poor beasts." With a snap, he turned and pushed the little girl on ahead. "Follow," he said to the crowd of captives behind him, and several of the slower-moving ones received blows and curses from the guards as they started to move forward, straight towards their apparently invisible observers.