Negative Energy

The Impenetrable Door

After four more full days in the Mesch with only Logos's shard for company, Matt had a mild yearning to be around others of his own kind. He considered going to see Ina but wasn't sure what to say to her after the slightly awkward way their previous meeting had ended. Should he be direct and open about his attraction? Or should he take it slow and court her in a more traditional way? He rehearsed some icebreakers, but nothing felt natural. Besides, he didn't want to show up at her door empty-handed. As he adjusted the lighting for Jemma, its seductive flower a death trap for insects, he was reminded of her one-of-a-kind gift.

In Matt's previous life, work had supplied most of the human interaction he needed. But occasionally on weekends, when loneliness crashed in on him, he would go to his local chain coffee shop and sit at one of the small tables with his laptop open. Pretending to be absorbed in the topography of a flood basin, he would eavesdrop on nearby conversations and lose himself in the trivialities of other people's lives.

Maybe it was time to get out of the apartment. He left the choice of what to wear up to the pickup closet, which served up khaki pants, a loose pullover, and comfortable loafers—the same outfit he had worn since his college days.

Matt encountered no one in the hallway as he retraced his steps to the pod cluster. The nearest pod opened for him, but when he climbed inside, it just sealed itself and sat motionless in its dock. Why wasn't it responding? Because he hadn't specified an actual destination, he realized. Big corporations like Starbucks had not survived the Splintering. He formulated his intention to share human company in a passive setting that would not make demands on his social skills. This time the rotors spun quietly to life and the pod took off.

Matt knew now that the pod's shell could become opaque and show him any kind of virtual reality he wanted, but he left it transparent so he could take in the waveform architecture, which was no less captivating than the first time he'd seen it. As he floated past in his transparent bubble, the curved surfaces made funhouse reflections of him—a bit of Willy Wonka magic. Silver hemispheres were attached to some of the structures like metallic aphids. Maintenance beetles. Overhead, the segmented glass shell was tinted blue, but a faint touch of urine showed at the interstices. Now and then, a jag of lightning ran through the panes like a fleeting crack.

The ceiling pitched upwards as he arrived at the arcology's central dome. Here the architecture took on a split character, as if one style was in the process of slowly devouring another. While the waveform structures still predominated, obsidian spires bored through some of them like screws through taffy. The spires were long and straight with thorny spikes projecting from their spiral ridges. Some rose all the way to the ceiling where they pierced through to extend for a hundred feet or more, giving the arcology its spiny armor. Questing them produced no insight, which wasn't altogether surprising; they were off limits in the Mesch as well.

He passed a building that looked diseased. Gaping cavities revealed a wasp's nest of internal layers. Swarms of silvery beetles moved within, slicing away with plasma beams they emitted from their metallic antennae. Through one of the gaps, he spied a length of thorn-studded obsidian. Were the waveform structures being cannibalized for materials and converted into spires?

The pod approached the heart of the arcology where a ring of inward-tilting spires formed a colossal teepee, its convergence point just shy of the ceiling. Dark and bristling with thorns, it looked unwelcoming and even a bit sinister. He passed through a gap into the interior area. Resting in a clearing at the bottom was a spiral cone, forged from the same obsidian material as the spires. Its surface was covered in nested smaller spirals like a Romanesco cauliflower, creating an illusion of swirling vortices.

The pod deposited him at the cone's base in front of a featureless, inset door. He wondered if his intentions had gotten misconstrued somehow. This seemed like the last place people would casually congregate. There wasn't another living soul in sight, and the structure was windowless and devoid of human touches. If he had to guess, it was some kind of control center for the arcology. Guessing was all he could do; questing didn't seem to work here. One thing he did know about this place from the Mesch: the energy flowing into it was massive and redundant. He could almost feel it throbbing beneath his feet like a subterranean river.

Exiting the pod, he embarked on a brief exploration around the perimeter of the cone. Finding no other entrance or distinctive features, he circled back to the door. It was handle-less and, like the rest of the cone, impervious to his questing. His curiosity was piqued. Why had the pod brought him here?

Something clicked in his mind, and the door slid back without making a sound. Had he done that? Maybe someone was about to come out or go in? He waited half a minute or so, but when no one else appeared, he deemed it safe to try a little experiment. He sent a mental command to the door. It started to slide shut, confirming his suspicion. Interesting. He could operate it but not quest it. In this world, the line between knowing, willing, and doing could be a fine one. He would have to remember that.

He stopped the door midway, leaving a gap just wide enough to fit through. Why not have a look inside? Surely, his Nex wouldn't allow him to enter a restricted area. But something about the door struck him as odd. Even from up close, he couldn't peer through into the interior, not even by an inch. It was as if there was a black screen obstructing his view. Some kind of mind occlusion? He extended a hand into it, encountering no resistance. His forearm simply disappeared in a clean line as if passing through a plane of impenetrability. It was enough to give him the jitters. But when he quelled his fear, his curiosity gained the upper hand. Without further hesitation, he squeezed through into the void.

The door clicked shut, sealing him in pitch darkness. Panic. Quelled. Followed by resoluteness. He had already taken the first step. The next ones followed naturally. This darkness seemed different than before, not a mental obstruction, simply an absence of light. As his foot connected with the floor, a red glow pulsed outward, revealing the stark confines of a hallway. He raised his foot and put it down again, producing another pulse of light. He got it. His Nex was using sound waves to construct a visual map. Echolocation.

With the way illuminating with each forward step he took, his strides became more assured. Ahead, he could faintly discern a vertical rectangle full of tiny, cobalt-blue lights, like a window onto a crowded starfield. He paused intermittently so he could see it better without the interference of the red echo-light. The star-filled window gradually enlarged, almost imperceptibly at first, and then at a steadily increasing rate, until it became a doorway. Blue light tinged the walls of the tunnel, swallowing the leading edge of the red echo-pulses, which stopped soon after. The doorway's edges expanded out to his peripheral vision then disappeared entirely, leaving him enveloped by a sea of young, blue stars still shrouded in their natal nebulas.

Matt looked around in awe. He was standing on a transparent floor partway down an enormous shaft. The lights weren't stars exactly but plum-sized spheres illuminated from within not by a single point but a diffuse fuzz of filaments, which gave them their nebular quality. A few larger spheres were sprinkled throughout; the molten-orange of live embers, they were all but swallowed up in the astral expanse. The stellar lights that made up the overhead dome were bright and close while those below faded away into an infinite well of light. Dimmer and brighter bands traced a spiral pattern, creating a mesmerizing impression of descending motion. What were all those lights? There must be millions of them.

There was a slight brightening as a weak shaft of light pierced the center of the space. A portal had opened in the overhead vault. Framed in the light column, a pod-like drone with a cluster of blue stars floated down from above accompanied by a faint whooshing noise. When it reached Matt's level, it paused in its descent to hover in place. It had the same set of quad rotors as a pod, but with protective guards. It had the top hemisphere of a pod as well, while the bottom was taken up with a Swiss army knife of mechanical arms and manipulators, two of which were holding clusters of the stellar orbs. Perhaps it was bringing new additions?

The semi-pod swiveled around as if to face him, although it had no clear front-side or visible cameras. For a moment, they both stood motionless regarding each other.

Suddenly, the chamber plunged into absolute darkness. This time, the visual impenetrability was accompanied by a sound barrier. The tapping of his foot produced no echo of either sound or light. He turned around—at least he thought he was turning—until his eyes located the rectangle of a passageway. It glowed an emergency red, showing him the way out. It pulsed with urgency. He was not supposed to be in here. He needed to leave. Now!