Artifact Read online

  The formula is true. We all lose evidence of what resistances we offered before ultimately letting go, and we never get them back. In the world’s eyes, the only thing that matters in the end is the fact that we gave up. But the truth is that nobody wins.

  The truth is that everyone quits on some level, at some point. What matters is what you do afterwards.

  And if this place was symbolic of my fight for survival in a body that’s somewhere else, then I was finished. This place won. I gave up.

  What I’ve figured out, though, is that although I have certainly given up – because I have, I’m done – this doesn’t mean that I have to stop doing things. This doesn’t mean that how I finish doesn’t matter.

  Besides, Patrick said something really interesting right before the monster ripped him in half.

  4.

  He said that there was something in the wall…

  I painfully rolled to my knees and carefully inspected the interior of the vault. I paused for some time, studying the details, looking for anything that stuck out of the ordinary. The walls were pristinely painted, light beige and warm where they cleanly ran into the ceiling, which matched the room so closely that I imagined things would be difficult to straighten out if we were to suddenly find ourselves in zero gravity. Every aspect of the room was identical to the other, except for the warm concrete floor, which was polished to a shine.

  Sarah was still asleep, intermittently kicking at the shadows in her dreams. Her hair was matted to one side, and her arms were lifelessly splayed in opposite directions. She looked like a carelessly strewn doll whose eyes feverishly moved under the lids, taking complete advantage of this brief moment of respite to snatch as much REM as she could. My eyes passed over her, registering that she was still alive and breathing, and I moved on.

  Patrick said that in the wall, there’s a…

  –A what?

  I moved to the edge of the room and pressed my hand against the painted drywall – which must have covered unimaginably thick fiber–reinforced concrete. I slid my fingers at the foot of the bed, feeling the smallest detail, the tiniest divot, the most infinitesimal stud or dent. I carefully brushed the wall from side to side, looking for…

  –Anything.

  I went around the room, carefully holding my left arm to my side, not wanting to disrupt the deep punctures on my shoulder and back. I ran my fingers along the floor, swept them back and forth up the expanse of the wall, standing on my toes to reach the ceiling, and then back down again.

  The abomination outside was determined to breach the vault. There was an occasional break in the thudding, as I heard what sounded like heavy, scrabbly fingers working their way into any crack that they could find.

  I tore my eyes away from the door and focused on pulling the desk away from the corner. I knelt and started knocking, looking for hollow spaces.

  I swiped my hand around the bed, careful not to disturb Sarah. I took some time drinking nearly a gallon of water until I felt the world exude better focus. With my thirst satiated, I let my eyes meticulously fall across everything in the room. I studied the locking mechanism behind the vault door, wondering if the time–locks were set, and if they were, for which time. I shook my head and moved to the wall opposite the bed. I pressed it, wiping it in a left to right pattern.

  And then the wall suddenly swallowed my hand–

  –No, not swallowed.

  My hand was suddenly gone, cleanly severed at the wrist.

  I turned my head toward Sarah, trying to work out the mechanics of the wall, afraid to move my arm away from the slot where my hand disappeared.

  “There’s something in the wall,” I whispered.

  Sarah slowly sat up, immediately coming out of that place we go where we’re never really asleep. She looked around the room with bleary eyes. The only sound in the room was coming from the vault door as the behemoth on the other side resumed its siege.

  “It’s just that thing outside,” She said quietly.

  “No…” I shook my head. I moved aside so that she could see where my arm sheared below the wrist.

  “What happened…?” She slid out of the bed and tried rubbing the nonsense out of her eyes. She cautiously moved behind me, scanning the blank, unyielding wall for answers that I didn’t know how to give.

  “There is,” I said quietly. “Something in the wall.”

  There was no separation between my arm and the wall – where my hand disappeared, the wall began. I tried pulling away, but I was stuck.

  Sarah took a few tentative steps back. “What’s happening?”

  Where my hand should have been, however, there was a word.

  MO–STACK

  It was the same word I saw at the base of the door in the hospital.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I – I don’t know. I’ve seen it before, though.”

  She was at my side again, studying it closely.

  “I can still see your hand,” she said. “It’s just… blurry.”

  She was right. I could make out the details of my hand when I looked at it from different angles. It remained translucent until I moved my eyes, and then some sort of optical relay kicked in until my hand would disappear again. There was a transmission delay between the camouflage adjusting to the changing positions of my eyes.

  “Mo Stack,” I said softly, thinking aloud.

  The vault suddenly fell away – instantly replaced by what looked like a liquid crystal display the size of the entire wall – written large in the center was the word MO–STACK. My hand was back where it belonged, attached to my wrist. I stepped away and appraised the wall, which suddenly transformed into an enormous screen. Spectra of vermilion, white, chartreuse and pink resonated wherever Sarah placed her hand. It looked as if a thin, flexible sheet containing tiny organic light–emitting diodes suddenly materialized over the expanse of the vault’s interior. Sarah studied the intricate, infinitesimal pixels on the seemingly flexible screen, which looked a lot like a sheet of high–tech wallpaper.

  “What happened?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know. I must have activated something.”

  “How…?”

  The wall changed when I read the word aloud. “Mo Stack,” I said a bit louder.

  The screen zoomed out, and new words occupied the space in the center, and MO–STACK moved to the upper left corner of the wall.

  DWELL, USERS, SYSTEM, PROCESSES, DIVISIONS

  “It’s a user interface,” I said, awestruck.

  Sarah sat back on the bed and wrapped herself with the blanket, staring wearily at the wall–screen. I wiped my face, feeling the hum of anxiety on the tips of my fingers. I grabbed the folding chair from the corner and sat in the center of the room, thinking deeply.

  “Dwell,” I said, and nothing happened. I looked at each word, trying to divine some meaning therein. I rubbed my hand, trying to remember everything I knew about haptic and expert language systems.

  “Users?”

  The wall changed again:

  ALI > ONLINE>USER NOT RESPONDING> USER DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR?

  PAT> OFFLINE>USER NOT RESPONDING> USER DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR?

  JO> OFFLINE>USER NOT RESPONDING> USER DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR?

  LAN> ONLINE> USER RESPONDING> USER DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR?

  Alice, Patrick, Joseph and me.

  We were users? Users of what?

  It said that Alice was online. And since I saw Patrick blow Joseph’s head off before later getting eaten by William Blake’s worst nightmare, I figured that offline meant dead. This meant that Alice was probably still alive somewhere in the facility.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  STIPULATE

  I tried to focus. This thing was a user interface of some kind, with its own unique set of command functions.
I tried to think in terms of what questions it would be able to answer. I had to grab hold of this loose thread and tug. I had to start somewhere…

  “What is Mo Stack?” I asked.

  MODULAR STACKING INTERFACE

  “Interface,” I repeated quietly. “Are you an operating system?”

  MODULAR STACKING USER INTERFACETM by Expert Systems

  DEVELOPER MOSES STANLEY, Director of Information Services at the Center for Energetic Materials

  “Where am I?”

  VAULT

  “Why?”

  QUARANTINE

  “What…” I said, and then stopped. “How did I get here?”

  PATHWAY> ARCHIVES> ???> ???> ???> ???> VAULT

  “Why is this happening?”

  STIPULATE

  “What is happening?”

  DEFRAGMENTATION IN PROCESS> ERROR UNKNOWN> SURGE 100025467 DETECTED> DAMAGE UNKNOWN> CRONOS VIRUS DETECTED> DAMAGE UNKOWN> REPAIRABLE?>UNKNOWN

  “What does this mean?”

  STIPULATE

  “Cronos virus…”

  CRONOS VIRUS DETECTED

  “What is the Cronos virus?”

  CRONOS IS TO CUT> IN THE CYCLE OF REPRODUCTION CALLED LYTIC> REFERENCE GREEK MYTH> THE BIRTH OF THE GODS 2900 BCE> CRONOS VIRUS> IS A COMPLEX MUTAGENIC VIRUS FROM THE HAXSOUP VIRUS> THE CRONOS VIRUS IS WELL KNOWN FOR ITS ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CYBER–ORGANIC WEAPONS AND HAS BEEN USED IN A NUMBER OF BIOTERRORST ATTACKS IN THE 21’ST CENTURY> REFERENCE FICTION/FANTASY> REFERENCE GENRE ZOMBIE> REFERENCE APOCALYPSE> REFERENCE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE> REFERENCE ZOMBPOC

  “Virus?”

  BEGIN SCAN?

  “Yes…”

  SCANNING…

  “What does it mean?” Sarah asked.

  “I – I’m not sure yet,” I said. “The entire building must be a network of some kind. This,” I hesitated. “This looks like an integrated operating system, with a holographic interface built directly into the walls.”

  Or something more ominous.

  It was definitely three dimensional, and certainly holographic. If it had been anything other than a holographic projector, the only way I would be able to see the three dimensional shapes that the screen projected was if I had a set of wireless lenses, or a pair of wireless glasses, or something. In order for this to not be a hologram, there would have to be some sort of intermediary between the image and my perception.

  It still didn’t explain why my hand went transparent when I touched the wall, unless the wall contained some sort of haptic touch technology or something, but I let that go.

  I reread the notation a few times so that it would sink in, paying very serious attention to that last line – the line that referenced fantasy and fiction. I wanted to burst out, to vent all of my frustration onto this thing, whatever it was – to howl triumph into nothing – to pick up my chair and hurl it into the screen – to inflict onto something some semblance of what I had been through. There was a dark thread of wire here that I could feel connecting everything. For the first time since this started, I thought seriously about what the implications of waking up might be.

  The artifact.

  The artifact continued circling my thoughts, always there, always waiting for me in the Clean Room. I traced the mental image of its light pattern as it pulled me along, taunting me while out of reach, promising answers that would fall into place like giant pieces to a puzzle. The artifact was more than just a test – it was the linchpin for all my affairs in this place. If there were any answers at all, I believed that I would find them here.

  SCANNING COMPLETE> THE FOLLOWING FILES ARE CORRUPT: DWELL, REPORTS, SYSTEM, CONSOLE, ALGS, JOSEPH, PATRICK, LANCE

  “That’s my name.”

  STIPULATE

  “Lance is my name!”

  STIPULATE

  “What – what the hell is happening?”

  DEFRAGMENTATION IN PROCESS> ERROR UNKNOWN> SURGE 100025467 DETECTED> DAMAGE UNKNOWN> CRONOS VIRUS DETECTED> DAMAGE UNKNOWN> REPAIRABLE?>UNKNOWN

  “What is surge number,” I fumbled through the sequence. “100025467?”

  SURGE LOG> SURGE 100025467> SURPLUS OF ELECTRICAL CURRENT: 1008.2% BEYOND SAFETY> UNNATURAL COUNTERFEIT DISTRIBUTION> SURGE 25467 OCCURRED AT PRIMARY CLEAN ROOM> MARS> USER LAN DISRUPTED> PURSUENT ATTACK> ATTACK REASON: DESTROY USER LAN> COMMAND TRACKABLE?> COMMAND NOT TRACKABLE> USER LAN COMPROMISED> QUERY> USER LAN NOT RESPONDING > END ANALYSIS>BEGIN INVESTIGATION>RUN USER PAT

  I rubbed my chest, feeling for the burn that wasn’t there. I registered a murky sensation of pain. Even before I found this thing – this wall–screen router – I had a pretty clear idea what was going on. It was only then, after stumbling onto this – whatever it was – every fiber in my body suddenly had a thousand references of a thousand open ended questions that began the moment I woke up in the hospital. This was the turning point, and I knew it. This was the rubicon. Kate said as much anyway when she found the wires severed from both terminal blocks. My time was apparently very limited. Somebody or something wanted very much to help me shuffle off this mortal coil. MO–STACK said that an unidentified command was entered that caused a massive energy surge.

  “Someone sabotaged the experiment,” I said suddenly. “Someone tried to kill me…”

  “Who?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged, “Patrick, probably.”

  I wiped my face and stood, the possibilities reeling through my mind. Someone wrecked the generators. During the initial experiment, when Alice and I started following the algorithm, while we were turning the object in the direction it wanted us to, someone caused a surge that would have fried a city sized power grid.

  “Mo Stack,” I said.

  The original list popped back up.

  DWELL, USERS, SYSTEM, PROCESSES, DIVISIONS

  “Divisions.” Thousands of files appeared. I bent down and studied the ones closest to the floor. Some of the files were nonsense – but it appeared that the Center for Energetic Materials was into more than just accelerants. There was a whole array of divisions pertaining to research, development and space exploration.

  [SPACEMED], [Engineering.], [ASTRO.phys], [HUMspace.flight], [SOL.phys], [HUM.adapt.], [HABITAT.enviro], [AERO.], [MARS.pho.dei.], [OIIA], [DEF.rocket.sat], [bio.TECH.]

  “Mars.” I felt a jolt of adrenaline.

  STIPULATE

  “Mars,” I said a bit clearer, and then hesitated. “Mars dot Phobos, dot Deimos.” The wall screen zoomed out again, and [MARS.pho.dei] replaced MO–STACK in the upper left corner.

  ARCHIVES, PERSONNEL, PROJECTS

  “Personnel,” A row of names populated the wall, floor to ceiling.

  Moses Stanley, Information Services

  Anthony Runwell, Equipment Manager

  Alice Liddel, Director of Limbic and Neural Cybernetics

  Patrick Ruth, Director of Security Operations

  Joseph Timms, Director of Biophysics

  Lancelot Kattar, Principal of Research and Development

  Samuel Richardson, Director of Mining Operations

  Allison Swick, Director of Construction and Site Development

  And the list went on.

  “Lancelot Kattar,” I said.

  Lancelot Bryan Kattar, EE# 128221, Principal of Research and Development.

  222 Calliope Street, New Mexico, 87081

  DOH 6/8/2032

  Date of Hire was June eighth, 2032.

  The truth was that I didn’t know what year it was. Nobody that I encountered in this place seemed to know either. But if I had to guess, I would have put the date somewhere in the ballpark of 2015.

  2032 seemed too far removed. Too distant of a place to see clearly. I filed that for later, promising myself that I would devote serious attention to figuring out where, and especially w
hen I was…

  “Mars dot Phobos, dot Deimos.” I said quietly.

  “What is fa,” Sarah asked. “Foh bose?”

  “Phobos and Deimos are the two moons of Mars.”

  ARCHIVES, PERSONNEL, PROJECTS

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know.” I said, “I suppose I’m trying to falsify a thought that I’ve been having.”

  “You told the other guy that you think we’re inside of a dream?”

  “Yes. I guess what I’m really looking for is a way out.”

  “What about my dad?”

  I looked at her. I watched hope relentlessly gather in her eyes. It wouldn’t stop. I suspected it wouldn’t stop until the moment before she took her last breath. I didn’t know what to say. My thoughts suddenly circled back to Sid’s outburst earlier, and how crushed Sarah seemed.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “For everything.”

  Everything I could have said, every term of phrase, every sentiment, every single combination of apologies that I could have possibly given, all I could say was, I’m sorry.

  The gravity of her pain was too much. I couldn’t think through it.

  What I offered wasn’t enough. It would never be enough to make things right. Nothing I could do or say would bring her father back, and I went as far to imply that he never even existed.

  She shook her head and looked at the ground. “I hope this is a dream…”

  She wiped her eyes.

  We thought about separate things for some time. I eventually had to pull myself back into focus, away from that deadly, defeated place.

  “Patrick implied that there was a way out of here,” I said finally. “We’re going to find it. Then we’re going to make our way back to the Clean Room and open that artifact.”

  “What about those things?”

  “Well,” I thought. “Maybe there’s a way out of that too.”

  I turned back to the wall–screen, leaving Sarah the privacy of her thoughts, which were probably circling the shades of her father, no less the shadows in her dreams. Although I had given up – although I let this place pour into me until I burst – Sarah wasn’t done yet. If there was any way for me to pay her back, I was going to find it.