Authors: Pamela Foland
“So Sanctuary is going to be destroyed?” Angela felt a cold chill run up her spine and settle in her gut.
“My team needs to do some checking and go over some calculations, but we have a few years before the dark can set up the proper alignment to try again. “ Chavez responded, “But the plans for the generator look promising, and the crushed prototype looks as though it might have almost been functional. Ralph must’ve been working on it to the end.”
“Well get to work on the generator, we’ll need it as soon as possible. I authorize you to use whatever manpower and resources are necessary. Keep me apprised of the situation,” Angela paused, Annette had suffered a very personal loss. Angela tapped a key authorizing Chavez to contact her directly, “And Chavez, you don’t have to mention any of this to Miss Peterson, you can report directly to me.” Angela ended the call and found herself facing the image of Annette, who was desperately trying not to cry.
“Annette, why don’t you switch off your pad and take the rest of the day off. You could use a rest,” Angela said sympathetically.
Annette looked suddenly stunned and hurt, “I can handle it, and I don’t mind. Besides no one else knows what’s going on with all the repairs.”
Angela definitely saw something of the chief behind Annette’s eyes now, “Alright, but try to take it easy, okay?”
The girl nodded on the screen, “Yes ma’am.”
- - - - - - - - - -
Yllera had passed the last several months nearly oblivious to the upsets within Sanctuary. She had spent the time deep in information exchange with key Agurians. She had provided them with pop-pads and other trinkets of Sanctuary tech and they had given her their detailed oral histories. The focus of Yllera’s personal interest was the plague time.
Everything Yllera had learned of the plague from the elder Agurians left her wondering. They talked of it as though some intelligence were behind its every mutation and infection. The blame for that intelligence was usually on some dastardly Tanerian scientist, though Yllera had checked with Sanctuary and no such scientist existed. Yllera had come to question whether the plague itself had some sort of intelligence.
Her research led her to search Sanctuary’s databases, through reports of various intelligent or semi-intelligent infectious agents encountered in the past by factors. The worst and most dangerous of which was actually more than a simple infection by a single pathogen.
The Riiad collective, was a combination of various parasites, bacteria, even plants which could transform the infected individuals into a
mindless and un-extractable part of the collective.
Sanctuary’s historical database on Riiad spoke of ten years of fear crossing the boundaries between alternate realities. Only an improbable and unclear use of some sort of technology alien to the laws of physics had stopped the collective from spreading through-out reality, to Sanctuary and beyond.
Yllera’s began to worry about Riiad, searching the databases of Sanctuary and all its allies for details. It terrified her to discover implications that the Riiad collective
could be duplicated. She spent a few weeks wrapping up her research to the point that Tatia could take over. Yllera was bound for Sanctuary, to search for information on pathological organisms with the potential to be a part of a new Riiad.
Yllera activated her emergency return toggle, passed through the shields and headed directly for Tina’s office. The shabby state of Sanctuary was a startling sight. Yllera barely recognized it. Yllera made note of the many cracks and holes in ceilings and walls, all patched with ill-matched structural plastics. Her glances and examinations of Sanctuary were matched by the looks from others following her with their eyes.
The strange looks drew Yllera’s thoughts to how she must look to the people in Sanctuary. She was dressed in her survival suit beneath her snake skin coat, with feathers grown in amongst her hair and a layer of grime and settled filth which comes from an environment where bathing was a ritual luxury.
Yllera probably seemed like a wild eyed native wandering aimlessly through the battered yet still somehow civilized halls of Sanctuary.
Yllera made it to Tina’s reception room, without anyone questioning her right to be there. She stepped up to the reception counter, catching the eyes of the receptionist. “Yllera Vllett to see Tina about a post mission physical.”
The receptionist eyed Yllera disbelievingly and passed the message on via a touch screen set into her counter space.
A few taps later the receptionist grimaced and rose, “Tina will be right with you, please follow me.”
They went down the hall to the first available exam room and Yllera waited the bare few moments before Tina arrived.
Tina looked Yllera over with a grin, “Gone quite native haven’t you?” Tina began waving various scanners over Yllera ending by placing a helmet-like Everett scanner on Yllera’s head.
Yllera patiently waited while the scanner pushed and pulled at her mind, until with a ping the scan was over.
Tina tapped her pad to view the results of the scans, “You are in perfect health, I notice some increased muscularity in strange places, I take it that you have been learning the fundamentals of shape shifting.”
Yllera smiled, “Yes, it’s been a very informative exchange of information. Speaking of information, my main purpose back here is to find out more about the Riiad collective. I was wondering if you had any personal files on the subject?”
Tina frowned, “No, it was before my time, but I could hook you up with Gene or my mother, she was responsible for driving it out of existence. Why do you ask?”
“Just a gut reaction to my inquiries about intelligent pathogens.
That started with Agurian tales about an intelligence behind the plague, which lead me to question whether or not the plague itself somehow held a consciousness,” Yllera replied.
Tina raised an eyebrow, “Hmm, the Agurian plague as an intelligence? It might explain some perplexities of the last stages of its progression. Perhaps we could work on that theory.”
Yllera reacted on her gut, “No, it’s not what’s important, I need more information on Riiad, or organisms which if combined could become a new form of Riiad.”
Tina paused, looking briefly upset by Yllera’s abruptness before tapping furiously at her pop-pad, “I’ve sent you a prospective list of every organism which could possibly fit the bill. Good luck with that. Now before you go I need to warn you that your rating indicates the likelihood of spontaneous teleportation is high, so be careful what people and places you find yourself focused on. We’re done here.”
Tina offered her hand for shaking. Limply, Yllera shook it and left the room. She pulled her pop-pad from a zippered pocket of her survival suit, and began searching the files almost at random for a place to start.
One stood out almost like it was highlighted, it was a marine organism almost like an intelligent,
multicellular amoeba. It had the ability of absorbing or inserting itself into larger more complex animals and asserting control of them. It had a primitive sort of telepathic link with all of its parts and pieces even when they were no longer touching or even on the same world. Its R-7 designation labeled it as having the potential of being the key element of a very dangerous new form of Riiad.
The more Yllera read about it the more she needed to see it for herself. That was a mistake especially given Tina’s recent warning. Yllera found herself splashing down in briny water before she realized she had formed enough intention to teleport. Fortunately treading water was easier than instinct. Yllera examined her position. She was alone in a vast expanse of water. At least she hoped she was alone, thoughts of killer sharks floated into her mind, as did thoughts of finding the creature her woolgathering had brought her to see.
Soon her fears were realized as a dark blob, like an oil-slick began moving in her direction.
Yllera watched as it moved, occasionally things resembling dead fish or crustaceans would surface only to be submerged again beneath the dark churning slick.
Yllera numbly considered screaming, but decided it wasn’t worth the wasted effort.
It circled her leaving a blob of clear water around and beneath her, for her to continue treading water. Even the waves seemed to subside for it. Over the sound of the water Yllera heard sort of kaaah-virr sound as it bubbled water and air through itself. For a few moments the creature held itself at a distance from her. Then all at once it contracted around her, holding her limbs tightly in its slimy embrace. Fingers of its substance slid like liquid ice defying gravity up her neck onto her face pushing past clenched lips and eyelids seeking entry into her. Yllera fought not to scream, screaming would only aid it in its purpose.
Pain and drowning in the creature shook her body, the touch of its alien mind shook her thoughts. It wanted to grow to feed upon her soul to make more of itself. It wanted her hands, her feet her mind, but for some reason she remained separate, for now.
- - - - - - - - - -
Max was knee deep in muck; his swamp boat was bogged down in weeds. He was days away from anywhere searching for an old man who might or might not have a clue about what might make that world so special when it came to probability.
The world was called Taryna and it was strange in that it was only rarely habitable when it came to alternate realities. In most realities it was no more habitable than Venus but sometimes, in some alternate arrangements of circumstances it was lush and swampy.
The fact that this alternate dimension had a Taryna might be why it was dead center of the probability anomaly he was investigating for Angela. Max could see the old man’s shack less than a horizon away because of the rich glow of a channeled swamp gas lantern.
He was happy to be so near his goal and the possible answer he sought, despite the muck he had waded through to get there.
With his goal in sight, Max suddenly felt a familiar gut churning reaction. Yllera was in trouble. Her fear and pain was so acute, Max found himself unable to breathe. Without a thought or intention he drew himself to her. Out of thin air he plunged feet first into cold seawater. He found himself surrounded by some kind of black oily film. It wrapped itself over, under and around him.
The film had weight, pressure and unnatural strength, seizing him and preventing him from surfacing for air. It was alive and it began trying to enter him, through his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his ears. He couldn’t bat it away or stop it, he was engulfed within it. Pain lanced through his skull and suddenly his physical awareness was shoved aside by something alien.
His body was no longer his own, even his mind was sluggish to respond. Somehow through the creature Max could sense Yllera as though they were parts of the same whole. Surreally, Max felt anger that Yllera wouldn’t fully offer herself to the one-ness. Parts of her were still kept secret.
Kavir was the name of the oneness, as it spoke to all its parts, we are Kavir. Max couldn’t even think to leave Kavir, without it he would no longer be complete. In Kavir he and Yllera were one.
Yllera came upon an idea, possibly the
only way for her to escape Kavir and to save Max's life was to merge with it. Max cheered against his will, yes she must become more one.
Another part of him filled with horror at the idea of his beautiful woman becoming more one with the creature. Dimly that part of him sensed her hope of turning it into a human, a form in which she hoped Kavir would lose its ability to absorb and control other life forms. It was a dangerous gamble, one Max almost didn’t want her to make.
Max felt through Yllera the preludes of the transformation. He knew she didn’t fully understand how she was doing it, just that it was working. The grip Kavir had on their minds began to dissolve and the black plasmic fluid of Kavir withdrew from Max. He bobbed to the surface gulping down air. Around him fish and other sea life drifted away half stunned but suddenly free of their captor.
Soon Yllera, Max and a new man were all that drifted in the last broken remnants of the slick.
Yllera hung limply, clearly exhausted and unconscious from her ordeal. The new man, naked of everything except a thin membrane of the stuff from which Kavir was made, flapped arms and legs spasmodically, clearly not able to swim. Max, free once again to pursue his own priorities, Wrapped his arm around Yllera,
“Yllera!”