The Breach: Finish the Story Week #32

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The Breach

By @agmoore

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She found him hunched over the PC. His face was flushed, his eyes wide.

"I did it!"

Her heart sank. She was hoping he would fail. That was the only way to stop him.

"How far along did you get?"

"I broke the code. Arthur had everything locked up. He thinks, with that MIT degree, he can code rings around anyone. I showed him. Showed them all. Wait till they see!"

"But Brian, how far did you get?"

She was beginning to panic. He might actually try to breach the dimension. Maybe he could get through. Then what? It was envy that drove him, an obsession that had consumed their lives for months. After he stole the code from Arthur she knew she couldn't keep him safe. If she reported him, they'd lock him up in a black site facility. He'd never get out. And if she didn't report him....

"Brian, just hold on a minute. What is it you think is going to happen next?"

"Think?"

He jumped out of his chair and grabbed her shoulders.

"Think? Do I have to prove it to even you? You doubt me?"

She was afraid of him how. Not that he would physically hurt her. Probably not. But he would definitely hurt himself.

"Whatever it is you want to do, to breach this dimension, whatever that breach does to you, it will do to me. Because I'm not leaving. So when I ask what you think, I'm not doubting you. I want to know what will happen to us."

His fingers relaxed and he sat down.

"Pull up a chair. I know the fourth dimension will be breached. This is history. Right here, right now. Bigger than Einstein. Bigger than anything that ever came before."

Softly, she asked, "What if...we are somehow.....absorbed, obliterated? Will anyone ever know?"

"Nothing like that is going to happen, but I've left a trace, kind of like electronic breadcrumbs, that Arthur, with his clever MIT training, would be able to follow. They'll come after us, to learn what we've seen, what we discovered. If that happens, won't we have a story to tell?"

She was glad they decided not to have children. At least no one else would be hurt.

"Are you ready?" He was eager. His eyes shone. His knuckles were white. "I'm going to execute the command. And we'll see, together."

"Yes, together, Brian."

She didn't have long to reflect upon their folly. Somehow the dimension opened and then folded back so that it wasn't separate but reached into their room and became a continuous landscape of bleak darkness. Of crimson sky and endlessly floating graphite. In front of them, the most ominous edifice. And all around, a wail that cut to her soul.

They were soon separated, because familiar laws of locomotion and distance did not operate anymore. Would she see Brian again?

They were lost.

What follows below is the story, written by f3nix, that gave rise to my dark fantasy. @f3nix put so many rich clues (some perhaps I saw but weren't even there), that I went in a peculiar direction. I wondered, how did this unnamed man find himself in such a desolate circumstance? The wondrous thing about creativity--it is unbounded and unpredictable.

This is episode #32 of Finish the Story, a creative exercise that can be found in the @bananafish realm. Every week a new story is begun, usually by @f3nix, but sometimes by guest authors. The challenge for participants in the contest is to pick up the wand and complete the scene already set. There are no rules, except for a suggested 500 word limit and that the new piece be connected thematically to the original.

This week, I turned the beginning into the end. I hope I haven't violated the spirit of the contest by turning it, in a way, inside out.

Awakenings

by @f3nix

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The hoverbike lay abandoned on its side, the engine still warm. The fine black dust carried by the incessant wind was a snake that crept in every small recess.

From the top of the dune the Tesseract 19 could be seen with the naked eye. The column pierced the black sea of ​​graphite and challenged the dark crimson sky. The awareness of his distance made him wince. That construction was enormous. That impenetrable artifact, Moloch's sharpest tooth.

Intertwined with dust, the warm wind brought an imperceptible howl: the bark of the monolith, an omen of death.

The man waited, a stiff exoskeleton bent over the black sand. The helmet lay abandoned beside him. Soon the team would have arrived.

"Soon you will arrive too and everything will be accomplished, one way or another."

He thought of her smile, her courage, her strength. "My life, how could I've been so reckless to have you involved in all this?" The tears were already kneading blackened as the memories of their happy normality swept over him.

"I can not let them find me like this". He stared at himself from outside: another tower on a dune, far more uncertain than the one that howled his feral wish.

These and other demons echoed within the chambers of his soul, when his eyes met a green sprout. The man stared that little miracle that, against every odd, was striving to affirm its existence. In the midst of that sea of bottomless ​​despair.

The tear finally found its way lingering and bathed a leaf. The man managed to pull himself together and, now smiling, he put on his helmet.

"This Moloch will tremble, time has come for an awakening."

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