The Desolate Guardians (11 page)

I'd been abandoned.

I'd been left behind, just like the men and
women on the walls.

I was alone, just like all those poor people
messaging me about the terrors working their way deeper into the
realms of man.

Anger faded into frantic terror, and I began
searching for the way I'd gotten in here in the first place. An
elevator? Perhaps the odd server room door was part of a
non-obvious lift mechanism. I found nothing, but the idea remained.
Was there an elevator somewhere in this place?

What did I remember about showing up for
work, before I got trapped here?

I slept during the day, so my trip into work
was always a groggy blur… and I hadn't seen the sun in longer than
I could remember… except for that one shining day of training.

How had I entered the building on that
day?

Nope. The front doors were fake, too. I broke
them, then climbed out and slumped against the cool rock wall,
wracking my brain.

I'd
seen the purple glow of a portal
opening
outside the windows when I'd activated that massive
facility's portal machine. What had that been? My goddamn
imagination? There had to be
some
link with the surface
office building duplicate that the kids had just been in.

I returned to the spot where I'd witnessed
the foggy purple glow. The windows there remained intact. Lifting a
chair, and fearing what I would find, I broke the glass.

Beyond I saw… a tunnel!

Stepping out over the glass, I rushed down
it… and found a wide circular scorched section of cave wall, where
the portal had appeared. At least, that's what I imagined it to be…
which meant that I'd stayed inside the glass out of pointless fear.
I'd missed my one shot at escape.

Above all else, that discovery broke me.

I returned to the server room in a daze.

"I'm going to die down here," I said aloud,
to nobody in particular.

And I knew it to be true… unless…

I began to respond to my messages with a new
energy. I wasn't done, not at all! Someone out there had to have an
ability, a device, or knowledge that might get me out. After all,
if I'd almost escaped once before, I could do it again - and, this
time, I knew a little bit more about my situation.

And there were people in need, too. All over
the place, creatures were roaming the woods, entities were stalking
people, loved ones were exhibiting odd behavior, neighbors were
disappearing, and bad luck was rampant. It overwhelmed me, at
first, seeing the sheer range and volume of problems, but it hit
me: I had the information, I had the communication, and that meant
none of us were alone.

I started responding to every single message,
giving people what info I could find, and putting them in contact
with those around them who had also clued in.

Then, the author I'd been talking to
responded once more. He finally sent back:
This is a very grim
situation. What do we do?

"First, I'd like to get out of here," I wrote
him. "I'm trapped." I explained my situation as thoroughly as I
could.

Those are some very odd happenings,
he
wrote back.
I'm not sure you have all the pieces of the puzzle
yet, as they don't quite fit together in a way that makes sense.
Although, I know for sure how you can get out of there.

"What? How?!"

No matter how bad things are, you can always
make them worse. What you need is a sudden serious problem. Then,
while thinking quickly and trying to survive, you'll have a chance
to turn that problem into an opportunity. In your case, an
opportunity to escape.

"That doesn't seem logical. How would making
my situation worse help me get out of here?"

We live in strange times. Existence follows
certain trends. In a sense, there's a grim fairness about it. If
you do nothing, you die. If you risk it all, you've at least got a
shot. That's a rule.

"And if the shot doesn't work out?"

Then you die anyway. But isn't a slim chance
better than none at all?

He was right.

And, in fact, I had dozens of Internets at my
disposal. I could find the right threat, tailored to my situation,
and try to use that threat to escape. Were there any creatures that
used portals to move around? Were there any dark entities I could
make a deal with? I began my search of the stories online. It
quickly became apparent that those with specific intents usually
sought out a certain type of ritual.

What I needed was a Game… and someone with
the power to make it real.

"Do you know of any Games that might help
me?" I asked my author contact.

Hmm… I've never really gotten into Game
stories, but here's how I imagine an actual real one might
work…

I memorized everything he told me, and I
began searching the office building for the proper supplies. It was
a shot in the dark, and incredibly risky… but, as he'd said, it was
better than doing nothing and dying here alone.

If a soul was a thing; or, at least, if a
mind was a thing, then there had to be more to existence than the
physical spatial dimensions we saw. What
was
a mind? Why
were humans self-aware, and animals not? I'd read stories of a
creature that could cut away and eat a person's self-awareness,
turning them into walking biological machines that talked, ate,
laughed, and watched movies… but with nobody inside, not for real.
If that existed, then a mind must be a real thing.

And if minds were real things, there was a
dimension or plane where they existed. They were
something,
somewhere.

And if they were something, somewhere… then
there might be other things there, too.

I sat in a dark, quiet corner of the
building, a single candle lit in front of me, and a pad of paper
and a pen on hand. These were not necessary for the Game, but they
might help me focus, and then remember. I'd been instructed not to
bother with mirrors, or pentagrams, or blood, or any other human
physical or mental fear.
Human
concerns didn't matter for
something like this…

Sitting in place, senses dark, I thought a
single word:
aware.

I thought it again, repeatedly:
aware,
aware, aware, aware…

I made the thought louder.
AWARE, AWARE,
AWARE…

I began shouting it in my mind.
AWARE.
AWARE. AWARE.

I kept screaming the same word in my mind,
from
my mind, over and over. Fear of actually attracting
attention held me back, but fear of dying here pushed me past an
intrinsic barrier.

For each repetition, I envisioned the words
as louder than the chant before them, the volume ever-increasing,
until I was sure I was shouting throughout an entire mental
universe.

I kept this up even as a feeling of impending
doom swept over me. Again, I might have stopped… but survival
instinct kept me going.

Then, eight minutes and seven seconds after
I'd begun, it happened.

I opened my eyes and looked out.

A shadowed face flickered beyond the candle's
flame, shifting shade dancing across darker darkness. It wasn't
really here, and I wasn't really looking. I understood that… but I
still felt a chill seize me.

It smiled hungrily, its teeth a row of jagged
voids barring infinite blackness.
Congratulations, you've
attracted attention.

I had nothing to offer it, and nothing to
keep me safe. As the author had told me, human rituals were
probably useless in the face of entities that existed beyond the
physical realms. I knew there were other realities that I could
travel to, if I had the means, but
this thing
was from
somewhere else entirely. But, as my contact had also informed me,
all things followed logic in at least some sense. My only hope was
that some part of its value system overlapped with ours.

"Wait," I thought aloud. "It's important that
I talk to you."

It always is,
it whispered back, its
empty eyes icy.
None of you ever
want
to be
consumed. How short-sighted of you.

I didn't ask what it meant by that, and I
didn't want to know. "Are you aware of what's happening? Are you
aware of the Crushing Fist?"

It hissed softly, but did not kill me or
consume me or anything else. It waited. I assumed that meant it was
at least open to my proposal, and that the Crushing Fist meant
something to it.

"I… want to work with you, or make some sort
of deal with you. I need to get out of here. I need to be able to
help others of my kind more directly, or we're all in trouble."

Something behind it moved, and I realized…
the vague humanoid shape before my awareness was a front. The real
entity behind it lay shrouded in darkness, both massive and elegant
at the same time. I dared not look directly for fear of offending
it.

You have no idea what you're up
against,
it finally replied.
But I envy your ignorance. You
scramble ever forward, like bugs in mud, like
fivhen
in
squuar
.
You don't even stop when you're already
doomed, dead, or
vwaal
.
That obstinance is, likely,
the only organic trait worthy of mention.

"So you'll help me?" I asked, confused.

It grinned again, its mock shadowed face
stretching horribly.
Didn't you hear me? You're already
vwaal
.
You cannot
be
helped. You should do
yourself a favor and allow me to consume you. I am experiencing
pity for your pathetic situation, so I will allow you the choice,
rather than force it upon you.

"Um… no thank you."

So be it.

A non-light flared behind its massive
shadow-form, and I prepared to scream as I caught a glimpse of what
it really looked like. The shape, the size, the complexity - it was
absolutely -

I fell backwards as if struck, suddenly
ejected from the realms of the mind, and I hurried to write down
what had been said before it faded like shreds of a dream on waking
fog.

Then, I tried to draw it.

What had I… I'd seen it, but… the image… was
gone…

Sitting on the floor, I let myself wallow in
despair for a while. Even shadow entities from the realms of the
mind couldn't help me… unless I'd fallen asleep, and dreamed the
whole thing.

Despondent, I returned to my computer, and
began half-heartedly responding to calls for help again.

I'm intent on helping as many as I can before
I starve to death down here… but who is going to help
me?

Haven’t heard from you in a few days,
the message said.
Are you alright?

I stared at the two sentences for quite some
time, failing to comprehend that they were actually meant for me.
I’d been answering messages, coordinating responses, and watching
the worlds burn for so many uninterrupted hours… I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d eaten, or slept, or even taken a walk
around my office building prison.

They’d tried to destroy themselves. Or,
someone had tried to destroy them from the inside out. I’d spent
eleven hours breaking into a military mainframe to shut off a
nuclear launch countdown gone awry. Who was in charge on that
world? Why had they tried to detonate all of their nuclear weapons?
I was still getting messages from people there, all desperate for
help against black transmorphic spheres that kept evolving new
defenses against anything used against them - black transmorphic
spheres that liked to stab people through the skull and then take
up residence inside. Were these the brain-eaters Jonathan had
mentioned? Or were they a new threat?

Somebody high up had panicked, and started a
twelve-hour countdown to global suicide.

I’d managed to turn it off… with four minutes
to spare.

Haven't heard from you in a few days.
I stared at the two sentences that had been meant for me in
particular.
Are you alright?

I had no way of knowing - had the writer of
the first message I’d read, the man trapped eleven thousand feet
underground with the fate of the world at his fingertips, been the
one to start that countdown? Had he seen what was happening on the
surface and given up?

I didn’t think so. The military mainframe I’d
gotten into hadn’t been nearly as secure and high-tech as the
encryption of his message had implied. Most nuclear arsenals on
human worlds had been built during the Cold War - an era they’d all
shared - and the technology was equally as outdated, often scarily
so.

I stared at the two sentences that had been
sent with concern for
me
, something nobody else had really
been shown during my efforts. They had their own situations to
worry about, and their own homes to defend.

My author contact had remembered that there
was a person behind the screen.

“The candle I lit during the Game started a
fire,” I wrote back slowly. “I watched it burn out a couple rooms,
until the sprinklers took care of it.”

Oh… wow, I’m sorry.

“It’s fine. I kind of wanted it to take this
whole place down. I’ve smashed all the windows, flattened half the
cubicles, and trashed all the pictures my coworkers left
behind.”

Are you losing it?

I sighed. I was considering lying, but, as I
watched my map, the circle I'd thought I'd saved went red.
Connection lost.
I stared at it for maybe thirty seconds,
too numb to feel anything. Had I missed something? Had I made some
error? Had they overridden my shutdown? We'd actually lost one.
We'd actually lost an entire world while I'd watched. The sheer
size and complexity of the defense efforts had practically
guaranteed somebody would slip through the cracks eventually, but I
hadn't… thought about how it would actually feel to realize,
finally, that it was a losing battle, a battle of attrition that we
could not win… a crushing fist of intense stress squeezed my
awareness, and I felt like bursting.