Chapter 17 - Recording No. 107: Truth
Year 2493. South Pole
“Hey! Gaius! Can you grab that crate over there? We’re gonna need it soon!”
“Ugh. Alright. Hold on a minute! I’m on the phone with Aria!”
“Alright. Take your time with that one.”
Gaius rolled his eyes, “Sure.”
“How much longer is the Fritz house going to stay in Antarctica?”
Gaius sighed, “As long as my father believes in that physical form of will.”
“Where the hell is he getting all this?”
“I have no idea. Sometimes it seems like he’s hearing things.”
A silence settled upon them as Gaius gazed at the sprawling research base the whole family had established.
“Hearing things? Why would Patrik be hearing things?”
“Well, he is my father.”
Aria considered the statement, “Well. He is insane.”
“That, is something we can agree on.”
“So, when do you think he’ll be done with this bullshit?”
I stared at father leaning over a newly drilled core of the ice, “At least a month.”
“A month!”
“Yeah… he’s pretty engrossed in this uh… what was it called?”
“Ether.”
I nodded to myself, “Yeah. Ether.”
“Do you believe ether exists?”
“I showed it to you! It obviously exists.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
A rustling of papers crackled through the phone, “Why are we only able to use this ether stuff now?”
“I... huh.”
“You said your father has been hearing things?”
“I wouldn’t call it hearing things. Stuff just seems to coincidently happen when he says certain things.”
Aria paused, “Like?”
“Like one time we were having a meal, and he told me I was going to kick my water cup over and seconds later I did just that.”
“Did he use the Oracle?”
“That’s the funny thing. We didn’t bring Oracle here.”
Aria fell silent as she pushed through a couple of papers. Finally, she circled something with her pen, “Pass me to Patrik.”
“Okay give me a few minutes.”
“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere”
Gaius chuckled, “Every minute matters when I’m freezing to death down here.”
Aria let out a small giggle as Gaius lumbered over to his father and tapped his shoulder. With a quick nod Gaius quickly put the phone up to his ear, “Aria?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll be home in a year. I promise.”
“Yeah?”
“I promise this time.”
“You better keep that promise.”
Gaius smiled, “I’ll try. Love you.”
“Love you.”
Gaius passed the phone to Patrik who had a massive grin on his face after hearing the short exchange that unfolded before him. As he grasped the phone he squinted at Gaius, “Oh how nice it is to be young. To think you would chase after her of all people.”
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Gaius stared at the old man with a slight face of concern, “Dad, you need anything?”
Patrik grabbed Gaius’s shoulder, “Your old man is weathering the cold better than you! Look at you shivering in that jacket!”
Gaius blew a puff of air out of his mouth and watched as it floated off, “I’m bigger. More surface area. Colder faster.”
Patrik made a skeptical frown, “Sounds like an excuse to go inside again.”
“It’s nice inside.”
“You hearing this Aria? Your future husband is this weak.”
Gaius glared at Patrik, “Hey!”
“Sorry my bad, future close friend. That better?”
Gaius rolled his eyes, “Not that, the weak part.”
Patrik patted Gaius on the back, “Go head inside and get yourself warmed up. You can’t be catching a cold or Aria will murder me after this trip.”
“I don’t think she’s capable of that.”
Aria’s voice blasted through the phone, “Not capable of what?”
“Sorry! My bad! I’m… I’m going now!”
Aria and Patrik chuckled as Gaius scurried off into the temporary building the family had built.
“So, Patrik. I figured out what you told me last week.”
“You still believe the Earth can think?”
“And you think Earth is just a rock?”
Patrik frowned as he ran his hand over the cylindrical ice core in front of him, “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
“Well Earth is sentient.”
“How so?”
The sound of Aria scribbling something echoed through the phone, “Earth is alive.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Patrik moved on to the next ice core and pulled out some shining lime green quartz like structure, “Then what about this crystal stuff?”
“That’s ether.”
“This? We’ve checked and it has the same properties as quartz.”
A few seconds later Aria sighed, “Change your belief to the material being diamond.”
“Wait.”
“Yes.”
Patrik grinned, “How have I not thought of that!”
Raising his hammer above his head Patrik tried to smash the small crystal on the bottom of the ice core. Unlike previous tests, the hammer bounced off with a cube shaped dent on it. Patrik smiled, “It… the properties changed!”
“It must be ether!”
Patrik quickly ran over to the crystals, “So if I made them liquid…”
Putting his hand over the small crystalline structure he watched as the structure melted into a pool of glowing green syrup.
Patrik smiled a crazed grin, “It… it works. IT FUCKING WORKS!”
-----
“Prisoner twenty-four has been restrained, sir.”
Gaius and Patrik looked over the row of people in front of them. War criminals. All of them. Terrorists. Bad people. But what constituted bad? Eh. It didn’t really matter. Holdouts from the Lunar war. People that knew too much.
Gaius grabbed one of the people and helped him walk towards the laboratory, “What’s the test today?”
Patrik frowned, “We want to see what ether does inside the body.”
“This liquid stuff is ether?”
“Aria thinks this is the blood of the Earth. I can’t see it.”
“Why not? If it’s ether it would make sense.”
Patrik glared at Gaius, “I trust nothing. I need to see it. See it for myself with my own two eyes.”
Gaius shrugged, “Yeah yeah yeah that whole crazed mentality has led to this.”
“This?”
Gaius spread his around the whole room, “This.”
Patrik nodded, “And you see this as a bad thing?”
Gaius shrugged, “Just a thing. Not good. Not bad.”
Patrik held up a small syringe up to the tiny light in the temporary shelter and measured out 5 milliliters of ether. I looked up at the line, “Gaius, hold down that one on the end.”
The man looked into Patrik’s eyes. His body shook as his teeth chattered in terror. Patrik grabbed the man’s shoulder, “Calm down. This stuff won’t kill you. I promise we’ll do anything to save you.”
The subject didn’t believe the words. Patrik frowned, “We have seen that some people gain superpowers from this.”
“S- suh- super powers?”
Patrik nodded, “Yes. Superpowers. Powers like super speed and time stop.”
Gaius glared at his father. Lies. All of it. Lies. Probably possible. Unproven. Patrik looked up at Gaius and gave him a sad smile. He knew. The commonwealth had sent these people as lab rats. They were no longer considered human to the commonwealth.
Patrik wiped the man’s arm with small pad, “You ready?”
“Y- y… yes.”
Click TshhhCK
“There we go. All done.”
The man sat in front of us and looked up at us, “Um… Is that it?”
Patrik nodded, “Yup. That’s it. Tell us if you feel anything.”
The man stood up from the chair, “Alr- THUD.”
“What!”
“AED! Get an AED!”
“Gurgle COUGH Augh!”
Patrik grabbed the man’s shoulder, “Hey buddy, stay with us. What’s happening. We need to know.!”
The man looked up at Patrik, “I can’t see.”
When looking at his eyes Patrik noticed his eyeballs had been covered by what seemed to be a thin green glowing film. What could that be?
Seconds later the man pointed up at the sky as he writhed in pain on the chair, “I see it! I see it! I see it!”
“See what?”
The man fell silent and fell limp on the chair.”
A largely built man who was one of the private soldiers of the Fritz family burst into the shelter with a plastic box, “AED?”
Patrik pointed to the man in the seat, “Hook it up. We need him alive.”
The soldier nodded, “Rodger.”
Zzzt Zzzt BZZZT
“COUGH COUGH AUGH!”
“You with us buddy?”
“I… I see it!”
Patrik frowned, “See what! We need to know!”
The man’s mouth fell open, “God. I see god.”
“God? Describe it?”
The man stopped twitching and moving and seemed to stare directly at Patrik. For an ominous couple seconds, the figure seemed to stare at Patrik. The man smiled, “Hello.”
The room rumbled and the floor shook. Patrik looked around and grabbed the closest thing to maintain his balance. Gaius.
“Father?”
Patrik looked up at Gaius, “Heh, one benefit of being such a dense rock.”
“What do you mean?”
“The room just shook!”
Both Gaius and the soldier stared at Patrik, “What do you mean the room shook?”
Patrik stood up and looked into the eyes of the test subject, “Ah. I see. Who the hell are you?”
The man smiled, “Earth.”
Patrik’s eyes widened. Aria was right. She was right all along. He stared at the ground and laughed, “To think the greatest scientist this millennia would overlook such a hypothesis.”
It tilted its head sideways, “I have come to offer humanity a deal.”
“Deal?”
“A deal to borrow the power of my blood.”
“What is it?”
“Each being will forge a contract. First is limits. Second is interest. Third is sacrifice.”
Patrik frowned, “What does limits, interest, and sacrifice mean?”
It looked into Patrik’s eyes. It grinned. Patrik heard something snap in his head and suddenly was staring at the floor. Looking up at the thing sitting in the chair he saw a shining green crystal bursting out of the test subject’s skull. Well. That couldn’t be good.
