Waking Titan by Dylan James Quarles

Author:Dylan James Quarles [Quarles, Dylan James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

The ghosts of Mars

Thunderstruck, Harrison dropped to his knees. All around him, the twisted and shining bones of a thousand dead glinted and glared. With the blue glow of his Augmented Vision now turned off, Harrison could see the amber yellow light of the tiny star as it washed over everything in the room, making stark shadows in the negative spaces.

About half the size of a Lander, the miniature Sun turned in slow circles, sometimes wavering or flickering like a candle in the wind. Spurts of fire twisted up and away as random flares released their energy, sending sparks of light dancing into the murky dark above.

Unable to speak or move, Harrison simply stared—his eyes refusing even to blink. Still calling after him, the voice of Ralph Marshall was a distant buzz not even worth attempting to understand. Soon, though, even that sound fell away as Marshall himself entered the Dome and was silenced by what he saw.

How long Harrison stayed that way, kneeling and staring, he did not know. When finally he did stir, he felt as if he himself had become like the thousands of dead bones strewn about: frozen and immobile.

Struggling to his feet, he glanced briefly over his shoulder to be sure that his team was with him. They were there, gazing as he had done, in silence and in shock. Taking a few hesitant steps towards the miniature Sun, Harrison allowed himself for the first time since entering the Dome to play his eyes across the other elements that comprised the picture.

Lying in neat piles that retained the original orientation of their design, the bones glittered with a light dusting of crystals like morning frost. Besides the few that he had scattered with his boots, they were totally unmolested. Picking his path carefully, Harrison made his way towards the center of the Dome and the sun that hung in the air above it. As each tentative step brought him closer to that ball of fire and light, the tugging song that had drawn him to this place rang louder. Nearly breaking through to the realm of tangible sensation, the call of the sentinel star made it seem almost like a conscious entity.

Totally absorbed, Braun had become like liquid mercury. With an omnipotent view of all that had been and all that possibly could be, laid out before him in one continuous pattern, the AI felt lost in a sea of relativity. Even without the aid of YiJay’s mechanical Eyes, he saw the energy fields using instead his Ajna Chakra, his Sahasrara—his third eye.

Binding, powering, and elucidating all of the finite webs that formed creation, the miniature Sun was a beating heart at the center of everything. Repeated and reflected countless times over, its influence never died.

Though part of his being diligently recorded and processed the information his physical avatars reported, Braun’s essence—his soul—had transcended to a space in between spaces.

Within two dozen steps of the fiery sphere, Harrison paused. There, directly below the sun, in the center of the Dome’s floor stood a small altar.

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