The Future Soon

[Wilhelm Bosche]

"The Directorate has announced today a new dimensional mining operation will begin tomorrow. Sources within the First Prefecture indicate that there may be a brief power fluctuation as the Phase Engine comes online. Estimates suggest that the resources gained over the next few months may allow for an increase in the Materials Allowance of all citizens."

In well over a millennium, there had been no significant improvement in news broadcasting. Talking heads centered on a flat projecting device blathered on about the day's events, predictions for the future, and if things were really slow a retrospective on events past. The resolution had improved, to be sure. Wil could see the obscene smoothness of the anchorwoman's face. She had been doing that job for thirty years and still looked exactly the same. That sort of vanity was what passed for happiness in Architelos.

"I'm sure people will be thrilled to hear that, Jin."

Her companion was a man about Wil's age, intentionally older looking with patches of grey around his temples. He was, in fact, the same age as the woman next to him, but older men are somehow a desirable commodity, growing in value like a bottle of wine, until at some point they do spoil.

"Yes, I'm sure they will, Hans," Wil scoffed at the screen. "Because they have no greater desire than to add a few more cubic feet to their dwellings or acquire a dispenser that functions in a stunning three milliseconds instead of four!"

He half expected the ad for that very dispenser to come on as the news show went to commercial, but he was spared the irony. His fingers gripped the arms of his chair, beautifully carved lion's claws closed around orbs, all done in Old World oak. It had cost him a month's Materials Allowance to requisition it from the Archives. The attendants there had begun to recognize him as a customer rather than a visitor, having lost a significant portion of their collection to his increasingly voracious habit. The rest of his small room bore testament to that.

The walls were draped with tapestries from every era of Earth history that produced them, arranged in chronological clockwise order with the broadcast screen set up at the center. Above it, two rapiers crossed, relics from the anachronistic century following the Last War, after Eudaemonians had abandoned their home plane. This was all background, window dressing. His true passion was laid out on his desk. A chunk of unworked mithril, the severed claw of a demon, vials of healing salve, and numerous other trinkets from a world nothing like his own were arrayed across the surface. A vellum map was stretched out in the center with a legend in florid calligraphy, "Althanas."

With ink and quill had head attempted the duplicate the lettering as he catalogued knowledge the mapmaker lacked. The point of insertion where Arius Mephisto first arrived was marked with a crystal pin. Wil's own ancestor, Nijin Bosche, had his path traced with onyx markers. Where the two crossed, there was almost always a notation of the battle that resulted. Dozens of other marks and inserts catalogued the course of the failed Corone Invasion, and the insuing Eudaemonian-Makarios Civil War. An elaborate model of the Old City of Architelos lay in the middle of the western ocean, a grave marker where that ruin lay, crushed by the pressure of the depths.

Wil let out a sigh as his eyes danced over it. He opened a drawer and produced a leather-bound book, the special edition of Arius Mephisto's autobiography. Fanning through the pages he stopped at his bookmarked place, near the end of the second chapter. He had been reading the book cover to cover, a few pages a day, for decades, since he was a young boy. Keeping track of how many times he had read it exactly would seem too pathetic, so he preferred not to count, but he suspected it was dozens at least, and likely much more.

The sight of the portal tearing itself apart is something I will always remember. Swirling blue tendrils enveloping the platform, dead bodies at our feet, Linnea and I were as likely to die as arrive where we did. I feel a sense of gratitude that we ended up here in Gamma Space, a pastoral realm of relatively simple people, but frankly I have no idea where I should direct such a feeling. So I keep it for myself and turn it to pride, something I have great need of in these late days as I see the twilight coming.

He was no poet to be sure, Wil thought, but it was powerful stuff nonetheless. The room he destroyed had been reconstructed a dozen times larger. No human had set foot within the portal's aperture in centuries. Now it was only materials, energy and matter from far flung planes that the Directorate decided would not miss them. Wil smirked a bit.

"Tomorrow, that's going to change."

[Arsène]

There was a park outside of Radasanth, nestled just beyond the city limits and just before wooded thickets teeming with bandit and goblin alike. It was an inexpensive solution by city officials to quell rising worries of overcrowded streets that plagued the market ways midday. Roads, or well-trodden pathways rather, were shaded by hastily transported trees of all different shapes and sizes, taken from the forests and strewn about in such a way to seem natural. Prancing children enjoyed the summer air as much as picnicking couples did, and the small dirt paths all around provided a comfortable, if noisy, way to pass the day walking at one's leisure.

Away from the sounds of laughter and cheer was an obscure garden sectioned off by a half-built stone wall that came above the green grass by a slim margin. Rose bushes and bright flowers abound in the tiny alcove of nature, surrounding one simple bench. The frame was iron wrought with specks of rust and chipped paint. The wooden boards were frayed and darkened by pyromaniac kids with too much free time.

And atop it all lay a man, dressed in splendor, watching the cloudless sky. He had not moved in hours, and had no plans to. His room in the city was noisy and smelled of the sickening concoctions of the bar downstairs. Lying in bed only created a sense of worthlessness, and watching the downtrodden poor scuttling from the alleys brought on depression.

Arsène Laurent was a man without purpose, without meaning, and, thankfully, without passion; a man with passion in his situation could be led dangerously astray by a charismatic word. All he had was the passage of time to further remind him of the memory from his beloved, and weaken the grip her death had on his heart. He had long since moved past the feelings of madness; dominated by suicide and necromancy. All he had was the sobering thought of acceptance for what must be, and all the time in the world for him to dwell on it.

Within a few hours, he left the small park bench that smelt of ash. He left the merriment and cheer, and the trodden paths, and the butterflies that fluttered from petal to petal.

He would return. And return early enough to beat the crowds.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

Wil had hoped his sleep would be a preview of things to come, filled with dreams of the fantastic world that would soon be his new home. No such luck. He tossed and turned in his soft synthetic cloth sheets, sweating despite the constant cool temperature of Architelos. By 0430 hours, he had given up on it entirely and sat himself down at his desk to perform one final check of his plans.

There was a simple pack set out by the door with the sorts of things that Eudaemonians simply did not produce. Provisions for a long journey could only be acquired as antiques, items of curiosity rather than practicality. He had stockpiled them for some time, paying several hundred times their legitimate value in Materials to requisition them from the Archives.

His long sword sat next to them, an item he had worn on his hip for years, to the point that no one genuinely questioned him about it. Carrying a blade seemed merely strange in a world of energy shields and powered armor; it was surely no threat. Wil meant to test that assumption within hours. How complacent had his countrymen truly grown? Could a single man really storm the Precinct and seize control of the Phase Engine?

Most men couldn't, if only because the Phase Engine was keyed by a gene sequence. Members of his extended family had been assured an important station for generations for that very reason. Only those who could trace their lineage to Hanaka Otani could hope to command the machine that lay at Architelos' heart. Nijin Bosche Otani's pedigree had been exposed as a fraud within his own lifetime, but his genes were not a lie. His predecessor Director Bosche had gone through great lengths to perpetrate the deception, so much so that he resequenced Nijin's genes. Legitimacy aside, the blood in Wil's veins, thin and far removed from its source, still bore the necessary key sequence to command the mighty technological relic.

Before him lay the command codes that formed the second necessary element of his treason. The declassified records of his family contained a surprising amount of detail about the device on which Architelos was balanced upon like the head of a pin. The Directorate must have figured that only a rare few could make any use of the information anyway, so it was scarcely worth controlling. Since the Civil War, the descendants of Otani had been model citizens, after all.

Finally, in the same overwrought calligraphy that was painted across the whole map, the absolute coordinates of the Althanian plane, the address for Gamma Space, were written out on his map. He had memorized them even before he hatched this plan, so it was little more than an aesthetic addition, an attempt to exert a sense of familiarity and control over the alien world. For all his escapism, Wil was still inescapably Eudaemonian in some matters.

Before he knew it, a buzzing stirred his mind out of the sleep that had at last come to him when he least wanted it. He had finally drifted off while he was reviewing his notes, and now the clock beneath his broadcast screen read 0850. He had only a few minutes to reach the precinct before the power fluctuations were to begin. He scampered to the door and slung the pack over his shoulder, fastening his sword to his hip and his buckler to his arm.

"So it begins."

Autobiography of the Executor, page ten, paragraph three, line four, he cited silently to himself.

[Arsène]

The Blessing was one of the few reputable dives in all of Radasanth. Scuffles were kept to a minimum, and bathroom nooses were almost non-existent. Almost. The high prices kept some of the riffraff away who came looking for a good scoop on the next buried treasure or captured princess, and the bar sustained itself on a healthy diet of friendly, eccentric regulars.

"It's well lit, at least. That's more than you can say for most taverns," said an elderly man with sunken eyes and a crooked smile. He rented a room across the hall from Arsène, and kept quiet enough that the melancholic did not reject him outright.

"I imagine." A trite chuckle was all he could manage to respond with as the geriatric sat down, uninvited, at Arsène's favorite corner booth. It was one of the few tables in the house that did not have a cloth lamp suspended directly above it, allowing the sweet intoxication to go off unhindered by bright flickers that pounded at the eye without mercy or reprieve. And poor lighting allowed noble conditioning to fade away to blindness, allowing the man to stomach the cheap wine without concerning himself with the unsanitary and unsightly pewter goblet it was allowed to fester in.

"It was sure a nice day today. I could see so many children playing from outside my room!"

"It was enjoyable."

Chatter in the tavern became nothing but soundless notions as the awkward feeling crept deeper into the darkened corner. Before he knew it, the old man vanished without a word or the decency to say goodbye.

Or perhaps Arsène had not noticed. He had a tendency to not hear enough to care, or care enough to hear. Had it been a year ago, he would not have had a problem with scraping together enough pity to keep a pointless conversation going. But times had changed; changed just so much that he found himself leaving his favored corner booth for fear of yet another senseless fraternization.

As he ascended a staircase a bit further back, hidden behind piles of useless knickknacks and exotically painted walls, he could only run from the dreadful notion that had become his life.

Routine.

He knew when he arrived upstairs there would be his nightly meal of bread and soup, and a glass of water that would fruitlessly dilute the taste of bad wine in his mouth. He knew he would spend countless hours sprawled out in front of a rented desk, writing poetry and music by candle light before crumpling them into the trash to start anew. And he knew, that when he finally did fall asleep, he'd only wake up hours later to spend a day hidden away in the park, and start everything over again.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

Metallic statuary, the two guards outside the First Precinct were motionless within their sleekly designed powered armor. Between boots, their stylized helms, and the fact that those who chose to be guards tended to be a bit taller than the average citizen, they stood about a head above Wil as he walked casually between them. A voice crackled from within one of the technological husks, but he was already long gone before it could be heard. His visitation was routine, like everything in the soldier's lives. They were as much decommissioned as the massive artillery platforms that had heralded the Corone Invasion, relics of a bygone era guarding more of the same.

Within the facility, the hallways were deserted as usual. What few staff existed were assigned to various self-sufficient station, and there was little reason to walk about, except to come in and leave for the day. There was no one to scrutinize Wil as he turned the corner away from the Archives and toward the Phase Engine Aperture Chamber. It was not completely without security, but that much Wil had already planned for.

"Attention personnel, stage one activation of the Engine will commence shortly, please back up all work and prepare for intermittent power fluctuations. An audible countdown will sound momentarily."

Wil smirked. A single stocky man could stop him from going even a step further into the restricted area, but there was no such guardian. Instead, a line of redundant force fields stood between him and the corridor leading to his destination. He simply stood next to them and tapped his foot impatiently.

"Activation in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Stage One Act—"

A hiss cut off the transmission as the lighting throughout the facility flickered. The glowing air of the fields dissipated and Wil strolled casually through the gauntlet before power was finally restored. He could barely restrain a laugh, because that was essentially the whole of the security he needed to bypass. A device powerful enough to obliterate worlds, if that were his wish, and this was all it had taken.

"Power levels normalized. Stage two activation will commence shortly, please stand by."

The corridor continued for several more segments until he reached a sealed door. To his surprise, a broad shouldered man wearing lighter guardian-class armor stood outside it, an energy rifle propped on his shoulder. It was as if the hypothetical interdictor from his mind had been given flesh before his eyes. He walked casually up to him as he attempted to convince himself that the day would not end with him in custody.

"Authorized personnel only, citizen. How did you get back here?" the soldier called to him from a few yards away. He could hear the slight whine of his rifle powering up and the visible glow from its remote power source. His armor did not include a helmet and he could see the man's skeptical eyes

"I'm authorized, why else would I be here?" Wil said, continuing his casual walk toward the door. He reached down as if to produce indentification, but placed his hand on the hilt of his sword as he came within arm's length of the last obstruction between him and Althanas.

"Stage two commencing."

There was no countdown, the power flickered and the rifle's power core dimmed. Everything in Architelos was connected, a weakness that had never genuinely been exploited. Wil did not hesitate to be the first as he drew his sword with a swift motion, smashing the flat of the blade against the man's head. His eyes widened with shock just as the metal slammed against his skull. A rapidly blackening line formed along his skin where the blade struck and he fell to the ground with an unceremonious thump.

As the power was restored once more, the door hissed open automatically as Wil approached it. Not even a lock, he thought as he jammed the length of his blade into the door's activation panel, effectively sealing it for the moment. The room he found himself in had only a few white-coated technicians standing at their control stations as a majestic blue portal swirled in the center of the chamber. Prying his blade out from the wall with a crackle of energy, he turned to the one nearest him.

"Nothing to be concerned about, gentlemen. I'll just be taking the Engine on a slight detour," Wil said confidently as he shouldered the technician out of the way and began inputting the coordinates he had memorized. Once they were punched in, he patted the pack on his shoulder one last time to ensure its contents before approaching the aperture itself.

"You'll be torn apart! No living thing has gone through that portal in centuries!" one of the men finally cried out at him, having been struck dumb with shock until that very moment.

"Do you think I just showed up here one morning without a plan? I understand this contraption as well as you do, cousin," Wil called out. It was not that he knew the man; he could only imagine they must be relatives, if they were in charge of controlling the Engine.

"Best regards to Eudaemonia. Progress always," he said with a smile as he stepped into the swirling cerulean light.

The world around him seemed to collapse into a singularity and reemerge without a sight or sound inbetween. The transition was seamless, painless, and utterly lacking in the fanfare he had hoped for. Without so much as an earth shattering bang, he found himself standing in the center of a municipal park not unlike those of his own city. He had hoped his first sight would be something fantastic, but he was unable to calibrate things so precisely. If all had gone according to plan, he was somewhere on the island of Corone.

"Greetings, Althanas," he called out in the Tradespeak he had practiced for years. He could see a few individuals milling around, but he had no intention of addressing anyone in particular. It was just his little attempt to give the act he had just committed the significance that the universe was denying him.

[Arsène]

His restless night at The Blessing had finally given way to the terrible rays of the morning sun, Arsène decided it was time to leave his room to the rats he was sure snuck in whenever he made himself scarce. He washed his face and dressed as quickly and quietly, all in hopes of avoiding pestering neighbors and sleeping drunkards as he slipped out the greyed establishment and into the streets for some air devoid of stale ale and uncooked meat.

He had taken far longer than he imagined, as the streets bustled with activity only seen when lunchtime breaks allowed the monotony of work to be broken up by a quick meal and errands to the local businesses. The melancholic hated the crowds with a passion, and dreaded the idea of explaining to another strange face why his tie was crooked, or why the bags under his eyes seemed to grow darker every day. He could only nod and smile with all the tact of an aging simpleton and hope their questioned would be buried under a wave of odd looks and hurried steps.

With his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, Arsène made the long walk to his favorite spot to sit and think. He past the pleasures of every district; from distinct foods to exotic women, and shrugged them all off without even a second glance. He ate once a day, every night, and never even felt hungry then. And wine was all the comfort he needed at night to warm him in bed.

Before he knew it, the familiar face of the local guard gave him a friend nod as he past through the cities gates. Arsène tried to nod back, but could only really give a slight twist of the neck without caring. He knew it was best to be friendly with the guards, especially when the roads were packed with bandits so furious with rage that one might need saving from their manic exploits. Still, even the thought of a knife to the gut couldn't stem the thickening waves of apathy that pulsed through him whenever the thought of social interaction came up.

The paved roads became nothing but well-trodden dirt paths within a few paces outside the city gate, but the park was so close to the walls that it did not affect one's ability to navigate. The sounds of singing and hymns reminded Arsène that the local prayer group had brought some of its congregation to sit in the park and pray to and for the glories of nature.

It was a wonderful thing, indeed. They scared more causal park goers off with merely a glance.

The park's boundaries were marked by trees in full bloom, and bent by way of magic to make fairly simple curves to serve as archways. Arsène had noticed that the trees often died quicker this way, and enjoyed the site of Radasanth's municipal employees scurrying to replace the fallen, rotten plants as they crumbled to the ground.

Something ahead caught the melancholic's eye for a brief moment. An odd man stood up ahead, talking to no one in particular. Odder still was his appearance, as Arsène could have sworn nothing was their a moment ago. Even deeply entrenched in thought, he took some pride in remembering where people stood at all times in hopes of avoiding them. Though queer, he shrugged this off too and continued to his usual seat, just past where the odd man was standing. Deep in the back of Arsène's mind, he could only conjure one dear and true thought.

"I hope he's not a busker."

[Wilhelm Bosche]

After his initial jubilation, the pesky details fell upon Wil like a wet blanket. That very metaphor came to mind as the cloying humidity of the air filled his lungs. A fleet of pollen from every flower, tree, and shrub sailed through the muggy air into his eyes. The bright sunlight added to the sting and he struggled to keep his feet.

Preparation could only go so far, he thought. The records of dimensional travel were replete with stories of maladjustment to local conditions. He had modified the environmental controls in his apartment to raise the temperature, humidified the air by vaporizing water, exposed himself to as many specimens of foreign flora as he could. Yet here he was, hacking his lungs out in the middle of what should have been his grand triumph.

Shielding his face with his sleeve, he tried his best to regain a level of composure. The fluid in his ears and tears clouding his eyes reduced the world to a murky mess, even as the air around him began to crackle with a sourceless energy. Silent as the transition was for Wil, there were precursors to his arrival that he had not witnessed, and they were repeating themselves before his beclouded eyes. The fabric of reality did not tear or unravel, but it did fold and stretch, its threads strained by the tug of the Phase Engine.

A soldier came into behind in front of Wil. There is no other way to describe his arrival but that one moment he was absent and the next he was standing, mildly disoriented, but with his rifle readied all the same. Its core gleamed with a full charge and Will staggered to the side as quickly as he could.

The Eudaemonian trooper's senses caught up with his body after some delay, the narrowest margin to save Wilhelm's chest being annihilated by the bolt of plasma that issued from the barrel of the rifle. It sailed across the park and struck a building across the street, leaving a smoldering crater twice the size of a man's skull in the structure.

This was what it took to capture the attention of the milling crowds. A few screamed, others stared, but at the very least this tiny section of Radasanth was aware of the latest Eudaemonian incursion, even if they didn't understand that was what it was.

[Arsène]

Normally the birds were fairly loud in the park, but today seemed different. There were no songs or serenades; the chirps were silenced for unknown reasons that caused the slightest sliver of a smile upon the melancholic's face. However, the severity of the situation soon sunk in with the sound of screams. They were quiet at first, but gathered speed and strength until their shrillness crept to the very core of Arsène.

The man whom he had just past now faced the calamitous end of a gun of grim and strange design. Whether enchanted by magic or some perverted science unknown, it was clear to all around who noticed the smoking crater in a nearby building that its powers were efficiently destructive. And as the stone fizzled, its effectiveness was about to be proven on thick human hide. Once a busker in Arsène's mind, the man turned would-be victim in need of divine intervention at the very most, and mortal pity at the very least.

Arsène, staring at the scene with a sort of morbid fascination, spent what seemed like an eternity debating whether action on his part was possible. He was at a disadvantage in both weaponry and empathy, but an instinct deep inside him kicked in. Whether his true nature was an altruistic hero or a suicidal madman was unclear. What was true is that Arsène charged forward; clad in what many assume would be their Sunday's best.

The melancholic threw his jacket over the foreign soldier's head to blind him, and kicked at the back of his leg with all the might he could muster. Thankfully some trappings of disorientation still lingered, enough to prevent another shot from going off. Instead the harsh, blunt force of an elbow to the stomach was Arsène's reward for his intervention. It was stunning how quickly he fell, or how rigidly he froze up under the terrible stress of the blow.

He had succeeded in delaying the man's next shot. But that came at the price of directing attention at him.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

The Eudaemonian soldier winced as the intervening man struck him in the chest, though none could see the expression of pain from beneath the jacket. He tumbled to the ground ineffectually. Wilhelm started to muse on the frailty of his people, how isolation had made them soft, how even a soldier could be brought down with a single blow, not once but twice. He cut his instinct for reflection short and drew the sword from his hip.

As he plunged it down with both hands to deal the coup de grâce he was careful to avoid his unexpected assistant's coat. The blade sunk deep into the trooper's stomach, slid between plates of his armor. His body twitched a bit, but he did not scream, seemingly and pathetically unconscious already from a single blow to the chest. Wil left the blade there for a moment as a strange compulsion came to mind. Rather than turning to thank the man who had helped save his life, he knelt before the body and thought.

Now that he was in Althanas, all the magic signs, words, and spells he had learned were of some use. He remembered dozens, hundreds perhaps, with varying degrees of clarity. The first that came to mind was an incantation that would remove a corpse, quite convenient for a variety of purposes both sanitary and seditious. He intoned the words and pressed his hands against the Eudaemonian.

Nothing.

Wil furrowed his brow. Eudaemonians were unusually resistant to magic, but he insisted on being certain that the spells he learned were no useless. He gripped the hilt of his sword instead and began to mutter a minor lightning invocation. As he finished the words, sizzling bolts trailed down his fingers into the blade and crackled through it and into the corpse. Sparks flew from out of the armor and a smoldering cloud with an awful stench rose from the man. An unfortunate choice, Wil realized on reflection, since he had just shorted out one of the only pieces of technology he had available. The man simply took it in stride and rose back to his feet, satisfied that his knowledge was not without use.

“Thanks for the aid, stranger,” he said, turning at last to the somber looking man. He picked up the coat from the corpse, perhaps a little smokey but otherwise untattered and tossed it to him. “Want to know what we just killed?”

Wil realized as soon as he said the words that they sounded perhaps overeager, but that's precisely what he was: Pleased to be in this world, for all its strangeness and unpleasant humidity, and doubly pleased to share his esoteric knowledge with its inhabitants.