Log 1 Matter | Antimatter (57 page)

“Tarus is almost ready to steal the
Artifacts.”

Viper nodded. “If the Aryans aren’t scared
enough that will really frighten them.”

After a hot shower and nail scrubbing, Ara
walked to her bed and picked up the hand mirror. It was a bit oldie
looking, gaudy even. But she saw “Ara Honeybee” recessed in a
golden oval. There were even little bees and flowers. She lifted it
and studied it closely. Turning it carefully—it was heavy—she
studied the reflection.

She looked pale and drawn.

Korbet called her “Ara Honeybee”. Was this
from him? She was about to put the mirror away when she noticed
something appearing around her neck. It looked like a tattoo.

“Cool.” But then it grew out of her neck.
“Obscene!”

Looking back in the reflection of the hand
mirror, she watched the necklace sink back into her skin.
“Nanites.” She remembered the NaPP and Mole that she’d been asked
to work on. She never told anyone the NaPP was her design,
contracted secretly and categorized “Gold Level”. Ara had since
learned that “Gold” was a military and Pure-Gen combination. Only
the military had access to the tech she was designing. Her
“meshing” experience with the Natal had given her a lot to work
with.

She ran some tests later and analyzed the
data but no equipment she could access could give her the answers
she wanted. She lifted the hard copy she had printed, staring at
the tiny plasma triganic filament. The triganic material allowed it
to bond and move though the gaps in her atomic structure, oozing
through so it didn’t break or weaken any of the organic bonds. She
had to think about what she was seeing.

Jamie’s Cabin

Now that Ara had returned, and Leo was living
in their first apartment close by, Jamie was happier. Later in the
day, he was in his stable, brushing down the stallion, when he
sensed her behind him. With rising desperation in his voice, he
said, “This is dangerous, Ara.” Evidently ignoring his plea, her
answer was to hug him around his waist, head leaning on his back.
In his own turmoil of emotions regarding Ara, he’d forgotten that
she might have an attachment to him as well, the one she felt safe
with. Even that in itself was dangerous. He needed her to increase
her responsiveness to the world around her.

“Thanks for everything you and your teams do
for me.”

He leaned on Drum and smiled, resting his
hand on her bare arm. “You’re welcome, but it’s just our jobs.”

“Sure it is.” She squeezed but he felt her
body moving with laughter. “I know. But you have to know how I
feel.”

A. I’m not as vulnerable as you think

Her voice was so loud and clear in his mind;
for a moment a rush of thrill swept through him. She’s not Leanne.
She’s not Leanne. He shut down the inner chanting.

She released him. “Bye, Jamie.”

Warmth flooded him, replacing the fear. He
loved hearing her say his name, and she sounded so shy using it.
“Ara?” He turned, but she was gone.

He dropped the brush and ran out. He admired
her short summer dress but thought it odd in the cool weather. He
followed and watched as she began down the trail. But then he saw
the portal, and Ara heading for it. “Ara!”

Jamie ran, panic filling him, and, without
thought, jumped through in time.

Life-System – Tatsela

He bumped into her, stumbled, and fell on to his
side. Ara squatted next to him, tucking a strand of hair behind her
ear. “Welcome to Tatsela.”

He accepted her hand, and stood looking
around at the garden scene around him. “Tatsela? I’ve … I haven’t
been here yet.”

“No. Not much to spy on here. Just king
bees.”

She was giving him a cheeky look now. His
eyes narrowed. “What are you up to?”

With a wicked leer, Ara held out her hand.
“Let me show you.” But she laughed, spoiling the effect.

Bemused, he reached out.

“Just be warned, once you hold my hand,
there’s no going back. You can leave now or stay.”

He grasped it tightly. With a happy smile on
her slender face, Ara turned, pulling him along.

And that, Jamie thought, was all she
wrote.

“What do you need me to do?”

They’d been walking around the Gardens of
Tatsela, a veritable paradise. He studied her face, noting her
weight loss but determined look. “During your apprenticeship keep
going back to Wilds for starters. That way I have a reason to keep
a special team there.” He needed to keep an eye on the Function
Tests.

“Ah, a team not approved by our great
military leaders?”

He nodded. “Now Wilds is no longer enamored
with Pure-Gens in general, they have their own security again.
Before you ask, my team is not approved by Vakar either.”

Ara took that he was a Vakar Avatara in her
stride.

“So, you have a secret team and I have a
secret team.”

He looked at her sharply.

“Did you know how much radiation is given off
by the planets we live on? They continually contaminate our bodies.
I think my “go home” has something to do with that. But first I
have to learn how to make planets. To truly understand the nature
of the thing you must endure the thing.”

Jamie turned to see a figure emerge from the
trees. His smile froze. “Aed—?” And then another stepped out from
the trees. “Dad?”

The two stopped and waited for them.

Ara laughed at him. “Apparently, I started
something called the Legendary Damned. Aed is head of that
clandestine syndicate. Your dad is head of—”

“The Dragon’s Teeth, Sentinel Program.”

She said, “Ah, you know. Well, my
apprenticeship is up first. Apparently, I don’t just have to get us
home, and get fish breathing oxygen, I have to wield Chaos without
using technology. Of course, as a Mobile Unit, I have access to
everything in the Cardinal Unit; I just don’t have control over
everything now I’m not connected to Maya.”

“Hmmm. Aven said she couldn’t reconnect you
either. Maya had forbidden the link.” His mind grasped what she had
said. “You think that’s all connected to the reason you are a
Mobile Unit?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“What about what Viper said?”

“They need to get out, don’t they? They’re
the ones that made me the Mobile Unit. That’s why they’ll try for
alliance to join them or corrupt me to lead or weaken me to
use.”

Jamie didn’t say it but they’d probably keep
alternating and trying combinations of those three things. She’d
done a good job working with so little, she’d matured significantly
after the vote and it surprised him to find that hurt him so much,
but he was still worried about why the Snakes wanted to wear her
down so that she’d kill herself. What was the benefit in that?
“Well shit.” Jamie rubbed his head. “We have to get out, they want
to get out, neither wants the other to get out; it’s not just a
race because how are you going to get us out and stop them?”

“And here’s the really ugly factor, will
those outside want us dipshits fucking up their lives and bringing
out, deliberately or accidently, a pile of Chaos fuckups?”

Jamie burst out laughing. “Ara!” He couldn’t
stop grinning. He had a sudden inspiration. “Lesson One: The Nature
of Conflict.”

“Huh? I think Tara said Karu taught
that.”

“Balin actually. But that’s where we are
going to start. I’ll leave the philosophical, psychological stuff
with someone else.” He felt suddenly gleeful and ignored her sudden
antipathy. He switched and deliberated about the preparations to
move to Kios. She “knocked” on his head.

“Are you still flapping your mind over
it?”

“I’ll be with you all the way, no matter
what.” He felt good about that decision.

“Even though it’s a babysitting mission?”

Jamie chuckled. “A baby who helped me to help
her. But I’ll take what I can get since I really don’t know what
the hell is going on anymore.”

Ara sighed. “You and me both but we are in
the Alien Crucible and Matter | Antimatter was the catalyst for
what I have to do. I’ve got one more thing to show you though.”

Coral

Jamie sat down and stared at the mirror.

Ara knelt in front of him. The necklace oozed
out and Jamie screwed his face up, much as she was doing. He saw
the black metal with nine small frames with pink stuff and three
larger frames one with a jewel, an oval, lying on its side. “Looks
like red coral.” It was an opaque red, with something embossed—a
weighbridge used to balance?

“That’s really repulsive, sweetie.”

“I know. I can’t get it off.”

“The only thing is I know it’s linked to the
function tests, I was there when Maya, well I think it was Maya,
placed it in … um … in your body.”

“Ah. I’m worried my memories will be fudged
again.”

“I’ll make sure Aven doesn’t do that again,
or stops it from being done. I had the impression she was acting
under orders.” He brushed her hair from her face and placed the
mirror on the bed. The necklace sunk into her pale skin. It
reminded him of his NaPP. “As a last resort I’ll act as your
compass. I just want to know two things.”

Ara looked at him, amused. “Just two?”

“Why did Aed have your hand dunked in that
pool?”

“Something about turning me off and on to
hide me from the Natal; whatever the Natal did on my hundredth
didn’t work.” She shrugged. “The Triad thing? I’m not sure. They
turned my Sawol ‘off’. They need me to keep my Nexus ‘on’. It’s a
little odd.”

Jamie nodded. “Fair enough. Next, where the
fuck are we? Where exactly is Tatsela?” They listened to a loud
droning. “And why are there king bees?”

“That’s three. Choose one and you shall
receive possibly misleading, incorrect, and ridiculous
information.”

Jamie held her face in his hands and kissed
her nose.

Matter

There must be more matter than antimatter if we
exist. Yet we need more antimatter or less matter now to ensure
existence, so maybe I can antimatter Maya or make a hole to get out
of this crazy test.

Ara Katron

The Year of Irony and switched “on” (I
think)

Encryption start. 01000001 01101100 01100001
01110011 00100001 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000
01001101 01101111 01110010 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111
00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01000101 01110110
01100101 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01010011
01110100 01100001 01110010 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110
01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000
01110100 01101111 01110010 01101110 00100000 01100001 01110011
01110101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 00101110 Encryption
end.

I had a cool bio on the “About Me” website,
but then they changed the site and my cool bio was wiped.
Essentially, “About Me” became less about me and more about “About
Me”. Visit https://about.me/mypompeii if you want to see the not
about me stuff.

My head is filled with nonsense just like
that, but occasionally I pull it all together and make stories. So,
once I have an idea, I work it, draft it (several drafts), craft
it, and edit, edit, edit. And then, there’s the beta readers and
reworking, and finally the proofreader. Phew! Wipes sweat from mad
eyebrows.

On the topic of mad eyebrows, I consider
myself a mad writer with a secret desire to be a mad scientist. But
the truth is I’m a bit lazy when it comes to anything not writing.
And that, my reader friends, includes final editing/proofreading. I
try my best but I just can’t spot the mistakes in my own work. Nor
am I a grammar queen, or even, princess. In fact, I’m probably on
par with the grammar joker or torturer which is why I pay a
professional to proofread my work. However, because I’m a little
bit naughty sometimes I sneak back in and add a few things


Anyway, I’ve been writing since I was a kid
and not just the compulsory writing they make you do at school. I
did actually write because I loved, and still love, stories. From
wooden blocks, to paintbrush (with no paint), to crayon, to
paintbrush (with paint), to pencil, to the almighty pen—I still
remember when I passed my pencil strokes and was allowed to use a
pen—to typewriter, to recorder (that didn’t last), to keyboard
connected by cable and then cordless, to stylus (didn’t like that
either), back to cordless keyboard I have been creating and
designing stories.

I’ll keep writing as long as people enjoy
them. And if they aren’t enjoyable, then I’ll return to the real
world and live in other people’s stories.

Cheers

S. V. Brown

Alien Crucible runs from Log 1 through to
Log 18 - visit
http://www.aliencrucible.com/

Kingdoms Away - being reworked for eBook and
print

Praeda Chronicles - free on my website (see
“Connect with S. V. Brown”)

Swackle - free on my website

Short stories and writing hints at
http://lonecreature.com.au/

Connect with
S. V. Brown

Twitter

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Website

http://www.selinavalenbrown.com/

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