Chapter 5: As Writ in Stone

  “If humans tricked rocks into thinking, something else made everything think, and then that something else shoved it all together into one thing.”

  The next day, she followed her angrily rumbling stomach to her fridge. Her abdomen felt like it had a massive pressure up until a wet pop sounded from her back thanks to Eta’s hug the night prior.

  She smiled at the leftovers from the prior dinner, the bone sticking out of the roast like a piece of rebar in concrete.

  It faltered slightly at the thought of the bone extensions. She didn’t meet the height requirement to become a Ravenguard. Even though she stood at 5’8, the minimum requirement was 6’0. She pondered idly as she ate a small morsel, imagine the tissue of the cleanly cut bone regenerating into something more than the material it had available.

  Nanomachines had become commonplace throughout the world before the first heralding, but highly regulated in Ravensmantle and reserved for the medical spire.

  Her feelings mixed along with the snarling mid-summer storm bleeding through her apartment windows. She briefly half expected one to burst open, that loper charging in and ripping her apart inside her own living room.

  She rubbed the back of her neck involuntarily with a wince, jumping slightly at a knock at her door, she managed her way to it through her office. Tom’s warm smile greeted her, obviously excited for the day.

  “Sup Fe, how’s the leg?”

  “Hurts.” She smiled wryly.

  “Stomach?” Tom drew out.

  “Full of angry fairies, how’s the quarry in Irie?”

  “Pretty damn pretty, we got the train line working so we can start really shipping more material to Ravensmantle.” He leaned on the door frame.

  “So, we getting that hydroponic facility I keep asking for?” She keened out sweetly to the geologist and civil engineer’s raised brow.

  “Maybe, I’ve given some plans to our contractors, and they seem to like it enough,” his display chirped, “we gotta’ go, it’s time to meet at the atrium.”

  They cut through ecology, through the medical ward and its massive spire of decks that rose like a smokestack. The windows across the 100-foot expanse rippled the sunny day in vaguely golden hues that brought comfort to Melissa, save for her newly soured stomach.

  It roiled akin to the shifting shadows of the plants on outside terraces, the sunny days often glinting off their surface with the workers on break chatting and taking care of the perennials with watering cans and nutrient powders.

  The elevator ride was smooth with a few painful bumps that made Melissa grip the polished, icy railing tighter as she withheld wincing pain.

  It made her ankle feel like it was swelling.

  “So... the reason we’re showing this to you now, is simply because we are intrinsically tied to it.”

  “What do you mean?” Her ankle stung.

  “Most Ravensmantle tech is based on it and what’s written on it, in it, and through it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her question burned.

  “All Ravenguard are tied to an object that let us do pretty much everything here.” Her need for answers hit its peak almost immediately as she crossed her arms with a playful smirk.

  “What thing?”

  “Get a load of it yourself.” He merely gestured as the doors opened to concentric ringed catwalks surrounding a massive, jet-black stone. Its size seemed impossible to even fit underground, its edges gleamed brightly under the phosphorescent bulbs surrounding each catwalk.

  It reminded her of a net cast on an egg.

  The long walkway that greeted them spanned the half-block’s length distance.

  “This, is the monolith. Found years ago, and Vahlen doesn’t exactly remember how it got supported inside the particle barrier, this whole atrium is just a massive system, all for study and containment.”

  She could only gawk at the massive, stories tall and wide geometric monolith as she approached, the people just below it looked like ants, there were dozens of other researchers on various floors taking notes and photos on gantry mounted camera systems.

  Ants on the monolith’s hair net, she noted the floor they landed on, level 15 was well above the forest below.

  “Holy hell... I’ve been here for years and never, not once, did anyone mention the massive egg living under us,” she gestured down, “and this forest down here, what?” Tom laughed as he pointed

  “Well... quite a few know about it, but, now that you’re here and you’ve got the paperwork set... don’t say a word about it to anyone. This is top secret and you're on the board now. If anyone found out about this thing and leaked the information...”

  “We would be in a civil war all over again but nation state v nation state, and we’re already dealing with the Cadre...” he scanned her eyes briefly, “the Western Federation would do anything to get what they consider a weapon or tool.”

  “Understood...” she continued staring blankly at it, drinking in the expanse of beauty. Her temper flared briefly at the thought of them. Her history with the Federation was colored and marked with red tape and black lines of censorship on most of her documents pertaining to Juniper Valley.

  She smiled ruefully as she looked below at the forest, she noticed each tree was helical and had grown to support the monolith, it was heavily underlit as the pale white growths sparked faintly off the particle barrier, like an underlit cradle.

  The shining lines of the monolith beckoned her forward, compelled her.

  It was a strange, almost organic multilayered, multicolored flowing script that was a stark contrast to the black surface. Sharp vivid colors all lined with a ghostly golden hue, much like the outlines of a burning field against a black sky.

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  She stared in awe at the sight and memory before Tom bumped her shoulder with a smirk.

  “Save for Amanda, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Both looked down at a group standing just in front of the stone, Vahlen stood on the same catwalk, studying the monolith. Melissa gathered that the catwalk she was on was meant to act as a meeting platform.

  Ripley instructed new recruits, each wearing the same rank with the minor difference of a purple orb just under it.

  “This, is monolithic code, it is… asymmetrical, in its design.” Ripley had a briefly lived frustrated look as she instructed new Vaporial researchers, leaning and languidly swaying her hands, a large display flickered into existence, utterly dwarfing the thin cosmologist.

  Her demure hand rose, punctuating her words.

  “Your primary duties will focus upon decoding the information we record from this,” she gestured to the looming rock of information, “into useable data, we are translators first. Your primary duty in this regard is to attempt to find what we can of the first contact this object had with Earth and the nature of its origin.”

  “For none remember that day.” They affirmed in unison, to Melissa it felt more like an ‘amen’ in the somber way it was said.

  The she dismissed them, “please meet with Bishop and myself in the morning for further orientation, here at 0600 sharp.” She waved as the group of new specialists and young faces regarded the monolith on their way to a far-off elevator.

  Ripley waved the senior group over, having noticed a new set of symbols she had not seen before etched into the blackened surface.

  Strangely they were all too familiar.

  Constellations of stars and planetary bodies.

  She could not explain why, yet something about them nagged in her memory. Were they the very ones that all humans saw from Earth, but seen from a different perspective? How was this stone etched so thoroughly and... who may have written upon its surface?

  What secrets within secrets lay within, why did it call to her akin to a palpable gravitational pull?

  It was almost as if it wove its secrets into her very essence and yet withheld them.

  A set of three concentric hexagons pulsing an eerie dark corona, somehow pulsing through the data as an image that formed in her mind.

  Regardless of its make.

  It was near their solar system.

  So close, getting closer by the day, a different apocalypse threatened her borders, three heraldings in so far... the spores, the Cadre, and the moon itself...

  What else was coming this time? How soon would it arrive?

  “Director Vahlen, I believe I have found something rather different.” Vahlen’s empty stare at a portion of the monolith was interrupted, her jade eyes flaring in curiosity.

  “Yes, Ripley, what have you found?”

  “This is a star system… however,” she squinted at it, a familiar stare of knowing, “considering how the stars are aligned on this side, I believe this would indicate its location somewhere near the Epsilon Eridani system here...” She padded along the massive gantry spanning the middle point of the stone.

  As she got to the halfway point Tom kept withholding a shit eating grin as Ripley saw it and hurried her steps, letting out an airy laugh with the others.

  As she got to the other side 100 feet around the middle ring, she pointed to a set of familiar stars and shifting symbols, moving one of the high-definition cameras mounted on the railing.

  The image popped up one of the displays facing them.

  “And upon this side is our solar system, however... I see something within the code, an object... I believe its trajectory is pointed at us.”

  “Understood,” Vahlen said, she peered at the stars again, “do you think you can find it’s precise landing point?”

  “I believe we may, I will prepare my team.”

  “Good, thank you Ripley, I’ll leave you to it.” She turned her attention to Tom.

  “Doctor Dufrane, would you care to explain your findings on the monolith for our newest member?”

  Tom gathered himself, looking at Melissa, ensuring she wasn’t still just gawking with her mouth wide open at the thing and paying attention.

  "This giant rock is artificially made," Vahlen frowned, only making him smirk, "you can see microscopic tool marks where individual pieces were fitted together under a microscope, or maybe something with super fine motor skills, macroscopic vision, and a billion hands.”

  “Like silicates, if humanity tricked a rock into thinking, then whatever made this, tricked all types of matter and mineral into doing so, and that would be,” he pointed, “the monolith itself, its material is called veilstone. It borrows from other places to build itself, by..” he made an air quote, “piercing the veil."

  The mere concept of something adding knowledge from unknowable sources made her mind spin, was it digging up old data? Permeation simply was borrowing from other realities, whichever ones they happened to be, nobody knew.

  Bishop spoke in mumbles while Tom replied in gibberish, lost to her mental periphery and what ifs.

  A hand on her shoulder brought her back to her reality.

  “Fe, still here?”

  “Yeah, lost in my thoughts.”

  “Well, let's get lost in an interesting place.” He pointed at a security booth barring a high security elevator bank leading to the vaporial library, her biolab full of her scientist’s inside. She hadn’t visited since her injury.

  She admonished herself for not paying full attention.

  She hadn’t realized they left the monolith atrium, nor did she recall them walking and somehow collecting Bishop, Ripley, and Amanda for the journey. Vahlen left somewhere she couldn’t remember but, she distinctly knew she had a conversation with her about it.

  “I didn’t miss anything, did I?”

  “Nah, just jabbering, how’s that memetic treating you? You’re still new to the atrium, but in time you’ll start to remember more and more when you leave the place.”

  “I didn’t realize we were even moving.”

  “Eyup, it’s a little disorienting at first, but, once you're used to it, it’s just another room here if I’m being honest, we’ve got so many like it.” She opened her mouth to ask what other rooms like the monolith atrium were hidden inside the 2 mile spike.

  Tom smirked, intercepting with one of his own.

  “How you and Dakra doing?” She stiffened slightly. She both wished she had and hadn’t told him about her beneficial friend.

  “We’re doing well.” He rose a brow of focus, the blue shine in his eyes seemed to scan her intently.

  “No feelings yet... not sure about her if I’m being honest.”

  “Why’s that? You guys don’t look half bad together.”

  “It’s not that... it’s hard being ambivalent about things...” she glanced toward the ecological ward half expecting to see Karla and Nala, “but I’m making the choice to let it fall where it may... commitment issues, ya’ know?”

  The group passed the security booth, Bishop lost in a conversation with Ripley, her touching his arm and laughing.

  “I get it... Amanda and I were kinda’ like that in the beginning, both of us still had feelings for other people, and even then, our respective exes were dead.”

  He shook his head gently, “same feelings, Fe, I don’t think it ever goes away... just, love who you can, however that may be, however it may look...” They squeezed through the door, a display on the wall flickering to life, his face dropped steadily as he worked the system..

  As soon as the map of the octagonal, multi leveled, prison-like structure was up on the display he pressed a few keys.

  “Big feels?” She asked.

  “Eyup,” he somberly replied, sharing a glance at Amanda, “glad I found her, and she found me, I’m pretty sure we would have only given an awkward hello if it weren’t for the fridge over here.”

  “I’ll be your wingman any time, Damsel.” Bishop smirked at him, then Amanda, eyebrow raised.

  “I think I’ll do the wing manning from here, thanks for telling me about lonely ole pretty boy here.” Amanda wrapped her arms around Tom as Melissa’s thoughts wandered to her destination.

  A beautiful bio lab awaited her. She was certain the facility was set away from main central point of Refuge and its 2-mile spike given how the elevator worked.

  She awaited the familiar bump as it jolted backward, mostly anticipating the coming pain and discomfort to her still healing ankle. The elevator doors slid open after the elevator shuddered to a halt a few minutes later. Her wince and hiss of quiet pain was lost to the doors.

  “Welcome back to the Vaporial Library.” Bishop said.