Chapter 50: A System Primed to Self-Corrupt

Azwold and Vick5 had deconstructed part of Tect0n’s metal harness, rigging it up to the laboratory pushcart. With the make-shift thing, they loaded W3dge’s corpse and shoved him along back to our quest door.

We maintained a sense of urgency, knowing that more Telemoon could be upon us at any moment. They pushed W3dge right up to the door and Vick5 raised his former ally’s wrist up to an oval-shaped pad next to the door’s opening mechanism. But nothing happened. No lights, no beeps, no clicks, nothing.

“Do we need him awake?” said Relja.

“I did not drain his corpse like I did his friends,” I said.

“Which means he could rez anytime,” Azwold said. “He might be lurking as a ghost, waiting for us to abandon his body.”

“Probably is,” said DarkNeon, peering around. “You’re pretty high level, though, Azzy. Can’t you talk to ghosts?”

“It’s a lot harder to do without a nearby graveyard, but if I had a mirror, I might be able to spot him. Or cast [Spell: Fading Gate], yell into it and hope he hears. What would we say?”

With a sleight of hand, DarkNeon produced her small mirror and twirled the handle toward Azwold. “No light user leaves home without one. Here. But I’ll need it back, so don’t crack it.”

“With luck, I won’t,” said Azwold. “Ah, yep. There he is. I see him hovering near the corner there. I can’t tell if he knows what I’m doing yet. He’s just staring at Vic.”

“Upon opening a fading gate,” said Vick5, “would my voice be audible to W3dge?”

“Possibly, if we both held the mirror together.”

“Please initiate this plan,” said Vick5. “I may sway him with logic and new information.”

“Is this like [Spell: Spectral Reflection]?” asked Relja.

“Similar, yes,” said Azwold, “but it doesn’t take a triad. Just focus and quiet.”

Azwold conjured a handful of sand by shaking the [Sandfall Scepter] into his palm. Covering the sand with his other hand, he concentrated and opened them to reveal a shift in color and consistency. With falling rivulets of sand, he finger painted up from the floor, drawing a rectangular oval mid-air. Then he drew several purple glyphs around it and held DarkNeon’s hand mirror in the center while whispering words from his tablet. The air rippled like liquid mercury amidst the gate’s plane.

“Are we supposed to see ghosts in there?” asked DarkNeon.

“No,” Azwold replied, maintaining his focus. “Okay, Vic. You’re on.”

The ex-Chemist stepped forward and put his hand on the mirror.

“Firstly,” he said, “allow me to apologize, my friend. It was not my intention to abandon you and our guild without warning.”

I moved to stand where I could monitor both the fading gate and W3dge’s corpse. There was no change in either yet.

“Secondly,” Vick5 continued, “you must understand I do not think Telemoon is evil. The Mentalist Troika’s original intentions were noble and still attainable, based on my evolving calculations. But not by continuing on with misguided trajectories and compromised ethics. You should know as well as I that scientific progress is nothing without proper ethical protocols in place.”

We stood and waited for some change. Still nothing. I looked to Azwold, but he was staring into the gate, seeing things we could not.

“Simply stated,” said Vick5, “science is my religion. I find it impossible to experience the beauty and elegance, the chaos and complexity of reality, without an innate understanding that there are things bigger than we know, bigger than we are capable of knowing as mortal beings. Telemoon experiments on powerful beings. But capturing a deity provides ample evidence for asserting lack of ethical oversight. You must agree. But whether our universe was created, or is in the process of being co-created by all who observe it via physics that border on the supernatural, there are conundrums entangled in it. Science, if treated like religion or a corporation—like an organization with hierarchy and power to be gained—is a system primed to self-corrupt. Power is the greatest addiction of all, W3dge. You cannot disregard the evidence of your own eyes. Telemoon has gone too far. There is no returning from the lines they have overstepped. The only way forward is to undo whatever damage we can and start with a new framework. Something free from corruption potential.”

“What is your proposal?” W3dge’s body rose from the pushcart frame.

“Wow,” said DarkNeon. “Do they have a debate club in Telemoon?”

Relja hushed her.

“Telemoon’s overarching goals, to create a more disaster resistant planet, to forge a better future than our models predict, they are still possible,” said Vick5, helping W3dge stand.

“The plans are too far along,” said W3dge. “We have too many experiments going that can’t be halted. You’re insane for even entertaining the idea.”

“I do not see any paths that are completely sane, I admit,” said Vick5, “but I do see potentially beneficial outcomes. Without working under secretive hubris. Without cultivating exclusivity or unethical magical manipulation.”

“The simulations have ran, and re-ran. They’re peer-reviewed and tested,” said W3dge. “Don’t play holier than thou. We both know it’s impossible. Telemoon goals fail without our current trajectories. Without us, it’d take a sustained planetary effort involving most of humanity. It’s more than just improbable. It’s borderline impossible.”

“I heard a good thing once:” said Relja, “‘You shouldn’t tell people something’s impossible while they’re in the middle of doing it,’ or something like that.”

“All you’re doing is meddling in things beyond you,” said W3dge, gazing past us toward the corridor.

“If you open this door,” said Azwold, “and let us access that node in there, we can prove you wrong.”

“I see you’re hanging around weak hypothesizers,” W3dge said to Vick5.

“Ignore logic for one moment,” said Vick5, looking at him squarely. “Search whatever moral code you possessed prior to becoming a Telemoon guild member. You will find I have made a compelling case.”

The Fire Demolitionist stood still for several moments. I could tell that his internal flame was burning and conflicted.

“If I help you, they will do more than kick me out,” he said.

“Log off and go hide?” said DarkNeon, shrugging.

“We are dealing with deities,” I said. “We offer you a chance to be on the right side of Balance.”

Azwold gave me an approving nod.

“You are aware of the disruption in Telemoon guild structure,” said Vick5. “There has been a shift. Ralos is plotting, and I fear the Troika may slip further into irredeemability in the name of progress. We must stop giving science a bad name. Offer us the meager assistance of opening this door. It is all we ask.”

“Fine!” W3dge stomped the metal ground, sending out a heat blast. “May as well do me like you did Ralos and Sprock3t! Wipe me out so I can’t come back. I’ll be offline forever, hiding from whoever comes looking for me. I’ll be in danger, don’t you get that?”

“We’re all in danger until Telemoon goes down,” said Azwold.

“Facts.” DarkNeon pointed a dagger at him.

“I won’t be needing this, then,” said W3dge, twisting and unlatching his control gauntlet. “It’ll get you in here and maybe elsewhere. Guess I’m all in, so I marked the map. But let me be clear as a blowtorch: if you don’t win and I’m stuck hiding out offline, I will find all of you IRL and burn your houses down!”

W3dge threw his control gauntlet at Vick5 full force, knocking him onto his rump, then logged off in a concussive ball of flame.

“Bit dramatic,” said DarkNeon, “but at least we’re still in business. Joke’s on him anyway. My place ain’t much more than a dumpster with internet hookups. Adding fire to it wouldn’t change my life much.”

“I did not predict that going quite so well, actually,” said Vick5. “I estimated a 75% chance restraints and force would be required.”

“Let’s use our luck and get to that node?” said Relja.

Vick5 got to work installing W3dge’s sizable red-orange control gauntlet on his other arm, and I was reminded of some vague memory; a blue robot video game character with an arm cannon. Once properly connected to his wiring, Vick5 interfaced with the gauntlet and held it up to the oval keypad.

The door slid open with air puffs and a twinkly beeping.

The room was dark, and as we entered I heard DarkNeon whisper to Relja; “If a deity’s vulnerable to traps, doesn’t that mean they’re not omnipotent? I’d never get caught if I were all-powerful.”

“Or maybe getting caught was part of some grander plan?” Relja replied, but then held her finger to her lips, peering inside.

My vision wisps were still active, and I could see what looked like a simple metal birdbath standing in the middle of an empty room. And a vertical stone ring leaning up against a wall, taller than myself and thick as an oak bough.

DarkNeon swiped her hand mirror back from Azwold and cast an illumination spell. Her mirror became a lamp, and she shone it around.

“Um, I see a bowl on a column?” said Relja. “And a big circular rock?”

“Another bowl on a pole,” said Azwold.

“Like the Cave O’ Whispers?” I said.

“It’s definitely not kobold stuff,” said Azwold, “but eating marinated sea gunk seems more straightforward. How do we turn it on?”

“There is an interface located on the wall,” said Vick5, scanning. “I will activate it from there.”

“Oh yeah,” said DarkNeon, nonchalant. “I see it. I’m gonna go check out the ring thing.”

Vick5 walked up to a wall, then inserted W3dge’s gauntlet fingers into nearly invisible holes. The omnipresent fluorescent lines illuminated, casting us in blue light.

But something happened. A noisy whirring sound and a clank. Vick5 fell unconscious and unresponsive, dangling by W3dge’s gauntlet from the wall.

“Sabotage?” I said, worried.

The Continuum of Memory node sparked to life. Light projected upward from the middle of its horizontal disk. Holographic imagery came and went, quick and disjointed. Vick5 had attempted to access files relating to the goddess, and the node was feeding him a slipstream of any and all things related, but in an incomprehensible montage.

“Slow it down!” DarkNeon called out.

But the imagery kept wheeling along. After several minutes of this, and Relja trying to revive him, Vick5’s eyes opened. They glowed the same blue as the neon blue lines scribbled all around the walls. He was attempting to regain control.

Focusing and taking on electrical energy in the process, Vick5 managed to tune down the speed just enough.

A series of slower images came to us in three dimensional holographic detail.

Telemoon was using Gaea’s energies to facilitate their experiments, karmic cycles, portal technologies, Shadow Realm, Spirit Realm, and various other dimensional manipulations. These images only confirmed what we already suspected.

The next series of images caused Vick5 extra pain, and he struggled to maintain.

Though confusing, the next montage—still too fast to comprehend perfectly in real time—told of something that set my bones shivering. Telemoon had learned via advanced simulation theory, modeling, prediction... that there would be a future exodus of humanity. They had predicted the odds, both total and partial. They were constructing models of how to engineer an alternate future. And they were using portal technology to peer into the future. Not only were they manipulating deities and mystical laws, they were dabbling in time-gazing. Their overarching plan was to create an exodus-resistent future Earth by draining the goddess who watches over the planet to do so.

“Foolish!” I groaned.

And just as my outburst escaped me, Vick5 lost his grip. His gauntlet overloaded like when Sprock3t exploded.

The gauntlet blew up, shooting sparks and energy, and throwing Relja off. She slid along the smooth ground.

Then Vick5 flopped to the floor, without his arm attached. Acrid smoke slithered upward from his cauterized elbow.