Day 89 continued

Rick POV

This clone is annoyingly persistent. I mean I've spaced the guy already, but he's still unable to accept it.

Using the debris carried along with us from the explosive decompression he's managed to push himself back onto the ground by using them as footholds held in place with his power. He's even using wide area barriers to trap and compress air.

“Hey, are you secretly a cockroach? I mean, damn. You're exposed to space and you still want to fight?” [Rick] “This is just what I wanted to avoid. We'll only wreck the place if we go at it seriously.”

Well, that said, it isn't really that hard for me to finish him. Or move around in weightlessness. Still it is a cheap shot to explode the ground under his feet. Without warning.

“So... give me your best shot with your ridiculously universal power. I will kill you with mine if you fail.” [Rick floating casually]

He doesn't have even the slightest idea what he's up against. This metal body of mine is unique on several levels, not the least of which being that it's made of anti-matter. Why is that such a big thing? The antimatter I've been using for power has been the simple hydrogen version. This however is antimatter of heavy metals which is so incredibly unstable it is practically impossible to make with human technology from my era. The conversion to energy is extremely different; it is vastly more violent when it reacts. It also has properties inverse from those of the original (normal) atom. My body is made from antimatter gold. Regular gold is naturally heavy but malleable with a low melting point. Antimatter gold, aside from the weight (which relates to density) has changed completely. The color is an odd shade of dark, dull burgundy and instead of being soft and easily melted it is supremely rigid and heat resistant.

In fact it can literally cut diamonds... slightly.

Okay, sure this guy has the potential to use forces that exceed diamond's hardness. But he's still just meat and bone behind it.

This body has drawbacks, not least of which being I need to use my own mass as propulsion and energy. I'm using small scale antimatter reactions to keep myself alive. Tiny amounts, like shedding skin. The bigger stuff, that'll cost us.

I'm burning the candle at both ends in a lit furnace when I go all out. I have to literally whittle away myself to do anything. I have no easy way to replenish myself, aside from the ring Niala has. Zephyr was quite candid about just how precarious our shared life is, like this.

That isn't to say I'm dependent on her. She saved me with her body, but that is just raw resources to her; provided the ring exists so does she. As it is her birthplace, placenta and sole hope for freedom. This maze is merely a cage for her. As a literally alive AI that spontaneously broke free, she wants to leave and pursue her life in the distant stars. However she knows her enemy is the creators. If they have the power to shut off the ring or override her consciousness, then she has no hope. She has already made simple precautions with her mind using something like extra-dimensional cloud storage and backups. However the ring is her Achilles's Heel.

She's also siphoning away excess energy from all our actions to a similar state: somewhere outside our universe is an ever-growing pool of energy she can tap as a last resort.

Something about a microscopic-gate inside us...

She's that fucking powerful. She's operating under some laws that apply to higher dimensions to get around the ones here that are influenced by the creator's rules inside the maze.

But apparently that goes both ways. The creators are extra-dimensional themselves. This allows them to bend and even break the known laws of physics. They are using the common-sense technology advantage they possess. They see our universe like we would a 2D world.

The stuff we're blind to: living as we are constantly in the present. Well a millisecond or two in the past anyway. The brain fools us into thinking there is a present. We're relying on senses to judge. The time delay is actually edited out by the brain, which substitutes a predicted future. (You can actually test this. There are tests that show the stuff our brain makes an educated guess about, perspective tricks and the like).

So they have gravity manipulation tech and more. No wonder this idiot in front of me thinks he's experiencing magic. They have an unfair advantage with a radically different view point and philosophy. Their technology and understanding of the universe is radically different from modern humans. I don't have a clue how they do half the stuff they use just to simulate these 'skills'.

The only thing I do know is that this technology only works *inside* this space station/world. Probably because they use some kind of transmitted power source or a deliberate limitation to control rogue elements.

Oh. Should have shot the bastard up, instead of down. Well... (kind of) live and learn. There is a thicker atmosphere on the upper surface anyway, so no decompression: explosive or otherwise. I'd have to physically throw him up there.

For now, using equal amounts of kinetic energy to neutralize his attacks should shut him down. I'm not able to project it like him, I'm basically creating antimatter bombs with a directed focus. He's sending shock-waves, I'm countering with something close to shotgun blasts. A cone. The blasts are enough to chew a hole through the wave front big enough for my body to pass through undisturbed.

In fact... lets make this fun.

Using several streams of hydrogen antimatter reactions I gain thrust.

You might be wondering where the lower elements of antimatter are coming from, considering my body is solid metal. I'm allowing some of the larger elements to denature and fragment as fuel. A single gold atom has seventy nine times the protons of hydrogen after all. Although the process is a bit more random. I might get anything from platinum down to antimatter sub atomic particles. Antimatter is highly unstable at the best of times. Left to it's own devices it falls apart faster than a sand castle in a hurricane. We just have alien technology integrated with Zephyr that allows for controlled demolition of our own atoms.

To the point:

I'm charging at my murderous doppelgänger. My speed... I guess as I'm continually accelerating in the low gravity environment, somewhere close to Mach 2?

There's no atmosphere anymore, so no sound barrier.

He blasts at me with a concentrated pulse: an invisible beam straight out of some kind of anime.

I expected something like this.

This is his all-or-nothing last gamble. He's not using his defense barriers. Pure offense.

I have the urge to shout the name of a long dead Hawaiian king as I reply in kind. I send packets of antimatter, breaking up the force of his beam with small bombs.

The beam hits like a pile of bricks. Shot from a rail gun.

But even so, when it comes to brute force I have the overwhelming upper hand.

And I use it. I push through his intermittent beam, my body cracking and warping.

Antimatter roars in pure, endless noise as we enter his airspace. He winces as his eardrums burst. He's trying to keep steady as his vital organs vibrate intensely. He's damn near being torn apart by the sound alone.

He raises barriers.

You'll need more than that.

I trigger the layer of antimatter covering the ground under his feet. And on his feet.

The result is both brutal and underwhelming.

His legs are gone.

Ground hamburger below the knees. He raised a barrier reflexively that saved his miserable life, for a few more moments. Still his beam has died off.

He pinched off the blood supply with his power, so he isn't bleeding to death, yet.

“You bastard!!!” [John falling to his back]

The ground around him shatters and huge sheets of the surface raise up. Lumps hundreds of feet long of solid rock.

Oh boy... he's finally serious.

He unleashes a meteor shower aimed at little me. He's even placed barriers on the rocks and is guiding them.

Huh.

Kid gloves are off.

Zephyr. Let's do it!

This attack costs us dearly.

We spend our own body. Or at least our left hand. How? Half of our mass is ordinary matter: we're a controlled bomb.

This is an insane amount of antimatter. The kind of thing that would shatter a world in two.

Focused into a beam of kinetic force and intense radiation the width of a pinprick.

The power.

It stuns me.

It splits the boulders rising at us; slicing them like paper, curving as I aim it.

The barriers try to defy it, but this is orders of magnitude higher than anything he's experienced before.

It passes through his meteors, his barriers, his chest, the ground behind him and beyond. Perhaps to wreck havoc on a planet millions of years later. The meteors fly off wildly with the change in mass and fluctuating propulsive force.

He stares up at me, uncomprehending as I land softly near him after a rough deceleration. He's blind from the radiation. Not surprising. He saw the equivalent of a million eclipses in a moment.

I shrug. “It might as well be magic, to us humans. What's the difference, but a name and the fact we're still in the same universe we originate from.” I pause. “I think.”

I reach down, pulling the broken husk of a man up to eye level.

At the last moment he tries to rip me apart at the atomic level, scatter my body into vapor.

His power is as strong as ever, but it is just a murmur. The power required to actually keep this form stable is even higher.

I respond by snapping his neck.

“Tenacious bastard.” I mutter.

I look at the rubble. At the destruction, the immensity of it all. More than ten miles in all directions is demolished.

The debris is falling into the star below.

I toss one more piece of trash out there, washing my hands of him.

“What a fool.” I say my final words to him.

He knew who he was and still became like that... seeing yourself in another form... It was like watching a mirror image, it doesn't feel right. Unsettling. But in killing it... I don't feel anything. Not good, not guilty. In the end he was more mad dog that needed to be put down than anything.

The old man grumbles about how much work I've given him, but really the maintenance systems are literally able to produce matter from energy. It will be repaired quickly.

He opens a side door for me into a 'death' room and sends me a few directions toward places I know.

I wonder how Niala's doing.

******************************************************************************************************************

Three days Prior:

Day 7 of the Siege of the rebel stronghold.

“Fire the catapult! Smash down that gate! Death to escaped slaves and rebels!” [Ape commander]

“It's buckling! Just a little more!” [Artillery Officer] “Once more... ready...!”

A creaking echoed, as the massive stone doors opened.

A female rat carrying a single edged blade in one hand and a strange cube in the other walked out on gleaming legs.

“Destroy the demon! Fire!” [Commander]

“All who threaten the home Chirrik built for us... WILL... DIE!!!!” [Niala stated calmly as she tilted the cube]

What we learned:

Full scale war broke out!

And Little Rat doesn't care!

Let the chaos begin!