[100] The Beginning of Two Worlds Ending
Adam was lying on the soft, comfy surface. It radiated warmth in slowly pulsing motions, mimicking the heart rate. He felt that he started to sink into the creamy texture - he knew the process was about to begin. Jaw unclenched, all muscles relaxed through the sweeping motion over the whole body, breathing becoming rare and shallow.
After a while, in a dark, gloomy mist, he starts seeing dots. One at first, joined by the second one a bit later. And third. Their shapes and sizes morph as they’re slowly moving in the space, surrounded by the silky gloominess. Occasionally, their surfaces would touch each other, and they’ll bounce off, moving into different directions.
Other patterns start to appear in that space, emerging from the darkness. There’s a light coming from the bottom. Irregular bubbly figures start to dance in the void. More patterns emerge, and they begin to interact with each other at varying speeds. They jumped around and crashed into each other in unison, resulting in the bubble bursts, which would then bounce around until they would slow down. Sharp rays pierced the void illuminating everything. It’s about to start anytime now.
More light piercings at the sides, then at the center. The rate intensifies until it’s blindingly bright. Now, the patterns are all inverted. Piercing rays become a wall of light with more shapes emerging.
Adam starts to fall. He hated that feeling—hundreds of times before they reminded him that there’s no point in trying to resist it. There is no way back anyway. The sickening part is about to happen anytime now. He tried to focus on trying to distinguish and identify ‘ping sweeps’ in this chamber - it meant that the synchronization process started, and it helped to concentrate on something else than the feeling of constant fall.
He continues to drop into what seems an endless tunnel until finally, it synchronizes with something else on the other side. It’s only a read-only session without full control abilities, but at least it was ‘real-time.’ It’s been a while he was able to do that. This skill deteriorates quickly if not trained consistently. The problem was that all of their “connections” were read-only. You couldn’t alter anything or communicate with the other side. It was a gruesome experience in some cases, where you’d be a first-row spectator of a massacre without any possibility to avoid it.
It all started with brain-wave-controlled interfaces, quickly sprawling into the consumer electronics world. The Engineering promptly jumped into it, seeing a huge potential of expanding their enterprise even more than ever. Interfaces evolved, and soon enough, you were able to see them in your everyday lives. The most successful early implementation was, of course, medical devices designed to help communicate w/ people who otherwise couldn’t. Soon enough, there were suits made out of the intelligent fabric morphing their patterns based on the state of your mind. Privacy shields followed quickly afterward.
Then it took few bored scientists and one experiment gone wrong to discover the unintended potential of all this. At first, they even didn’t understand what they have found, and it took them years and years to finally reach the point where it would be seriously treated. They saw the incident about to happen in the future, although it wasn’t theirs, albeit a very similar one. Then it all unfolded in an uncontrolled manner. One problem with the tech was that at the time, there was no time to control most of the parameters - all you had was a glimpse into the parallel future of what might happen - you had a predefined time window, which couldn’t be altered; thus they couldn’t explore whatever they wanted - only what was present to them at any given time. While limiting, this was enough to see how specific actions might lead to unfortunate consequences. And in the case of Adam’s version of the reality, even though now they had a detailed picture of what happens - before it was only predictions of so-called domain experts, they wouldn’t take drastic actions. What if it’s not true or doesn’t happen? Seeing the aftermath of the war and devastating consequences for the environments survivors needed to exist in wasn’t convincing enough to take drastic measures here and now. It was like hindsight bias even didn’t apply here.
[…]
Once you’ve passed the tunnel - it was an unease, devastating reality with people clinging to their lives. They started building these shielded monster vaults designed to withstand a hundred thousand years. Previously unheard of, this was probably the most complex challenge ever taken. And technology was only a part of that. They needed to consider many aspects - threats from outer space in meteorites, seismic events, etc. The seeds bank and the knowledge to bootstrap again. They didn’t know the exact time frame when they are going to be discovered, if anytime. What language are they going to speak? Can we use the signs language? Which ones? What signs should be used as the same sign might be interpreted differently in different cultures. It was also unclear who would find it and how it would be used. Thus, you need more than one of these vaults. Another problem was how to find them once they’re buried and forgotten. That’s how the always-on tone generator was created. It resulted in producing the low-end hum being felt and heard at a certain distance. The specific frequency should show that it was one of the vault locator beacons.
[..]
Adam was now seeing a very familiar wall. Few meters in that claustrophobic tunnel, and he’ll reach the hatch, which needs to be opened. He knew that you couldn’t alter the state of the things “on the other side”; instead, you would follow along with other people and be an observer. ‘Maybe this time?’ - he wondered, after seeing so many failed attempts. At least this timeline and people were curious enough to ignore frightening pictograms on the walls left by their predecessors.
He couldn’t understand how it did work at the deep technical details. Still, if you tried altering anything, your connection might be disturbed, or you might be disconnected abruptly, potentially leading to trauma and painful aftercare. Occasionally, operators would try doing this, but in most cases, nothing would happen.
But this time, it did. Adam was synced with the lead scout, as he was the first one at the hatch. He was watching another attempt to open it. For the hundredth time, unsuccessfully. The scout was going to miss that crucial turn of the left handle of the hatch. It wasn’t clear in the paintings on the walls. Adam almost subconsciously” twisted his arm as it would be resting on the cold handle, suddenly unlocking the left side. You could tell that the scout became stirred by the sound of switching gears inside of the hatch. There was a good pause before the scout started moving again. Now he was doing the same sequence on the right side of the hatch. After few minutes, he did the same thing - turning the handle clockwise 45 degrees and pulling it - this time Adam being very conscious of what he was doing. He heard a hiss and a rumble. Hatch was unlocked.
The emergency exit system sealed many hundreds of years ago was finally opened again. It uncovered the dark tunnel which dropped down to the abyss. Emergency lighting now was lit, showing the maintenance ladder and some hatches on the sides of it. Adam saw the scout dropping lit candles and rocks and still trying to understand how deep it went. Then he grunted something to the other scouts behind his back. They were preparing to go down.
It took them a while to get the squad going, but finally, they all went it. At first, one scout went down the rope, checking the ladders and the maintenance hatches along the way. Occasionally they heard him shouting and sending the signals via rope, until it stopped. It seems like the eternity passing by while they were waiting. Lanterns didn’t really cut through the pitch black dark in the tunnel.
Finally, the rope twitched. It was the signal, that it’s ok to go down. They all followed one by one with few of them near the hatch, just in case. All the others followed the steps of the first two scouts through the dark tunnel, until they reached one of the maintenance hatches, which was already open. It was dark and narrow. The hum was getting louder and louder as they were all pushing through very slowly through this tiny space. One couldn’t fit in with all the gear on; thus heavy backpacks were pushed in front of each person, slowing everything down even more.
Finally, after of what seemed like ages of crawling in the dark, all sweaty and smeared, they entered the big breakout area carved in the mountain. It was lit by the pale light, although it was confusing as it wasn’t clear where it was coming from. They were on a big metal platform w/ a few unknown mechanisms on it, and the big black door on the opposite side. It was closed. It seemed like the pulsing hum was coming directly from the other side of that door.
Everything became hazy as the scout Adam was following touched the surface of the door. He felt that he started to drop, and the session has abruptly ended.
All tracks in the mix written, produced & mixed by Decaying Foundations.
Link to the recording: https://soundcloud.com/palanga_street_radio/decaying-foundations-100-the