Semiotic Drift [IC]

[Supercape]

"These ones are necessary. They are needed for the protocol memes to spread and duplicate. Exo-Threat 31572 must be contained. There must be no risk of breaching the seal. This place shall be made clean to neutralize all risk."

"Exo-threat 31572?" replied Supercape, to nobody in particular. "Are we talking about something alien to this world?" he pondered. That might make sense.

Unless we are the Exothreat... the thought struck him. Are humans the threat?

Not to mention the fact there are at least 31571 other Exo-Threats...

"Good speech, Fleur" he said in a softer tone "lets hope they start giving us some answers...we are blind here!"

[trollthumper]

"The workers are not contaminated by the Exo-Threat," spoke the voice, "otherwise they would have been destroyed by now. They are our means of communication, our eyes and ears into your world."

"And who exactly is 'we'?" Nick spat out. As a necromancer, he was used to cases where something had to possess a person in order to better communicate, but he wasn't exactly happy that whatever was behind this was doing it in such a cavalier fashion, like the men were a disposable cell phone. "You said this place would be 'made clean.' Do I even want to know what that means?"

"We are a memetic agent of the Preservers," said the choir, "designed for spread amongst an acoustic vector in the event that the sanction risked violation. Exo-Threat 31572 has remained entombed for..." The choir paused for a second, as if counting within its own head. "...four billion orbits of this planet. It was loosed from its old prison - a planetary body designed primarily for its containment - upon impact with this planet. It posed a threat to the entire system of this world, and it took many sacrifices to bind it once more. Your direct intervention would be appreciated, but futile.

"As for making the land clean... the longer that life remains near Exo-Threat 31572's prison, flourishing and expanding, the greater the risk that expansion will result in the breach of the seal and the obliteration of the grand design. This development must be emptied, preferably in a peaceful fashion."

[Electra]

"What do you mean by "this development?" Fleur asked cautiously, keeping her seeds in her hand. Four billion years ago the earth had been little more than a ball of rock with big dreams. A lot had changed since then. "We can evacuate the school temporarily, get people to safety while we seal up or move whatever's causing the problem, but this is the middle of one of Earth's most important cities. It would be impossible to try and wall the area off indefinitely. What exactly is the threat we're dealing with?" she asked. "Some sort of alien life form, or a killer virus, or something else?"

[Supercape]

"How large is this prison?" said Supercape, to himself, not quite aware he was talking aloud.

"This cave? This city?...this continent?"

This planet? he added to himself.

From the sound of it, the Preservers were taking a rather utilitarian angle to their ethics here. If Exo-Threat whatever really was so dangerous, sacrificing a few...or even many...would be justify to save the planet (or the galaxy?) from a more dire threat.

"What exactly are the scales we are talking about?" he added, more firmly, as a direct question to the chorus of voices.

[trollthumper]

"This city will suffice," said the choir of maintenance workers, "for now. The Exo-Threat has yet to rouse, or gouge at the walls of its prison. It remains caged beneath this urban center... and approximately one mile out from there, in diameter. The technology within its chambers will not decay until this planet's sun has reached red giant magnitude, by which point all concern of containing it shall be rendered obsolete. Were this prison to be breached, however, the organism would rouse. Slowly, or quickly, but once restored to proper function, it would rend the tectonic plates and cause a good portion of this land mass to crumble into ruin. From there, it would move quickly across the earth, absorbing local biomass into its form and gaining strength. Within a period of 30 rotations, half of this continent would be scythed clean, and it would be capable of punching through to the planet's core if it felt like it."

"So no one touches it," Nick said. "Got it. Like Fleur said, we can get people out of here, clear the immediate area, make sure no one comes down here."

"And how long would the words last? A lifetime? Two? How long would it take for disbelief to set in? How long until the instinct to explore develops? Fill this chamber with a quick-setting solid, and it will crumble within centuries. Gouge words in a common language on the walls, and that language may be outmoded in twenty generations, forgotten entirely in sixty. You are welcome to explain, to give them a reason, but not all will grasp it. Herd instinct will draw the masses back, and the pattern shall begin anew. This city must be made a monument to absence. A haunted place, rendered barren through curses, monsters, and fear."

"Four million people live here. You can't just ask us to clear out overnight."

"That is why we are not asking."

[Supercape]

"What happened here?" queried Supercape, as much to Fleur and Nick as to the mysterious intelligence (if it was such a thing) that they spoke to.

"This exo-threat...four million years ago, did you say?" his mind plucked through some astrophysics lectures many years ago. He was more interested in the micro-physics of quantum mechanics, but he kept amply abreast of the wider fields of physics. Everything was connected, after all, and given his galactic-hopping abilities, astronomy had become more of a practical concern for him.

The theory was, of course, some major collision occurred, between the embryonic earth and some other body, a collision which would have ultimately formed the moon. Was this other body the exo-threat?

There was a possible way to check this out...

"And when did it happen?" he asked "I mean precisely when did it happen? and I don't mean four million years ago. Given your precision, how long ago, to the second?"

[Electra]

"What you're telling us," Fleur spoke up, her face creased in a frown, "still isn't acceptable. You still haven't told us the nature of this threat, much less why there's no other option but for us to surrender and give way before it, as though that were even possible! Freedom City is a very important place, not just for the people who live here but for everyone in this dimension. It's vital that this area remain populated and defended. There must be another way to deal with this threat or seal it off, and if you just tell us more of what you know about what it is and how it's imprisoned, I'm sure we can help you find it!"

[trollthumper]

"Perhaps it is best if you understand the scale." The workmen threw back their heads, and opened their mouths wide. The clicking of radio transmissions registered to Supercape's senses, and a vision came into being on the roof of the cavern.

"This is your planet, 4,527,134,567.39 orbits before now." It appeared accurate to Supercape's knowledge; there was little land in those days, merely oceans stretching across the globe with the occasional piece of land mass. "We were studying the planet at this point, measuring its potential for the development of life. There were promising chemicals in the primordial mass that could attain life with the proper stimulus. Our studies were interrupted, however, by the presence of a planetary body heading towards the planet. Our sensors detected readings of life, but not on the scale we would come to associate with the Exo-Threat - we believe now that whoever sealed it away found a way to block such readings, so that none would be tempted to investigate. We decided to stand aside and see if the collision would bring about life."

The body, the size of the moon, appeared before the blue planet, trailing in at hyper-speed. It collided with the earth, sending up a cataclysmic impact and waves the size of mountain ranges surging out in all directions. The earth pushed back against the impact, an ocean of magma surging from the massive rent in the tectonic plates. In rapid motion, the magma suffused the ocean around it, clouds of steam rising to the heavens, as the remaining mantle of the moon-like body coalesced around the detritus of impact. The body, fractured but mending, slowly trailed away from the earth, rising into orbit.

"The impact disgorged the core of the body into the mantle of the earth. This is where we believe Exo-Threat 31572 was stored. The impact had fractured its prison... and it rose."

Certainly enough, something remained in the sea of magma - a tiny black dot, the size of the head of a pin. But the illusion magnified, coming in closer to the impact site, to the point where the heroes could see it from bird's eye view. The "dot" was the size of a city, a gigantic, ten-legged beast with flesh like metal. It strode through the boiling magma as if it was water, pushing towards the edge of the great rift. It strode out of the ocean of lava and into cooler waters, and where it stepped, the oceans turned black as oil. It supped at the polluted mixture, and roared to the heavens.

"It is a beast of entropy," the workmen said. "There is nothing living about it -- flesh of metal, bones of earth, breath of poison. Where it steps, the earth is parted, and life decays. We knew that if it was allowed to roam free, the planet would be barren within one quarter of an orbit, and all our study would be lost. We resolved to make sure that would not happen."

The beast turned suddenly, trudging back towards the ocean of magma. Ships like gigantic steel manta rays hung over the bleeding crater, likely luring the thing to its fate. They opened fire on it, with cataclysmic fury and planet-rending weapons, but all it did was stun the beast. "The creature was resistant to all our weapons - at least, the ones we could use without risking planetary destruction. All we could do was incapacitate it. And when we did, we began the process of imprisoning it."

Streams of molten metal with a luster and sheen similar to impervium fell on the beast from above. It began to scream soundlessly as the metal encased the thing's body, running off of it in sheets and enfolding around it like a glove. Finally the beast lay still, wrapped in impenetrable metal and sinking towards the core of the earth.

"Exo-Threat 31572 was subdued and sunken into the depths of the earth. Soon, we began work on repairing the damage it had done to the earth." The ships flew over the planet, swooping low and laying still. The black oceans were swept up into their holds, replaced with clear water flooding into the dry gaps in the ocean. The magma sea cooled more rapidly than it should have, setting into the earth to be swallowed by tectonic motion. In no time at all, it looked as if nothing had happened to the planet in the first place. "We left a series of markers on top of the prison of the Exo-Threat. If life was to develop at this point, it would eventually reach the point where it would begin exploring the planet, inside and out. We needed a deterrent, a way to mark the thing's prison as a place of fear in order to prevent anyone from getting close enough or curious enough to crack its bonds."

A light appeared on the endless ocean, marking the place where the great beast had been imprisoned. The earth surged forward at this point, moving as if on fast forward. The great oceans receded, to reveal one solid mass of land. And in time, this land shifted, cracked, and broke apart into many pieces, eventually coming together into a new form - the continents, as they would be recognized today. And the glowing spot never moved from where it had first been placed - the coastline of what would one day become Freedom City.

"Well, thanks for the movie." Nick was trying to be nonchalant; he'd seen all of the earth's development in the space of a few minutes, and was still trying to wrap his brain around the sheer scale of the threat presented by this thing. "Why confine it, though? Why not try flinging it into space?"

"All signs indicated that Exo-Threat 31572 would be capable of independent motion in vacuum. If it was tossed aside, there was a chance it would find some other planet capable of life, perhaps further along in the development cycle than this one, and drive it to ruin. Confinement was the option with the most certain results."

"And now we're caught footing the bill. You don't understand, this isn't just some little camp site, this is a city. What sort of warning do you want us to give the people? 'There's some great thing sitting underneath, so we need to get the hell out now'? There are people who can't just move out, people who won't move out. They'll come back, one way or another." He pondered. "If we find some way to keep this thing comatose... keep it from ever waking up... or some way to get it out of here entirely - would you admit that the city is safe?"

"You are welcome to try."

[Electra]

"I could move it," Fleur suggested to the others, sounding a little diffident about the possibility. "I mean, it's big and powerful, but it's really just a monster in a big rock prison, isn't it? If we can excise the part holding it, I can send it to a dimension where there's nothing living anymore. I'm sure I can find one, Phantom told me about plenty of dimensions where everything went wrong and it's just blank space. Maybe this thing would even be happier there, if it's a creature of entropy," she added hopefully.

[Supercape]

"There are plenty of dimensions that would suit" replied Supercape "just place it in some lifeless rock on some near empty dimension. "

"I appreciate the utilitarian concerns" he said, addressing the voices "to save a planet, or a universe, moving a city is a small thing. But consider this - inevitably, it is a danger on this world, in this universe. The safest place it can be for the city, for everybody, is right outside of this existence. Where it can't do any harm".

Of course, it would help if we knew exactly what it was... he muttered to himself in his head. And exactly how we are going to move it...

[trollthumper]

"All right," Nick said. "Let's see if I can find something matching that description. Completely dead, no life on the planet, little chance of escape." He sat down cross-legged on the dusty ground, expanding his senses. This would be tricky, but he knew there was the seed of a possibility.

All right, I'm already wired into the archives of the Moirae. If I go back far enough, I can find all the possibilities of all the universes... and then, if they've kept their cataloguing up to date, I should be able to locate the precise possibility and use it for reference...

His mind reeled with the possibilities as he pulled at the strings of fate -- and, thanks to the construction of the working, Fleur and Supercape were along for the ride. A dimension where humanity - at least, what he recognized as humanity - had developed on Mars instead of Earth. A dimension where China became the major world power early in the burgeoning of civilization. A dimension with nothing but shrimp. Finally, he came to rest floating in the void. There was no Earth here, nor a moon. In fact, as he pushed to the outer limits of his vision - which was quite a ways, given the knowledge of the Moirae - he couldn't find any stars whatsoever in the sky. Odds were this wasn't so much an alternate dimension as a place of nothing. No Big Bang, no Big Crunch. No origin, no end.

"Fleur, you have a lock on this place?"

[Electra]

"I can get back here with no problem, if that's what you're asking," Fleur replied, turning the little seeds over and over in her hand. Some of them were beginning to swell and sprout, for all she didn't seem to be concentrating any attention on them. Nervous habit, perhaps. "As for getting the creature out... I would need to have a look first," she admitted. "If the prison is actually made of earth, buried in earth, I might need to tap someone like Gaian Knight to dig it out first. But if it's at all freestanding, I think I can make it work. We'll have to be careful, though. I don't know if any of us can breathe vacuum on the trip."

She looked to the possessed workers. "Can you show us what we're dealing with, or describe the prison?"

[Supercape]

Supercrape cracked his knuckles and furrowed his brow, deep in concentration.

"Trans-dimensional transportation is it then? well, this will be bigger than anything I have ever attempted. And I've been fire and wide, I can tell you..." he said, placing his cracked knuckles to his temples.

The maths was complex, to say the least, but any two points in the multiverse could be theoretically entangled - with the right encouragement. Nudging of M-branes this way and that.

He called out to the voices - whatever entity they were.

the Preservers? he asked himself. It would fit. They seemed to be preserving life in their normal cold, calculating way.

"We can move this - to another dimension. It would be safer there than anywhere. If you can just release it to our care...!"

[trollthumper]

The construction workers looked at each other, as if they were independent entities rather than reflections of the same source. Then they turned to the group. "It is released," they said. "It is now your problem to handle."

"God, I've never been happier to hear those words in my life," muttered Nick. "So, if we could just see the merchandise --"

Before the words were even fully out of his mouth, the workers turned their heads down and began... "screaming" would be the best way to put it. It was the closest way Nick could describe the pulse of sound that was more like a force, cutting into the earth like a jackhammer. The din seemed to go on forever, hitting him right in the brain stem, until it finally came to a stop. The earth beneath them was cut open, revealing a gouge about a thousand feet down -- and at the bottom, a solid barrier of impervium.

"The final prison remains," they said. "But it should hold for the transfer."

[Supercape]

"Wow!" said Supercape, genuinely awed by the power on display and the considerable effort that had been made to ensure total security for the "exo-threat" whatever that was.

"Its Pandora's box all over again!" he commented, adding, under his breath "and I confess to a desire to know what's in it!"

He really hoped that wasn't overheard and gave the custodians time to reflect and reverse that decision.

"How heavy is it...it looks big...I mean really big. I don't think I have ever shunted that across dimensions, at least on that scale...."

He felt a slight wave of nausea at the size of the feat and the responsibility of ensuring its success...

[Electra]

Fleur took a deep breath, looking as though she shared some of Supercape's trepidation. After a moment, though, she squared her shoulders and looked at the others. "I can move it," she told them with a fair approximation of confidence. "If you can go on ahead to the right universe and take one of my plants with you, I'll open a portal underneath the prison and it should fall right through." She took one of the seeds she was still holding, rolling it between her fingers until it sprouted and grew into a bushy little marigold with three cheerful orange flowers and no roots to speak of. She handed it to Supercape. "Just make sure you put it down and then move away, since the prison will fall out of it at a pretty good clip. How long do you think you'll need?"

[Supercape]

"For that" replied Supercape "very little time at all. Or as much as is needed. Or as much as is wanted..."

"You see, given the Relatavistic nature of time when considered with nth dimensional parabolic vortex entanglement, if you take the m-brane basic theorem of fractal displacement by dividing c to the inverse floating integer..."

He coughed politely.

"Yes, well, anyway. Back in a jiffy..."

Time and Space collapsed around him, dancing and swirling. Suddenly like a photo-swap, he changed position and direction, but did not appear to disappear.

"There we go" he concluded "took about 3 minutes. But I travelled backwards in time 3 minutes to do it. So, no time at all! well, from your perspective. Arrived back here the nanosecond I left..."

[Electra]

Fleur gave Supercape a look of pleasantly tolerant incomprehension as he explained what he'd done, much as she would give her husband when he got off on a tangent about the intricacies of deep-space gravitic theory. Stesha didn't consider herself a slouch in the science department, but she was no physicist. Since the takeaway was obviously that Supercape had come back flowerless, having placed the plant where it ought to be, she lost no more time in turning to her own business.

"Once we do this," she warned the still-invisible force that had inhabited the humans, "you have to leave. We appreciate your concern about the thing you trapped here, and we'll be glad to see it gone too, but we are the protectors of Earth now. We look out for it, and for the people you are hurting. It's time for you to go." With that, she sent a vine shooting down into the pit, like a time-lapse video of a plant growing and rooting itself to the ground. Tendrils leapt from the main stalk, some digging into the dirt, others reaching out to encircle the massive prison. Within moments, the vine had braided itself into a ring around the base of the prison, wide enough to just exceed its diameter. Fleur closed her eyes and raised her arms, and suddenly a glowing green portal appeared within the ring. The smell of dirt and sewage was replaced by an overwhelming smell of vegetation as the prison began to shift from its place.

[trollthumper]

The vines thrummed with life, like live power cables, as the portal to the realm of entropy opened. The impervium prison was slow to move, trickling downwards at an infinitesimal pace. In time, however, inertia and the pull of the new universe won out, and the prison slid into the other world faster, and faster, moving at avalanche speeds -- and that was when Fleur felt something kick within, like a dragon trying to hatch from an egg.

"It is awake!" cried the force possessing the workers. "And it has adapted! If that prison does not hold..."

But the prison held - long enough, at least. A large crack began to form along the top, almost sundering the mass in half - just as the last of it went sliding into the other world. As the portal snapped shut, Nick could swear he heard the faintest notes of a screech. The plant mass quickly filled the gap left by the prison, blossoming and filling the empty earth so as to prevent collapse. The workers looked upon this, then to the heroes.

"Exo-Threat 31572 is gone from this continuum," they said. "Our duty is complete." The workers went slack, then fell to the ground. Nick rushed forward - his death senses were telling him they were still on this side of the grave, but that didn't mean possession hadn't done a number of them. He picked one up, helping him back to his feet. "You okay?" he asked.

"Think so," mumbled the worker. "Someone hit something... it was like a tuning fork... what the hell happened?"

"Well, I saw a lot of it, and... I'm not entirely sure I can tell you."