After a week of being behind, I’ve finally caught up with myself. I also planned ahead a little bit, so I shouldn’t be getting too off-track with the story this time. I want this to remain prety focused, so we’ll see how it goes over the next few days. On the bright (or at least interesting) side, Adam Curie returns… as a kid!

Word Count: 23,477

I found myself inside of a small room laying on my stomach, where I could hear voices talking. Behind me, the black void persisted, ready to take me in again. I shuffled away, afraid, and picked myself up quietly so that nobody would hear me.

Through a nearby window I could see endless green plains. Trees, grass, ferns. A clear, blue sky. A pond, filled with sparkling water – such a rarity on Cydia that I’d never seen a pond for myself before. It was something I’d only imagined in my dreams. I looked at the portal I’d come through and I knew at once that I was on Earth, nine light-years away from my home planet. For some reason, I felt more at home on Earth than anywhere else.

The voices were talking about Cydia. I heard chatter from the man I’d spoken with earlier, the stout one in the suit. His voice was distinct enough.

“If Cydia ain’t going to survive much longer, we need to do something about it. We should move everyone to Earth.”

“No,” said another voice. “Don’t be an idiot. If we move anybody here, the natives of this place will react negatively to the invasion. We’ll be killed for sure. We need to keep on track with the fetch project. The tests we’ve run in the mines are showing pretty positive results—”

“Yeah, sure they are. That’s why that one guy went and hung himself when he found that he had a new body, yeah? Workin’ real well for you.”

“It’s the safest thing to do. If we market the fetches and subsidize them, everyone should be able to survive a failure. We set up databanks to hold their souls in the meantime that won’t break down during a catastrophic event, and if anybody is killed they can be sent to the database.”

“What if I don’t wanna be part of a database, eh?”

“I suppose you could live here on Earth, then. The fact of the matter is, I’m running Tychon now. Earth isn’t going to accommodate shit, so we need to make our own accommodations. And if Cydia isn’t going to be able to house that, we don’t exactly know any other hospitable places to live. You guys think I just walk in every day with some shitty smile, but I’m living in this fetch. It works. I am proof that it works, and the mines are proof that it works. Countless lives have been saved because of fetches.”

“I’m not sayin’ that the fetches are bad. I just don’t think that they’re gonna do what you want ‘em to do when the time comes. I still don’t trust ‘em. I mean, whaddaya do with my original body? Keep it frozen somewhere?”

“It’s useless scrap. We need to mutilate the old bodies to move their souls into the fetch. They can’t be reused.

“Yeah, and where’re we puttin’ all these ‘useless scrap’ bodies, then? A magic compost heap?”

“We can send them through one of the other Corpus Locks. I’ve got one set up in Central Square that goes to the middle of nowhere. The last guy that went through there was dead as soon as he got out. Perfect place to dump bodies.”

“Alright. You can have yer shot at it. But you ain’t touchin’ my body until this stuff gets proven. I want to see everyone on Cydia in a fetch in the next year, if we even last that long.”

“You act like you’ve got authority over me.”

The man chuckled. “I kinda wish I did, so you’d stop making dumbass decisions all the time.” I stepped closer, but the floor creaked. “Hey, did you hear that? Anyone there? Micah, you there?”

I began to hear their footsteps coming closer to where I was. They were leaving their room and coming into the room with the portal. Thinking quickly on my feet, though frightened out of my wits, I tried to find a place to hide. There was nothing that would conceal me – the room was empty with a wooden floor and stone walls held together by primitive mortar. There wasn’t any furniture. I was completely exposed.

Without thought, I looked at the portal, and then at the lush green fields beyond. I could have either rushed into the fields and hid there – at the expense of my life at the hands of the natives – or returned back to Cydia through the portal to escape the stout man’s discovery. I chose the latter.

Before they could reach the room, I leaped into the black void and was rushed back to Cydia through the power of the Corpus Lock. I found myself once again face down on the floor, only this time it was on the floor of the Cascade Inn. The dust from the carpeted flooring filled my mouth, and I spat it out, then wiped the taste of filth from my mouth. Standing up, I contemplated what the two men had been talking about: The fetch program on Cydia. I couldn’t help but think about Inland being involved somehow with the entire venture.

That the fetches were protection against some sort of disaster surprised me the most, and made me more determined to figure out what was happening beneath the surface. Their conversation had confirmed my notion that Inland was capturing residents below the surface and placing their souls inside fetches, but how were they doing it so quickly, and for what purpose? What the kid upstairs had told me earlier only egged on my notion that something was fishy about Inland’s skyscraper at the edge of town.

I went back to the fifth floor and knocked on his door to see if he was around. The kid opened the door, leaning against it. “What do you want, boss?” he said to me, looking in another direction.

“I saw it. I saw Earth.”

“You shitting me? You went there?” The jealous look on his face was priceless. I knew that would reel him in.

“Yeah, I did. There’s a portal open downstairs.”

“That’s one of mine. Who’d be stupid enough to leave it open if they weren’t using it?”

“Oh, people were using it. I overheard some people say some things. And that’s why I’m here to talk to you. You want a fetch. I know how you can get a fetch, but I’m wondering if you’ll come with me for a bit and help me out. You see, I’m looking for my lost friend. Me and him, we come from beneath the surface – in the mines. I know it’s tough to believe, but I was tossed out here on the surface by Inland, a mining company. They fired my ass. I don’t know why they did it, but I think it was because I’ve been looking into some interesting ‘business practices’ of theirs, you could say.”

“So, you want me to help you find your friend. That it, boss?”

“Well, yeah, I do. But I need to get into Inland’s building first. You know more about it than anyone else around here – you know what it looks like, and that it has no doors or windows. I figure if you’re so good at building gadgets, you could build something to get us into that building.”

“Sounds like a pretty sweet deal for you, boss. You get to see the inside of that building, maybe find your friends. Sweeten it up for me, too.”

“You can have a fetch,” I said. His face went red; I knew that was exactly what he wanted, for no other reason than to go to Earth. I could see this kid in the future, living on Earth peacefully in those grassy fields, with his own house, without worries. I wish I could have seen myself there, but I could only see myself back down in the mines, doing my job, living my life. Just like The Embassy said I was doing.

“You’re not just shitting me, are you?”

“Not at all. Inside that building, there are tons of fetches. That’s where I was forced into mine. Sure, it was a little unpleasant, and I didn’t get to pick it. But I got one. If you’re up for it, I’m sure the people in there would be happy to force you into a fetch, too.”

The kid leaped up, eager to go. I told him to hold off, that we were going to have to be careful about who we interacted with on the way there, and to make sure that no people from Inland or the Cydian government got involved. I was afraid of Inland because I thought they might really do something to this boy, and I was afraid of the Cydian government because they supported the fetch project. One of the men on Earth had been a Cydian ruler – he was one of several men who led Cydia’s parliament. That the fetch project might have been his idea was mind-boggling, and also sickening.

“Don’t pack up anything,” I said. “You’re just going to over-encumber yourself. Take only the stuff you think you’ll need to get us into that building.” He nodded, and picked up a few supplies, but left everything in his room for the most part.

We took the light tram downstairs and exited the Cascade Inn. When the manager asked why I was checking out so early, I shrugged and said, “I got all the rest I needed,” then continued walking out with the kid.

“Say, kid,” I said to the boy, “what’s your name?”

“Adam Curie,” he said. “What about yours, boss?”

“Stop calling me boss. It’s Vince Torsten.”

“Torsten, huh. Alright, boss. I mean, Torsten. The light tram is that way, so let’s get going.” We walked up to the light tram, but could see from a distance that it wasn’t glowing the soft blue it usually would have. When we finally reached the tram itself, it was obvious that it was out of order. Without means of transportation, Adam Curie was demoralized.

Luckily, I was used to long trips walking on foot.

“We can walk to the building. It’s not that far – a few kilometers at most. A morning run down in the mines is worse than that, so pick up the pace and let’s get moving if you want that fetch.” I started walking; I never realized that district 137 was like a giant Cascade Inn – it was completely run down. Roads were not properly paved. The Leaf was spread about everywhere, but in many cases its code had been scrambled and decayed, causing the Leaves to flicker or show graphical artifacts. Buildings were missing paint. Pathways in between buildings were narrow.

I couldn’t even spot a Central Square building. It was as though district 137 had no community to gather.

We were about three-quarters of the way to the Inland facility when we heard footsteps behind us. The scum of district 137 crept through the back alleys of buildings within the urban stronghold. As soon as we heard the footsteps, they were immediately replaced with gunfire. Four men approached us, their clothes tattered, their faces desperate for anything they could get, pointing laser pistols at our faces.

I felt around in my pocket for anything that might be in there. I thought,perhaps, that my fetch might surprise me. As soon as I felt a solid object, I pulled it out.

I was greeted by what I was certain had been lost. My Mu Gun.

Either Maiya or The Embassy must have slipped back into my pocket before throwing me out the window. Probably for my own protection in district 137. I looked at the thugs approaching Curie and I, and raised my Mu Gun’s nozzle to their torn-up faces. They laughed, and kept on laughing until I pulled the trigger.

A blinding blue light encapsulated them, trapping them for as long as I saw fit. They struggled, firing their laser pistols at the barrier of the light capsule to no avail. With the power of the Mu Gun, I lifted the capsule into the air and lodged it into a narrow alley between two apartment high-rises. The capsule stuck, leaving the four thugs floating in midair.

As I walked away, an unnoticed fifth thug approached me from behind and hit me in the neck with his fist, hoping to subdue me and rescue his friends. Although it hurt, I was hardly injured. I grabbed his arm, turned around, and punched him square in the face, not thinking at all about what I was doing. From the looks of it, I broke his nose pretty bad; he bled all over the ground. At that time, I wasn’t aware of how much strength my new fetch gave me.

That one punch alone was enough to shock the other four thugs into fear. I released them from their capsulated prison, and they ran away without a second thought. The light from the capsule returned to my Mu Gun, safe and sound. Curie applauded, amazed that I could handle myself against a few thugs. I told him not to worry about it, that I had bigger things to worry about. That he’d see what I was really dealing with, soon enough.

The other end of the light tram was broken, too, but not in the way the first end had been. No, this end looked legitimately busted up – as if some external force had come in and pounded, hard, on the Slate caging of the tram’s bulb, breaking it up and scattering the nanobots within. It would probably never work again. Not until it was replaced, anyway. This was all located suspiciously only a few hundred meters from the Inland facility; I could see the skyscraper more than clearly from where Curie and I stood at the broken light tram.

Together, we marched toward the building. Like soldiers, we were prepared to risk ourselves on the battlefield. We were cohesive, a single unit, and we had but one operation: rescue the prisoners of war.