Back underground, it looks like it’s time for Torsten and Curie to get serious with The Embassy.

Word Count: 35, 218

In the several days since I had seen that man, he had changed substantially. No longer was he the mysterious, clean-cut figure waltzing about his room, but a nervous, disheveled ambassador to the underworld. When we entered, he cowered, and it was clear that something had happened beneath the surface over the last few days to cause this dramatic change in character.

Curie turned to me, “Is this The Embassy? He looks pretty grim and down, boss. You sure this is the guy who put you into a fetch? He looks like he wouldn’t hut anybody.”

“Well,” I said, “don’t let that fool you. He sure as hell did a number on me, and on Derek. Probably on countless others, too. I have no idea what to expect from him right now, so just be cautious and safe with him.”

We approached him, moving slowly closer to that nervous wreck, until I was able to shake his hand. “I believe we’ve met,” I said, gripping his hand and moving it up and down. His arm felt limp, and he moved to my will without reciprocating any of the force of my gesture. When the handshake was done, he stepped back, in the same manner he had when we’d first met.

“You, huh…” he grunted. “What do you want, Vincent Torsten? And who have you brought with you?”

“This is my friend, Adam Curie. He’s a mechanic, and looking for a little adventure. We’ve actually come to gather some information from you. Just a few questions, that’s all. I hope you don’t mind answering them – they won’t be hard, I promise.”

He stepped even further back, nearly stumbling over his desk, the infinite copies of his blunder all motioning in unison around me and Curie. “You’re not from them, are you?” he asked.

“Them?” I asked.

“The damned Cydian government. You’re not working for them, are you?”

I wasn’t sure what to say – we were working unofficially under Maiya, an agent of the Cydian government. In a way, we were both working for the government; at the same time, I was still employed in the mines, and Curie was a mechanic from district 137. “No,” I said, having made my decision. “We’re not working for anything of the sort. I’ve just heard some rumors about strange happenings down here. I used to work for you, so I figured I’d ask you.”

I gave it to him lightly; I knew he’d tried to murder me. He needed to be made aware of the fact. As expected, he stared blankly. He knew how I’d survived, soul intact. I needed to know if it was his intention to send my soul to the collective by destroying a fetch he’d put me into.

“And what makes you think I’m going to tell a brat like you? You’re the cause of all this mess! You and your damned squad member. You’ve ruined us – you’ve ruined me… what more could you possible have to ask?”

“Well, knowing that seems to be like a good place to start. How did I ruin you?” I inched my way closer, just as I had before.

“You, you and that girl – that devilish girl. I knew there was something strange about her. After we tossed you out of the building, she tied me up and went back down below the surface! When I broke free, it was utter chaos and panic. Structures were failing, plants breaking, homes collapsing. I couldn’t help but think that she was the cause of all this, and that you were indirectly related… but no, you are directly related.”

Another step forward. I slowly trapped him into a corner; with each step, his infinite copies merged into a single frail being.

“Directly?” I asked. Curie, behind me, was staring him down, curious as could be.

“Your partner, Derek Marland – he was taken from you. I never told you what became of him, and yet I’d promised you. I suppose at this point, you’ve proven that you deserve to know. As much as I’d rather not tell you, I feel it is your right.”

I felt my stomach sink. Bad news was coming from The Embassy – Derek was dead, Derek was maimed, Derek’s body was burned to ashes while his soul rotted within the confines of a digital realm.

“Deep below the surface – even deeper than the mines – is a research facility. It’s so close to the core of the planet that pressure suits must be worn to protect their bearers from fatal injury. It is in this room that I have been conducting experiments, if you will, at the behest of the Cydian government and Inland. I told you earlier I was just doing my job, just trying to get by as you were, and I didn’t lie.

“But this became too much. I was overseeing a top secret research project focused on the extraction and containment of human souls. I’m hardly a scientist myself, but I did a lot of the grunt work for the smarter men and women, and I didn’t mind it up until a certain point.” He paused, and picked himself up a bit. “When your buddy Derek showed up.”

“So,” I said, “what did Derek do to justify his ‘showing up’?”

“Nothing. He was simply determined to be a prime candidate for testing purposes. Everybody living beneath the surface is nothing more than a lab rat to those of us living above. It’s personally hard for me to view those people out there as anything else but test subjects. But you – when I learned you were originally from the surface, I was enraged.”

“Many people often are.”

“Yes. But your friend, Derek, he had arrived with some very specific information. Apparently, he was the first to notice a slight cracking in the structure of the caverns; since that discovery, the crack has propagated. Attempts to weld it just have failed. Several districts have collapsed, and our entire integrity is on the line now. When Derek first told me and the other scientists about the crack, the entire focus of the research project shifted; it became a development project. Apparently, not only could the scientists involved in the project see where Derek’s observation was set to lead, but were entirely prepared for such an occurrence.”

“And what happened to Derek?”

“His soul was the first used for special testing in this new apparatus. Hastily thrown together, this container for souls that we had made would be his home for eternity. We extracted his consciousness and placed it inside of the container. And then we did it again, and again, and again, until we had an entire district of souls within a single container. That man you saved from the collapsing purification plant, he, too, was extracted and stored as Derek was.”

I froze, hearing this. I had gone through so much trouble to save that man, even if he was no happy to be saved himself. Even if he lacked all the appreciation in the world, the way I had captured and transported him as cargo to The Embassy, I felt so immensely horrible that it had led to the extraction of his soul that I was speechless for a good amount of time. I remembered his struggling body, wrapped in the light of the Mu Gun, as it was delivered to The Embassy’s doorstep.

I was embarrassed and ashamed. Eight years of correcting myself, of becoming content with my life, had just been destroyed.
Curie looked at me, seeing my pain, reading my thoughts. He knew what had to be done, and so did I: We had to terminate the research. If the mines were at stake, then the surface was at stake as well; who was to say they wouldn’t soon be affected – captured and assimilated into The Collective as mere test subjects?

“Take us there,” I said. “We have to go see this facility.”

“I’m afraid it can’t be done,” said The Embassy. “The doors are locked tight, and non-subjects are not allowed access even to the passageways that lead to the facilities. Unless you somehow became eligible test subjects, which you cannot be as you are in fetches, there’s no way for you to visit the facility.”

“No, there has to be a way!” Curie said, his black skin blocking out his expressions of emotion. I watched him speak, his movement like those of an invisible man; his test dummy fetch appeared to be the most ambiguous being on the planet. On some level, I wasn’t even sure if it was Curie inside of there. “If you can’t take us there, I’ll build a Corpus Lock to do the same. I’ll smash down the walls of these caverns until I find the buildings in question.”

The Embassy laughed. “Good luck doing that. The walls crumble even as we speak. The crack that Derek discovered is slowly eating away at these mines; there is no way to stop it. By the time you even reach the facility, it may be too late to escape.”

By now, I had boxed The Embassy entirely into the corner. He had converged into one man, one force that could be easily reckoned with. He would take us where we wanted to go now, whether or not he believed that he could. Curie and I, together, placed enough pressure on that broken man that he had no choice but to spill everything he knew about the current state of Cydia.

“You keep mentioning the crack,” I said. “But who cares? It’s just a crack. If some walls crumble, it’s no big deal. That can be repaired.”
“Not this time,” The Embassy said. “No, the government has been busy preparing for a global disaster. The world is about to change, my boy, and it probably won’t be for the better.”

Curie turned his head in thought. “Boss, you ever heard of a planet called Earth?” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was smirking; his emotions were entirely hidden. But, judging from his tone of voice, he had a plan in mind. And it was getting a good start: The Embassy was silent at the mention of Earth. He just stopped and stared, blankly, into Curie’s empty face. He had nowhere to move back to; he was forced to face the issue right there.

“No? I’ve always wanted to go there,” Curie said. “It’s a beautiful world, I hear, entirely separate from our own. It even has life. We wouldn’t have to terraform, the inhabitants are rather primitive, there are bountiful resources. There’s quite a lot of water on Earth – I bet everyone loves all the water there. None of this rings a bell to you?”

The Embassy’s mouth remained shut.

“There are trees. Real trees. But you can’t go unless you’re in a fetch, because we don’t know the composition of the atmosphere yet to know if fetchless humans would be able to breathe on Earth. Everything’s real on Earth, boss. The plants, the grass, the sky – the air tastes fresh when you breathe it in. It’s a really nice place.”

“I know,” said The Embassy.

“I figured.”

“How do you know about Earth, boy?” The Embassy remarked with intense surprise.

“Did you listen at all to Vince, here? I’m a mechanic from the surface. I built Corpus Locks for the men who are negotiating with Earth so that they could travel through space. I still know how to build them; wasn’t building one but a few days ago before Vince here promised me a fetch if I went with him. And here I am. But now, I’m thinking something; if such a perfect planet exists, why would Cydia not be rushing in to take charge of it? With all its resources, you’d think the situation in the mines wouldn’t be an issue.”

After a moment of silence, The Embassy sighed. “Yes, there is a developing relationship with Earth. And yes, Cydia is looking to use it to gather resources. But it’s far more complicated than that. I shouldn’t even know what I could tell you about that world…”

He hung his head down in shame, hoping we wouldn’t ask him what he knew. Deep down, I think he wanted us to ask – otherwise he wouldn’t have mentioned anything. “I shouldn’t be talking to either of you. You both should be dead,” he said.

“Well, how about this – I have a hunch what’s going on. You can just play hot or cold with me, boss,” Curie said. “If you say that there’s going to be some kind of global disaster, I think that fetches are being subsidized right now so that the Cydian government can evacuate the planet to Earth.”

“You wish,” said The Embassy. “You wish it was so nice. You just want to get your scrawny ass to Earth because you like the flowers and the grass. There is war on Earth. There is suffering and pain and bloodshed. It is a primitive and backwards land to live in, and there are no plans of any sort. You should find and ask Maiya about this; she probably works for the government.”

“We did, and she doesn’t know. You’re the last person we can ask. Nobody seems to know what’s going on, but something’s clearly happening, and you know more than anybody else we’ve spoken to, especially more than Maiya. We’re trying to help; we need all the information we can get about the state of the planet and what the government’s plans are.”

“Well, I only know so much. But the researchers in the Renaissance facilities would know more. But, like I said, there’s no way you can get there without being selected as a test subject.”

“Then select us,” Curie said, “and send us down there.”