It would’ve taken a bit of courage to call the line of silver compartments Siddhārtha could see in the light from his projector “rooms.” Each compartment sported a circular silvery hatch of an unknown alloy, and their contents were a mystery. The compartments lined both sides of a dark hallway that continued on for what seemed like an eternity in both directions. Electroluminescent material on the ceiling sagged and faded like old paper. He wondered how much time would have to pass for material like this to cease bearing its own weight. He guessed it would have to be counted not in thousands, but in tens of thousands of years.
He walked down the hallway, eventually coming to a place where it split in two, then again into three. No matter which way he turned, the same silvery hatches lined the walls on both sides.
It’s like a mass grave.
Siddhārtha considered the mindset of the people living here in the stagnant air and desiccated darkness, never showing their forms. To them, Siddhārtha must have been an unwanted interloper, a terrifying enemy from the outside. Yet he encountered no signs of resistance, nor any obvious security. Either the city was defenseless, or its architects were confident that no one would ever be able to remove those silvery hatches that doubtlessly held their citizens.
As he walked, he wondered how many levels there were in this place and how far it stretched in every direction. He had been walking now for what seemed like days, at first looking for information, but now looking for a way out.
It’s a trap!
He had suffered the same worry since the moment he set foot inside the “city.”
Siddhārtha walked up to one of the hatches, illuminating it with the beam of his projector. Set in the middle of its compartment, the hatch had a slight outward bulge, like a convex lens. Siddhārtha connected the output from his micro-reactor to the maser on his arm.
A brilliant red beam of light struck one of the hatches, continuing its assault for ten, twenty, then thirty seconds. The hatch glowed like a gemstone with reflected crimson light.
No good!
The light of the maser faded, and darkness massive as a mountain settled over Siddhārtha. The faint reddish glow of the hatch quickly faded. The citizens of this city were well protected in their castle. No wonder they required no alert system or defenses. Siddhārtha had been able to infiltrate all the way to this corridor, what should have been the heart of their fortress, only to find his way blocked—and no exit in sight.
Removing one of his discharge panels from his shoulder, he connected it to his high-frequency agitator and pressed it to one of the circular hatches. Faint, high-pitched vibrations began, softly at first, then increasing in strength. The silver hatch began to audibly whine as the frequency climbed. Siddhārtha lifted his maser again, directing a beam of light toward the center of the vibrations. The ghostlike report of a brittle fracture echoed down the hallway. He turned his maser off at the very instant that the hatch ruptured and fell to the ground.
Beyond, he found a translucent portal made of high-density crystalline silicon. He melted the hinges with his maser and gave it a push. The light metallic screen he found beyond was easily removed.
Inside he discovered a narrow space that was less like a room and more like the engine access bay of a small spacecraft. The room was filled with countless pipes and electrical lines large and small running this way and that, burying the walls and covering the ceiling. A cylindrical console protruded from the center of the floor. The console was connected to several dozen electrical filaments that stretched out to where an atmospheric adjustment unit was spinning its emergency self-cooling fan at full speed. It seemed that by opening a hole in the door, Siddhārtha had dealt a fatal blow to the ecology of the compartment.
A large, organic lump sat in the light from Siddhārtha’s projector, giving off a smell like warm, raw meat. Siddhārtha trained his projector on it, hunching over to get a better look. He could make out a round head on the lump, connected directly to swollen shoulders, and incongruously short arms and legs protruding from a thick torso. In the brilliant light, the thing’s exposed skin was light brown in color.
“Are you the occupant of this compartment?” Siddhārtha asked, leaning forward, not really expecting an answer. The organism was quivering irregularly, its breath growing thinner and quicker. Apparently, even the desperate countermeasures taken by its life support system were not enough to prevent the compartment’s occupant from heading toward a swift death.
Siddhārtha straightened up and was about to leave when he noticed a pipe roughly five centimeters in diameter extending from either side of the organism to small holes in the sidewalls of the compartment. The pipe was not attached, but rather was an extension of the organism’s body itself.
He touched one, detecting a slight pulse and the trickling of liquid inside.
Siddhārtha removed the tantalum steel cover from another of his discharge panels and pressed its sharp edge to one side of the pipe until it broke. The organism began to spasm wildly, flopping around inside the confines of the compartment. Siddhārtha looked closer to see that the pipe’s interior was divided into three compartments. Out of one sprayed a translucent liquid that wet Siddhārtha from his elbow to his chest. Another of the compartments held what were clearly nerve bundles, sheathed in a soft, gelatinous protein that was now being pushed out to drip onto the floor by the organism’s internal pressure. The final compartment seemed to be a blood vessel. Deep green liquid oozed from the crushed opening where Siddhārtha had cut the pipe in two.
Out of curiosity, he slashed through the other half of the pipe, finding it identical to the first.
The organism shook two or three more times before it stopped moving altogether.
“Perhaps it’s dead.”
Siddhārtha exited through the destroyed hatch back out into the hallway. Outside, he peered in both directions through the darkness, hearing nothing. He flipped the switch on his light projector, sweeping away the gloom around him, finding nothing but the same deathlike stillness he had found upon his first arrival to this place.
No, wait, I can hear something!
Siddhārtha directed all of his nerves to his ears, listening through the silence around him. Something like a breeze was coming from the depths of the darkness on one side. He raised the power going to his supplementary processors, broadening his range of hearing. The sound rose high, then went low, swirling around Siddhārtha like the crashing of waves.
What is that?
Siddhārtha began to advance quietly down the corridor, looking for the source of the sound. Yet the faint trembling in the air seemed to come from above him at one moment, only to sound as though it was emanating from below a moment later. He went right down the corridor and felt the trembling come from the left. Continually, the noise shifted so that he could not determine its source. With a sudden clarity, Siddhārtha realized he was the target of a powerful enmity. He extinguished his projector, put his back to the wall, and attempted to conceal his own presence.
Rage made tangible and viscous as tar crept closer, an unseen wrinkle in the fabric of space around him. He could feel the rage emanating from a vast number of points surrounding him in every direction—at least one hundred million, he guessed. It was coming from the compartments—the agony and death suffered by one rapidly spreading to all, becoming a virulent wrath.
Here, suffering and death are shared equally!
He ran down the dark hallway.
This was no city.
It was a hive.