The Eternal Duty Ch 04 05

Authors note:

This will be the as of yet longest and also most important installation of this story. Still no sex scenes and still a lot of talking while the "action" consists out of basically two people just walking or sitting around; also a long monologue in the central fifth chapter.

Everything up to this point was an introduction to keep the main character somewhat believable in her makeup and future development (and to make people stop reading who search for some easy fun read to get them going in the nether regions, sorry there). This installation will basically explain what the story is all about, including the pompous sounding title.

After that there will be another final installation to the epic tale of two people hiking a mountain which I am currently finishing up and that will be probably online here next weekend. I decided for splitting it up because the whole tone will be quiet different and decidedly hard to digest for some (I also swear I don't do that on purpose). It will finish with some more easygoing "Arrival" themed first contact stuff.

In the second arc I will finally get the real story going. Its first mostly finished installation will center on the introduction of the other main characters, who won't be introverted depressives I swear. Progress after that will be slower though, as I have a busy year of work before me and I am unwilling to spend all my limited free time on this project.

---

Chapter 04 - At the top of a world

As it turned out, her resolution to get some serious hiking done proved unnecessary. In hindsight it was clear he knew already how close to their goal they were, which is why he probably forced some last good advice on her, or whatever it was supposed to be.

With real mountains it was always hard to tell when you would finally reach the peak. The slope tended to disguise the view upwards just as it supported the idea looking downward, that there was no way there could be a path hidden somewhere in this sheer drop before you. You had a few hundred meters in each direction and the rest was guesswork. This here was a special case though.

When Nico said they were heading towards a plateau at the top of the mountain she suspected already it was a bigger then a normal mountain top. Perhaps more along the line of a large hill or so, which meant at maximum the size of a football field in her experience. In extreme cases perhaps something big enough to build Machu Picchu on, but that is about it where the natural world was concerned. As a consequence she was quite surprised when she went around a bent expecting to find some less inclined meadow or so before some final but serious ascent. Yeah d'uh, this certainly was no natural world at all.

What she found was a perfectly level area the size of which she could hardly estimate. At least two kilometers or even more. Fuck this thing they were on must truly be huge. At least she finally had hiked a bit in front of Nico so she didn't need to look at him smiling about the expression of disbelieve on her face.

There was also something odd about this plateau, namely its center carving inward like it was some volcano crater, not that she could tell much about it from her perspective many hundreds of meters from the ledge. If they went all this way just so she could be thrown into a lava pit as an offer to alien gods, she was going to be pissed.

He talked a lot of times about what would be expected of her here, although without giving any useful details. The one exception being that she could return to 'her' lake if she so wanted. There was a decision to be made then between finally being allowed to die in the manner of her choice ... or being recruited in whatever group of crazy old men he was being part of. To what end and in what capacity she hadn't the foggiest.

Well that wasn't the full truth as she had her suspicions at least. There was a problem with that though: whoever wanted her for whatever purpose it wasn't Nico and all she could base her suspicions on was him and what he said. Taking his character, his skills, his way of dealing with things as basis was therefor likely an assumption that could backfire on her. Just because he treated her like his future Mender pupil or some such didn't mean that had anything to do with her real situation.

He already insisted they wouldn't see each other again so he was out of the picture anyway after this. While she wasn't into always suspecting something nefarious was afoot, better be cautious on this one she thought to herself. Case in point it was him who told her at to take her 'decision' on whatever offer he had 'very serious'.

She strongly suspected this was no random matter of speech of someone overly protective. He meant it and he likely had reasons to as he didn't strike her as the type to use those words without implying a catch that even a truly rueful ex-suicidal would have a hard time swallowing.

So she was basically back at square one: what should she do, how should she decide on hamlets 'to be or not to be'. But not only was the answer perhaps vastly more complicated now that she had to be given again, even more important: there were consequences.

Before she took her final dive into that lake one thing was absolutely clear to here: whether she lived or died, she didn't matter in the great scheme of things. She was a speck of dust in a sandstorm that would work perfectly fine with or without her, no allusions of grandeur ever got far with here. At times she was part of a group of people who thought or at least hoped they could achieve something bigger. But she on her own? Not so much.

Of that she wasn't all that sure anymore, because whatever his people did and whatever her role may be in it, she had the distinct feeling that there were forces at play here she didn't dream existed before waking up in this strange forest below her. Nico wasn't shy on making predictions to that end too.

Remembering his comments about how many people he helped recruiting, these forces may have a need of quite a few thousand people. So at least she wasn't destined to rescue the world on her lonesome or some such fantasy drivel. But ... whoever build this enormous thing she was on orbiting her home planet had some impressive technology at his quite literal fingertips. And they chose her for ... something.

She wasn't dealing with things here that had any connections to her former life. As such her estimation what a splash such a life could possibly make may be in need of a reevaluation soon. Some people may get exited at such an outlook. Finally some force in the universe could see how special they were! Finally they were about to be given the power to rule the world, a power they were destined to wield since they got rejected from the soccer team at the age of ten!

A bunch of loosers is what those troubled souls are. Less megalomaniac inclined people may dream of at least finally living out their Harry Potter adventure fantasies. Go do some LARP instead would be her reply to them, far less dangerous and most likely more fun too. At least then anything the real world will throw at you, no save words and all.

She instead was just scared by it - badly so. She had the distinct feeling of someone or something planning to turn her into a cue ball instead of just a speck of dust. Just for what kind of game though? A speck of dust was of no importance but it could live with the illusion it chose itself where the wind should carry it.

It didn't, sure, but the wind didn't care about purpose or destinations and just randomly threw the thing around. A cue ball though ... that was a tool wielded by a mind to reach a target. You had to be an exceptionally dense cue ball to think you had any say in the matter of where you were going after someone prodded you with a long stick. If you then hit something the effect could be quite a bit larger then that of a speck of dust hitting at random.

She just couldn't wrap her mind around what kind of idiot thought of her as an effective tool for just about anything. Speculating about it brought her nothing though, likely as not she was just drawing her own assumptions and fears into the sand, thinking it afterwards a message from the gods. So time to find out one way or another. If she didn't like it, there was always the lake.

While all of this was running around in her head, Nico stood patiently at her side and looked at her without trying to be too obvious about it. He knew her facial expressions good enough now to read them quite a bit.

"Finished?"

She just looked back at him, so he continued. "I thought to better give you some time. The good news is that you do not have to decide anything quite yet. There is time and we are not yet finished with each other by a long shot anyway."

"As I insinuated quite a lot, the real explanations have yet to begin and if you think you had it hard wrapping your head around things until now ... well better be ready for a rough surprise or two. Not all of them will be bad I assure you. You also will have a chance to relax before it gets really intense. First things first though. Follow me please."

As they walked steadily towards the center of the plateau, Sofia felt a cold dread in her stomach slowly spreading with each step. It was one thing seeing a large hole in the ground from afar and another being able to look into its gaping maw piece by piece as her perspective changed.

While the circular hole of in her estimation a bit more then five hundred meters in diameter wasn't the biggest by far she had ever seen, that title was reserved to some open-pit lignite mine in Germany, it was certainly the scariest. First of she doubted it had a bottom. Secondly its outer wall wasn't just made out of rock ... she was looking at a giant city that was coming more and more into view.

Finally Nico was standing mere centimeters from the precipice and the concept of her doing the same made her sick. 'Great', she thought 'now I can chose between my organic fear of heights and the dread my mind conjures up about what expects me here'. 'Why not do both' was the answer her stomach gave her. Going as far as she dared she took in the view, well she tried to at least.

It was like looking in a borehole towards the molten core of a planet. Only this core was the blackest of blacks and had a quite solid appearance. It was also spherical, of course. As a late guest awe joint the party her double fears were organizing. A lifetime of movies with mostly cheap special effects and later CGI dampened the strangeness of it a bit, but this here was no fiction on a screen.

No amount of science fiction movies could have prepared her for the experience of looking down at what probably was a city stretching for kilometers downwards and starting directly below her feet. That wasn't the worst though. That city wasn't just below her, she could actually see it on the other side of the hollowed out planetoid also. It stretched all around the whole fucking thing.

The view towards those distant lights reminded her of looking at a city on Earth from a satellite in orbit, so the opposite side was quite far away. There were also thousands of objects moving around basically everywhere. Long tubes stretched like blood vessels all over the place. Those housed probably something like trains or a metro.

"So here it is Sofia, the southern nexus port and manufacturing hub. We call it Nasu'tun'pela though, which translates to something like 'the lower door to the first'. The black large sphere you can see down there? Well ... that is the First. There is another port obscured by it - obviously - at the northern pole of the larger sphere we are on. That one is called Mira'tun'pela or 'the upper door to the first'."

It was difficult for her to tell or even quantify given distance and perspective, but between the port and the ... First ... there seemed to be quite a lot of ... well nothingness. Like if the god who built this small planet forgot to add a mantle to the thing after six days of hard work with some 'there is always next week' attitude, only to be fired come Monday morning.

"It just looks to me like one giant city." She said looking at him for a moment.

"Looks can be deceiving, the two poles are centres of activity and therefor extend quite a bit more into the inner sphere. The stuff in the distance is usally not much thicker then a highrise building back on earth, mostly empty agriculture and housing at that."

Her emotions were in open turmoil, again. First off, as a companion to the awe the vista triggered in her, there was the impression that she was into something that went far over her head. This wasn't exactly news. She spend half a day now following a shepherd turned Gandalf through a bizarre world filled with bizarre stories and factoids... but this ... this was on another level altogether.

It was one thing walking up a mountain on what she assumed to be a space station. But looking down into the innards of an artificial planet Roland Emmerich would think to be a bit over the top? That wasn't exactly comparable. She certainly understood Nico now who refused to describe with words what her eyes now looked at. You don't tell someone how chocolate tastes who never had some, you just give the poor slob some fucking chocolate asap and then look at the cocaine rush on his face while he eats it.

If this city was filled with people and stretched for as far as this planetoid seemed to be big in her estimation ... there could be millions.. heck billions of people, no matter how much he downplayed it. They certainly had the space. Whatever operation they had going on here, it was big. From what Nico told her it was also clear all these people were not just binging the day away on some sort of space-colony Netflix, but actually working on something with some sort of united purpose ... it was staggering. What the fuck was she doing here? What could they possibly need her for or god above forbid want from her?

This certainly would be no 'we are short on burger flippers' kind of job interview. She was sure this here was a very special tour after all, not a random schmuck recruitment. Now for what kind of job does someone qualify that just a day ago proved she could successfully kill herself, if not some divine intervention had stopped her?

This was decidedly not looking good and freaking her out quite a lot. To do that on top of everything that freaked her out today, this was quite an achievement on its own. She already suspected something sure, it was just that the dimension of things ... was her planet about to be invaded from humans from the future?

That didn't make sense, as he said they were here since at least the time of some neanderthals. She needed some fucking info here or she was going to drive herself into madness. But she couldn't allow herself to rush this one either; 'be smart now' she told herself.

At least he didn't seem like the nefarious type. But whom better to chose then 'good cop Nico' in order to prep the new sacrifice girl for some gory end. What really bothered her though was not the possible last part, but that she was obviously set up to be someones game piece. She didn't know the game, the stakes or what this was for in the end, but she certainly was not invited to be a player -- the new lowest of low and expandable pawn more like.

THAT - she disliked, immensely and infuriatingly so. Which was the feeling that took over at the end here. Scratch the part of her having the choice to continue on her owns life journey to nowhere, these people knew how to dangle an attractive carrot in front of your face. They would promise her something she couldn't refuse - and then use her.

It was again time for some serious threat analyses. Fuck being raped, she would even chose a psychotic serial killer over this in a heartbeat.

Sooooo, to speak about the elephant in the room for her. What was it: couldn't or wouldn't they read her thoughts? She wasn't a noob, reading someones thoughts wasn't like turning on some subtitles on Youtube. Those things didn't exactly come with a file format either and likely any mind reading compiler had not only to be incredibly complicated but also individually crafted, as each and every human brain built its higher functions from basically scratch. Still, he admitted there was a remote controlled, semi-organic and therefor likely neurologically interfaced drone inside her own skull. Until further notice there was nothing she could presume they were incapable of doing.

It was best to assume she was dealing with gods here, well or beings with godlike powers attested by the technology and sheer scope of things on display. Looking down at that enormous black sphere, she got the feeling it actually looked back at her. Like the evil eyeball of something even Sauron would have nightmares about. So they weren't shy about flouting their power to her face, in fact this whole operation seemed to be build around the point of thoroughly turning her into an ant piece by piece.

As if that was really needed and didn't sum up half her life until this point. Still, if their power was without limits - then nothing she did or thought mattered anyway. What those beings could possibly need silly hers truly for - she had no idea. She had to set a baseline for herself. Something to believe in until proven untrue, because otherwise she was on a path to crazy for sure.

Point one was about truth or believing things she was told. He said he couldn't lie and until now she had no reason to doubt that. All things said and done she always trusted people more then was good for her or in any way smart. There was a reason for this though, because if you didn't put trust into your relationships, the cynical hellscape your inner world was bound to evolve into over a lifetime wasn't pretty.

Knowing this was instinctual for her. She could deal with people betraying or backstabbing her, thinking her a fool or worse. It was harder to deal with the lies people feed her since she was a child, lies that those people actually believed in, prime among them the lie they - and therefor her - were the good people. The fallout of that seemed still to be manageable though - well perhaps taken with a grain of salt there considering she actually offed herself.

In this concrete case before her now though she wasn't so sure. How would she manage believing the lies a god told her, a god who promised to be incapable of lying? She had to walk a compromise here she thought - take things at face value and act accordingly, but cordon off a second self, the 'self of doubt' she would call it, that would remind her occasionally but insistingly that all of this could just be one huge pile of crap shoveled together in order to enroll her into the biggest shit show the world has ever seen. It all circled around one question though: to what end? She had to wait and see for that one.

Point two was the mind-reading thingy. If her thoughts weren't private, there just was no point. So in other words she just had to assume they were. Nothing fancy to this one, she just had to.

Well there was something fancy about it now that she directed her thoughts in that direction. Any three year old could tell when a thought made her angry or sad or something. The part of her that was thinking wasn't some secluded schmuck in a ramshackle hut somewhere high up in the mountain range of her intellectual vanity.

Everything was connected, in the world as well as in her body and brain. Her thoughts or life weren't so unique either, only fools believed that and were consequently flabbergasted at some gypsy woman with a cheap glass orb reading their innermost, shallow self. If humans with some proper experience and empathy were capable of reading each other to some not so small extend, then beings of godlike powers must have at least some similar capabilities, if not vastly more. How much more was anyone's guess ... if it was total then she was totally fucked and a puppet for the ensuing manipulation game anyway, so there was after all no point to it.