Chapter II09.VI.2022
A group of twenty village folk entered a vast, industrial hall, lit up by a multitude of floating glowing spheres. Walls of large, sandstone-coloured brick ascended endlessly to the pure darkness that hid the ceiling, and the air within was filled with subtle odor of machine oil. It could have probably been an empty storage facility near a couple thousand-years old cosmoport.
A hologram of an old Archon greeted the group as soon as a wormhole closed behind them. They went forward to show Archons to the «waiting hall», whatever that could be. Yet they ordered three specific Archons to stay near the wormhole and wait.
These three Archons were Naia and their children.
As Tayne understood nothing, anger slowly raised in her as she stood there waiting. She studied and poked the walls, then the wormhole frame – an arm-thick metal arch with intricate engravings atop of a round plate, not that different from any other she seen – and after that decided to text Komi – her other parent, if they knew anything on the matter. Komi volunteered part-time at the local town newspaper and probably was there.
Tayne grabbed her scrollphone, took a couple pictures of the place and was ready to send them to Komi, when she noticed one worrying thing.
The connection was absent.
Every planet in the Cosmos that supported life was fully geared out with an omnipresent, free to use wireless mobile network, connected to interstellar communication centers of the Cosmarium. Having none of that around meant Tayne ended up on an unsettled planet or in deep space.
Anxious, she opened up Cosmic Navigator… and it failed as well. Archons used natural pulsars as beacons for navigation, detecting their radiowave signals. Tayne's scrollphone caught nothing resembling that.
«No beacon heard…» on a pure black screen is what the application showed. As if the outside world ceased to exist in an instant… or, more plausibly, as if they were in a deep bunker under hunreds of meters of rock.
In a last effort to grasp what's happening Tayne reached to open the neutrino counter – but instead she caught a remote sound of someone's footsteps on metal and instantly got distracted. The sound was coming not from the other end of the hall where the civilians left to, but instead from beyond the walls – and after a bit more time a wall piece, indistinguishable from any other, slid forward and across, opening a gaping black aperture.
Why would anyone ever want a hidden door in a place already so hidden?
"I am terribly sorry for making you wait!" – there the person was. A middle-aged Archon, wearing a round hat and a black dress-hoodie up to the knees, stockings and a belt across the waist. Their thick, waist-long pale-white hair made Tayne a bit envious — she always wanted a hairstyle like that, yet her own hair were too weak and dropped out whenever reaching the shoulders.
The person seemed slightly familiar, Caithe looked at them with great admiration, Naia with a happy smile – and in a couple seconds Tayne remembered: she saw them on some photos in the family album, with her parents. An old colleague of theirs. What was their name again?…
"Yasimir!" – Naia interrupted, – "i'm glad to see you, but do you really have to bring my children into this?"
"Err…?" – Tayne chocked on a mix of various questions.
"Umm… Hello," – they scratched their head, – "so these are Tayne and Caithe, right?"
Naia facepalmed, giving the ceiling a look of despair.
"So long story short, i used to work with your parents decades ago, now i'm working in the research department," – Yasimir talked quite rapidly, Tayne was barely able to catch up, – "and speaking of, we just had a major national security breach possibly tied to your family via the Metacosmos…"
The Cosmos had no common government. Instead, in interplanetary management it majorly relied on artificial intelligence and decentralised networks of dedicated activists. The latter, called the departments, helped to mediate the planetary officials and administrate various tasks like transport or distribution of goods. The research department in particular was a scientific union dedicated to scientometrics and global research coordination. In the latest centuries it also picked up the duty of looking after the Metacosmos.
"How can it possibly be tied to us, let alone the kids?" – exclaimed Naia, – "Yasimir, why?"
"You'll understand once you see all the materials, we never had anything like that to happen!" – Yasimir exclaimed with passion. – "Would you three mind to follow me into my office? I need to show you some video material."
"Fine," – Naia emited an exhaling sound: due to them being a hologram they couldn't actually have exhaled. – "Can I at least explain the kids where we are?"
"It's not like this topic's a secret, you know."
Yasimir reopened the fake wall and led the group inside, to a narrow corridor with metal floor and pure black walls, that looked like they were openings to the void — yet when Tayne touched one, it felt solid and covered in velvet. Surprisingly, it wasn't dark, Tayne could clearly see the floor and other archons, yet no light source was in sight (apart from Naia's dimly glowing body) – light seemed to be propagating equally from all sides, leaving no shadows.
"When you were young, Komi told you tales about the Metacosmos, the space beyond our reality that we visited in dreams," – said Naia, – "and the realities within we tried to create… Yasimir was our pal back then, though they used a different name as a child, Yasmine — Komi probably mentioned that name. Yasmine doesn't go well with adult pronouns, so they reworked it…"
"Now it checks out!" – Caithe exclaimed, – "i remember!"
"We never were the only ones who tinkered with it. Metacosmos was a popular topic when I was young… Archons in the research department made serious science on it, and this place is a result. A place, one of many, that they managed to stabilize and visit in reality, linking it to the wormhole network. Departments use them for many things, but the name «escape dimensions» is to remind of the initial goal, which was to create a place easily accessible from anywhere to evacuate anything to in case of a major catastrophe. Which is, ironically, what happened now…"
"Speaking of," – asked Yasimir, – "have you ever contacted the Metacosmos yourself?"
"Caithe did like five times," — Tayne spat out, – "I tried, but never even managed to approach it."
"How peculiar… So how's your results, Caithe?"
"I feel like it doesn't like me much," – admitted Caithe. – "It only started accepting me around a year ago, and it never really opened to me. Sure, I have dreams about a colourful, whirling void, i was able to freely move, but not so much to weave anything as Komi advised, and it kicks me out every time… So i really don't think i could've damaged anything there…"
Yasimir suddenly stopped and pushed the black wall in a seemingly random spot, opening it.
"We're here."
"What a ridiculous floor plan you have," – Tayne noted sarcastically.
"That's not even a floor plan!" – exclaimed Yasimir. – "This is my creation, the dark path, it was in the news like… seven years ago!"
"Yasimir, the trend died," – Naia objected. – "Not that many people care about department's otherworldly inventions anymore."
And then the Archons entered the office.