The Floating City - Chapter 2

Sorry for the delay, travel and some personal stuff left me scrambling to get this posted, and I apologize in advance for any typos. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

The Review Board

Roshan sat on the roof of the University’s library, looking out over the flying city of Ater-Volante and thinking. The last three days had not gone according to plan, and this was his favorite spot for introspection. From the University’s position near the apex of the city, he could gaze down over domes and slender minarets of the wealthier districts. From there, he looked over to the less ostentatious buildings and warehouses close to the city’s rounded edge, and then out to the patchwork fields of Alis Dak a thousand fathoms below. Although even in summer the wind was biting this high up, the midday sun and heated grey stones of the rook warmed him, and he felt quite comfortable – at least, physically.

The bad news had started with his meeting with the University review board about his research findings. Before his discussion with Filias, Roshan had anticipated being awarded a Maestery and maybe even a position at the University for his ground-breaking research. Now… he leaned his head back against the warm stones and shut his eyes, feeling a pounding headache coming on.

He had discussed Filias’s warnings with Aki, in a sound and rune proofed corner of their lab where he was sure they wouldn’t be overheard. Aki had listened patiently, hearing him out, and then asked “But you want to go forward, yes?”

“I do, yes… but this research belongs to both of us. We have to decide together.”

Aki nodded, once. “Let’s do it,” she had said firmly, and that had been that.

Her friendship and the knowledge that he was not alone had buoyed him for the rest of the day, but any hope he had had faded when they stepped in front of the review board the next morning.

It had started out simply enough. Every prospective Maester went before the board, and Maester’s countless times, to defend their findings or to ask for funds for further research. Forewarned by Filias, Roshan had approached their own meeting with trepidation. Usually final defenses like his and Aki’s were held in lecture halls, before the board and their peers in order to grill them before their impending ascension to Maestery. Ominously, for this review, the board had called for a closed session. They met in a stuffy, richly appointed room in the heart of the University’s north tower, one that Roshan had never seen before. Most of the circular room was lushly carpeted, but, in the center where petitioners stood (or the accused, he thought morbidly), the floor was marble inlaid in gold with the Eolas crest. The effect was intimidating, and the light from the Fòrsic-powered lamps kept catching on the gold and irritating the corner of his eyes. The board’s table was arrayed in a semi-circle surrounding Roshan, standing in the petitioners’ marble circle, and he couldn’t help but notice that the board seemed to be made up of the oldest, fussiest members of the University. The only member of the five-person panel that he knew personally was his old logic professor, and where she had been ancient and crusty ten years ago, here she looked positively youthful.

For almost a full bell, Roshan and Aki had stood and explained their experiment. As per their prior agreement, Aki focused solely on the technical elements of their research, leaving the theory and, Roshan hoped, the potential ire solely for him. This hadn’t stopped them from each giving an impassioned summary of their ideas, from the underlying hypothesis of Fòrsic and crystal decay, to Aki’s design and construction of the crystal testing apparatus, to their findings, and, finally, to the implications of those findings for Eolas, for Alis-Dak, and for, Roshan supposed, their whole world. The fact of the matter was simple. If the strength of the Fòrsa was declining, then they needed to figure out why, and fix the problem, immediately. The longer they waited, the more difficult it would become to implement a solution, and the more dangerous Fòrsic constructs, such as the floating city of Ater-Volante, would become.

The review board had listened in a silence that grew stonier and stonier as the hour had worn on. The blank-faced expressions on the old men and women of the board had revealed little, but Roshan had felt the pressure building in the room. When they finished their presentation, the board stayed quiet, the tension stretching out for several agonizing moments. Finally, the dam broke and the questions, and accusations, came thick and fast.

“Why did you start with the assumption of Fòrsic decay, do you want this city to fall?”

“How did you ascertain the crystal decay rate? It’s never been modeled empirically.”

 “How can the decay you posit be so dangerous? The rate is tiny!”

“Why pursue this research at all, why not more accepted fields? Do you bear a grudge against our society?”

Roshan and Aki had answered as best they could, but the board didn’t seem particularly interested in their explanations, although they passed by most of Aki’s testimony without incident. Finally, the chair, an elderly man who was fat, bald, and would look like someone’s kindly uncle except for his intimidating beard and his deep-set, predatory eyes, spoke. “Enough.” He said in a deep, resonate baritone. “We have heard your defense, and we will withdraw to deliberate. You will hear from us within a five-day.”

And that had been that. The board had filed from the room, leaving Roshan and Aki standing awkward and alone save for a crushing feeling of failure.

Neither of them had much to say to the other after that. Aki had gone off to get drunk with her fellow engineering students, while Roshan had gone back to his room, his head hung low. There were other Fòrsic Theory students that might have sympathized with him, but he’d wanted to speak to precisely zero of them. He’d been tempted to join Aki, but he had felt the pressure and the desire to be alone with his thoughts.

For the rest of the day, those thoughts tended to be miserable ones. He’d gone over every line of the review board meeting, wracking his brains for something that he could have done differently, something he could have said that would have convinced them that they was right, that this research was important. He’d felt like doing the same thing today, but the morning dawned bright and clear and warm, so he grabbed a couple rolls from the dining hall and made his way to the roof. He had a wineskin with his bread and cheese, and he supposed he would spend the rest of the day there, and maybe tomorrow, until he had developed some sort of idea, some plan, about what to do next.

Roshan had finished his bread and cheese, and was most of the way through the wineskin, when a whirring sound woke him from his reverie. He looked all around, searching for the noise, when, buzzing and clacking, a strange contraption rose up from beyond the edge of the roof and flew towards him. Roshan frowned, and rose to his feet warily. The contraption had a bird’s narrow body with wings of whirling metal reminiscent of a hummingbird, and he could see a Fòrsic crystal nestled within the body’s wire housing. His eyebrows went up, Aki had talked about the potential of clockwork creatures run with Fòrsa, about how they would be more efficient then pure crystal constructs, but he’d never seen one in person before.

The construct darted towards him. Roshan raised his arms instinctively, but it merely circled him, whirring, before landing gently on the roof on a pair of extended metal struts. The head of the construct twisted up from the body, revealing a cavity stuffed with a small role of parchment. Curious, Roshan bent down and tugged it out. Once he held it in his hand, the bird-thing gave a metallic chirping noise, its head twisted back down, and its wings began to move. They whirred in place for a moment, and then the construct rose slowly into the air and darted off the roof, disappearing back down from whence it came.

Roshan watched it go, and then unfurled the note in his hand. His fingers shook as he recognized Aki’s scrawling script.

“R,

That was a hover-bird; engineers use them as emergency messengers. I knew you would ask, and I’ll tell you about it later. But now, you have to run. The Prime’s guards came looking for you -- Your friend F tipped me off. They’re staking out your room, searching the grounds. You can’t go back. Leave the grounds and hide somewhere in the city until next set-down. Destroy this note. I will try to contact you when I can. Until then, good luck, and stay safe, my friend.

-A”

Heart pounding, Roshan crumbled the note, ripping it into pieces and letting them float off in the omnipresent breeze. He hurried to the door to the roof. Pulling it open, he froze. From the bottom of the stairwell came the discordant sound of iron-shod boots, marching steadily upwards.

Chapter 3 can be found here.

The Floating City - Chapter 1

This is the first part of an ongoing series. I am planning on posting updates every Sunday. Feedback and comments are much appreciated. Enjoy!

The Frightful Discovery

“We’ve got it!” Roshan’s soft exaltation broke the quiet of the observation room.  He pointed at the readings on the crystalline screen in front of him.  “Look! There’s a clear decrease!”

Aki frowned. She was a sturdy, brown-haired woman, dressed in engineering leathers and with her hair pulled back into a no-nonsense braid. “I don’t know…” she said, leaning forward and tapping her stylus against her front teeth. “There is a decrease in each successive test, but it still could be the crystal failing.  It’s not necessarily anything else.”

“Phaugh!” Roshan made hand waving motions. He was tall, lanky, and prone to gesturing excitedly, and his russet-brown skin and green eyes positively glowed with excitement.  “You built this contraption yourself, and we both double checked the figures.  Everyone knows that Fòrsic energies degrade the emitting crystals over time, so we accounted for it! The decreased efficiency in energy shown here,” He gestured at the crystal tablet in front of him, “has to be from the energy itself, not the crystal.  This is it, this is definitive proof!” He pointed outside the observation chamber.  In the darkness in the cavernous room beyond came distinct flashes of light, coming at relative intervals but at scattered points around the vast chamber.  “Each crystal flashes five times at set, random intervals, right?”

“Right.”

“And we know the decay rate of this type of crystal right?”

“Right” Aki sighed. “Get to your point, I know all this.”

“I know, I know, sorry.” Roshan said. “But look at the decrease!” He pointed to the crystal tablet, its screen crowded with cramped figures. “It’s faster than we anticipated, almost infinitesimally so, but it’s there.  Our experiment was a success!” He paused, and said in a softer voice, “whatever the source of Fòrsic energy is, it’s running out.”

*************************************************************************************************************

Roshan paused outside of the lecture hall, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and tried to calm his breathing.  He could hear his adviser, Professor Filias, from the other side of the door, and he suspected that she would look askance at any interruption of her lecture.  His news might be important, but it would still have to wait.  Slowly and carefully, Roshan opened the heavy wooden door and poked his head inside the room.  The lecture hall was a bowl-like chamber sunk in the rock of the university’s foundations.  Professor Filias stood in the center, surrounded by rising rows of students in the brown robes of acolytes. As a senior level journeyman, Roshan stood out in his own robe of blue lined with gold. Professor Filias was a middle aged woman, with brown hair in a bob and liberally streaked with silver. Like Roshan, she wore a different robe from the acolytes, and looked resplendent in the scarlet and gold of a senior maester.  She was also the foremost theoretician in Alis Dak, maybe even on the whole continent.  With a smile, Roshan ducked into an open seat in the top row of the room.  The lecture was just beginning, and listening to Filias expound on Fòrsic theory would give him time to get his own thoughts in order.

“What do we know about Fòrsa?” Filias asked the room. Silence answered her, and, with a pause, she continued. “We know of its discovery, and we’ve talked in this class about how it came about. But what do we really know about Fòrsa itself?” She pointed to a brown-haired girl in the middle rows.

The girl stayed quiet for a moment, thinking, and then answered rather hesitantly, “well… we know how to use it, how to draw power into the crystals.”

“Ahhh yes, the crystals.  Truly unique, they are the only known way of channeling Fòrsic power.”

Filias pointed to a blond-haired boy in the front row. “How do they channel this energy?” she asked.

“The Runes”, the boy answered promptly.

“Ah, but why those symbols, and why these specific crystals?”

The boy frowned in thought, he seemed to be weighing his options.  Finally he answered, “I don’t know, sir.”

“Exactly!” Filias exclaimed. “We know the how. How certain runes cause certain effects, how to combine runes for different effects, even what mental muscles to flex to start the process and channel power through the runes and the crystals themselves.  What we don’t know is the why! We don’t know why only these types of crystals, out of all the minerals in the world. We don’t know why these symbols, out of all the written languages in the world.  We don’t even know where the Fòrsa, the power, comes from!”  She paused, and pulled a small crystal sphere from the pocket of her robes.  “Watch this.” And she threw the sphere at the first row of students.

Before it could reach them, crystalline wards inscribed in the floor blazed into light, and the sphere shattered on an invisible wall that sprung up around the students.  A huge wave of flame leapt from the broken sphere and broke against wall, before it abruptly fizzled out.  The lecture hall sat in shocked silence.

Filias began lecturing again as if nothing had happened. “We know enough about the physical nature of the world to know that every action should have an equal and opposite reaction…” she paused again, looking out at her rapt audience.  “You should probably write that down, it’s important.”

As the students broke out of their spell and furiously scribbled notes down, she continued.  “The energy for that flame has to come from somewhere.  Fire consumes fuel to burn, that’s how it works.”

She pointed at another student. “What fuel did that flame just consume?”

The student, a flaxen haired girl, shrugged. “Air?” she asked diffidently.

Filias grinned appreciably. “Pert, but more or less correct, fire does consume air or an element within it. But then why did it, as it were, flame out…?”

There was a collective groan at the pun and Filias waved a hand in acknowledgement. The flaxen-haired student answered again. “It ran out of whatever it was using for fuel?”

Filias’s grin widened. “Very good. What was your name again?”

“Elspeth, sir.” The girl replied.

“Well Elspeth, you are quite correct… under normal circumstances. The average flame can be snuffed out through starving it of fuel. In this case, the wards on the floor did that for us. But, the point stands. We can draw this rune” she chalked the rune for flame on the slate board behind her, “on this crystal,” as she held up another one of the crystal balls “and it will produce this reaction. We rely on this. Our society is built on this. And we do not know why it works the way it does!”

************************************************************************************************************

Roshan waited until the last of the students had filed out of the room before going down to speak Professor Filias. She heard him clomping down the stairs in his heavy lab boots and turned from packing away her things to smile up at him. “Longing for simpler times, Rosh?”

 He smiled back, “Always a joy to watch you pound knowledge through thick acolyte heads.”

“As you know from personal experience, if I recall correctly. Did you need something, or were you just brushing up on your Fòrsic theory?”

“I do, actually. We’ve got significant results!” He grinned hugely, and then sobered. “They are… worrying. I wanted to run them by you before Aki and I did the final write up.”

Filias looked around the nearly empty lecture theater. “Is it what you expected?”

“Pretty much.”

She frowned. “Alright, let’s talk in my office.”                                         

Professor Filias’s office was small and wood paneled, tucked away in the back of Eolas University. The walls were lined with shelves packed with scrolls and books, and to Roshan’s nose the whole place smelled of parchment and varnish. It felt like a tinier version of the great university library, and it felt, for him, like home. The walk to the office had been spent in companionable silence, save for a few forays into small talk. Once they arrived, Filias shut and locked the door, touching a crystal set into the frame above the door so that it glowed with a soft, gold light, before offering him a seat in one of the comfortable leather chairs arranged in front of her desk. Once he sat down, she took a seat behind the desk and said, “Right, show me your results.”

He took a scroll out from a pocket hidden in the lining of his robe, and passed it to her across the desk. “What’s with the secrecy?” He asked.

“Oh?” Filias had put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and was peering intently at the data Roshan had passed her.

“The locking the door? The, if I am not mistaken, rune against eavesdropping?”

“Ah… yes.” Filias was silent for several long moments. When she spoke again, it was halting, measured tone. “Your… research has the potential to be… upsetting for several… important people. Not the least the University review board.”

Roshan felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Oh?” it was his turn to say.

“If you like, I can run your preliminary findings by the committee, so that they can offer edits in order to have your dissertation be more… widely accepted.” Filias said, her face twisted in a sour grimace. “This is not coming from me, you understand, but…”

“I understand.” He said bitterly. It came out harsher than he intended. “They want to cover-up my findings.” He gave a soft laugh, and shook his head. “No wonder I could only find scraps on the topic. This isn’t the first time this has happened, has it?”

Filias shook her head sadly. “No, it’s not. My own Maester’s research was on a similar subject, but I allowed myself to be… encouraged… into following a different direction.”

Roshan sat back, a shocked expression on his face. "Why didn't you tell me about this?" He demanded. "You knew about this from the start, you even encouraged me!"

"I had hoped," Filias said regretfully, "that your results would be other than what you have found." Roshan snorted, but she held up a hand to forestall him. "I hoped also that certain... attitudes towards this line of research would change. I have been advocating such a shift with my not inconsiderable influence, but" she shrugged, "alas."

Roshan was silent for a long moment, his expression twisted up in a strange mix of emotions. “But this is important!” He finally said, anger coloring his tone. “Our whole society rests on Fòrsa and the use of the crystals… if they are failing, it could impact the entire world!”

“I know, I know!” Filias sounded frustrated too. “But this is the way things are. I strongly suggest you follow my advice. We can… mitigate… your research, and you can still publish! The information will still get out, people will still know… just… not as forcefully.” She was pleading now. “Roshan… It’s better than nothing!”

Roshan shook his head slowly from side to side, disbelief in his voice. “You always said that knowledge, that truth, was sacrosanct. Why are we here, if not to advance knowledge?”

“There are many kinds of truth.” Filias said softly, sadly. “Roshan, this is for your own safety! People have… disappeared pursuing this research. In fact, the last person I knew...”

“I never thought that you were a coward.” Roshan interrupted harshly. “This potential danger to our way of life must be published! I will not allow my research to be watered down. It’s been my entire life for FOUR circuits. Aki and I have put everything into this project. I am going to the board with this, and that’s final. I will deal with any consequences, but this information must be out there - Maker’s breath, the only reason this city exists at all is from Fòrsic Crystals!” By the end he was standing, and shouting, and when he was done the office rang with a brittle silence.

Filias sighed explosively, and seemed defeated. “Fine” she said finally. “I can’t stop you. But please, I beg you, be careful.”

“I will” Roshan said, his voice still harsh as turned on his heel and left, slamming the office door on his way out.

Chapter 2 can be found here.

A Key to the Multiverse

This is a piece I wrote for the 2015 Quantum Flash Fiction Competition
 

“No.” Shelly said as I entered the Box.

“I haven’t even asked you anything yet!” I protested with a grin.

“Doesn’t matter. Computing time here is limited as it is, I’m not going to waste precious research minutes indulging whatever asinine whim you had this week.”

“Come onnnn” I wheedled. “It’s a matter of life and death. Besides, you owe me.”

“I owe you?!” She arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah, for setting me up with that troglodyte of an accountant last week. I swear I shall never recover.” I affected a pose, the back of my hand resting dramatically on my forehead.

“Harold is a nice guy…” Shelly looked at me, and I held my pose. After several moments, Shelly made a face. “Fine!” she said, sticking her tongue out at me as I relaxed. “Two minutes, but not a nanosecond more.”

“Thanks! I’ll owe you one.”

“Again…” she muttered, as I strode into the Box and up to the Booth.

Years ago, when Humanity had cracked the secrets of quantum computing, we discovered an unintended side effect. Through some arcane quirk in the laws of the Universe, we discovered that we could access the whole of the multiverse; looking only, no touching. Decades of research and billions of pounds later, and this was the result: The Box, a windowless cube 10 meters to a side. I always found the room itself boring, with featureless grey walls covered in miscellaneous computer equipment, and the humming of the machines put my teeth on edge. In the center of the Box was my destination, facing the only empty wall. Unlike a certain flying police box, the Booth was the size of a telephone box both inside and out. It was made of clear plastic and was empty, except for a harness and a long tether. Management had resisted the efforts of the geekier staff members to paint it blue, but I did notice that someone had stuck a siren on top. Even with the Box, we were still limited to skimming alternate realities, looking for answers to the what-ifs of History. Mostly. However, when circumstances were just right, and we found a world close enough in particulars to our own, we could do some fishing.

I stepped up to the Booth. As I strapped into the harness, Shelly handed me a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of her white lab coat. “You’ll need these,” she said, before retreating to the concrete control room tucked into the back corner of the Box.

“Not my first rodeo!” I called after her. She lifted a middle finger without looking back, and I waited in silence for several seconds before keying the intercom set-up in the Booth. “We set?”

“When and Where?” She answered with a sigh, and I grinned as I gave her the coordinates.

“N 51.536935, E -0.106098, around 8:30 this morning, and as close to our variable set as possible.”

There was a pause as she input the information, and then… “That’s your own bloody flat, you wanker!” Shelly exploded, the squeal of the intercom feedback making me wince. “I thought you said this was important!”

“It is!” I protested, “Vitally important. National security depends on it!” I tried to take a stern tone, although the effect was somewhat spoiled by my being unable to entirely hold back a laugh.

“Fine.” I could hear her grumbling through the mic as she keyed up the search parameters. “Alright, we’re good to go. It’ll take a while to sync up, so you’ll have to cast your line fast.”

“I know, wish me luck!”

“I hope you fry. On my Mark. 10…9…”

“I love you, too!” I called, as she counted down.

As she said “zero”, the atmosphere of the room visibly altered. The background hum of the machinery ratcheted up several decibels, becoming a grating, vibrating whine. The light levels began to fluctuate, and the white fluorescents began to rapidly shift between red and blue, creating a kind of purple-hued strobing effect. It gave me a headache.  I could very distinctly taste ozone and feel my skin rising in goose pimples. Yet despite all of the ambient weirdness, I felt a bubble of excitement building in my stomach: this part never got old.

Gradually, the changing lights began to slow, resolving into a series of flickering images on the wall in front of me that were remarkably three-dimensional. Because this voyage into the multiverse was centered on my house, most of the images were scenes from my life, the what-ifs and the could-have-beens. I saw marriages and deaths, divorces and childbirth, and a whole host of important life events, with close friends, some people I dimly recognized, and others who seemed wholly unfamiliar. The images waxed and waned, flickering through several at a time before stuttering to a stop, holding for moments before suddenly rushing on again.

With a sickening, shuddering lurch, the scene in front of me froze, showing the kitchen counter of a tastefully decorated little Islington flat, shining in the morning sun. “This is it!” Shelly said over the loudspeaker. “Thirty seconds on the clock, go fish!”

Giving the tether a testing yank, I opened the door of the Booth and strode forth.  Several large steps brought me to the still image on the wall, and I reached out a hand. Touching the wall felt like reaching through a mirror, metallic and cool, and not altogether pleasant. I could feel the pull of the other world tugging on my arm, and blessed the tether keeping me in place. My hand was through now, and I scrabbled uselessly around my counter until I snagged what I was after. I toggled the tether belt, and felt a tug as it hauled me back into the Booth.

“You got it?” Shelly asked.

“I got them.” I said. “Thanks for the help. I really do hate it when I lose my keys. I swear, it’s like someone keeps taking them.”