Mobius
MOBIUS is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and events are divined from the author’s imagination or are being used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2015 by Vincent Vale.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9851655-3-6
3rd Edition
Cover Art by Adam Burn
Other works by Vincent Vale:
Website:
www.vincentvale.com
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[email protected]
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REVIEWS ON AMAZON AND
GOODREADS ARE GREATLY
APPRECIATED
To Sharon and John, my loving parents. Karen, my sister, who was first to read it. And David, whose editorial skills and friendship were lifesavers.
Quantum Threshold
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I wasn’t alone
—I heard a beating heart behind me.
Not the soothing sound of mother’s blood, but a deep and ominous thudding.
Doom-damn... Doom-damn...
It continued with the cadence of hellish clockwork.
Doom-damn... Doom-damn...
My skin crawled, my stomach clenched.
What was behind me? A man? A monster? I didn’t dare open my eyes, didn’t dare look back. It couldn’t be human. No man’s chest could contain such a heart. It grew louder and louder, becoming thunder in my head.
Doom-damn! Doom-damn!
My breathing quickened, forcing me to suck in more of the foul air around me.
What’s that stench?
I wondered.
I at last opened my eyes—slowly, fearfully. Holo-monitors illuminated the room, displaying ever-changing graphs and numerical data. It meant nothing to me. I looked down and found myself naked, floating in an anti-gravity field above a metal slab.
Where the fuck am I?
I thought.
Why am I naked?
The beating heart continued.
Doom-damn! Doom-damn!
“Stop! Please stop!” I screamed.
It felt like my skull was cracking. What was behind me? I had to see. The truth would release me.
I tilted my head back. Disbelief! Horror! My small hairs rose. It was a complex beast—half machine, half monster. A great blob of bio-mechanical flesh. Metallic nano-fibers interlaced the pale skin, causing electrostatic discharges that buzzed and sparked.
The beast loomed above me, the height of the ceiling, like a giant animal—but not an animal, an abomination of flesh. It had no appendages and no head, only a great, moist sphincter that puckered mere inches from where I lay.
“Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!”
Escape! Fight! Run! I wanted to do all these things, but my body proved too heavy, too weak. My perceptions distorted. Was the beast growing larger or was I becoming smaller? My stomach heaved and my head spun. My thoughts clouded over and my brief journey into the conscious world ended.
I again awoke, my head pierced by pain, my vision a jumble of blurred shapes and drab colors. My eyes focused. A face. A hideous face hovered above me. Two bulging eyes, stained the color of piss, inspected me.
Who is this ugly fuck?
I wondered.
I felt the urge to fight. I lashed out, but the man pinned me down with surprising strength. I thrashed, kicked, screamed.
“Let go of me, you bastard!”
The man held my neck with one hand and produced a hypo-injector with the other. “This will calm you.”
I felt the sting of the injection. My face went numb and my anxiety soothed. I looked around and discovered I was in a different place, no longer near that enormous beast. I was lying on a small cot. It felt soft and clumpy beneath me.
I sat up on elbows. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the sanitarium, where you belong,” replied the painfully close man.
What’s he talking about?
I thought.
What sanitarium? Why do I belong here?
From what I could see, I was in a room no more than two lengths of my body from wall to wall. It was lit by a dim node overhead. A single door with a magnetic lock gave passage to the room. It hung open. I heard the whisper of distant voices.
I grabbed the man above me. “Who am I?”
“You’re Theron Mobius.”
“Theron Mobius?” The name was unfamiliar. “Who are you?”
“I’m an orderly, here to take care of you. I attend to your hygiene, nutrition, and overall comfort.”
“You’re an ugly fucker,” I said.
“That’s not very nice, but I know you’re confused. Now, let me look you over.”
The orderly began poking and pulling at me. I tried to fight him off.
With two greasy fingers, the orderly spread my eyelids apart and peered inward. “Some people think the eyes are the path to the soul, and they’re mistaken, for it’s the brain itself that gives way to that mysterious entity lurking within each of us.”
He spoke a command word and a glowing orb floating near his shoulder descended just above my forehead. It started scanning me with beams of energy. I could feel a searing heat on my face and then in my head as if it was melting my brain. I tried to bat it away, but my arms became heavy as the orb increased the gravity around my body. I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds.
The orb spoke in a female voice, “There are no deviations across the quantum threshold. Atomic neural stability is holding. The fusion is optimal. The specimen is unique.”
A wave of energy shot through my body. I flailed my arms and kicked my legs with an unnatural strength that defied the increased gravity. A lucky swing sent the orb crashing into the wall. It flashed and fizzled as it hit the ground and rolled under my cot. I kicked the orderly, sending him through the room’s doorway and onto his ass.
“Something’s in my head!” I cried. “It claws at my skull! It wants out! It’s too great! My head’s too small!”
The orderly stood up and signaled down the hall. He was soon joined by a man whose face was a gnarled mask of large features and pale, splotchy skin. He wore a fine black suit, perfectly tailored for his body.
“Doctor,” said the orderly, “it appears Theron’s undergoing a more difficult acclimation than the others.”
Something about the doctor caused a terrifying sensation within me. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt it in my stomach, my brain, and my heart. It was unbearable. I gazed into his eyes. They glowed with an unnatural green color as they looked down the length of a long bulbous-tipped nose.
“My brain,” I whimpered. “Does it spill from my head?”
The doctor worked my head between his palms. “This is fantastic. He’s more affected by the treatment than the others.”
“He is,” agreed the orderly.
“Take Theron back to the rehabilitation vesicle,” said the doctor. “He shows promise deserving of another treatment. I’ll be there momentarily.”
“Release me!” I cried. “Please!”
“You’re in need of another treatment,” replied the orderly. He clamped a silver ring around my chest and I floated up, limp and weightless.
I was helpless as the orderly pushed me down a hallway of many doors. At that moment, my mind filled with strange words. I was compelled to speak them aloud, over and over: “A thread of thought, I forge in flesh, I cast it out into the light and await its return to cure the blight...”
The orderly didn’t respond to my utterance and soon brought me to the end of the hallway where stood a large metal door protected by a force field. He performed an odd hand motion, causing the force field to dissipate and the door to open.
We entered the chamber of the bio-mechanical creature I had previously encountered. The orderly placed me back in the anti-gravity field above the metal slab, near the beast’s great sphincter.
Robotic insects crawled on the creature’s terrible flesh, repairing damaged nano-fibers and cauterizing open sores.
“Lie still until the doctor arrives.”
I could only repeat those words that filled my head: “A thread of thought, I forge in flesh, I cast it out into the light and await its return to cure the blight...”
When the doctor finally entered the room, my mental fit subsided. “Who are you? What are you doing to me? Why are you torturing me?”
The doctor placed his hand on my chest, at my heart. “We’re going to help you rise from the depths of insanity, Theron. You must trust us.”
“I’m scared.”
“You shouldn’t be,” replied the doctor.
“What is that thing?” I tilted my head back and recoiled from the sphincter trembling behind me. “Take me away from this abomination! Please!”
“I cannot, my son.” The doctor turned to the orderly. “Hold him in place for insertion.”
“Insertion?” My jaw dropped. “What do you mean ‘insertion’?”
The doctor closed his eyes and remained still as a tendril of glowing nano-fibers emerged from just above the sphincter of the bizarre creature. It stretched out toward the doctor’s forehead, where it broke the flesh and pushed inward, joining the doctor to the creature.
“What the fuck!” I screamed.
The great sphincter above me puckered and swelled. Ten of the robotic insects gathered at the perimeter of the sphincter and deployed tiny tractor beams on my body, pulling me in.
“Stop! Please, stop! Fucking hell! No!”
My resistance was useless. My entire body was ingested by the beast.
An unlikely calmness ran through me.
My God, where am I?
Instead of finding myself in the vile innards of the creature, I found myself floating in an expanse of pure light. The bio-mechanical skin of the creature encased another realm. The light surrounding me rippled and stirred in such a way that it seemed alive, or at the very least was something more than just light.
I was mesmerized as a sparkling silver-white wisp caressed my cheek. It was soon joined by another, and then another, until a multitude of glowing wisps constricted down upon me. I felt the wisps of light penetrating my body, creeping into the core of my being.
