Nakkie stood shoulder to shoulder
between five other men. One of them was Simon from his own team,
another looked like a builder from the third construction team, and
the other three were cavers. They had been herded into the square
room by all of Crune's boys about twenty minutes ago, turning the
cube they had spent the last two days putting together into a
torchlit cell with depressingly black walls. A single cell, in the
deepest of six caverns, sitting one thousand, two hundred and fifteen
feet below sea level. That was a lot of rock between them and the
sunlight on the brazillian desert above their heads. Not for the
first time on this trip, Nakkie didn't like the feel of this.
Simon was looking around, trying to
assess the situation. All of the workers were nearly noiseless, aside
from the occasional hushed whisper. Crune's men, now revealed as the
hired guards that they were, were surrounding the workers in a
circular formation, their intimidating presence pressing the workers
together. Simon noticed that many of the builders and cavers turned
to see, and were unable to conceal their apprehension, when the
circular black door was closed, and the sound of the bolts confirmed
that it had been locked into place. Crune's thugs hadn't stirred.
"Hey, Nakkie!" hissed Simon.
"Yeah?" muttered Nakkie in a
low voice, not turning to look at him.
"Is everyone in here? Are there
any people still out in the cavern?"
"No, everyone in the building
teams is here, all twenty two of the cavers and climbers are here,
Crune and his five dozen men are all inside now that three of them
have pulled the hatch closed... and of course," now he turned to
Simon to show the lack of respect in his eyes, "our dear, brave
leader is over there up the front. I don't know how he thinks he-
...hang on, I think he's about to say something..."
The mind leading the expedition, Dennis
Kint, had signalled the room to be silent. Without needing to move,
the presence of Crune's thugs around them encouraged the small crowd
of builders and cavers to become obediently quiet. All of us are
angry and tense, Simon thought to himself, but Kint has used first
his own character, and then Crune's associates, to control us very
efficiently on this underground expedition.
Satisfied that the room's attention was
on himself, Dennis Kint, scientist-turned-politician, flashed the men
his famous salesman smile. "Gentlemen!" He raised his arms
as if to introduce them to the work of their own labour, "I
would like to congratulate you for your co-operation and hard work on
the Sylbreck Box Project! You are all standing on such an
achievement, such a sensation of science as you would not believe.
But allow me to put you out of your misery, and share with you the
secret I have discovered, and the privelige I will give you..."
All of the workers were facing Kint at
the front of the room, but Nakkie noticed out of the corner of his
eye that two of Crune's guards were doing something with the single
window in the cube, a round window that grew and shrunk with the use
of twelve black spiralled shades that looked like the iris in
someone's eye.
Kint was telling the men some stories
from history about war experiments and conspiracy, sweeping his hands
around him as he did, but Kint had tired of Kint's theatrics days
ago. It had begun to piss him off during the press conference at the
cave entrance. Nakkie remembered all of the workers trying to wait
patiently in the baking sun until they could start the descent and
get this weird contract over and done with. Two and a half days... it
had been two and half days since Nakkie had seen the sun...
He kept counting the guards and
wondering how many he could take on, but Nakkie knew he wasn't a
hero. Kint had provided funds to kit the guards out anyway, just like
he had funded everything else. What did Kint even have to gain from
the construction of one cube made of some weird science material, in
a cave one thousand feet under the brazillian desert?
"So," Dennis Kint beamed at
the faces in front of him, "Sylbreck metal is the only material
in the world which blocks the last form of radiation from the sun, a
form of radiation which we never would have guseed." He paused
to put on a face of confusion, "can anyone tell Dennis which
year we are in?"
The group of builders and cavers looked
at him strangely. Prisoners don't usually expect audience
participation, and they might as well have been prisoners at that
moment. But Mr. Kint clearly wanted a response to continue with his
speech, so someone near the front said "It's 2032."
"That is correct, and I can tell
you," Kint nodded, his smile launching back onto his face, "that
that is because the entire world has been hit by that amount of time
radiation from the sun, and other stars."
Simon's eyes widened as he began to
understand what Kint was saying.
"Time!" The extravagent man
said the word as if he had conquered it, "Just like light, time
flows from our sun. Because of time radiation I age, and my house
will fall apart, and the value of my finances will fluctuate, but I
can tell you, gentlemen, that just like we can shield bright rays
from our eyes and create shadows in the day, sylbreck metal allows
you and I to shield ourselves from time itself, and to create our
very own eternity!"
Nakkie heard Simon cry out from next to
him, "That cannot be true, Mr. Kint, everyone knows that time is
a constant, it is a dimension of the universe, it does not need to be
created by anything or to flow from any location! That is absurd!"
Some of the builders and cavers, who did not need to understand
modern physics to have common sense, nodded in agreement to this. A
few were even laughing at Dennis, but not too loudly, since Crune's
men were still present, and holding firearms.
"Tradition agrees with you,"
Kint's flow did not suffer from the objection, "however, modern
science is on my side, good worker. I have co-ordinated small-scale
experiments where I have placed an object or creature in a sealed
sylbreck container..."
Nakkie instantly noticed that a
'sylbreck container' was exaclty what this six-sided room was. They
had brought two and a quarter tons of materials underground, put the
pieces together, and now they were all inside it. Oh my god, he
thought, Kint is taking the next step from his small-scale
experiments. We're all rodents.
Nakkie's eyes shot to the window and
it's twelve shades. We aren't sealed in yet, he thought. At least,
not by this sylbreck stuff. But those twelve shades are sylbreck
metal. If they get closed... What the hell is Kint going to do to us?
Mr. Kint had been telling the crowd
about the window mechanism that acted in the opposite way of a
shutter mechanism from the first photographic cameras. It would shut
only for a moment, and then spring open again. "Or," he
added with a cruel grin, "only for a moment on the outside... As
possibly thousands of years pass the outside of the Sylbreck Box, we
will experience infinity. Infinity, gentlemen! I know I have dreamed
of eternal life, won't you admit that you share this same dream with
me? I will take us to the heights of science, and yes! To the heights
of life itself!"
As Dennis Kint had revealed the full
purposes of this dreadful plan, the builders and cavers had started
to protest despite Crune's boys raising their weapons.
"What about our families?"
cried one voice from the left of the crowd of workers, "We can't
leave them!"
"Yeah," shouted another,
"everything we know will be gone!"
"How do you know we'll even
survive with no time? You'll kill us all, this is criminal!"
"Take your stupid money back,
Dennis! We don't-"
The guards around the edge of the room
had stepped in. Nakkie heard at least five different screams as
workers were hit with batons, and three shots as rubber bullets were
fired at others. He saw four of the men duck down to the floor in
defence from the thugs, and one of the builders clench his fists and
face two of the guards at once, fighting for his life. Kint was still
standing at the front of the room, with six of Crune's guys
protecting him. He looked nothing more than mildly dissappointed with
the reaction, and Nakkie thought he might be the only one who heard
him quietly say two sentances.
"I never said you have a choice.
My experiment is more important, it is too important..."
As he said this, his right hand went
into one of his trouser pockets, and came out again with his four
fingers wrapped around a small device, and his thumb on a single
button, which he pressed down for one and a half seconds and then
released. Nakkie saw the twelve shades slide quickly so that the
circle of window shrunk to one meter in diameter, and then half a
meter, and then-
The room was light. A white light was
shining through the walls of the cell, which might have still been
there, or maybe they weren't... Nakkie felt like he was floating, and
wasn't sure he could see anyone else, but there were outlines like
shadows, and noises like whispers of eyes...
Maybe years were going past, but they
all sounded rather distant... everything was very distant. He tried
to look around behind him, and saw the floor, and then the front of
himself, not in a reflection, but he was no longer confined to
himself. Then the second him smiled at him, and he smiled back, which
made him become the second him, looking at nothing but the light...
perhaps...
Nakkie floated through deaths and
laughter and a faint memory of his body, and being angry and
afraid... He spun in the air, and felt it soar past him, and was
entertained for several years by the weight of his breath... although
he might not be breathing...
Then a sound began, visible as a ripple
through the air, bouncing the bright glow around the room that was
bigger than a planet, and Nakkie imagined himself turning, and saw
himself seeing those sylbreck blades on the window, looking white in
the glow, twitch for the first time in both centuries and seconds.
Then, suddenly, they opened again, and like a flood, time and
darkness flowed back into the room...
Nakkie grunted as both his legs fell
under him and he fell next to three other bodies on the cold metal
floor. With effort he pulled one of his aching hands to his face to
rub his eyes, trying to adjust to the darkness. He had just... No,
how? He was back in the six sided cube again, if he had ever left...
but where was he, in time?
Image source: http://metc.org/suntime.htm
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