Initial Breach and First Contact
Danriel strode into the almost uncomfortably cool room, his heavyset and worn leather boots thumping on the white tile floor. In front of him, Saga was examining a few things on a computer screen while writing on a clipboard.
“Think of anything else to increase efficiency?” his question echoed, clasping his hands behind his back as he approached the screen and console nearby.
“As much as I know you don’t want to hear it, we may have to just go ahead and go full-on photonic. The copper-tungsten wiring works well enough in some locations, but after that last breach, I’m not sure they’re going to last much longer.” Saga handed over his clipboard with a weathered hand and Danriel accepted it, giving the figures on it a quick once-over.
“Damn. You sure we’re going to be able to convert those parts over without risking data loss?”
Saga shrugged as the clipboard was returned to him. “You’ll just have to be careful with how you bend them around. I’m sure you’ll find a workaround for any issues you encounter. Maybe you could make some tiny mirrors to help.”
Danriel chuckled as he put a hand to his chin and rubbed it, looking through the scratched observation window and into the breaching chamber. The metal gate still dominated most of the back wall of the room despite months of research and theorized miniaturization. They probably should replace the room’s lining as well, he noted. Most of the walls were covered in a layer in soot and the charred remains of the chamber’s cracked tiling. Even with Saga’s reflexes, there was still a considerable amount of damage done in a mere fraction of a second. Who would’ve thought one of the first few universes they had breached into would be best described as hell itself? The only other thing that was observed was a dead and desolate landscape accompanied by a massive star staring through the portal. He could still sometimes smell something that had burned. Probably a hermetic seal failure.
“Miracle the gate survived intact, I’d say,” Saga piped up as he slid next to the Doctor.
“No kidding! That place almost melted the coating off the gate, and that stuff is rated for temperatures not more than 4000 ℃! From what little data I remember gathering, that room almost hit 4700 ℃ in the matter of thirty-seven milliseconds. It’s a miracle that even the insulating layer didn’t burn up.”
“Are you sure you're ready to give this another try?”
Danriel nodded without hesitation, checking the new coordinates on a panel that Saga had generated before his arrival.
“Here’s hoping this one isn’t as devastating. With the state this place is in, if we took another hit like that, a good few tons of dirt would bury everything down here.”
Saga laid a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you want to proceed then? We can postpone this test until we’ve gotten some repairs done, maybe even get those photonic parts installed.”
Sure, it would’ve been a load off his mind to get things fixed up, but after still being in debt after the initial construction, the authorities may start getting suspicious over his purchases. Not to mention the electricity bill.
“MIT is not giving me another grant. We’ll have to make do. Keep focused on the emergency shutdown.”
Danriel heard Saga sigh as he sat back down in his chair and wheeled over somewhere, rattling off some pre-breach protocols that Danriel didn’t pay much attention to. It was tedious, but Saga felt it was necessary to have things looked over before activating the gate. Probably a wise decision that would’ve been overlooked had Saga not been there.
“Ready for the breach?” Saga finally asked.
“Yes, go ahead.”
Saga took to activating the coolant system, a soft hum emanating from the walls as he did so. After being satisfied it was up and running, he began the breaching process.
A whine could be softly heard piercing through the chamber as energy flowed into the gate. Definitely a seal somewhere. Lights glimmered on the edges of the gate, signaling its awakening, and a low rumble thrummed through the facility as its inner workings were set into motion. The rumble slowly rose in pitch as the lights around the circular gate began blinking on and off in time with its component’s inner rotations.
“Everything seems to be running smoothly. Nothing out of acceptable parameters yet,” Saga chimed off.
Danriel felt his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. The gate was in full swing now, the lights on its perimeter dancing around in a circle and nearly becoming a solid line.
“Full power reached. Initiating brea-.” Saga said, getting cut off by a sudden flash and crack from the origin of the gate. The two men looked at each other briefly before staring back at the spectacle before them.
A small dot of light began to form at the gate's center, flashing and cracking several more times as it gradually grew in size. The rushing of air hissed through the seal somewhere as particles of the charred interior began to swirl around the luminous globe. Saga said a few things to Danriel, probably something about stopping the procedure. Danriel was too awestruck to pay attention to much more than what was unfolding before him. This breaching pattern wasn’t the same as any of the others. It was flashier. More temperamental. Slower.
Something was stopping it from going through.
Danriel clenched and unclenched his clammy hands, eventually sitting in a chair of his own and gripping onto the ends of the armrests. What could possibly bar the breaching process? It would make sense that some strange physical laws would differ between the two universes, but to the extent of completely changing the pattern?
What if it was something?
How could that be possible? What kind of power or understanding of reality could such a creature have? Would it be hostile? Danriel’s eyes flicked about the worn room. Would the chamber be able to hold up if it got in?
By now, the orb had scooped up a significant amount of the sediment that was in the chamber and had grown in diameter to about three meters, still cracking and flashing away. The black rings that had formed around it were beautiful in their own right, but made Danriel shiver unexpectantly. Everything about the breach felt wrong and his fears slowly crept up behind him in an effort to persuade him to stop.
But he couldn’t. That would halt progress.
The miraculous orb finally bellowed out in a menacing explosion, launching its ashen rings into the walls and observation window. The shock wave nearly knocked Danriel out of his seat despite his ironclad grip on the armrests. After that, there was nothing. Silence dominated the room, aside from the light hum of the machinery still chugging away within the walls.
Saga appeared unfazed by the blast inside the chamber. Instead, he was looking at Danriel with a smile on his face, raising his eyebrows as Danriel finally caught sight of him.
Danriel gave Saga a light push from his chair, sliding across the floor as they traded shaky laughter. Looking back at the now open gate though, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Checking the video feed on an adjacent monitor, he could’ve sworn he saw trees.
“Well…” Danriel sighed, standing out of his chair and heading for the chamber airlock. “Let’s give it a look, shall we?”
Danriel pressed his hand on a scanner on the wall a short distance away from the console setup, a large metallic door creaking open and retracting into the ceiling and floor. Stepping inside the blindingly white room, he turned to find Saga making his way through the entrance as well. The door clanked behind them as the airlock sprayed and hissed at its occupants to ensure no contaminants would be tracked in.
“You plan on going with me this time?” Danriel asked amid the noise.
“No. I trust that you can take care of yourself, so long as you’ve stuck to that exercise and training regimen I gave you, which you have been following, right?”
Danriel hesitated before giving him a sheepish nod. Saga rolled his eyes at him and continued speaking while glaring at him. “Based on the initial scans I’m retrieving from the server now, it appears that it’s very Prime-like, environmentally speaking.”
Danriel cleared his throat. “Excellent. Here’s hoping there’s something worth noting in there.”
The door to the airlock finally opened, a rush of stifling air flowing through the now open doors. Danriel felt his shirt stick to his skin as he walked inside, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
“I’m probably going to stay out of this,” Saga said, hanging back in the airlock. “The heat in there is considerably more intense than I’d like to bear upon myself at the moment. I’ll observe from outside while I gather your things for the journey.”
“Aw, live a little, Saga. You don’t always have to look like you were freshly minted yesterday.”
Saga smiled and shook his head. “Maybe when you dye your hair brown again. You look as old as I seem sometimes.” The airlock door closed on him as Saga chuckled to himself, leaving Danriel alone with the gate. The floor crunched beneath his boots as he slowly approached it with his hands in his pockets.
Must’ve really worked out the gate to heat up the chamber this bad. Should revamp that coolant system, he thought, reaching the shimmering gate before him.
It was truly a remarkable sight. The perfectly circular opening that formed in the center of the gate hovered invitingly as a flight of stairs rose from the floor to guide him upward.
The edges shimmered radiantly, inviting to the eyes, but not the touch. Their first opening taught them that. Luckily, he didn’t press down too hard on the edge at that time and just got a shallow cut on his finger. He almost didn’t even feel the cut, but he noticed the blood quickly enough. A bad idea in hindsight, but he couldn’t resist.
“All for science, of course…” He muttered, stepping from the staircase and onto the grass on the other side of the gate.
It was much less stuffy there, for certain; like early spring or summer. The leaves shuttered and a cool breeze whisked its way through his hair and clothes. A welcoming change from the oven that the chamber was.
The tree cover seemed awfully heavy and only a few patches of sunlight splitting the canopy made their way to the forest floor. Plenty of vines snaked their way up the trunks of most of the trees, some arms coiling through the bushes and grass. It reminded him of some of the lesser tread portions of some nature reserves he’d been to. No birds chirping, which was disconcerting, though they may just not have birds there.
Danriel walked back into the chamber and saw Saga waiting for him behind the speckled observation window.
“Everything’s ready for you,” he buzzed through a speaker near the window, lifting up a large rucksack. “Packed up the hiking kit for you. Should have plenty of provisions for the weeks to come, along with basic survival tools, a few universal gate hailers—red and green—a hunting knife, and a recreation mechanical pistol with some custom piercing rounds. I even took the liberty of finding you a custom leather holster that should neatly fit under the coat I packed.”
“Going old school this time, huh?”
“I figure a small sidearm will suffice in confrontations with most unwelcoming hosts.” Saga shrugged. “I got the piercing rounds in the event that they’re a bit tougher than anticipated.”
“Thanks, Saga,” he said, striding up to the window, “Go ahead and put it in the airlock. No radiation suit this time?” he pointed playfully.
“No radiation suit,” Saga shook his head and laughed, “...you mess up one calculation...”
“Hey, I don’t want to wear that dopey looking thing when there’s actually less background radiation than what we’re used to.”
After another short decontamination session, Danriel strapped on the holster and examined the archaic weapon he had been provided. Most modern weapons you could find today were significantly more potent in burning holes in things, but they were also significantly more expensive than a vast majority of mechanical weapons you could find on the market. Danriel clicked on the safety and holstered the sidearm, testing the sharpness of the knife on his finger before hoisting the backpack onto his shoulders and returning to the window. Saga had since returned to the observation port, staring at the anomaly intently.
“Something is off with that place…” He stated quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“Couldn’t say.” He crossed his arms and stroked his beard. “All of the readings are normal… Something is just pulling me the wrong way. I can feel it in my servos.”
“It’s probably nothing. May have gotten some dirt in your skeleton. You should probably do a cleaning and tune-up.”
“Probably…” he sighed, unfolding his arms as Danriel ascended the stairs, “Regardless, don’t let your guard down. I don’t want you to use the red Gate Hailer.
“Don’t worry about it, Saga. No great harm has come to me yet.”
Saga glared at Danriel and pursed his lips.
“Be safe, Danriel. I’m replaceable, you’re not,” he said, jabbing a finger at him.
“I’ll be fine…” Danriel stopped at the top of the staircase and smiled. “Just remember to write and I’ll be even better off, alright?”
Saga’s hard expression melted and he laughed a bit. “Yes, I’ll make sure to. I’ll keep the letters on my nightstand.”
Danriel and Saga gave their traditional salutes to one another before lunging off into the lush unknown of the forest ahead.
The portal snapped closed behind him, the space warping slightly before finally settling into its natural state of being.
Danriel put his hands on his hips as he sucked in the clean air, immediately letting it all out as a beam of light smacked into his chest and threw him back into some bushes.
He wasn’t sure where the beam had come from, but he wasn’t keen on sticking around to find out. Scrambling back to his feet, he sprinted off into the unnaturally darkening forest. He heard the shouts of something calling to its compatriots—in English, surprisingly enough—telling them to “fan out to find it.”
The forest was an unrelenting bramble of vines and shrubbery which would have made for decent hiding spots, but with his bag and likely possibility that these things would know the forest like the back of their functionally appropriate “hands” rendered the thought moot.
He heard rustling to his left and he spotted something a short distance behind him rushing through the foliage. He couldn’t quite make it out, what with the darkness and abundance of flora, but he could still make out that it was quadrupedal. While he was pondering the offensive capabilities of four-legged beings, he turned back around too late to see a suspiciously taut vine at about chest height that blocked his path. His backpack gave him some much-needed momentum that carried him through the sheared vine, surprising even himself.
He looked back with a grin. “You’re going to need to try something a bit cleverer than tha-OH FU-,” he cried, tripping over an exposed tree root and quickly having an arrangement with the dirt. Before he was able to stand back up and continue the chase, something heavy stood on his back and prevented him from doing so.
“Just quit struggling and just maybe we won’t throw you into a dungeon,” a rough female voice shouted. “Wait, your castle does have a dungeon, right, Twi?” He lifted his head to see what was on him, but the portable shelter on the top of his bag blocked most of his vision. The sound of multiple four-legged creatures pattered around him before a few garishly colored legs stood in his limited field of view.
“That all depends on how easily it can be restrained,” another voice responded.
“What if he's not mean? He could just be going for a stroll in the forest for all we know.” A soft voice suggested.
“Sure, just like how everything else do-si-doin' around the Everfree is just lookin' to smell the poison joke…” A Southern voice rebutted.
A pair of blue eyes suddenly forced themselves into view, making Danriel jump and shout another profanity.
“What a dirty mouth!” the eyes squeaked. “We’ll have to fix that right up!” Before he knew it, a bar of soap had jammed itself into his mouth. Danriel grunted and spat the soap back out, cursing at the creature as a new piece of soap replaced the first. Danriel narrowed his eyes at the blues eyes as they “tsked” at him before pulling themselves out of view.
A pair of violet legs slowly approached him from the front, soon being joined by a matching pair of purple eyes. The soap was pulled out of his mouth, though by what, he wasn’t sure; it appeared that it had simply levitated away.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
Danriel said nothing. Her eyes narrowed and the soap loomed back into view surrounded by a curious warping purple aura.
“Where did you come from?” she repeated, “I won’t ask again.”
“Go to hell.”
The increasingly familiar taste of bitter lavender filled his mouth yet again before he was blinded by a flash of white light. The smell of dank mustiness assaulted his nose as his clothes started wicking up moisture from the cold stone floor. He threw the soap into a corner and sat up, no longer restrained by the weight of the creature on his back and took in the depressing atmosphere.
He scratched his head as he stood up, walking forward and gripping onto the gleaming iron bars that made up one side of the room and attempting to look down the torch-lit hallway of similar rooms. His backpack sat near the far end that lead to a stone staircase ascending upward. He slid his hands down and grunted, looking around his cell in an attempt to find something that would help him pick the lock or break the bars or something. A rough wooden cot hung from one wall suspended by chains, but other than that, all he found were stone walls and soap.
Another flash of light appeared before him outside his prison, making him stumble back a few steps. Although poorly lit, he could still make out the group of small horses glaring at him through the bars. A purple unicorn walked forward and stopped just short of the bars.
“Anything you’d like to say before we get started?” she said.
Danriel thought for a moment.
“Uh, yeah. Fuck you, cun-.”
The next one was citrus.
