When we got into the chamber, one of the techs was mopping the floor. “I must warn you that the Machine seems to be covering people in mud and snails.”
C.L. nodded curtly. “Like I said. Situation is getting worse.”
We arranged ourselves around Morehshin, the floor still wet beneath our shoes. The tech positioned three small tappers around us, cotton-padded hammers poised to bang out a pattern in the rock. When our knees were covered with warm water, Morehshin used her multi-tool to access another part of the interface I’d never seen before. It looked like a jar of mud and darting lights, hovering in the air roughly where the ring once was. She reached into the jar, hand completely disappearing into the mud, and I could see blue flashes between her fingers.
Rain swarmed around us, full of fat hot drops and freezing bullets of hail, and we held each other in the void that meant history was still mutable. I concentrated on my friends, and how their breathing felt next to mine. We seemed to spin slowly, like a drifting asteroid or a diatom in the ocean’s water column.
And then we emerged on the knife-edge of a continent, encircled by two enormous, floating parentheses of heavily oxidized rock the color of rust. The salty air was dry and thin, but breathable. Over our heads hung a translucent dome made from pearlescent oil and water, their colors oozing into and around each other in psychedelic patterns. It was shocking and beautiful and unnamable. Had someone actually built such a thing? Would we ever understand it?
Morehshin was unimpressed. “That’s where I think the decoupling settings are.” She gestured at a segment of the ring. “But they’re hard to find because mechanisms tend to move around inside.”
C.L. knocked on the floating rock and whistled appreciatively. “It feels so solid.”
I touched one with my fingertips. It felt like a warm igneous rock, slightly powdery with rust. I ran my hands underneath it, and felt nothing but a bumpy, wind-smoothed surface. The structure was levitating because of something that I couldn’t perceive. Abruptly, a light purple stain appeared in the air at eye level.
“Don’t touch that!” C.L. and Morehshin yelled simultaneously.
“What the hell?” C.L. peered at it more closely and gently prodded one shimmering edge with their finger.
Morehshin joined them. “Looks like part of the system for choosing a direction. Whatever. For now, we need to… fast-forward. Have you done that before?”
Nobody had. We returned to the group hug position.
“Ready?” Morehshin twiddled her fingers in the oily water overhead and the patterns swirled into a throbbing spiral. The purple stain flashed pink. “Stay together!” Outside, the landscape changed fluidly, shadows lengthening and shortening as algae blooms turned the water emerald, then red, then a luminescent yellow only visible in the long nights of winter. We were traveling rapidly into the future, watching the continent erode and sprout rough scabs of lichen around us.
“I didn’t know we could do this!” C.L. was wriggling to get a better view.
“Keep an eye out for the Comstocker so we know when to stop.”
“Now!” Anita yelled. Everything solidified and I could see the remains of a crude rock forge several feet away. We filed out carefully, Morehshin palming her multi-tool, and took in the scene. There were deep, precise cuts in the floating rock, and footprints everywhere on the sandy ground.
In the distance I could barely make out the blue-gray bulk of a glacier creeping up the barren continent from the South Pole. We were in a slightly later phase of that ice age C.L. mentioned, when sea levels sank and the Machine stood on dry land, subject to the weathering that eventually erased the visible parts of its interface.
On the beach below, the Comstocker’s entire operation was in plain view. Curtains of seaweed were spread out to dry next to a shadowy cave entrance, and farther away was a garbage pile of shells and armor plates from Ordovician fish, clams, and squid. A man emerged from the mouth of the cave, completely naked, dragging a large net bag. From our perch, his features were a blur.
“Everybody get down so he can’t see us.” Morehshin lay on her stomach and peered over the edge. Then she poked C.L. “Can you use that implant to see distance?”
C.L. nodded and tapped on their shirtsleeve. “He doesn’t look good.”
Even from this far away, I could see that his pale skin was blistered and his hair was patchy. “Looks like he has no protection from the sun, and he’s been here awhile.”
The man waded into the ocean and wandered away from shore, the waves lapping no higher than his shoulder. Ducking into the water, he scooped up something fist-sized and stuck it into the bag.
“What’s he doing?”
“Looks like… hunting.” C.L. made a twisting motion with their arm, activating some mechanism in the shirt. “He’s got some… snails and trilobites? They love these shallow oceans, and we know from the fossil record that there were hundreds of species. He must be eating them.”
Sure enough, he returned to land and started a small fire with the seaweed in a pit outside the cave. He went inside and returned with a clay pot, filled it with ocean water and a few snails and trilobite legs, then set it in the glowing coals. He wandered in and out of the cave, finally emerging with a loose gray tunic covering most of his body and something that glittered in his hand.
“It’s a knife,” C.L. breathed. “Must be one of the tools he smelted.”
Hunkering down next to the fire, he pulled another trilobite from the bag, worked its legs off with the knife, and slurped tiny bits of meat into his mouth. Trilobites are distantly related to arachnids, but they looked like stubby green lobsters.
“Wonder if it tastes like lobster or spider?”
“Shut up, Tess,” Anita hissed.
“We can take him. Let’s hide up here and wait.” Morehshin bared her teeth in a feral smile, palming her multi-tool.
That’s when a woman emerged from the cave, also in a tunic, carrying an infant in her arms.
“Oh, what the fuck.”
“Goddamn it.”
Nobody knew what else to say for a minute.
“How did she get there?”
“Morehshin?” C.L.’s eyes were trained on the woman. “She looks exactly like you. But her hands…”
Morehshin made a strangled noise that was somewhere between a sob and a growl. “He must have… taken a queen.”
“She has no hands.” C.L. looked blankly at us.
“Is that your sister?” I was astonished.
“Yes. There are many in my line. They must have sent her back to meet him. For breeding… to make workers.” Morehshin’s expression shaded from horror into abjection, and she scrabbled away from the view. Standing up, she stumbled against the floating rocks, leaned over, and threw up profusely into the Machine. Then she gasped like she’d been punched.
Anita and I ran to her, while C.L. kept watch on the beach.
“Look! It’s another layer to the interface!” Morehshin pointed overhead, her disgust forgotten. A hole was opening in the canopy over Morehshin’s soggy offering. A shaft of bright light shot out, and abruptly the Machine’s rocky floor absorbed her vomit, chunks and all.
“Another layer?” C.L. practically careened into us and waved their left hand. “I’m recording. Can somebody else keep watch on the Comstockery?”
“I will.” Anita went back to the ledge.
Morehshin poked a finger into the shaft of light and it emitted a noise like a distant wind chime.
“Oh yeah!” C.L. kept waving their hand. “Light sensor?”
The chiming continued as Morehshin swirled her finger in a tiny clockwise circle.