The Inferno Commute

The Inferno Commute

 By Q.B. Smith

The morning no longer froze crystals of moisture out of the air and had stopped depositing them on the stone and steel surfaces, which were now in thaw; but the air was still cold and stagnant enough so that Sowr’s breath hung there in it like a drop of white paint holding in a cup of clear water, only bothered by the next breath or the occasional slice of the Hatter’s signature spin knife.

Only when the mound in front of Intersection Avenue fully filled would they go. When it was shoulder to shoulder with the Hatter men and women, who gathered a top of Hillock before making these runs, would they all run across the ghastly gauntlet.

Often many would die during these runs but none worried, none dwelled on the past attacks, they all just waited calmly for enough people to gather, enough people to swarm past Intersection Avenue.

Now that the plasma orb on the far side of Intersection Avenue had lost its morning red patina, the plasma orb was brilliantly drowning the great hall in its white splendor. This indicated that the early warm up stage was over. Now that the hall was closer to fully heated than the freezing cold of night, the Hatters needed to hurry up and cross before the air temperature of Intersection Avenue continued to rise to the day time’s full flesh melting levels.

They were miles beneath the mighty city of Tardarus. They were undocumented, unlicensed, unwelcomed and considered pests and as such pests, the Hatters would be exterminated if the people from Tardarus ever discovered that so many now lived in their mighty city’s sewers and heating vents.

Through the throw of light the expansive hall was tattered with the bellows of hot wet air. There were plumes of sinister breaths rising from the far off rows of the Stone Hand’s tunnel holes--it seemed even more were waiting today than yesterday.

If they were not such predators the Stone Hands would also be considered pest to the Hatter who were now gaining in numbers upon Hillock; just as the Hatters were considered pest to those Tardarians dwelling above; and as far as anyone so deep underground knew, just as those vicious Tardarians may be considered the pests of even greater and more malicious cities above Taradrus. It was said to be a never-ending system of hierarchies after all. The only thing a Hatter knew, was he was somewhere near the bottom of it all. 

Today the Stone Hands got to Intersection Avenue first, this was a sign that violence was near and that they were hungry for blood again. Today the Stone Hands were eagerly waiting in their tunnel entrances for the Hatters to brave the pass.

It seemed today, that most of the Stone hand people from the Netherworld below the Midas caverns, were waiting in the parts of their compounding networks of man size arteries cut into complete darkness, where their menacing openings were laid out by the hundrids in front of those getting ready to make the daily run.

By the time the heat of the Stone Hand’s bodies stopped rolling out like fetid fog from their poaching chasms, the top of Hillock was nearly full, and with nearly enough people to make the first run.

About two hundred and fifty Hatters were drowning out the awful noises that those who got there first that morning had bravely faced. When it was calm enough that one could hear the lonesome eerie sounds and echoes--the crackling and sloppy smacking clatters resonating off the high archways cut through granite, one would envision the Stone Hands gnawing on the last bits of meat and sinew from their latest captive’s bloody bones--sinking that imagery up with the noise within the darkest and most infrequently visited of places in this vast underworld--the edges of a Hatter man’s dreadful thoughts.

Just like marbles finding their way to the lowest point in a floor, someone had to be there first everyday and hear those awful sounds; someone had to find the bottom of this place, that someone was usually Sowr Clatter.

The ground had just been dark blood-red from the home run of the night before; usually when Sowr Clatter got there the floor was not fully black yet; but slowly before his eyes, with heat from the plasma orb, the crimson splatters gave way to the normal black rubbery substance that was staining the path ahead. Only the Hatters who came early enough knew what the floor ahead of them was painted in, but they never felt the need to mention what they knew and the others, well they never wanted to ask.

Roger was there with Sowr today, not many others came that early to hear those sounds. They would be back in their holes and mines, stretching and getting ready for the day’s runs. Roger was not there often but he’d come early, when he’d come at all.

Often Roger and Sowr came to Hillock before the first red warm-up glow began, before it stole the pitch black away from the frigid night. Each trying to beat the other one here, each trying to be the bravest. Who got there first could ebb and flow, but today the air was so heavy and the fog around them tasted and smelt so much like the living, writhing burnt skinned bodies of the Stone Hands mutants, that neither one paid any mind to who was the bravest Hatter this day.

“The demons are always here, every morning, but only once in a while do they launch their blood hungry attacks against us lower Hatter tribe--we are the strongest tribe this season by far.” It was Roger’s normal speech, Sowr had come to expect it, much like you or I would expect an old codger of our time, and of our world, to accuse the morning’s clouds of the afternoon’s rain, still yet to come.

“Here, here!” Sowr said, “For all those who have seen the attacks first hand before this cold morning--us survivors I mean, we all know that today, this very instant, conveys all the hallmarks as had those earlier attacks--attacks in which many lives were lost--I prey we heed the signs good Roger--I prey we run fast as steam today.” Sowr would reply with his own whimsical predictions every time that it looked like the blood would rain. They tried new ways to say the same old thing again and again until they too one day would be reaped by the Stone Hands or exterminated by the Tardarian’s periodic toxic heavy-fog.

“Here, here!” Roger would say back.

The past attacks made some Hatters survivors of that that was certain to come again. Survivors, especially those with scars were the unofficial leaders of these runs. Regardless, nothing guaranteed surviving this time and death was the one sure thing, maybe not today but sooner or latter all those who braved past the netherworlder’s holes, or lived in the Midas caverns, lost their lives violently; and that war usually right here, on the black granite floored chasm, of Intersection Avenue.

The Hatters were greasing their bare arms with light green algae oil; some were slicing through the air with their spin knifes, a foot long re-curved, serrated battle knife that was built onto a palm swivel, and fixed to a chain-mesh gauntlet covering their dominate arms. The idea of it was that the knife could be swiveled forward when the owner of it needed to trust it forward and still be able to reverse it in one continues motion, to trust backwards--hopefully slicing open the same target twice. After all a dead Stone Hand meant a living Hatter and everyone knew that.

It was nearly time. The last rows of men and women were disbanding from their lines were they had each been facing another’s back and another yet was facing their own back. All those facing forward were rapidly latching the tiny hooks on the back of someone else’s light armor chain gauntlet, while ignoring the tugs from the stranger behind them, who was souring up their own light armor chain-mesh covered arm. It looked like, what a line of military monkeys priming each other, might look like.

This was all tradition by now, the morning bonding ritual of the Hatter tribes, and it had been the same for the better part of the last four million years. Today, all of it was done so routinely that even when the mutants lying in wait decided to attack, it would just be another ordinary aspect of life. This hellish ritual was a lot of things but there was nothing about it overly exceptional, nothing about it was thought of as horrific to either faction. Not to the Hatter who were almost ready to make their run, and not to the much larger, Stone Hands who were waiting with their barbed spears and fish-hook blankets for the Hatters to try and pass--hiding in the shadows drawn against their tunnel holes, dotting both walls below the far off plasma orb, and burning away the last frigid bite of night.

“They got two from the second home run yesterday.” Roger was touching his raised toes, flexing his thin muscular calves.  

“From our quarter? Who got it? Do I know them?” Sowr knew that no one was reaped from the first home run of yesterday evening, because like today he was in it, and like today, he had taken the lead.

“I can’t remember for sure, I think their names were Bates, and Gunther? You know any Bates in our quarter? I know there ain’t no Gunther’s, but they is some Bates. Know any Bates?”

“Kathy and Brandon, their kids, and grandkids I guess; but they would never be in the second home run.” Sowr was asking, as much as he was telling Roger, he did not know the Bates that well but he could not fathom them running with the upper Hatters.

Betty Firechild was listening to the two men as she was latching the last titanium loop over the last titanium hook on Sowr’s arm, just above the elbow. When finished, Betty gave her own 12-inch knife a quick spin, caught it and jabbed it forward--slicing only air. Having over heard Roger and his conversation, she asked Sowr, “Who are you talking to?”

Sowr looked around but Roger must have melted back into the amassing crowd. When he did not answer, Betty ignored her first question and asked, “Why would they take the second home run if they’re from our quarter?” Betty then checked behind her; seeing there was still another person there she turned so she was facing the amassing, lower north Hatters, and spun her knife again, this time so fast it sounded like a bee reaching full speed just before being thumped from the air. “Thump!” As she grabbed the smooth metal handle-counterweight, and sliced the air where she now knew no Hatter was standing behind her.

“Indeed Betty, I doubt any of our people would be running with the upper folk, it would not have been Brandon Bates or any of his clan, I bet their an entirely different Bates family, but I never knew a Gunther.” Sir looked around at all the people stretching and readying themselves to run, none were from upper quadrants, some may be from the rear areas of lower, lower Midas but the uppers would never run with the lower Hatters and likewise, the lowers would never run with the upper Hatters. “Indeed, they must be different Bates then who we know.” Sowr reaffirmed.

“It’s just what I heard, I didn’t run yesterday, but I heard that a Bates man and a Gunther women was reaped in last night’s home run.” Roger was back again. Sowr looked to Betty to introduce her and Roger to each other, but Betty was bent down tightening up her boots and her pants were worn through just below each cheeky curve of her shapely butt, exposing her baby smooth brown skin just inches away from… so Sowr decided not to bother her just then.

When he managed to remove his gaze, he saw that Roger’s hands were clasped behind his back and his chest was pushed forward, his bones cracking for all close enough to hear, to hear.

Sowr moved to do his own warming up. Ahead of him, the black granite ground stole the light from the burning plasma orb that was hanging above Junction Mound at the far end of this obstacle. The sweat and blood that had been shed the day before was all blackened so no crimson could be seen distinguishing the blood from the sweat anymore; there had passed to many years of unmolested blood drying unto blackened tar, so it quickly assimilated all red drops into the dark grimy culture, the grey granite had transformed into over the many millennia of life lost here.

The black was absorbing all the light from the orb that the cold clear air refused to take. This was the first blitz of the day, so when the moisture on the ground dried and the vapors were no longer seen, or when the air warmed and showed the warmth rising, whatever--for one reason or the complete other, or any mixture of the two, some unspoken thing caused the metaphoric single shot that meant “go!” Today’s “go!” was when the vapor was no longer seen rising, shortly after the buzzing began.

The bursting hum individually started loud and faded as the knife lost its spin, then with the flick of the wrist, began again. The hum of one Hatter spin knife could instantly ripen the seed of fear in the heart of any unarmed person left to face one. Now on Hillock, the hum of roughly three hundred well polished, well sharpened, Hatter spin knifes was deafeningly loud. It reverberated at such a frequency that the very fear in a person’s gut was displaced by a highly exasperated purpose.

The vibration of the readying Hatter horde would wake the dead. A puddle of water would rumble and spittle up and splatter, due drops would breakaway, fly up and fall back to. The sound was magnified to the power of ten in the cavern of Intersection Avenue.

To be a part of such a sound was like knowing beyond your own sight, you would not be facing the terrors awaiting you alone. No one could be signaled out, no arranged leader yelled, “go!” nothing but the obvious climax meant move. As soon as the hum was as loud as it could get, and as soon as the horror turned to movement, movement turn into courage, and courage turn into a wish--the wish that the Stone Hands would try it today! The Hatter horde ran down the mound, down to where the Gray stone floor gradually turned into rubbery black, the whole while never losing count or control if their breathing.

Each Hatter was engaged with only their peripheral vision, their eyes were facing forward at the glinting sweaty necks before them, all waiting for the massive blood red disfigured mutants to pounce upon them. Sometimes catching the occasional glimpse of evil blood thirsty glowing yellow eyes, like demons peering out from deep within the complete darkness of the hideous monster’s tunnels. The Stone Hands were easy to spot if they did emerge and attempted to scramble the uniformity of the Hatter horde; they were covered with legions and spotted with stab wounds and marked by fierce teeth and fingernails and whatever else their former prayed futilely fought back against them with.  

The Stone Hand’s tunnels came and went, there was no attack--at least not this day, not the first blitz anyway. When the last of the lower north quarter Hatters made it over the Stone line, the upper north Hatters started amassing on Hillock to do the same.

“Where you off to today Betty?”

“Out of fat and protein again, headed to Hall-Herculean. Today I’m going through the Murdock labyrinth. You?”

“Work again.” Sowr braced himself, awaiting her usually response.”

“Dry Land Sowr Clatter, you got kids back behind the Stone-line who need teaching--still you going up a lever to teach them well-heeled kids, dry land dry land, I never knew such a fool as you.”

“Well Betty, like I told you before, as soon as you want to start buying my supplies, I’ll quit the upper Midas caverns and come work for your kids.”

Tempting offer, she could afford it too, now that her mine hit, and he was a very pretty man. While admiring him in them aims, Betty had notice that Sowr had been here everyday that she was since she started making the run so she asked. “How often do you hit the blitz Sowr? Betty only did it once or twice a month, but every time, he was here.

Sir Clatter smiled; he did this everyday, almost. So he mislead her a bit and paused right after saying. “Mostly Sundays, a lot of Sundays…”

“You do this ever Sunday too!?” She took the bate and interrupted Sowr where he thought she would, She was terrified. His odds of being alive should have been rundown by now. When Betty seemed her most enthralled, Sowr Clatter went for the punch.

“No, I fear I misspoke or you mistook me. Some Sundays I take off, otherwise I’m hear every day.”

“Well, you’re just a fracking fool, a real fracking fool.” Betty had sworn more and more each time that she ran the Blitz, but Hatter’s of the hard life recognized cussing as adoring tone. Most people reacted the same when they found out he had done this at least six times a week for 15 years.

Now there, safely standing with the rest of their group on top of Change Over Mound. They were taking off their gloves and for a second they were just chatting before they would part their own treacherous ways. Sowr caught himself with his eyes pinched to Betty’s friction hardened nipples, showing more crimson than the rest of her brown skin through her armor--his mouth a’gape. She was lit beneath the plasma orb in reflective sweat, and her body’s glinting silhouette was escaping through the small holes of her light armor-mesh shirt. He thought he’d cleverly patch up any intrusion caused by staring at the fairer sex’s breasts so long, and asked. “How do you keep that so clean?” She had not bought it but was polite enough to answer the ploy.

She my not think it a ploy he’d latter assure himself. Shit, after all his shirt, like all those who lived alone stayed on always, you needed a second person to take it off, and like any article one never removed--just like one would image--it became grimy and caked with years of blood, sweat, and tannins that leeched out of the body beneath it.

“I just soak it in the leach pond in my house, the leachfish clean it for me, it’s easy.”

“Aren’t you afraid of worms?”

“You can’t catch em’ unless the leechfish bite you; I just use a line, and before I touch the thing, boil it. That cleans the rest.” She looked at him inquisitively and verified that he was really a fool, “Every day Sowr?”

“Yep, except for some Sundays, some Sundays there is not enough people gathered to make the blitz so we just turn around and go back home.”

“You should come by--that is if Sunday’s blitz is a bust, then you should come to my little hole and let me put a new shine on your metal.” When she said this he had hope she did catch him ogling at her body without thought, he hoped she noticed his body making its own movements and was now inviting him to her house despite all that involuntary carnal misbehaving--he also hoped for “finally getting this fragging thing off, even if it was just for a moment.”

“No wonder you never have time to clean your shirt.” She added. All single men had dirty shirts but Sir Clatter’s was differently the dirtiest one she’d ever seen, but now that made since, as did the scars on his arm and face, the fool did this everyday, just to go teach rich kids as trade for fresh water and fat.

Betty was fit, fair, and widowed. Every body knew of her recent successes in her clan’s mine. Her eldest boy, Derrick Firechild, had more or less been draping the ore around his neck. Even falling behind in the blitzes, he was bogged down. It was no secret that she now had money and she could, if she wanted to, move herself to the upper Free Midas caverns; but she could not take her whole clan, so like all good females who found themselves as their peoples matriarchs, she stayed and helped shared the life load.

“What are you teaching those bastards today, Sowr?”

“About where we come from, Math, geological science and--let see, oh yes, I have for them a surprise spelling test.”

From Sowr’s list, all Betty seemed to hear was the first thing, so she asked with genuine curiosity “Where do we come?”

Sowr often forgot that people from the lower caverns didn’t go to school, so they didn’t learn about ancient history and anthropology. “Betty Firechild, we come from the surface, above ground, that much we know.”

“Oh--you, you’re twisting my knife hand.” She was uneducated, not stupid. “The pressure up there would kill a man, the wind would skin a him in a second and melt his bones within two.”

“Well, that’s certainly true, but it wasn’t always that way. The surface of Venus used to be very nice.” Roger looked around and asked, “say, did you see where my friend Roger went?”

“Roger, Roger wake up! You’re having that dream again.”

Instantly I was washed over in cool relief to find myself in my own soft twin-sized bed, with my head on my duck feather stuffed pillow, with the air-conditioner blowing quietly on my sweat soaked face and my mom’s face was unscathed and her hands were un scarred. She was still firmly holding my shoulder. I had just been standing there like always, and like always Sowr was there with me, running beside me--it was so lucid and sharper than ever.

“What planet are we on mom?” I knew the answer but I had to ask every time, I had the dream.

“Silly boy, this is Earth, your home.” Mom could always make it better with those words, but I think she could tell that I was still a little bit scared. “Here Roger, I’ll keep your lights on for tonight, try to get some more sleep, we have a long drive tomorrow.”

End.

Q.B. Smith

06-01-2012

The Cromakkian Job

Hawk and Dog

The Cromokkian Job

By Q. B. Smith

“What is it made of?” asked the mind of 27-Dog after he suddenly appeared in the dark-matter-ether of the fourth dimension. The mind of 05-Hawk was already there and had seemingly been impatiently waiting.

“Alloy of some kind--mag enriched inox-steel to be more accurate--if I recall it is not what they call food grade metal, but it is light weight.” Hawk seemed aggravated to Dog, even though he was actually glad that someone else was finally there that he could interact with. Dog felt as if there was a new somberness about him, a darkness surrounding him, keeping Dog out.

Hawk had been--by an unbreakable intergalactic law--confined to himself for over a year now. To Dog, Hawk seemed much more worn out than the last time they had worked together; back during their diplomatic exchanges with the Greys, who were then colonizing Lolobad’s solar system.

     It was already clear to Dog that Hawk was not going to be as light hearted as he had been on the Grey’s capital planet, Planet-1. That was when they negotiated the updated mining laws concerning meteors with single cell life forms on them. Dog was able to see that this new mission had taken its toll on Hawk within the fraction of a second since he had arrived and they began planning the new mission that they were about to undertake.

In the second instant after Hawk thought the various molecular values to Dog, they both understood a single concept, the first thing that they could possibly do, which might conceivably work. They communicated these concepts, not in words--but in feelings, with knowledge, and in a telepathic process that would best be compared to mass commutative uploading.

I will try my best to translate it into English.

Between Cromokks thoughts flowed instantaneously. One Cromokk could start to develop an idea and the other may finish it for him. By the time Hawk had brought up his memories of the structure’s molecular composition that he had uploaded from the spore-pod’s analyzer, the drone that surveyed the sight over a hundred years ago, he had made the jump to how they could best use the mammal’s, habitats framing metal to accomplish their mission. In the blink of a human’s eye, Hawk had answered Dog’s question and posed the new one. They blew through everything math or science related in this way, as they were working towards what Cromokks called the hard questions.

For this assignment there was more than one hard question. Only a few types of hard questions stood out to them, and they were a very big deal to Cromokks. These were not questions of a scientific or a mathematical nature. Since Cromokks had aligned themselves with the sciences and with mathematics, most of the hard questions that they found themselves up against were questions that revolved around the irregular behaviors of other, less evolved species. For instance, the hard question Hawk and Dog were now hashing out throughout the second blink of a human’s eye was. “How do we move all these sentient beings into a menagerie, move that menagerie to a distant galaxy, and do it all without violating the intergalactic fundamental law? “Do not let our presence be known!”

The business of placing the humans in a menagerie was the easy part. It was in human time, approximately 3800 AD, or what they now referred to as the year 1827 AF. 1,827 years after the remaining humans had been forsaken. They had already placed them selves in a kind of undersea zoo as part of their last-ditch-effort to survive their Earth’s burning atmosphere.

Dog and Hawk’s job was to find a way to move that undersea zoo, menagerie, habitat--whatever you want to call it, off the dying planet before a fast approaching neutrino event’s shockwave vaporized the last of the entire know population of hot-bloods, or as they called themselves, mammals.

Since mammals only lived on Earth and could only prosper on planets with oxygen rich air, and since Earth was the only planet within ten galaxies of the Milkyway that had an atmosphere of oxygenated air, they had to be moved far away if Hawk and Dog were to be successful in saving them.  

Their job was only to get them to a safe distance before the foreseen neutrino event would set off the beginning of the total destruction of what the humans called the Milkyway, leaving in its wake the cosmos’ newest black hole. After they were off the planet and far enough away from the super explosion, Dog and Hawk would start the menagerie on the beginning of its multi-generational flight toward their home galaxy, where their home planet of Cromo waited unfailingly for them to upload after they sent the mammal-menagerie hurling though space towards its new home, Trilop-E.

Trilop-E was just one planet farther away from Rubakon, the Cromokk’s giant blue sun, then Cromo. Its only plant-life was thick moss and mile high trees that covered every single surface inch of the planet. Because of the density of autotrophs on Trilop-E, the air was thick with oxygen--so thick that its atmosphere was prone to flash fires when the large trees on the two Polar Regions let loose their pollen in the early spring.

This was the home of the Trilopian Tree slugs, a mainly mindless soft-shelled snail. However, many of the Tree slugs on Trilop-E had attached to them, a very intelligent symbiotic fungus host nodule. The fungus host kept the slugs from mindlessly wandering into Trilop-E’s springtime atmospheric flash fires, so in return the slugs kept a generous supply of hydrocarbons flowing into the highly evolved lichen that guided them. It was this society of symbiotic and slimy creatures that all Cromokks could trace their long heritage back to. Hawk and Dog were to make the mammal’s habitat an intergalactic, life sustainable craft, and start it on its way to this planet before uploading their minds back to Cromo. This Cromakkian job was to make it so, humans would one day live on Trilop-E.   

Ah yes, this was their job, this was what their higher-ups and do-nothing bureaucrat-bosses had decided was the appropriate course for them to take. Doing it this way was thought to be the path of least resistance, so naturally it was the path that any scientifically enriched, mathematics worshipping species would take. But no one told Hawk and Dog how they were suppose to do it, just that they had better not violate the intergalactic fundamental law while doing it--or else!

“We will have to make them believe they are doing it them selves.” Hawk thought while he was feverously shuffling the heliographic orbs his consciousness had displayed out before them. “We will have to infiltrate their society somehow.”

Hawk was the older of the two Cromakks, this effectively made him the boss. His spore one Earth had ripened nearly a year before Dog’s did and he knew things about Earth that Dog did not.

This partition of knowledge was not part of some matrix or a hierarchal structuring of authority. They were given different pieces of this puzzle to expand their collective thoughts. This was not at all part of an arbitrary security classing mechanism built into their society to distinguish between leaders and followers. Hawk knew what compounds the human habitat was made out of, while Dog did not; but Dog also held an array of knowledge that Hawk did not hold. Cromokks had a good reason for functioning this way. Since Cromokks did not need the same kinds of social controllers that humans did in order to operate a productive society, there was no regular sense of confidentiality and classified or sensitive information between Cromokks, at least not in an Earthly sense. Those kinds of things were not needed for them to manage industrious intelligent agencies. Since they had no sense of pride or delusions of temporary entitlement like humans had, being the boss only came with age, and even still it was merely to preserve the pure sciences that they did it this way. As so, in a lot of instances the bosses of Cromo knew less about things than did their subordinates.

The withholding of key information was for accumulating a much clearer collective thought. So Hawk was informed of all the available resources that were here on this planet, while Dog was actively avoiding coming into contact with any type of that same data. On the other appendage, Dog was fully informed of everything his people had learned about human behavioral patterns, while Hawk was vigorously avoiding knowing anything about why humans do what they do. This way they would not risk falling into the same thought patterns as each other and becoming effectively the same brain-mind in two different clone-bodies.

This actually happens a lot with all the non-careful telepathic species throughout the galaxies. They would grow into a hive social structure as their thoughts become increasingly homogenized and they began to fail to identify the idea of the individual. Cromokks had decided eons ago to handle all their projects in this way for it was part of their extensive ideology to believe that the hive-mind was the wrong way for their societies to best prosper. So by restricting differing bits of data from each of the many groups of Cromokks, it kept their sense of diversity alive; but more importantly, It kept clean the integrity of what Cromokks called pure science.

The goal was simple, Dog, not informed of what resources were available to them, would ask questions like. “Could we use a Cerionic field destabilizer, and reinforce the existing structure with an ionic atomization alignment?”

Hawk would never have asked that question because he knew that the alloy in these structures was composed of less than ten percent chromium; and everyone knows that for a Cerionic field destabilizer to function, the beams would have needed to be made up of more than twelve percent, but less than 13.5 percent of chromium--the only place humans seem to use that particular alloy was in food-grade configurations and this metal was not that.

If both Hawk and Dog knew there was not enough chromium urged into the steel-inox, the two of them would have moved on to find solutions practical with the immediate available resources. Dog would have never asked about the CFD, as it is the efficient nature of their race that Cromokks try to only work with what they had available on site; also if they both knew everything the other knew, they would be no need at all to communicate about what methods were best, thus there would be no record of their converging thoughts uploaded into the quantum cloud.

Since Dog asked about the Cerionic Field Destabilizer or the CFD, they had their first possible solution, one that would not have been thought of if they had both received the molecular analysis data from the Spore-pod. So what that there might not be enough time until flash-out? Cromokks were not considered failures, just so long as they followed intergalactic law and kept trying and working on solutions. Now they could, if they had to, add chromium to the human structures and send back the request to their home world of Cromo, to acquire a fully charge CFD unit. The only problem would be in trying to obtain enough chromium on a burning Earth to do what they needed it for. At least it was a viable way to do what they were sent here to do. It was a start and it meant success was possible even under the worst-case scenario.

The Cromokks, like all intelligent socially inclined species, had leaders – many leaders to be precise, and their leaders, like everyone else’s leaders in the cosmos, sometimes elicited the sensation of worry from their subordinates. They too cursed their bosses like all intelligent species do; they just did it a lot faster than most. The same feelings that came when being drove about by someone with incompetent driving capabilities, came to Dog and Hawk when they were given these vague orders. Just as much as with any leader, of any species across Cromokk’s half of space-time, feelings of shock and bewilderment came from their leaders with outrageous orders like these.  

For Dog and Hawk, their grievances towards authoritative incompetence in the case, was not for being ordered here and being tasked with this mission in the first place, even though it was challenging, their gripe was because the only clear command they got from the Snake, their boss, was. “Do not violate the intergalactic fundament law!” The rest they needed to find out how to accomplish themselves. “Any Snake mind or Bear would be much more qualified than them, after all they were just a Dog and Hawk, they were still very young and inexperienced members of the Cromokkian race.” Both had thought.

When Hawk and Dog’s leaders decided this would be the path of least resistance, they were not referring to the human’s limited capability of resisting Cromokkian will. Out of the many maneuvering factions throughout their own half of the cosmos, humans would resist them least of all.

The path of least resistance only meant that the naturalists’ species across the stars would be infuriated if Hawk or Dog violated the fundamental law. If they inadvertently made contact with the humans, then people like the Greys, the lords of the other half of the cosmos past the far boarder, and the Trilopian Tree Slugs with their intelligent symbiotic fungus host-nodules, the board of twelve here on Earth, and the Eagle people of the giant gas world Exeeb orbiting Trilop-E, would all have conniption-fits. They would be very much diverged, if at any point during this assignment Hawk or Dog violated the central rule of the fundament law. The political fall out would be very hard to cope with back on Cromo and the resistance would be greater than if Hawk and Dog only failed; just as long as they did not break the first intergalactic law and kept trying to succeed, that is.

No trouble would come from the humans though. No, if it was only left to the humans, Hawk and Dog could just scoop them up like bugs and put them into a giant interstellar jar with holes on the top, no--not holes--rather oxygen-field-modulators.

So now the two of them were to the third blink of a human’s eye in their conversation and from Hawk, the best idea so far had finally come. “CVG-glass, we can use carbon-pressed vacuumed glass.” Hawk was still wearing his year of solitude and it showed in the underlying feelings that accompanied his technical thoughts as he went on. “There is plenty of sand here, and they already have the technology--they are even using it now.” He spoke in a timbre that was the Cromakkian equivalent to a Human’s melancholic monotone.

Hawk’s exact thoughts to Dog, roughly translated into English were. “The framing beams of the 33 structures are only wrapped with the Chromium/inox steel, the centers are filled with aluminum alloys, they are very light weight but not relatively strong, nevertheless if in-between them was CVG, or Carbon Vacuum Glass, the structures strength would be increased sufficiently enough for near light speed space travel.”

“What method do we use for propulsion Hawk? CVG is as heavy regular glass.”

As Dog thought his question to Hawk, Hawk began simultaneously explaining how the plasma lights that the humans used for sight, could be easily be modified and used to break up the atomic-molecular structure of the seawater surrounding the human habitat.“We could then use atomic fusion and the rapidly expanding gas to propel them from the gravity lock that Earth had on them.” With no emotion Hawk went on. “They could even save enough of the extra hydrogen to convert into hydrochloric acid and use that in batteries to power ionization propulsion for after they reached deep space and we uploaded back to Cromo” Hawk concluded. At the mention of uploading, Dog perceived a hint of the old Hawk--the fun loving Hawk who he so much enjoyed working with in past missions.

Nearly two Earth minutes had passed and both Dog and Hawk were nearly exhausted from maintaining the perfect quantum-pitch it took to work with the orbs. Their final mechanical engineering task that the orbs were used for would be to figure out how to keep a life-filled cavity, that had long ago been pressurized enough to hold back a five-thousand-meters sky of seawater, from exploding under its own internal pressure once it reached the vacuum of space. They had covered ledgers of engineering schematics that would make their rough idea physically possible; that part was comparatively easy for them next to the rest of their problems.

Now they had to cover the hard questions.  “What method of infiltration do we use?” Dog thought to Hawk having finally acknowledged his agreement with Hawk’s newly shaped plan of mechanical gravitational exit. “How do we get them to undertake all this proposed extra energy exertion?”

Three or four blinks of the human’s eye went by while both Dog and Hawk had thoughts of their own. These thoughts were called deep-thoughts. These thoughts--they did not share with each other. In part, Cromakks would use deep-thoughts because they did not want everything uploaded into the quantum cloud where may be reviewed by their superiors back home. This was the most complex one of the many hard questions and they were bound to dance on the line of legality to accomplish their goals.

Infiltration was partially based on the infiltrated, and since they could not blatantly violate the fundament law, and since the target was incredibly unpredictable, so were the two Cromokk’s answers to the hard question that they now faced.

For a second Dog even blinked out under the mental stress, leaving Hawk alone in the dark-matter-ether of the fourth dimension.

Finally when Dog flashed back and returned to his own holographic orbs, Hawk thought on to him. “We will just give them the answer they are already looking for.”

“What is that?” Dog asked. He seemed to Hawk, overly revitalized from his split second mental break, even a little excited.

Hawk was still too wrapped-up in the hard questions to realize that Dog’s little break was the first time his mind had been in his new Earth body. Dog would now be reacting to the cognitive fusion between his Cromokkian mind and the chemical makeup of is new life-growth’s neural-system. So Hawk thought on without compensating for Dog’s likely momentary intoxication. “They are trying to survive, they built their core for that purpose, so they will be looking over all their future failed attempts that they would have tried. They will be able to see everything that won’t help them, from looking at their core’s quantum cloud, splinter realities. If we make sure everything they do on their own that is not conducive to our goals, will fail, then we will leave them with only one solution--our solution. They will do it themselves if they see it as their only viable solution to survive.”

Dog knew this was true and could work, though he had yet to materialize this realization into his new corporeal mind’s language. His thoughts seemed to be infected with something describe by mammals, as morality. “But that would mean they are aware of them selves as a whole and have shown they can plan for their future generations, that ought’ mean we should instead use advanced sentient-prodigal and just ask them if they want our help.” Dog was baffled by this cognitive development. His superiors were essentially asking him to kidnap an entire third level sentient species but even more strange, was in the ways in which that thought worried him. “It was wrong.”

He had many deep-thoughts that he did not share with Hawk, he did think to Hawk however. “Now I understand why our orders are so vague.” He concluded his thought with a bit more indecipherable murmuring about his do-nothing Snake and Bear bosses back on Cromo.

Hawk, in total agreement about Snake and Bear and their boss’s illogical commands, thought to Dog “That, is not alone the sum of it young Dog.” Hawk himself, was nearly ready to take a break from the fourth dimensional field that they were occupying.

To be there took a lot of mental energy and concentration. Instead Hawk toughed it and out and thought on to Dog “Sentient-prodicall means you talk with the local species farthest along, or the most sentient beings living on the objective planet, while following the fundamental law concerning all the lesser life forms, sentient or not. As so, lesser life forms include the humans.”

“More self-aware than humans?” Dog was intrigued but also wondered how come he, the behavioral export of this planet, did not know of another intelligent species occupying it.  At any rate, this was another good side affect for withholding unique information from each Cromokk who were undertaking these off world missions. They had come to a point where Hawk must inform Dog of the ancient ones--the Board of Twelve. These new topics excided Cromokks, and they motivated them to exchange new ideas that they otherwise would not. It was the Snake’s managerial method, sort of like their type of a telepathic synergy tactic.

“What here thinks more about themselves than humans do? Did you know humans built this refuge over a thousand years ago to preserve themselves, who here can be more self aware than humans are?” Dog was baffled.

Hawk was still unaware of Dog’s temporary moral cognitive condition, so he carelessly thought to Dog “Just because they built these habitats so long ago, does not mean that over a thousand years ago their ancestors were not just thinking of saving their own rickety skins. The original builder’s prodigy may only be a side affect of the builder’s individual self awareness.”

Hawk was for the most part correct with this thought. Building these structures so well could have been as the result of the builder’s fear of drowning beneath three miles of ocean.

The Cromokkian intergalactic council distinguished between three levels of sentient beings, humans at most were class two. Class one is what most humans were, for they are only aware of themselves and were fairly numb to even other humans. Dog learned that humans barely became a class two as a whole only because a small percentage of them were aware of other humans and made choices based on their society’s wellbeing and not just for their own self-interests. Then there was the third class of sentient beings--beings who would never violate the fundamental laws; the Third class meant you knew about all life energy and not just that of yourself or that of your own species’.  Egocentricity was the trait of the class ones, and concerning yourself with just your own species was the defendant markers of a class two, but to understand that all life is somehow connected is the sign of the class three sentient being.

If human were class three sentient beings, Hawk would have just asked their designated leader if they wanted help when he arrived a year earlier; but if they were a class three, they likely would have never been hiding beneath the ocean--like they were, after having destroyed their home planet--like they had.

Since humans, taken one by one to study, usually proved to be nothing more than a class one, the same as any complicated multi-cellular life form, Hawk and Dog had to do their jobs this way. Cromakks being class three sentient beings, would never breach the fundamental law, and human as a whole barely classed as second level sentient being and as such, humans fell under the Central-Laws of the interstellar operations treaty. The fundament law was clear; Dog and Hawk were not to make themselves visible to the humans.

Dog was still thinking about the possibilities of re-classifying the humans. “That can’t be completely true.” Dog’s thoughts reiterated. “They built it to last this long, and if it was not for the planet’s accelerating orbit and its gas expansion slowing and collapsing the orbit of its moon, it would probably last another one or two thousand years. I think that from what we know of human behavioral patterns, they must have been thinking of future generations when they built this under sea city as strong as they built it.”

“Well, son Bata-prime of Boigle and son alpha of Snake, both say there is a more advance--more self-aware species living amongst the humans, calling them selves the Ancient ones. We heard their signal for billions of years in the quantum cloud from the core in Cromo’s capital, Snavole City; but it was actually the humans who first deciphered the old signal code.”

“How did these second level humans know how to decode such a thing?” Dog secretly grew even more conflicted.

“They swam with them. The reason our computation always failed to grasp the language was because it was organic in nature, and as far as we knew, not possible. Since such a complex organic language was thought impossible, we thought it to be random static, so no Cromokk ever even tried to decode it; and even if they had tried, the language is so complex and with so many characters that we, not in full contact with the Ancient ones like the human were, could have never decoded it. That is the only reason why we are not just taking the twelve Ancient ones, and why we have been told to take the few remaining humans as well. This is why we must follow intergalactic law concerning the humans--because they are not the most advance ones living here.” Amongst the words above, Hawk had imbedded into his last thought was, he was tired of explaining why the humans were important enough to save, but not advanced enough to class as level-three sentient beings, and that Dog should move on now!

Dog received the sub message loud and clear. “Are these the Ancient ones, as in, those who wrote the Ancient binders?” Dog’s thoughts stop waiting for the revelation he suspected was coming. “They had to be the same ones. They had to be the Board of Twelve.” He knew all the rest of the unspoken data behind this mission now. They would have asked the board of twelve if they wanted Cromakkian help, but they did not need to, the Board of Twelve had all ready asked for help over a million years ago, they were third level sentient beings even then, the humans were hardly second level, even now. Dog shuttered in deep-thought but was careful to hide what he could only hope Hawk was also hiding from him. They were sent here to try to save these mammals but they were not sent here to succeed. So as soon as Dog started that thought he withdrew it from their tête-à-tête, but Hawk had caught enough of it already and used it to move on.

“Yes, we believe they are the same ones who uploaded the Ancient Binders.” So not only did they both know what they were up against, they both knew each other knew just why they were here on this dying planet and why their jobs seemed so awkward with so many hard questions to over come.

“Well, how then did I hear of the binder as a child on Cromo three hundred years ago if we never learned to translate them? We must know how to communicate with them now; so why take the humans at all?” Dog knew the answer but he also knew that he had to ask the question to disguise the realization that he had a blink of an eye early. They were asked to take the humans too, to make the job even harder--even more impossible. Now Dog understood Hawk’s new demeanor.

“We must take the humans because the Humans uploaded the ancient’s language translation-code into the quantum cloud. If we abandon them the Eagle people of Exeeb will claim they were third level sentient beings and accuse Cromo of failing to uphold our imperial promises; but if we contact them the Greys will claim Cromo violated the fundamental law and that we failed to uphold our imperial promises. In short, we are upload-blocked if we do, and we are upload-blocked if we don’t.”

Both Hawk and Dog arrived at the next understanding by themselves from what they both already knew. Once a fact or idea was uploaded into the quantum cloud, it was solid mater beyond space-time, and it would seem like it was always there. A work or art having been uploaded a hundred years from now, would still be accessible from the core in Stavole City a hundred years ago. The core connected now with now, locking it forever in a quantum cloud. Both Bata-prime of Boigle and Alpha of Snake would be able to review this very conversation, they probably already had, which meant Hawk and Dog probably already failed.  

Hawk, having long been aware of the challenges ahead of them; still knew his thoughts would be visible to his bosses, but he thought with a renewed fervor to Dog anyway. “The quantum binder asked that we save the murderous humans too, so we will--and we will succeed!” There was the old Hawk who Dog admired so much.

Before that, Dog regrettable had showed his despair, so he tried to change his thoughts and asked again “Why are the Humans classed as level two if they built the buildings for the purpose of also saving the Board of twelve.” Dog was asking another hard question, one that could not be answered with a number or direction or even with a yes or no.

“Why are you asking the Hawk, Dog? It is the Dogs who learn of all the behavioral patterns, is it not?”

“Well it is the Hawks that understand local resources and the values installed in them, I can’t answer that because it is against all that we know of human behavior to have had saved them like this. I thought that maybe they used them for some kind of renewable resource, that is why I asked the Hawk who knows of such things.”

“They once did, they use to kill them for food and light-fire-oil, yet they had not used them in that way, or for anything else for...” Hawk rechecked the information he had stored, and then finished his thought. “They have not killed them for centuries before our spores were left here by the spore-pod, they had stopped hunting them a long time ago, today they even keep them alive at a great energy expense to themselves.” Hawk could see where Dog was taking this before Dog himself knew.

“So, should we ask them if they want our help, after we field class them as Third level sentient beings? We have no other answer to why they saved other species at such a cost to themselves?”

“We’d need in-person-approval from a Snake or Boigle, and us Hawks have only young spores on Cromo. Do you Dogs have any near ripe growths on Cromo--or near there?”

“Two embryos, but the ripest one is on the gas world Exeeb. Still, it wont will be a full life-growth until Cromo makes another 12 passes around Rubakon, or this planet make 35 passes around its yellow sun.” A humans eye-blink past when Dog continued. “But if we wait 35 solar orbits, then we wont have enough time to build a safe enough distance-gap between the last of the mammals an the mega-neutrino event’s shock wave, and we will fail to save any of the mammals at all.”

“As it is Dog, we still may not have enough time to save them. If I were you, I’d ignite one of your embryos now. At least one of us may live through this job.”

In the dark matter of the fourth dimension there was no air, so they both only by emulation inhaled twice sharply with a hissing sound, which to Cromakks meant laughing at disparity.

“It won’t be that bad Hawk.” Dog tried to think little of how his earlier purchase of the two embryos was on his mind, calming him, and letting him rest easy. He knew that even if the shock wave does reach them before they sent the humans out on their intergalactic voyage, he’d be able to transfer his conscienceless into one of the embryos before his since of person was totally destroyed. He could even house Hawk if Hawk would only ask him.

Cromakks had no regular currencies, but for each of their jobs done successfully, they received spores and incubation chamber credits from the great city of Snavole. The spores will turn into embryos and then await the owner’s consciousness to be uploaded into them, at which point they will become life-growths.

This was the method Cromakks had populated their half of the know universe. Unlike the Greys, the lords of the other half of the universe past the far boarder, Cromakks did not believe in terraforming planets in order to populate them, instead they could just engineer a new creature that could brave any harsh environment, within reason, and upload there minds into those creatures.

In fact Dog had an embryo nearly ready to populate on Exeeb. It was a modified life-growth version of the Eagle People. It looked like the Eagle people’s bodies but it was engineered to be able to make the short jump to Trilop-E when the orbit of the large ammonia cloud-formation of Exeeb, swung closest and nearly touched the outer atmosphere of Trilop-E.

Dog knew that somewhere in Exeeb he had waiting for him in a massive cloud of ammonia gas loosely held by the gravity of two massive chunks of iron, his emergency escape pod awaited him.

Exeeb was home of home the Eagle people, the two bodies of iron ore land were covered with Eagle people larva and pupae most of the Exeebian year while the Eagle people them selves, continuously flew around in low gravity hunting saptue.

Exeeb orbited the slightly larger than Earth sized planet of Trilop-E, for which the humans were unwittingly destined to. Exeeb’s two, four-hundred-kilometer-large metal asteroids swung past each other five times for every time the gas cloud rotated around Trilop-E and exactly fifteen hundred times every time Trilop-E orbited around Rubakon, the blue star that Exeeb and Trilop-E shared with the Cromakk’s home planet of Cromo.

The two chunks of iron that held the gas in place, had no known origins and for longer than life existed in that solar system the chunks of iron held an A-typical slingshot-motional, boomeranging orbit with each other--as well as a regular multiple daily, elliptical orbital relationship with the oxygen rich planet of Trilop-E, which was soon to be the humans new home if they were not vaporized by the foreseen and fast approaching neutrino event.

Each time the iron land bodies of Exeeb pasted close to each other, they renewed their magnetic charges, keeping the E.M. field alive that kept the blue giant, Rubakon, from blowing the Eagle people’s life-granting ammonia gas out into space. The Iron masses acted as the Eagle people’s hatchery while also protecting the ammonia from the blue star’s solar winds with an electro magnetic field similar to that of Earth’s.

Dog had thought of his Exeebian life-growth as a future vacation, in which he would spend a fifty-year life span flying around and hunting saptue, a delectable jellyfish like creature, with the rest Eagle people of Exeeb. Dog did not know that intergalactic war now set on his shoulders and that his specialized embryo on Exeeb would change the laws of the galaxy as they knew them, and that even though he or any other Cromakk would never populate it, His life-growth had a crucial rule to play.

Dog kept to himself his deep-thoughts and plans about leisurely living in Exeeb’s low gravty artic atmosphere, after this mission was over. He instead laid out his first strategy to help with the mission’s hard questions at hand. “I think we should just open a core-channel and let them contact us. Let the humans make initiation themselves. Those meat loving Greys wont cry about us violating the fundamental law if the humans contacted us first.” After a pause to allow for contemplation, Dog added. “They once ate these humans as a delicacy you know?”

Hawk did know that, even though Dog was the one proficient in most all behavioral patterns, the Grey’s barbarous nature was more or less common knowledge back on Cromo.

“There is no guarantee they will contact us, they use the stream as bluntly as any race I had ever known of. Rather than imprinting a thousand things on one quantum point, they use a million points to print--well, to print a bit of binary code I suspect. To look over their data you would not even think it was information storage, it seems more like a continual attempt to plan to store data one day, I’m not even sure they understand a tiny portion of the stream’s full potential yet. They are sort of like a thousand monkeys in a room with a typewriter waiting to push out a masterpiece. They are just primates with a fancy tool. I have not figure out how they could of even build it yet?”

“This species varies, some are much smarter than others. Dog began to answer, he was the behavioral export but he still just had a theory about how they built their core. “Some of them can’t even clean them selves while others have built this working N-Stream interface. The reason there is so much variance between them is because they are set to one chemical consciousness per body. I human mind dies with its body. Because of their bodies, most of the time during their intelligent peaks, their chemical brains are distorted with corporeal substances. Their minds are literally melted with what they call hormones. Often humans with physical retardations can access their minds at an exponentially faster rate than humans with perfect physical conditions afflicting their bodies. They are a strange and surprisingly adaptable creature, it is the result of their diversity that they built the core.”

“How are we going to infiltrate them Dog, I mean if they are fixed to their bodies how will we inter one?”

“They’re not fixed by nature, they just don’t know how to upload. Even if--well, say we taught them how to upload, they are so attached, sub-logically, to their individual bodies, they would never let themselves be uploaded anyways.”

Hawk had already heard Dog’s next idea and squashed it. “Logically, they could take a DNA sample from each remaining member, send its code off in a probe, like the Balaxtrow spore-pod that brought the Cromakk’s embryos to this dying planet, and ignite the proses of embryo development. This way when the embryos became full life-growths on Trilop-E, they could just upload each human one at a time into their new body.

“So what then--now we wait Hawk?”

“Yes Dog. Now we wait for the next time a human uses their N-stream interface, then I, being of the Hawks, will infiltrate him.”

“Very well, let it be so, so says the core.”

No answer from Hawk meant they were in agreement. A moment past before Dog thought to Hawk again. “When I flashed into real time-space, I seemed to be under water, where are our life growths at now.”

“Floating in a man built water way within their habitat, all operational instincts are functioning. I drove your life-growth a couple of times a week to keep it functioning and up to speed, it is much larger and stronger than mine. You’re a lucky Dog.”

“You get what you pay for. If we will be swimming in liquid water, you are also a lucky Hawk.” To most intelligent life spread throughout the stars, liquid water was a luxury and even, sometimes a novelty, Dog felt privileged and started to like this complicated mission just a little bit more. “So what, that there is so many hard questions ahead of us—-liquid H2o man!”

To Dog’s relief, Hawk fulfilled the Cromakkian version of a smile; but still he thought. “It gets old fast, we need to breath gas-air and in the Human cities there is a lot of places where it is hard to find air, there is a lot of tunnels and caverns where there is no air at all. Our life-growths are good swimmers but they can still drown--I don’t want to drown Dog.”

“I would like to swim through their canals exploring their cities until they use the N-stream again, until they use their core in real time.” Dog paid no more mind to Hawks pessimism.

“That should be fine Dog, these growths we have inhabited are males. Luckily the humans don’t seem to interact with the males of these bodies. Still, be warned, the other males similar to us here--the real ones, they will reject you. They some how know we are not like them even though we look and sound like them.” Hawk had a run-in with one before Dog’s arrival, and now the grey skin of his temporary body was raked with red lines. Fresh even streaks of red showed where a true male of the types of life-growths they were using, had raked its teeth over him.

Even though Hawk had arrived on Earth over a year before Dog, the information about the form he took was within the part of the data Hawk had been deprived of. “I’ve been learning things the hard way, I’m still not even sure what to call myself.”

“They’re called--I mean, we’re called dolphins by the humans.” Dog knew what they were called, but even with is biological and behavioral knowledge, he did not know the others would try and harm their approximated life-growths. He had learned that they were very peaceful and totally friendly from the data he had compiled before uploading into one, not five minutes earlier.

“Dolphins eh? I had wondered what I was called, I had been thinking of myself as, Swimmer, you can just keep calling me swimmer too.”

“Yes Dolphins. You will be Swimmer for now, You can call me…” Dog just made a high frequency squalling sound that Hawk would understand; but I cannot translate it into English.

Dog was excited to start swimming in liquid water. “It would be a lot like flying in the ammonia sky of Exeeb.” He thought.

Now, they opened their eyes as they closed their eye, then they fell asleep while they’re bodies woke up. They had exited the fourth dimension--the realm of the dark-matter-ether and had entered into a world of space and tangible matter. Both knowing that in both worlds they still had an impossible mission to do and for which to do it, not a lot of time left.

End