Iron Age short story prompt - The Geode
The Archive of Bliss, ep.1
I’m thinking to try hitting each week’s prompt with recurring characters and setting - episodic! Sci-fantasy of course, and likely shorter than my usual ‘shorts’ of 6k words or more.
So without further ado then:
The Archive of Bliss, Episode One
Bliss was a warm world, a cold world. A world of towering jagged peaks and wet, choking valleys that had defied every attempt at large-scale colonization.
Whether by plague or beast or insanity, no settlement of more than fifty souls had ever passed its second winter. You might be tempted to say that the planet hated life, but its own vibrant ecosystem belied that, and those denizens for whom it cared, it cared for well.
But this wasn’t always good for the myriad microcultures that had sprouted up across the wild planet. Gero Von, for one, would be glad to be rid of Juice Town.
He strapped his overnight pack and sheathed multiblade to the dragonfly’s luggage rack, checked the compact transport’s running lights, and swung a leg over the single seat to mount it. He shook the dust of Juice Town off his leather boots and eased onto the throttle. Soft-eyed Juicers watched him cruise down the rutted main street and out of town.
Those people had it far too easy, medicating on the poia flower’s nectar until each day was no more than a waking dream, filled with strange sights no other corner of the universe could show them. Long stalks of bana drooped over the tops of slumping buildings, dropping their superfood pods on all but the hottest days of the year. It wasn’t free and easy meat, but it was enough to keep slothful folk like the Juicers alive. Gero thought this more a curse than a blessing, but he need not return to this place any time soon, so he put it out of his mind.
His latest orders had come in during the night. He was to break from his survey of the hallucinogen-ridden Juice Town and make the 500 km trek to a poorly mapped location in a certain stretch of hill country. Scouting drones had picked up unusual emanations on etherscan, pointing to active natural magical formations or unregistered residents. The former was precisely the kind of thing for which Gero had joined the Luzcorp Interplanetary Survey Group. Peace, quiet, solitude, and strange archaeo-geological findings.
One day, he might even help learn what made Bliss so hostile to colonization.
Gero kept his small hovercraft low to avoid pirate radar, cruising as close to the forest canopy as he dared. Still he had to land once and hunker down when his farscanner spotted a glint of metal on blue sky - a half dozen slow-moving airships that were as likely to be pirates as not - and again when he rode into a band of blinding rainstorm.
Apart from that, the hours-long trip was clear and cool, and Gero’s destination was easy to spot.
The site was a lonely outcropping of banded rock with a skirt of dense, squat forest around it. Gero orbited the formation, and indeed even the dragonfly’s low power etherscanner picked up undeniable emanations of magic. He drew and engaged his lifescanner as well, and was disappointed to see that it registered one sentient.
He sighed. So much for quiet.
Gero brought his transport down near the mouth of a cave that led into the heart of the rock and down. Dismounting, he pushed the length of his thick leather duster aside, affixed his multiblade to his belt, and armed himself with a bullpup p-beam that had been secured in the craft’s storage compartment.
“Hail!” he cried into the shadowy cave mouth. “Luzcorp Survey here!”
No answer.
“I was dispatched to investigate an anomaly,” he offered. He prayed the resident was human, and sane, but it was far more likely they were out of their gourd on local psychotropics.
“Anomaly?” came a voice at last. It was male, and elderly.
Careful footsteps crunched on gravel and a small white-crowned head bobbed into view. The man’s eyes were dim, tired, but lacked the softness of the people in Juice Town. He wore an outfit of tanned skins, his hair was long, and he walked with a cane.
“No anomalies here, friend corpo,” the old man chuckled. “Just me’n the Geode.”
“Geode?” asked Gero.
“I figured someone was coming ‘pon I seen that fancy ship hoverin’ about.”
“Well, sir,” said Gero, returning the p-beam to his side, “that someone is here.”
“Come, come,” said the old man. “That’s Klepa, by the way, no sir.”
Klepa gestured for Gero to follow and turned on his heel to amble back down the sloping tunnel.
“Call me Gero.”
The surveyor followed, eyes up and ears perked.
The shadows of the tunnel enveloped them only for a moment before they descended into soft torchlight refracted by millions of tiny crystalline veins embedded in the rock. The air grew cold, but the light remained warm.
“I suppose your scanners picked up the emanations, Mr. Gero,” Klepa said over his shoulder.
“Yes, Mr. Klepa,” Gero said, “lots of energy coming off this site. Any idea what’s the cause?”
“Oh I’ve more than an idea,” said the old man, and Gero could hear his grin.
At the bottom of the slope was a tall pillar of rock, too large and regular to be a stalagmite. Near the base of the formation sat a squat hut of stone and mortar. Something cast a faint, multicolored pattern of light on the floor of the cave. As the pair rounded the pillar, Gero saw that the formation had been broken open on the far side, and it was from this that the lights shone.
The broken wall of stone revealed a stunning display of colors and facets, a crystalline work of art only nature’s God could produce. This close, he could feel its power, no scanner required, and the sight of it drew him nearer. His feet shuffled of their own accord.
A hard hand on his chest stopped his unwary approach. Gero looked down at it, then to Klepa’s face.
“Yes, yes,” the old man nodded. “S’quite attractive when you’re not prepared, isn’t it?”
Gero squinted and looked back at the Geode, just managing to turn away from it before he could become mesmerized again.
“You’re living here,” Gero said, indicating the torchlit hut. Klepa nodded. “How do you resist its glamour?”
“Self control,” said the old man.
He strode up to the Geode and stroked it with one hand. Gero wondered whether it was warm or cold.
“I’ve experienced its power, a’course,” said Klepa. “But one must be prepared before the attempt, or risk becoming lost. I can guide you, if you wish.”
Had Gero been a mere explorer, he’d have had no dilemma here. The Inevitable Church forbade any use of intoxicants beyond the fuzziest edge of sobriety. Though the Geode was not a substance to be imbibed upon, Gero sensed that full contact would be far more intense than that initial moment of glamour. What it would do, or show, to him, he couldn’t guess, and would happily never learn.
But he was here with a mission - to bring back actionable intel on the anomalies of Bliss. Such duty was not to be laid aside, and could surely be forgiven.
“What does it do?” Gero asked.
“Visions,” said Kelpa, eyes wide. “No way of telling what, ‘til you look. But you need a guide, or ya might fall in.”
He laughed.
Eager to gather his data and be away, Gero nodded.
“Fine,” he said, “let’s do it.”
Klepa looked pleased and hobbled swiftly to his hut, gesturing Gero to follow. The latter stooped to fit in the small doorway and went no further in. Klepa was already at a small stove, gently placing a pinch of hunweed into a kettle.
“Hunweed?” Gero said, and the old man nodded. “That’s a sedative.”
“Yes, yes,” said Klepa. “The magic cannot work if you’re asleep. Sleep makes you safe again. Two sips a’this give you five minutes with the Geode, but it’ll feel much longer.”
“And you’ll watch me as I sleep,” Gero intoned.
“Safest way,” said Klepa.
He pulled the kettle from the stove just before it reached a boil and poured the bitter tea into an old wooden mug, then handed it to Gero. He didn’t much like it, but at least if something happened to him, the Survey Group would have his last known location and could investigate. With a thought Gero activated his SightLog, then instructed his metabolic AIs to burn away all excess toxins and boost his adrenaline in six minutes.
“Thank you,” he said to the old man, and drank.
“Come, come,” said Klepa, showing only excitement at sharing his secrets. Despite Gero’s initial distrust, he found himself believing the old man was earnest about this.
They approached the Geode, and Gero kept his gaze averted until Klepa urged him to look.
“And place your hands on its surface,” said the old man. “It will itch at first, but worry not.”
Gero complied, finding the surface of the Geode cool to the touch. Immediately the cave dissolved into fractal lights and an earthy itch crawled up Gero’s arms. His skin split into a billion grains of glassy sand that shifted in waves with each beat of his heart. He felt that if he could just move, and keep moving, he might be able to ward off the terrible itch, but his body was one with the earth now, and suddenly he couldn’t feel it to move.
The coolness deepened and his skin went to ice. The itch receded, and Gero’s vision exploded with color.
He found himself rocketing through the burning void of slipspace as if he were spacecraft. And he was. His skin was diamant, its hairs antennae and conduits, his organs reactors and crew his cells. He dropped out of slipspace in the orbit of Matriz, the motherworld, with a hundred other of his kind, and at once they began to fire upon the planet.
He lasted only an instant before planetary defenses turned on him, and then Gero became the conflagration, elated to fill up the void of space with brief heat, jealous for the debris that escaped disintegration.
Now he was the dying cookfire of a mother on one of the outer worlds. Linoa, was it? Dark forest stretched above and strange beasts cried in the night. The mother suckled her child to keep it quiet, and Gero was his hitching breath and tears. They were the last, weren’t they? Those lights in the sky - these were the burning worlds of the galaxy’s end.
When the fire died at last, there might be nothing left.
Gero ascended into the void then, slowly, and drifted for an age. For a moment he felt his body returned to him as his eyelids drooped, and full blackness took him.
Another instant, and he shot awake with a breath. But no, his body was still and stiff, his eyes still closed.
“Not yet, young friend,” he heard Klepa muttering. He could smell the old man’s lonely breath. “I’m afraid you must be made to wake in a better place. The secrets of the Geode are too precious for the galaxy to know. You will thank me, in the spirit world.”
Gero heard the rustle of clothes as the old man hovered over him. Then the adrenaline hit and his eyes flew open. His hand found its way into his duster and drew the snub-nosed two-shot from its shoulder holster. He barely had to aim, the old man was so close, and the fat p-beam took Klepa in the chest before the old man’s knife could fall into Gero’s own heart.
Klepa looked vaguely surprised, then fell to one side with a thud. His crude knife clattered on the stone floor. Gero got up, frantically scanning the cave to see if the old man had any other surprises in store. They were still alone.
It was a pity the old man had decided to kill him. They might have come to a better agreement.
The surveyor brushed himself off, glanced at the Geode and then away. What had it shown him? The end? The past? Or merely a fantasy? Whatever it was, Klepa, though murderous, had been right about one thing - this was too much for the galaxy to know. Precious, maybe, but certainly dangerous.
Gero had a duty to the Survey group, yes, but his first duty was to the good of his fellow man.
He hurried back to the dragonfly, shaking with adrenaline and suffering the mixed afterglow of Geode and hunweed tea. He’d picked up many pieces of gear apart from his Survey kit, knowing that this weird and fascinating planet might throw anything at him. One thing he hadn’t needed to use just yet was the set of explosive charges he’d picked up from a black market near an old crashed space cruiser. At last, their time had come.
Gero situated the several charges around the base of the Geode, and the few he had left he placed at the low mouth of the cave. Maybe it wouldn’t ruin the strange formation entirely, but it was worth a try.
Charges set, Gero ran his checks on the dragonfly to make sure Klepa hadn’t tampered with it, then took off and hovered at a safe distance. Saying a prayer for the sanity of the galaxy, he activated the charges, and a few moments later, heard the first explosions. The charges at the cave’s mouth did their job well - the stone proved rather brittle - and rubble cascaded in an avalanche down into the tunnel, blocking the way, a cairn now for the old man who had lived there for who knew how long.
Gero etherscanned the site. There was still a trace emanation, but it had been severely weakened. With any luck, the energy of the Geode would dissipate further the longer its wreckage sat, and hopefully no one would ever stumble on this site again.
There was a line of rocky hills to the north and upon these Gero made his camp. That night he sent in his report to Mission Control.
Hostiles encountered at site. Battle resulted in destruction of the formation - emanations decreased to negligible levels. Purpose and source remain unknown. Theory - seems to have been a trap, perhaps for tourists. Awaiting next assignment.
Gero frowned at the partial untruths but couldn’t deny their importance. The Survey Group was, after all, primarily concerned with profit. There would be other things on Bliss they could benefit from, things that posed no threat to the sanity of the galaxy at large.
Gero ate from his rations, reviewed his SightLog from the day, deleted it, and lay back to watch the stars in the sky, burning with life.
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