Zeal of the Mind and Flesh Read online

  “Well then let’s be gone five minutes ago.”

  “Wait.” Mac said before we turned to leave. “Your elf friend disabled my leg servos, and that EMP blast destroyed what was left functional. As I am, I will slow you down. I have no desire for an open connection to my main processors to fall into the hands of the SHS.” Mac ejected a cube that served as his local memory bank. “This device has all my information stored on it. Take it with you so that the SHS cannot use it against me. It also houses all my local data, mostly about my work as your assistant, Theo.”

  I understood Mac’s intention’s immediately. I’d built the body he was wearing, so it was the work of a moment to remove the primary memory core. When that was done, I extracted several of the important chips and put them in my pocket. The android instantly became lifeless. The only thing the SHS would find from it was an empty husk.

  I left the room at a jog, not even bothering to collect my shirt or shoes. Dean, Sam, Erula, Yonda, and the purple-haired elf who’s name I never learned were all following me. It wasn’t until I’d been thrust into a leadership position that I realized I was placing everyone’s trust in the words of a bald alien-wizard-man.

  The facility seemed to be much bigger than I would have guessed. It must go quite a way underground. We eventually came to a sign labeled “Employees Only.”

  We waved our hands and jumped up and down, but the EMP blast must have knocked the motion sensor out, because the door didn’t open.

  “All right, stand back. I will kick it down.” Dean braced himself and took a few steps back. “Out of the way Sammy!”

  Sam turned the knob, opening the door easily. “There’s a knob. You can just twist it open Dean.”

  “Oh.” Dean shrugged sheepishly.

  Soon we were down an even longer hallway, though this one was plainer than it had been in the main facility.

  “How big is this place?” I asked while looking at Yonda and Erula.

  Yonda shrugged.

  “Don’t know.” Erula said. “I cleared a dungeon and was awarded a month’s stay here. Walked into a cave and found myself standing in a home filled with beds and tables.”

  “Woah wait a second, you guys have a sex dungeon here?” Dean asked lewdly.

  “No, the kind with monsters.” Erula answered, looking at her lover strangely. Yonda nodded at Erula’s words.

  “Not the time for that Dean!” Sam said as we came face to face with a big concrete wall at the end of the hallway.

  “Well?” Dean asked. “Where to now?”

  I glanced at the pocket watch. It was still pointing dead ahead. Except the only thing that was dead ahead was a big concrete wall.

  “Theo?”

  “It should be right here.” I replied helplessly. Realization dawned on me that I was taking directions from a magic pocket watch. What the hell was I thinking? Why—

  “Wait a second, there’s a latch here!” Dean exclaimed kneeling on the ground. Slowly, a section of the wall slid out of place.

  “A panic room. Sneaky.” Sam said as he got on his hands and knees to crawl through the small hatch.

  “Not a panic room. A telephone booth.” Dean corrected.

  As I stood, I realized he was right. The blue phone booth with the words “Police Box” written above it. It had all the markings of something that belonged in England from nearly two centuries ago.

  The booth looked strangely familiar. In fact, I recognized it from an old show that was airing its two hundredth season. Dr something-or-other.

  Sam must have recognized it at the same time as me. “Is that supposed to be a Tardis?” He asked.

  “Only one way to find out.” I didn’t have a key but after inspection I realized the phone booth didn’t have a key hole. Instead, it had a circular impression that looked a lot like the brass pocket watch. I pressed the watch into the hole and heard the click of tumblers turning. The door swung open.

  I opened the door. Yup, definitely a Tardis knockoff.

  For one, the room was much bigger on the inside than it should allow. There were all sorts of glass tubes and blinking dials with sparks of electricity flying left and right. It looked like a 20th century imagining of what a trans-dimensional ship would look like.

  “A spaceship!” Dean exclaimed.

  “More like a Hollywood movie set. I’ve seen real spaceships and they look a lot less cluttered than this.” Sam replied.

  “What’s a spaceship?” Yonda asked.

  “It’s this big rockety thing that goes bwisshsh and goes flying really high into outer space.” Dean answered as he made sound effects and waved his hands in the air.

  “So, where’s the exit?” Sam wondered.

  “This is the exit.” I looked to the center of the room. The pocket watch I had used to enter the place was floating the air, suspended by a glowing blue light. When I tried to reach for it, a blue screen suddenly appeared in my vision.

  New Owner Detected. Theodor Waltz.

  Accept Ownership of dimensional ship: The Wanderer

  Yes / No

  I blinked, trying to manage my implant settings. I thought about bringing the menu up, but then I remembered that EMP blast fried my menu. Then how was this blue screen showing up?

  Error. Cannot access the menu until ownership has been accepted.

  Accept ownership of The Wanderer

  Yes / No

  I selected yes with a thought.

  Your destination has been pre-programmed by this vessel’s previous owner. Prepare for takeoff.

  “Uh, guys… I just got a message saying, ‘Prepare for takeoff’ Everybody grab onto something!”

  Dean jumped and found a car seat in the corner somewhere. I hadn’t seen it, which was weird since it looked pretty out of place amid all the techno gadgets and blinking lights. He strapped himself in, cradling Yonda and Erula in either arm in a white-knuckle grip with his eyes shut tight.

  The purple-haired elf didn’t seem to quite understand the situation, except for the fact that something dangerous would happen. She tackled Sam to the ground and covered his body with her own, as if he were a live grenade. It didn’t completely work considering he was bigger than the elf, but that’s what it looked like.

  For my part, I just gripped the railing in one hand and held on tight to Mac’s memory core in the other.

  The whole ship shook… ever so slightly. Like a tiny motor that was just a smidgen unbalanced, creating a tiny vibration that could only just be felt.

  That’s it?

  “When do we takeoff?” Sam asked, voice muffled by the stomach of the purple-haired elf.

  “I think we already did.” I replied.

  Yonda and Erula looked at each other, excitement dawning on their faces.

  “We’re home!” They exclaimed together.

  The purple-haired elf was also looking around, sniffing the air.

  “Don’t you feel it?” Erula said.

  “The air here is alive! Filled with zeal! Unlike the cold dead air from where we were.” Yonda added.

  Dean unlatched the seatbelt he’d been clinging to and fell to his knees, gasping.

  “Oh guys, I think I’m going to be sick!” His expression twisted, and he clutched his stomach… nothing happened. “Well that was anticlimactic. Spaceships these days are lame. My uncle told me the force of takeoff would have me puking buckets. Just one more thing he lied to me about I guess.”

  It seemed whatever was going to happen had already happened. I wasn’t getting any strange pop-up boxes in my face, so I headed towards the door we came in from.

  Then I felt a pull from the beam of light behind me. It emanated from the pocket watch I’d been holding, but it resonated with the entire chamber with a supernatural force I could only describe as magical.

  Error. Owner and ship have not yet synchronized. You cannot leave the interface until syncing reaches completion.

  Begin synchroni
zation? Yes / No

  The blue light tugged on ever cell in my body simultaneously. Every atom was being pulled backwards until the blue light was shining on me once again.

  “Uh, guys? Bit of a problem here.” I said.

  Dean got up and walked towards me. He waved his hand through the blue light. Nothing happened.

  Sam instead walked towards the door. It swung open easily, revealing a stone corridor that seemed to lead to blue skies not far away.

  The purple-haired elf breathed deeply of the fresh air from outside the ship and said something unintelligible to Erula and Yonda.

  “She’s right.” Yonda remarked. “All the elves who cleared the Dungeon of Mothers simply returned, pregnant and full of life zeal, but they returned alone, clothed as they entered. I’ve never heard of anything like this happening.”

  “You’re right. This was my fourth time clearing that dungeon. And the other three times, when my time was up I vanished. A blink later I was back at the end of the dungeon. Then all I had to do was climb some stairs and I was home again.”

  “It looks like I’ve hit the jackpot! I actually got to bring a mate home with me! My clan will be ecstatic!”

  “What do you mean you’re bringing him home? I have the highest level of the two of us. I think I should be the one to bring him home.”

  “Ladies, ladies!” Dean interjected. “Nobody’s going home with either of you until we get my pal Theo unstuck! You two are strong girls. Each of you grab an arm. I’ll push from behind.”

  And so, the two elves grabbed my right and left arm while Dean pushed from behind. Even with all three of them they couldn’t budge me.

  Soon Sam and the purple-haired elf had joined in. They made a line going out the door and pulled. Dean had even tied his and Sam’s belts together and wrapped them around some of the metal and glass do-hickies in the dimensional ship to work as a pulley and give them some extra pulling power.

  I was able to get a few feet out, but the moment I was about to exit the light beam completely I was sucked back in. The belts had held me against the force for just a moment before snapping in two.

  “Maybe we can cut an arm off and build him a new body from that?” Erula suggested. I quickly vetoed that idea.

  The whole time the same box with the same message was displaying itself in front of my vision.

  Error. Owner and ship have not yet synchronized. You cannot leave the interface until syncing reaches completion.

  Begin synchronization? Yes / No

  “Guys, thanks, but I don’t think this will work. I’ll try pressing ‘yes’ and see what that does. If I still can’t come out in an hour you guys should go set up camp or something. We’re all going to get hungry soon.”

  Dean nodded, and Sam shrugged.

  “Good plan, Theo. I’ll have a fish on a stick waiting for you when you get out.” Dean promised.

  I selected the yes button.

  In an explosion of blue light, the pocket watch fell apart into a cloud of dancing sparks. They swirled around my head before finding a spot on my chest, just over my heart. There they swooped down like birds of prey, landing on my chest and forming a specific pattern. I felt them burn into me like a brand, and when the last spark had sunk into my skin I looked down to see a circle with a tiny gap in the bottom. In the center of the circle was a humanoid figure, standing upright.

  Then the world went black.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Synchronization complete. Third-party enhancement devices have been detected and re-purposed.

  Would you like to view your assets?

  Yes / No

  When I opened my eyes, I had the distinct feeling that many years had passed.

  The lights of the surrounding facility were dimmer, and dust seemed to have settled out of the air.

  Sam, Dean, and the elves must have shut the door, because it was closed tight now, whereas before it has been open. The blue light was gone, though the screen overlaying my vision remained, this time with new text.

  I tried to get to my feet, but my joints felt stiff from lack of use. My whole body was tingling, as if blood was flowing for the first time in a long time.

  “Yes.” I croaked in answer to the prompt, eager to just get rid of these things.

  Active Rooms

  Command Center*

  *Note: The Command center is damaged. You cannot add further rooms until repairs are complete.

  The interface reminded me of an old, twenty-first century video game. There were panels over my vision and an artist’s rendering of the inside of the ship. Across the side there were buttons for buying new rooms and in the bottom corner a box that listed how many points I had. It was like a tycoon game or a management simulator.

  This wasn’t a game, but it sure was built like one. Maybe if I played it like a game, things would make sense.

  It looked like the only room I had available to me was this Command Center. I looked around the room with hundreds of control panels and figured would be called the command center; this would be it.

  Okay, fix the command center room. This command center is a piece of tech. I know tech. I spent years of my life and just about everything I inherited on education packets that gave the raw information to understand technology like a whole team of scientists and engineers. Sure, it was book knowledge, and I didn’t have enough gray matter to use all that information, but I knew my way around a circuit.

  I took a stroll around the facility, examining the glass cylinders, the sparks of light sparking off strangely shaped chunks of copper. Was that a Jacob’s Ladder? A few pieces of glass had been chipped off here and there, and there were a couple of loose connections, but all in all, I was at a loss. There were vacuum tubes by the dozen, but they weren’t connected to anything.

  None of these things seemed to do anything. Heck, many of them weren’t even hooked up to a power supply in any way I could see. They just seemed to operate of their own volition. There was no way I could fix any of this on my own. My heart sank. So much for knowing my way around a circuit.

  I tried to pull up the interface again, and it came with a thought. The thing operated just like my implant, looking for some way to diagnose the needed repairs.

  Repairs needed to restore basic functionality to the Control Center

  Repair Human Interface Unit [350 points]

  Repair level 1 scanner [20 points]

  Repair emergency mana generator [20 points]

  Remove dust from facility [3.5 points]

  I got rid of the dialog box with a thought, just like with my implant. From that message earlier, I’d guessed that these messages were being displayed by my implant itself, probably intending to give me an interface I was familiar with, so I could use it quickly. Useful, but the idea that somebody hacked the chip in my brain was kind of frightening. Baldy the alien wizard was clearly in a whole league beyond earth’s technology. Probably several leagues.

  Curiously, I noted the ‘Remove dust’ option from the catalog. It was at 3.5 points. I swept my hand across a counter that seemed to have collected more the stuff. Then I checked the menu again.

  Remove dust from facility [3.3 points]

  Experimental evidence supported my hypothesis! Now I could call it a theory! It appeared that these values were determined by the amount of work that would need to be done to see them through.

  Too bad I couldn’t get a second opinion from Mac. That big AI brain of his could search through a million databases a minute. He was always the one correcting my mistakes. Maybe he could figure out what I was missing.

  I pulled his memory core out of my pocket, inspecting it for any scratches or marks of damage. Everything looked intact to me.

  Dungeon Core identified. [-350 points] to repair cost for Human Interface Unit. Add to system? Yes / No

  I selected yes. Maybe I should have been more careful with what was essentially Mac’s brain, but Mac had thousands of copies of himself all over the plac
e just like this one. He would have just abandoned it if it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t want a copy of himself falling into the clutches of the SHS.

  “That was a rub, ” said a voice over the intercom. “Had a blackout for a bit there. Somebody must have spilled some coffee on me again… wait a moment… this can’t be right… why can’t I contact any of my units?”

  “Mac?” I asked.

  “Theo? Is that you there? What’s going on? What happened to my server room?”

  “It’s gone, Mac. Remember the Society for Human Supremacy? I grabbed your local memory core and installed it on wherever you are now.” I explained.

  “You mean…” Mac’s voice trembled. “I’m a backup copy!?”

  “Don’t think if it like that Mac.” Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I’m glad I could get Mac working again, but I didn’t want to walk him through an existential crisis. Thankfully, he seemed to have calmed down by the time I finished filling him in on the details of what happened.

  “So, now I’m a Human Interface Device?” Mac said, as if he thought such a change was a massive demotion from robot janitor.

  “I think that’s what happened. Honestly, this was the outcome I was hoping for. Maybe you can help me figure this thing out? It’s the way we came here, so logically it’s the only viable path home.”

  “Well… that might not be the best idea. You said you were unconscious for an unknown length of time? Well, the systems for this place aren’t giving me much, but I’ve found what I’m speculate is a clock. Based on what it’s telling me, you’ve been under for a little over… four hundred years.”

  “Four hundred years?” I asked slowly. “But that would mean everyone I know is dead...”