Endworlds - Nicholas Read [73]
Now they knew Others existed. Plans needed to be drawn. But they needed more intel. The General had ordered their subject recaptured and held in containment, but for months it had not responded to verbal instructions in any of the multiple languages broadcast in frequencies detectable to both dimensions. Perhaps it was a matter of motivation, Kriegmacher had thought. But how does one ‘motivate’ a subject that cannot be touched?
Physics provided an answer, of sorts. The ‘quantum cage’ that held this being was rolled into position between two sections of pipe in the facility’s particle accelerator. Kriegmacher had explained to his captive through multilingual software that unless he received cooperation, he would again bombard it with energy, then unravel its photonic signature in an attempt to replicate what he had seen the ‘dagger’ do on the film. He had no time for moralizing about the act, even though this constituted First Contact with this particular alien race.
Receiving no response, they had been as good as their threat, but the scientists applied the concept of entangling this being’s photons with other light beams, which were projected into a separate bonding medium, effectively rebuilding this ethereal being particle by particle. Without the need to catalog the complexity of solid matter, the computing memory required to capture and render a copy had surprisingly only been in gigabytes instead of the yottabytes needed to store the photonic markers of a whole human being.
Keeping the creature compartmentalized in different buffers, the physicists had rigged up a way of manipulating the data so it could be visualized and stored within the parameters of secure software on existing communications devices. Then they reassembled all the files as an application Kriegmacher had later made them install on his latest iPhone.
The copy was much more accommodating than the original, the prospect of permanent deletion serving as the leverage Kriegmacher had needed.
It was called a Dae’mon. It was male, and his name was Warujja.
Through Warujja he first learned of the Four Ages of Man and confirmed the existence of four occupied dimensions. Four, not two as they had thought! He was told of the cowardly and greedy Fae’er who possessed technology that could save the planet from its impending doom, but who chose to withhold it. And of the brave Dae’mon faction who recently separated themselves from the Fae’er to help mankind in their time of need. Solid in their own dimension, the Dae’mon could only exist in Earth Prime in a non-corporeal form, unless they could find a way to cohabit with a mortal by mutual consent.
Months passed. Initially their relationship had been one of captivity, but the more new knowledge Warujja provided that advanced Project Sidestep, the more captivity morphed into collaboration, and collaboration into codependence.
Warujja slowly opened Kriegmacher’s eyes to knowledge much deeper than his mandate required. He learned of Earth’s origins beyond the six thousand years of established texts in his own Fourth Age. He learned of the different cultures, histories and people who had populated the planet, going back thirty thousand years. He was tutored in the science of its ancient kings, which had bordered on magic because the science reached down to the elemental level, much as Kriegmacher’s scientists were doing again now.
Warujja observed that it wasn’t the first time such technology had been mastered on Earth, and warned how it’s at the peak of their powers and pride that nations are most prone to fall, unless governed with wisdom and strength. It was central governance that had led ancient king Anu to unite people of all Earth nations in the First Age, and through it, had nearly saved the Race, but for that final