Chương 178: Chapter 177: The Gatekeeper (10/24/2015)

DATE: Tuesday, October 24, 2015 LOCATION: Low Earth Orbit | FSI Heavy Transport (Polar Shadow Orbit) LOCAL TIME: 11: 55 AM PST My physical body sat perfectly still in the Sanctum back in San Diego, but my consciousness was tethered thousands of miles above the Arctic Circle. I had projected my mind into a worker drone, standing silently in the open airlock of the heavy transport we had parked alongside the monolith months ago.

Outside the airlock, the bruised purple sky of the upper atmosphere danced with the aurora borealis. Hovering silently in the absolute zero void was the Black Knight—a jagged, light-bending anomaly.

"Stay steady, Chad," Woz's voice crackled through the uplink.

"We're routing the resonance through Taos now." To my left, my sensors picked up twelve asteroid tugs screaming in from a higher orbit, their plasma engines carving blinding white lines against the black backdrop of space.

"The tugs are four minutes out," Elon reported.

"Taos is live!" Woz shouted.

"Hitting the pulse... Now!" Through the data feed, I watched the agricultural network pulse in a violent crimson wave. Down on Earth, the massive biological resonance dumped into the tectonic rift. Up here, the effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. The Black Knight collapsed into existence. The "smudge" in the void solidified into a terrifying, jagged obsidian tower.

The sudden mass caused the Earth's magnetic field lines to violently snap and bow around it. A silent shockwave of displaced plasma rippled outward as the satellite suddenly possessed weight and physical consistency. The hitchhiker field had failed.

"It's solid!" Amy cried out over the comms.

"It tethered!" I fired the drone's micro-thrusters, propelling my Avatar out of the airlock and across the void. As I drifted alongside the newly-physical hull, the code in my visual cortex didn't just pulse; it screamed. I was so close I could see the waxy, biological texture of the metal—vibrant and reeling from the shock. I reached out with the drone's manipulator, extending the patch to make direct contact with the hull... The connection didn't handshake. It detonated.

A violent, catastrophic surge of raw data sheared through my digital tether. Back in the Sanctum, I felt my physical body seize. My heart rate monitor flatlined into a continuous shriek as my autonomic baseline was instantly obliterated. My consciousness was violently ripped backward, pulled through a terrifying vortex of collapsing geometry and blinding white light. The cold vacuum of space vanished. … I was at the Sand Castle.

I could hear the waves crashing against the seawall below, followed by the slide and thud of the glass door opening and closing.

"Chad. We need to talk." I blinked, the oppressive heat of a Southern California afternoon settling heavily on my shoulders. I saw my reflection in the sliding glass door. I wasn't wearing a sleek tactical suit, and I certainly wasn't a fifty-year-old operator. I was wearing a faded Batman t-shirt and board shorts. I was nine years old. I turned around. Buckminster Fuller was standing in front of me.

He looked exactly as he had in 1985—physically frail, leaning heavily on his wooden cane, peering at me through his thick glasses. But the presence radiating from him wasn't frail. It was vast. The man who had acted as my moral compass, the architect who had built the foundation of my world, was looking right at me with a reedy, rhythmic hum vibrating in his throat.

"Bucky?" I breathed.