Chapter 7 - Midnavik

Arwin could not believe what he was hearing. The longer he sat with the doctor and the woman, who he had learned was named Erika, the further he sunk into depression. He was not in the past, not even close. He had somehow stumbled into the far future. What’s worse, the inhabitants were completely and utterly human. It had been so long since gods had walked the Earth that they had been resigned completely to the realm of mythology. He couldn’t believe it. What had gone so terribly wrong? Did Gesturne make some incredible error? How in the hells had the world recovered from Aelithae’s scorch?

Erika had tried her best to comfort him, but nothing she could say could ease his pain. To make matters worse, it was clear neither her nor the doctor frankly believed a word that came from his mouth. They sat for hours and answered his questions. Even going so far as to pull up documentation on their little devices which seemed to function like far more advanced versions of Gesturne’s tablet. On its screen they were able to summon photos and videos, words he somehow now knew the meaning of, which showed great swaths of the Earth. All of it completely unsundered. Even a live feed of the planet from space. A solid blue and green marble sat perfectly within the black blanket of oblivion. It was hopeless. He was stuck here, trapped in this beautiful serene future having left everyone and everything he loved behind to die. Once the doctor and Erika had thoroughly exhausted him, they left to allow him to rest. Only then did he allow the tears to come. He mourned for his mother, his father, his sisters. The smiling faces of his friends and neighbors. The reassuring smile Gesturne had given him in his last moments. It was all gone. Even their bones would have long turned to dust. There was absolutely nothing left of the world he had loved.

A week passed by quickly, each day Erika came to visit him. Each day she sat with him and answered his questions. The world had advanced at an incredible rate. Almost all the problems that had plagued humanity were unwritten by the great magic they had dubbed “technology”. The people of this time seemed to have a great distaste for his labelling of technology as magic, but to him they were one and the same. His devotion to this label was further enforced by the scant knowledge the average person had on how any of this “technology” worked. Erika had the basic idea that some fluid infused with tiny robots had gone up into his brain and rearranged gray matter and patterns of electricity to allowed to to understand and be understood by her. It was old technology at this point, developed nearly 500 years ago to bridge the language barrier between the peoples of the earth. Many children took once dose to learn the common language, Danican. Danican was an artificial language first developed for the serum, named after the combination of Danish and American cultures which had presided over the creation of the revitalized nation of Greenland.
Apparently some seven hundred years ago, a great man had been born on a far southern island named Sri Lanka to pair of European doctors. As a boy, he was witness to the famine and devastation that country faced during a decade long solar storm which wreaked havoc on the world’s technology and climate. The boy grew into a man and worked tirelessly to develop an incredible new form of technology; terraforming. With this new power, mankind seized control over the wild elements of the globe. Greenland and Antarctica, both long seized in deep sheet of ice, were melted and developed into habitable land. Across the whole of the globe, large swaths of damage or uninhabitable land were cleansed and turned into fertile land. The newly harnessed freshwater from the melted ice was siphoned up into space, where it was drifted behind the dark side of the moon and frozen into stasis where it remains to this day, nearly 700 years later. With the ability to manipulate the weather, temperature and the very elements at will, mankind quickly went about shaping the world to their pleasure. Land became plentiful and the crowded populations of the world, which had suffered from generational cycles of extreme overpopulation into extreme famine were now balanced. New tracts of land were cleared from the ocean and terraformed into fertile soil in the course of mere weeks.

The population, no longer in conflict with one another and having all their basic needs met, fell into a steady rate of 1.9 children per marriage. Greenland, having been the first target for the new terraforming technology, had become a cultural and technological mecca of the world. A great noble lineage was formed from the creator of terraforming, Giovanni Desca’s progeny, and the country enjoy the highest rates of overall happiness and safety across the globe. 

Within the past century, driven by a new breed of apathy that had spawned from the ease in which many lived their lives, certain cults had begun to spring up across the globe dedicated to sowing chaos throughout the world in order to bring some strife and interest to the simple content lives of the Earth's citizens.

Arwin took little comfort in this information, and although he was clear to express his appreciation for Erika's time, he did not lie to her and tell her that it comforted him. 

Surely, he thought, with all the great technology that humanity had developed, there must be a way to achieve time travel. Magic was indeed real, he had seen it for himself and moreover it was capable of time travel across vast distances, this much was clear. On the eighth day of his stay, Arwin was released from the hospital. He thanked the doctor and was escorted back to the city by Erika. She had offered to accompany him, for a time at least, while he grew accustomed to life in the city. He knew she still did not believe his story, but it mattered little to him. If only he knew the string of fate which had begun by stepping back into that city.

Sitting within the high penthouse of Desca tower, Giancarlo Desca leaned over his screen. Another test failed. Another host rejected. He flicked his cigarette onto the floor in disgust. A stout little carpet cleaner bot rushed over and extinguished the flaming butt before removing the debri. It whirred back and forth against the carpet as it diligently cleaned up the ash. Giancarlo stared at the little bot. It seemed so obvious, why wasn’t it possible? He can make a robot one millionth as small as that robot, yet none the nanomachines are capable of doing what that basic consumer cleaning bot can do. Not without massive internal bleeding, at the least.

Giancarlo was absorbed in his thought. For a decade godhood had been dangled right before his eyes, all he had to do was reach out and grab it. But the plastic. That damnable plastic. It ruins everything it touches. If only those fools in the 21st century had an iota of sense they would not have dumped the poison in every fabric of their being. Even now, generations later, the plastic still proliferated the whole of the Earth and more important deep into the brainmatter of every living human, himself no exception. It had been ten whole years since his project had met with tremendous success. Nanomachines that could enable the full range of brainpower within a subject. Not only that, but these machines, when properly synched, could enable powers to its user on the level of a God. The ability to rewrite reality itself. It was something his Patriarch Giovanni had merely scratched at. A mere taste of that power. Terraforming bestow to humans heaven on Earth, but Giancarlo was no longer satisfied with this second rate heaven. He wanted the real thing. His creation had one singular, catastrophic, but singular flaw. Any plastic present within the brain of the host would eventually cause a fatal error in the machines, which resulted in massive cranial hemorrhaging and unavoidable death. It was completely unlike anything else in the real of nanomachines, as if the brain was giving one last purity test before it was allowed to seize its full potential.

It infuriated Giancarlo to no end. The absolute power of godhood dangled just infront of his nose, but there was no conceivable way to harness it. It was not an easy thing to test either, he could not simply willy nilly place the power of God into the hands of any fool off the street. It had to be someone he trusted entirely. This presented another challenge, his inner circle had dwindled to something depressingly small. All those he could truly trust with this had already given their try to whatever new solution he had created, and all had suffered the same fate. His wife, his daughter, his brothers and nephews. They were all gone. Now he was sat in this rediculous tower surrounded by nothing but yes men and career fools. He lit another cigarette. 

As the smoke curled up and around his nose, a familiar noise beamed in his ear. His assistant was coming up the elevator. He waved his hand at the securibot, signalling his permission for her entrance. The bot dipped its head in acknowledgement then wheeled itself over to the door. Extending a third arm from its chassis, it opened the reinforced steel bulkhead that separated the office safe room from the outer world. Nina, his assistant, strut into the room. She was wearing her usual attire, a tightly fit sport jacket that covered over the top of her all leather bodysuit. Giancarlo thought it rediculous, but he did not complain. She pulled it off impeccably. Her every step and breath oozed with the aura of superiority that the Desca lineage had worked so hard to refine over the generations. Her steel toed stilettos clicked against the marbled floor as she approached. He watched her in the windows reflection, the cold look on her face never faded, even as their eyes met in the reflection.

“What is it now?” Giancarlo asked flatly. “I don’t believe I remember summoning you.”

“Something came up you might be interested in.” Nina answered emotionlessly. No matter how many times Giancarlo had tried to make her crack, she never had. It perhaps was a point of pride for her, not giving into his constant snide remarks. At this point in the game, he no longer even said them for any reason other than to continue to test how long her resolve had held out. It had been 7 years already and she showed no sign of cracking. He respected her for that. Everyone else in this tower licked his boots like a dog, but not Nina. Perhaps a comparison to a cat would be more apt. She didn’t care a lick for his praises or insults, only for results. He paid her and paid her handsomely and she delivered what he needed. Cold and calculated answer to whatever problem he threw at her.

“It better be good.” Giancarlo said between pulls of his cigarette. “I’m on a short fuse today, and the next piece of bad news I hear I might take out on the nearest person.” He watched her eyes, but they remained unphased as always.

“We finally got a hit on those biometric tests you wanted us to monitor. A pure 100% match.” Nina laid the documents neatly upon the table. It was unusual for anyone to use paper documents anymore, for any reason other than security. A piece of paper cant be hacked after all, and if it needs to be erased all you have to do is put it into a fire.

“100%?!” Giancarlo spun around, cigarette still in his mouth. “Let me see that!” He snatched the paper up and began pouring over the document. He could not believe his eyes, it was just as she said. A 100% match. “Who… where?! Bring them here immediately.” He stood up from his tall backed black leather chair and it swiveled out away from him.

“There’s no name attached to the test kit.” Nina replied. Before Giancarlo could let out a word of protest, she continued “But I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding him.”

“Him?” Giancarlo asked.

“Yes.” Nina continued “The biometrics indicate its a male in his late teens or early twenties. Hes short, around 5’9. I’ve already sent out a team to search for him, he shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“Excellent… excellent.” Giancarlo could still barely believe his luck. A 100% pure subject. Absolute zero plastic contamination in his brain. The miracle had finally come. “Search the city, I authorize every measure, I don’t care what you have to do, bring me that man!”

Nina turned and walked silently out the door, the securibot opening the passage for her as she left. The final key had fallen into place. Whoever this enigma of a man was, his life was about to change. Giancarlo would guarantee it.