Chrono Cross: Through Heaven and Hell
An original fan-fiction by Demon-Fighter Ash
based on the Square game "Chrono Cross"
Part 1: Future's End
Chapter 2: Heart of the Fire
March, 2398 AD
The solid metal doors whined shut behind Kalim as he stepped into the sparse bedroom and he glanced silently down at the gleaming reflective plates that covered the floor, peering into the shifting mirror-image of the chamber below his feet, watching as it seemed to drop endlessly away below the floor. He looked back up to study the steel-blue, pipe-covered bedroom walls and the flashing golden-yellow control panel beside the sliding motorized door, and then over to a simple bed covered in white bedsheets, filling one corner of the room, and a metal desk and swivel-chair in the opposite corner.
"This was Belthasar's room," he asked with a glance over his shoulder.
"Indeed," the light chirping voice-synthesizer of the golden automaton answered as it walked into the middle of the room beside him, its weight and metal soles clanging against the floor, "this is the room of the project director. Since you hold that title, it's also your room now."
"Right," Kalim slowly said to himself as he looked around. A few hours ago he'd accepted a military post so mysterious that the general had refused to even tell him what the job involved. Now he stood in a vast, mysterious island-city that, by all indications, he'd been hired to manage.
He closed his eyes and remembered his journey through the entrance hall of Chronopolis; the raised arms of the goddess whose marble image stood watch over the front gates, the blinding light of the bright tropical sun pouring through the transparent force-field windows that filled the right wall and overlooked the shuttle hangar, the checkered white and black squares of the floor, the beige cushioned benches and lush ornamental plants.
The outer hall had seemed almost classical in design, with only a few black digital displays with red scrolling text along the walls to give away the advanced technology of the island; at least, until he'd stepped through the inner doors and past the massive electronically-sealed denadorite gates of the security checkpoint to find a huge inner chamber filled with gliding security robots, the air filled with scrolling holographic images and every wall covered with racing streams of arcane numbers and code.
Even this, he'd quickly noticed, was simply the main hall of the complex, with a glass elevator in the center that led up into the labs and working quarters of the island-city. Workers and white-coated scientists constantly streamed through the complex, barely noticing him in their quick striding pace through the electronic doors and up and down the elevator.
What little conversation he could make out had all been clipped and fast, snippets of baffling discussions about anti-entropy, flame-locks and element-fields. Through the deluge of information and bustling life, he'd recieved one clear impression: whatever went on in Chronopolis, it involved astronomical amounts of information and a constant, almost-frantic pace.
"You're an RY-series robot," Kalim said quickly as he shook his head, trying to distract himself from the shock of the day's events, "have the factories started production on that model again?"
"No," Robo beeped amiably, "I'm one of the first-generation RY-robots."
"First generation," Kalim remarked in surprise, "but you would have to be almost...I mean, sorry, that's a personal..."
"That's alright," the robot interrupted with a soft digitized chuckle, "my thought processors are incapable of vanity. I am, as you guessed, very old. Factory records show that I was assembled in late 1998."
"Less than a year before the Day of Lavos," Kalim said in muted awe, even as he glanced around at the bedroom, surveying the folders scattered about the desk and the bookshelf built into the right-hand wall of the bedroom, "do you remember anything about it?"
"Very little," Robo replied after what Kalim almost imagined to be an awkward pause, "my memory circuits from that era have degraded. Most of my memory-files were recorded during this past century."
"That makes sense," Kalim nodded, his bright blue eyes clouded in sudden thought as he walked to the desk, rolling the chair aside and flipping through the loose folders and pages, "the electro-magnetic pulse from Lavos fried a lot of machinery. Still, that you're around after all this time...are there any other RY-series robots in the military?"
"No," Robo whistled in reply, "but I do have an RY-counterpart working on the central continent named Atropos, who's assisting one the civilian archeological digs. Are you familiar with the reptite ruins?"
"I've read about them," Kalim answered as he continued shuffling through the print-outs and diagrams, "they date from more than 65 million years ago, and a lot of anthropologists think they were created by an advanced race older than humans, maybe descended from reptiles."
"Until the ice age ended their civilization," Robo chirped, "and gave humans a chance to build our civilization instead. Still, I can't help but wonder if there was some way for both our worlds to have survived..."
"I guess we'll never know," Kalim muttered as he set the pages down and then suddenly looked up from the desk, "where are Belthasar's books?"
"Books," Robo beeped curiously.
"Belthasar always writes down his notes in paper books, with quills that he made himself. He was famous at the institute for it, he kept volumes of books with all his thoughts and notes written down in them. But they're not here, these are all just technical reports."
"Perhaps," Robo replied, "Belthasar took those books with him?"
"I don't think so," Kalim answered, thoughtfully tapping the corner of one beige folder against the surface of the metal desk, "the files he left behind all contain theories and experimental results. If he was going to take his research with him, why leave these papers behind?"
"It is also possible," the plump golden robot chirped quietly, "that someone else may have taken both Belthasar and his writings."
"Maybe," Kalim replied, his voice still lowered in thought, "but then there's the same question," he glanced up from the desk to the smooth metal ceiling, and the almost-microscopic speakers and microphones scattered over the ceiling like a rash of tiny black dots.
"FATE," he called out into the air in a loud clear voice, and he heard the small beeps and whirs of the Chronopolis computer directing part of its attention to his room, "when was the first time, after the disappearance of Belthasar, that his online research files were accessed?"
"Belthasar's online files," FATE's melodic feminine voice replied calmly through the speaker-embedded ceiling, "were last accessed on February 19th, 2398, at 1247 hours."
"Which is several hours after he failed to show up for his shift," Kalim nodded to Robo, then raised his voice, "who accessed them?"
"General Sharl, General Taryn, Special Investigator Jereth..."
"That's enough," Kalim interrupted the computer, "were any of the files accessed between the approximate time of Belthasar's disappearance, and the beginning of the investigation on his disappearance?"
"Negative," FATE answered.
"I think," Kalim said as he strained his mind, rubbing the back of his neck as he glanced about the room, "that whatever led to his disappearance, it didn't relate to his research at all. The books he kept might have been taken because they contained clues about what happened, not because of their scientific value. That's why the research files were left untouched."
"Then finding those books," Robo answered with a nod, the tiny electric motors within his neck giving a small hum at the sudden motion, "would be a big help in finding out what happened to Belthasar."
"Exactly," Kalim nodded back, and then spoke up, "FATE, transfer all of Belthasar's online research files to my own inbox," he paused and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to recall the baffling string of codes Tessik had given him an hour before, "authorization code alpha-36, delta-3b."
"Authorization confirmed," FATE's voice replied, "all of the previous curator's online research have been transferred to Colonel Skuld's inbox."
"FATE," Kalim called out with slight, amiable exasperation, "Kalim is fine."
"Acknowledged," the computer answered, "Colonel Kalim Skuld has been reidentified as Kalim."
"It is almost time," Robo said, and Kalim turned back around, "for the orientation meeting."
"Right," Kalim nodded, then tilted his head curiously as both he and the brass-plated robot turned to leave the empty bedroom, "why does FATE keep calling me Colonel anyway? I'm not enlisted and I've never even been in the military before..."
"Colonel," Robo answered cheerfully, "is an honorary rank you hold as the curator and project-director of Chronopolis. It's necessary since the project is under military jurisdiction, but do not worry," the robot gave a soft digitized chuckle, "nobody will expect you to lead any wars."
* * *
A group of people sat in either side of a large viewing screen built into the floor of the conference room, the surface of the screen a few inches below the rest of the metallic floor and the viewscreen itself almost fifteen feet across, dominating the whole room. A thin pink bar of flourescent light illuminated each side of the black transparent screen, and Kalim glanced up from the flat screen to the twin rows of small cobalt-blue desks lining the left and right sides of the display, each chair covered in black leather cushions and facing the large screen on the floor.
He looked sheepishly about the desks and finally noticed an empty spot on the end of the right-hand row of seats, stepping gingerly around the back of the desks as he made his way to the empty chair. He looked around at the staff members that had taken their seats, but he only recognized Alissa, now dressed in a white lab-coat but still wearing her ponytail, and still dressed in the slacks and shirt that worn on the landing platform earlier, sitting in the desk opposite his own; Robo stood by the wall of flashing control panels on the far side of the room, and all the others, a mixture of humans and animal-like mystics, were completely new to him.
"Everybody's here," Robo chirped and Alissa stood silently up from her desk, striding across the room to the line of keyboards and switches, giving a quick glance to Kalim as she stood at the front of the room.
"Kalim Skuld," she nodded her head once to him, then looked back at the group, "this is the senior staff of the El Nido Project, the lead scientists of our physics, genetics, exobiology, and engineering divisions, and I'm the head of the medical and biology staff. Since I'm sure you've read the briefs on all the staff," Kalim tried to give a polite smile to the group, totally oblivious to even their names, "we'll get started on the orientation.
"This is the Sea of El Nido," she reached her left hand behind her and, without looking back, she tapped a few buttons. The darkened monitor on the floor suddenly lit up, casting a soft sky-blue glow across the room. Kalim peered over his desk to see a huge map of the El Nido Sea covering the floor, the image divided into sections by a grid of thin green lines; except for a few rocks and coral outcroppings, the sea was completely empty.
"As it looked prior to the project's formation," Alissa continued, "four years ago. Since then, we've terraformed several islands within the El Nido sea, including the island of Chronopolis itself. There are four other islands in the El Nido project.
"The fire-elemental island," she said as she tapped another, and the small red island in the center of the map began blinking. Kalim studied the image more closely; the steep crimson walls of a volcano rose almost straight up from the shore, so that, except for a few patches of forest around the base of the cliffs, the volcano itself formed most of the island.
"The yellow-elemental island," she said as another island north of the red island began to blink. Even at the aerial scale of the map, he could make out a thin ring of rugged mountains surrounding a small pit of sand. Beyond that, the island looked completely lifeless, a desert.
"The water-elemental island," and a third island, as far south below the central fire-island as the desert island was north, began to blink; this one looked by far the most pleasant of the three, with a crystal pool of water in the middle, surrounded by lush tropical forests on a staggered ring of hills rising toward a central peak overlooking the northern shore.
"The black-elemental island," and with another tap of the button, a fourth island, in the far southeastern corner, began to blink. This island seemed to be carved out of pink glassy coral that rose from the smooth stone ground into rounded hills and rocky plateaus pitted with shadowy mouth-like caves. It seemed forbidding, mystical...almost haunted...
"Each of these islands," Alissa finished, stepping away from the control panel to stand at the edge of the map, "was terraformed over specific geological points according to Belthasar's elemental theory."
"Tessik mentioned that theory too," Kalim asked curiously, looking at the map and then back up at the young woman, who seemed far more comfortable now at the head of the room than she had outside, "what is it?"
"Are you familiar," she asked him, "with the Gaea theory?"
"The theory that the planet itself is a living entity," he nodded, "and that all living things are a part of its own life-cycle."
"It's not a theory anymore," Alessa replied and she stepped back to the panel to tap another button, "Belthasar proved that Gaea is real."
A new image flashed across the screen and Kalim looked down at the floor at a diagram of the planet itself, divided into cross-sections to show the thin outer crust, the thick dark mantle and the fiery inner core of the planet. Four winding ribbons of colorful energy looped and twisted in and out of the planet's surface, countless loops dipping down into the center of the planet and then rising back out through the crust.
"Each of these four lines represents a stream of elemental energy that weaves in and out of the planet like a river," she swept her hand avove the screen, "red is fire, blue's water, yellow's electricity and black's gravity. These energy streams flow throughout the planet, like the biological cycles of a living being. Just as the human body has circulatory and respiratory systems to carry nutrients and oxygen to every cell, the planet itself has energy streams that carry the four elemental energies across the world and maintain the balance of the climate."
"So these streams control the climate," Kalim asked thoughtfully, "and keep heat from building up by spreading fire-elemental energy across the whole planet. It also keeps the planet from getting too cold..."
"And they control thunderstorms, earthquakes, even gravity," Alessa finished his thought, "these four elements are literally the lifeblood of the planet itself--without them, life would be impossible on this world."
Kalim watched Alessa as she talked, her hands raised and making quick gestures with each point, keeping pace with the almost breathless speed of her speech. He wondered if she might have been a teacher or professor like him, but quickly decided otherwise; as much as she obviously enjoyed science, she seemed to almost be rushing through the lecture.
He glanced around at the rest of the scientists, whose faces varied between bushy-eyed men and taut-faced women to reptilian serpent-women and large furry beasts; nonetheless, all of them listened to Alessa and glanced down at the glowing diagram with polite interest. Kalim quickly realized, with a sudden flush of silent embarrassment, that all of them already knew all this, that the orientation was for his benefit alone.
"How do the islands you terraformed," he quickly focused back on the diagram, "relate to these energy-streams?"
Alessa took a step back toward the wall and with a single tap on the control panel, the image changed back to the map of the El Nido islands, now with colored dots glowing in the center of the four element islands, a blue dot over the water island, red over the volcano, yellow over the desert island, and black over the dark coral island.
"Each of the islands," she explained, gesturing to each one in turn, "matches a point where an elemental energy-stream pierces the surface of the planet, forming a kind of geyser of elemental energy. Belthasar figured out a method for detecting these hot-spots of energy, and we terraformed the islands over four element-points, to harness and amplify them.
"In a sense, each of the islands is an elemental energy-collector, and FATE constantly regulates each hot-spot and draws power from them; we've even developed technology based on storing and then re-directing elemental energy, such as the black-element graviton weapon you saw earlier."
"So is that," Kalim paused, trying to collect his thoughts. It was a vast amount to take in so quickly--the planet's alive, he reflected back over the briefing, and it has four elemental energies. Belthasar found a way to harness the flow of elemental energy and store it...
"Is that," he repeated himself, "the purpose of the project?"
He could understand why the general had been so worried about secrecy; such a discovery represented unimaginable power. With the right technology, they could redirect the flow of the planet's elemental energy--they could control the weather, trigger earthquakes, volcanoes. He didn't dare think what would happen if the Choras Alliance ever found out about the El Nido project, or learned how to control planetary elements...
"No," Alessa replied with a slightly smug half-smile, and he realized that she knew what he'd been thinking, "actually, the elements aren't the reason we're out here at all, they're just a tool we use."
"Then why," Kalim asked, his voice fading into self-doubt and confusion as he tried to make sense out of it. He had just learned that the El Nido project could tap into the life-force of the planet and control it; what could possibly be more important than that?
"The frozen flame," Alessa replied quietly, seeming to answer both his spoken query and the silent question that he'd asked himself, and he noticed that the sprightly voice she'd used had lowered into a soft hushed tone.
"What's that," he asked, remembering the ominous report on the shuttle.
"It is," she paused, searching for the right words, "the power of Lavos."
Kalim's gut instinctively wrenched inward and he felt his breath catch in his throat at the name. He'd seen the pictures in school, had read about the day that the sky turned black, that a rain of fire poured across the whole world, shattering the city-domes and toppling the skyscrapes.
Like every child who learned about the Day of Lavos in history class, he'd had nightmares of the titanic spiky orb rising out of the depths of the earth, and even the pictures of the creature evoked a primal, inborn fear in humans that reason alone could never fully explain.
It felt, for lack of any better explanation, like staring into the face of God--and realizing that God is a predator, and that there is no place for you in the universe, no reason for your life except to be devoured. Nobody talked about that impression, even after so many centuries, but everyone felt it, and the name of Lavos had long since become almost unspeakable.
"How," he managed to ask after a moment of reeling silence.
"It'll be easier to show you," Alissa nodded to Robo and the automaton, who had previously stood silent during the presentation, quickly tapped a few buttons on the back panel, the map-screen growing dark again, the flourescent lights sweeping across the ceiling and blinding Kalim for an instant.
"Send a message to the monitoring team," he heard her say to Robo, "we're going to the core chamber."
* * *
"So there are four elements," Kalim asked aloud as the group walked through the cobalt-blue metal hallway, past the sealed electronic laboratory doors, and crowded into the large glass elevator that tunneled up and down through the core of the Chronopolis research center, the huge oddly-shaped tower he'd seen outside when the shuttle landed.
"Belthasar believes so," Alissa replied quickly as she led the way.
"But he was open to the possibility of other elements," another voice, a thin raspy voice that sounded as though it were speaking through a mouthful of gravel, interrupted, and Kalim turned his head sideways to find one of the scientists striding alongside him, a short, stone-gray, gargoyle-like beast whose gleaming fangs, short flurttering leathery wings and sharp claws belied the look of calm intelligence in its small black eyes.
"Grimlak," the creature nodded with an imp-like smile to Kalim, "head of the genetics department. As I was saying," even as he spoke, everyone had pushed their way into the elevator and Kalim felt his stomach jerk a little as the elevator began its descent into the depths of the facility, "Alissa is a wonderful biologist, but her comparisions of the planet's elemental energy to vital systems like blood and oxygen is a little misleading."
"How so," Kalim tilted his head slightly, aware of the barely-audible, but clearly exasperated, sigh from Alissa over his shoulder.
"There is a harmony, a musical quality to the elements that such vital systems lack. They compliment each other like musical notes. It's a little bit like DNA itself, with adenine and thynine binding together into harmony with guanine and cytosine to form the helix..."
Kalim suddenly understood Alissa's exasperation; Grimlak seemed to be a poet, a dreamer and artist who'd become a scientist to explore the beauty of the world. Kalim had never understood that philosophy; the universe simply was what it was, and he thought it seemed unprofessional to try to impose values like beauty and harmony onto science. Still, the mystics had their own way of thinking, and they could be as ingenuous as any human.
"So the elements," he asked, "are like music?"
"Right," the gargoyle nodded, "but they're incomplete. The fire and water elemental forces, for example, merge completely with one another to produce a third force, like notes blending into a chord. But the yellow and black elements don't blend with each other at all."
"So there might be two more elements that they WOULD blend with?"
"At least, and all the complete elements could merge together into a single harmony. The four elements we know about don't do that at all, so there must be more elements that we don't know about."
"We're here," Robo's digitized voice chirped as the elevator slowed beneath Kalim's feet. He hadn't thought about it during the conversation, but they had practically raced through the elevator shaft the whole way down; as far as he could guess, this new floor must be deep below sea-level, perhaps just a few feet from the ocean bed.
"We're now at the base of the island," Alissa called out as the group poured out between the opening elevator doors. They stepped out onto a long metal bridge spanning a gleaming concave pit that seemed to stretch forward for miles, as far as he could see. Huge cables stretched out like serpents from the sides of the bowl-shaped floor to connect to the walls of a huge round tower that reached up into the shadowy heights of the circular vault; the bridge led to a small sealed doorway in the middle of the tower.
"That tower," Robo beeped as he stepped beside Kalim, who stood staring at the gleaming spire, "contains the frozen flame. This is actually the same spot that the flame was first found. We built the tower around the flame and pumped out all the seawater so we could set up the lab around it; the city and the other islands were constructed more than a year later."
"Why didn't you simply move the flame," Kalim asked the robot, still trying to figure out what Alissa had meant about the flame being the power of Lavos, and vaguely recalling a report he'd read on his way to El Nido, about a mining team trying to move the flame when it was discovered.
"Do you remember the island in the southwest corner of the map," Robo asked as they walked down the bridge toward the tower, Alissa gliding a few steps ahead of the group as she talked quickly and forcefully with the inner tower's staff through a small handheld communicator.
Now that Kalim thought about it, he did remember a fifth island in the far southwest corner, a round patch of misty forest rising along steep rocky walls out of the ocean. He even remembered seeing it from the shuttle, and he simply nodded to the golden-shelled robot, wondering why nobody had mentioned that island during the briefing on El Nido.
"An undersea mining team found the flame hovering above the ocean floor six years ago and tried to hoist it to the surface. Their disturbance caused a temporal shock-wave that obliterated the mining rig and killed most of its crew in seconds. Once the flame had become dormant again, an entirely new island had appeared in the southwest corner."
"Where did it come from?"
"We believe that it's a patch of land torn out of its original era by the temporal disturbance," Robo answered, "that island has become known as Wingapede Isle, since it's the source of the wingapedes--and the most recent fossils of wingapedes date more than 65 million years ago."
"A prehistoric jungle," Kalim whispered to himself. The creature he'd seen outside was a relic from the dawn of time, dragged into the present by the power of the "frozen flame," whatever that meant. No wonder they'd built the lab around the flame, he thought, if simply trying to lift it out of the ocean had pulled a prehistoric forest out of the past...
Two hulking black robots stood on either side of the closed silver door and Alissa stepped into a blue glowing circle on the floor to the left of the door, pressing her left palm against a square glass plate built into the wall beside the door. A wide triangular sheet of faint laser-light swept out from the wall-mounted security scanner, down from her forehead to her ankles, then back up to her turquoise eyes, as everyone else waited.
"Analyzing," a synthetic female voice said over the seemingly-invisible intercome system, this one sounding just slightly more distorted, deeper than the voice he'd heard in Belthasar's room, "please stand by."
They stood now at the end of the walkway, beneath the base of the round pillar that formed the flame's inner chamber, the gleaming steel walls of the arena-like chamber lit by a faint pulsing blue glow.
"Was it just me," he asked the RY-robot, "or did that voice sound a little different from FATE's usual voice?"
"The frozen flame," Robo chirped, "seems to have an interesting effect on the technology this close to its core. After the lab was completed, the tower's security system would only grant access to Belthasar, who it called the Arbiter. Once he disappeared, though, it restored access to the senior staff of Chronopolis. We still haven't figured out why that happened."
"You're saying the flame," Kalim asked, his sapphire-blue eyes wide in surprise, "can somehow manipulate the hardware surrounding it?"
"Only the security system within the containment tower, and it seems to have gone dormant. The rest of the center is unaffected."
Who in their right mind, Kalim found himself wondering, would want to study something that could hack into computers, rip islands out of the past, destroy ships in seconds...something that held the power of Lavos...
"Analysis complete," the computerized voice suddenly called out over the speakers, and he looked back up, instantly forgetting his momentary doubt as the door suddenly slid open to reveal a soft golden glow within the tower, "security level confirmed, access granted."
The group stepped through the door, one after another, and Kalim gasped at the sight of the inner chamber. The slate-gray walls of the chamber rose up from the floor like a vast wide bowl and then straightened into the inner walls of the round tower, shooting miles above them toward the surface of the artificial island. A wide ring of metal catwalks stretched around the tower over their heads, ladders scattered around the edge of the laboratory leading up from the ground level of the room up onto the hanging catwalk.
The same gigantic cables that Kalim had seen plugged into the tower's outer walls stretched through the heights of the vault, connecting to huge needle-like laser projectors that hung from the inner walls on every side of the tower. Dozens of the thick spiky machines all pointed inward from every angle, pointing toward the center of the tower, almost a hundred feet over Kalim's head, and the hundreds of questions and mysteries that had been buzzing through his mind faded into awed silence as he looked up...
Countless beams of yellow light poured into a huge transparent golden orb hovering high above the laboratory, almost filling the tower; whether the flickering globe was made of glass, or if it was an energy bubble, he had no way of telling. The long silver needles of the laser-projectors pierced the shell of the bubble, firing the beams into a smaller globe of crimson light floating in the center of the large globe.
A huge pedastal rose up from the floor within the bottom of the larger yellow globe, and a gigantic robotic arm, nearly fifty feet tall, stretched up through both the golden shell and the smaller crimson orb, three claw-like prongs surrounding the object in the center of the inner sphere, the target of all the steady laser beams fired into the center of the two orbs. Kalim stared up at it, a brilliant yellow shape that looked, more than anything else, like a miniature star, casting the lab in a deep golden glow.
His first impulse was to twist away from the light, to keep the blinding glow from burning his eyes--but he gradually noticed that the light didn't hurt him. He instead found himself staring deeper into the steady amber glow. It seemed ancient, beautiful beyond any words, like the light of creation itself. He heard himself speaking, his words sounding dazed...
"What," he asked the whole room, nobody in particular, "is it?"
"The outer shell," he heard Tessik's voice answer, "is the elemental energy field that FATE uses to counter the flame's energy. The inner shell is the focused energy of the flame itself, which is contained by the laser beams. The glowing object in the center is the frozen flame."
"No," Kalim glanced around to find Tessik monitoring the controls on the pedastal that formed the base of the vast outer shell, "I mean," and he paused, his mind flooded by the light, "what IS it?"
"It's the power of Lavos," Alissa replied as she turned back from a group of technicians along one of the workstations lining the outer walls, beneath the catwalk, "more than three hundred years ago the creature we call Lavos emerged from the core of our world, destroying many of our cities and threatening to annihilate our whole planet. To this day, we still don't know exactly who or what the 'gate-travellers' that defeated it were, where they came from, or what their motives were."
"This," she said after a moment's pause, "is the essence of what emerged from the world's core almost four centuries ago."
Kalim found his gaze drawn from her face back to the warm glow within the energy-shells; he knew the horror that Lavos's form awakened in people, everyone did, and yet the golden light seemed gentle, soothing. He shook his head and made himself look back down at the scientists.
"How is that possible?"
"After the destruction of Lavos," he heard Alissa's voice answering, "scientists searched its shell, only to find it mostly empty--whatever organs the creature might have had, they must have been vaporized during its death throes. But they measured a trace of energy within the shell unlike anything they'd ever known--a form of energy that warps the fabric of time around it. We've come to call it 'anti-entropic energy' since then.
"The frozen flame," she continued, "is pure anti-entropic energy, the same energy that Lavos emitted. And it seems to be infinite."
"Even Lavos," Kalim muttered as he stared into the light, "wasn't infinitely powerful..."
"No," a slight male voice answered, one he hadn't heard before, and Kalim noticed one of the head scientists from the meeting stepping forward from the group, a short man with thin brown hair and glasses.
"I'm the head of the physics department," he introduced himself awkwardly before continuing "the frozen flame is a seemingly infinite source of energy, enough to have condensed into a physical shape.
"Although Lavos was killed in this reality," he continued, "there are an infinite number of parallel timelines where it is still alive. The energy fields of all those alternate-world Lavos have bled through the dimensions and mixed with each other to create a single energy-field.
"Just as you can see the sun even through a thin curtain, so the energy of Lavos can warp spacetime and bleed into the worlds where Lavos itself doesn't exist. The frozen flame is that energy."
"So it's an echo of Lavos," Kalim repeated softly.
"An echo of every Lavos," the physicist replied, "that exists on every alternate version of our world. It's their combined life-forces, mixed like different colors of paint into one spot, here in the Sea of El Nido."
"Why here?"
"Because in all the parallel versions of our world, this is where Lavos resides. The frozen flame is the sum of all the energy they emit, piercing the barrier between timelines and creating a nexus of energy."
Kalim looked back up, tilting his head back over his shoulders, to gaze into the heart of the flame; the pulsing glow filled his eyes, casting a dim yellow glow across his pupils as he found his gaze drawn deeper by the gentle warmth of the golden light. He felt the light of a thousand worlds pouring into his blue eyes, his mind filled with the faint humming song of countless Lavos stretched through infinite timelines, all of it pouring silently through the dimensional window of the frozen flame.
He tried to imagine the energy of all the different worlds converging within the light of the flame, tried to calculate the sum totals of all those wave-functions, but his thoughts died away into a wordless throbbing warmth, flooded by the hypnotic flicker of the amber glow filling the center of the elemental containment field. All of it seemed insignificant: the elements, the project, the explanations, none of it mattered compared to the light of the flame, to the voice calling him deeper into the light...
Kalim suddenly found himself alone in the middle of a blizzard; icy winds swept around him and he turned left and right, looking through the blue void and quickly finding the frozen flame floating before him. It hovered a few feet away, a jagged thing of streaked crimson and orange light, wavy arms sprouting from its core, where red eyes stared out at him through the frozen air...
His mind reeled, the world seeming to tilt and swim for a moment--and then he saw computer screens of the core-chamber exploding, the ring-shaped catwalk crashing into the ground, the glowing containment spheres vanishing. The blood-red light of the frozen flame poured into the winding halls of Chronopolis like a river of twilight, people screaming and vanishing, the island itself fading away into an empty howling abyss.
A silent apparition emerged from the darkness like a pale ghost drifting through the night...
She hung frozen alive within a shaft of crystal rock, clad in long robes that had long since faded into plain white fabric, her hair bleached of its color by a near-eternity of darkness. A thin whistling music filled his ears, a hollow melody that sent a shiver down his spine. A long thin crack slowly ran down the pillar, a dark line running down the front of the clear column, down the side of her face. She looked beautiful and young, barely older than a teenager, and yet ancient, her closed eyes etched with ageless wisdom.
The crack widened slightly. She slowly began to open her eyes, a dark beautiful madness within her sockets that seemed to fill his being. He saw the madness in her eyes, the loneliness, her hatred for the world that she'd watched and envied for so many millenia. He also saw her hunger, the aching, gnawing emptiness that a thousand worlds couldn't sate.
She opened her dark eyes and stared at him. The emptiness and madness of her gaze bored into his soul, infecting him, drowning his thoughts--and Kalim suddenly screamed in panic.
"Kalim...Kalim...Kalim!"
He felt something hard and angular slam into his lower back and he looked wildly around, engulfed by darkness. Voices and wailing alarms filled his ears, then subsided into calm murmering tones, as someone said his name over and over again.
Kalim quickly realized that his eyes were closed and he opened them to find himself leaning against one of the control panels on the back wall of the core-chamber. Tessik, Alissa and Robo peered curiously at him, the other leading scientists standing in a ring around him behind the first three, while the remaining technicians continued monitoring the flame from the digital work-stations scattered along the outer walls.
"What," he asked weakly, still blinking against the flickering golden light of the containment spheres as he slowly began to realize that nothing had changed, that the flame was as stable as ever, "what happened?"
"You were looking up at the flame," Alissa answered slowly, "when you seemed to go into a trance for a few seconds. Do you have any medical condition, like epilepsy, that could cause siezures?"
"No," Kalim shook his head, still dazed, "no, I don't..."
"There was an unusually large spike," Tessik said in a calm, almost monotonous voice, "in the flame's energy emissions for approximately half a second, but FATE was able to counter the increase almost immediately."
"I thought the flame was contained," Kalim asked as he began to regain his senses.
"It is," Tessik replied firmly, "but the emissions are so erratic that we have to match them by constantly adjusting the elemental field. FATE predicts and counters the flame's patterns, much like," Tessik paused for just an instant before speaking, "like playing a game of chess."
"I saw something," Kalim said softly, as the rest of the scientists began to relax and resumed their own conversations, "when the flame's energy surged, I guess. It was," he paused, trying to remember the flood of images and feelings and finding that they'd already begun to fade away like half-forgotten dreams, "darkness, the flame...someone was there..."
"Interesting," Robo whistled and chirped in reply as Kalim shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, "there was only one other person who reacted to the frozen flame's energy with such visions."
"Who?"
"The previous curator," Robo answered with a curious tilt of his head, "Belthasar."
An original fan-fiction by Demon-Fighter Ash
based on the Square game "Chrono Cross"
Part 1: Future's End
Chapter 2: Heart of the Fire
March, 2398 AD
The solid metal doors whined shut behind Kalim as he stepped into the sparse bedroom and he glanced silently down at the gleaming reflective plates that covered the floor, peering into the shifting mirror-image of the chamber below his feet, watching as it seemed to drop endlessly away below the floor. He looked back up to study the steel-blue, pipe-covered bedroom walls and the flashing golden-yellow control panel beside the sliding motorized door, and then over to a simple bed covered in white bedsheets, filling one corner of the room, and a metal desk and swivel-chair in the opposite corner.
"This was Belthasar's room," he asked with a glance over his shoulder.
"Indeed," the light chirping voice-synthesizer of the golden automaton answered as it walked into the middle of the room beside him, its weight and metal soles clanging against the floor, "this is the room of the project director. Since you hold that title, it's also your room now."
"Right," Kalim slowly said to himself as he looked around. A few hours ago he'd accepted a military post so mysterious that the general had refused to even tell him what the job involved. Now he stood in a vast, mysterious island-city that, by all indications, he'd been hired to manage.
He closed his eyes and remembered his journey through the entrance hall of Chronopolis; the raised arms of the goddess whose marble image stood watch over the front gates, the blinding light of the bright tropical sun pouring through the transparent force-field windows that filled the right wall and overlooked the shuttle hangar, the checkered white and black squares of the floor, the beige cushioned benches and lush ornamental plants.
The outer hall had seemed almost classical in design, with only a few black digital displays with red scrolling text along the walls to give away the advanced technology of the island; at least, until he'd stepped through the inner doors and past the massive electronically-sealed denadorite gates of the security checkpoint to find a huge inner chamber filled with gliding security robots, the air filled with scrolling holographic images and every wall covered with racing streams of arcane numbers and code.
Even this, he'd quickly noticed, was simply the main hall of the complex, with a glass elevator in the center that led up into the labs and working quarters of the island-city. Workers and white-coated scientists constantly streamed through the complex, barely noticing him in their quick striding pace through the electronic doors and up and down the elevator.
What little conversation he could make out had all been clipped and fast, snippets of baffling discussions about anti-entropy, flame-locks and element-fields. Through the deluge of information and bustling life, he'd recieved one clear impression: whatever went on in Chronopolis, it involved astronomical amounts of information and a constant, almost-frantic pace.
"You're an RY-series robot," Kalim said quickly as he shook his head, trying to distract himself from the shock of the day's events, "have the factories started production on that model again?"
"No," Robo beeped amiably, "I'm one of the first-generation RY-robots."
"First generation," Kalim remarked in surprise, "but you would have to be almost...I mean, sorry, that's a personal..."
"That's alright," the robot interrupted with a soft digitized chuckle, "my thought processors are incapable of vanity. I am, as you guessed, very old. Factory records show that I was assembled in late 1998."
"Less than a year before the Day of Lavos," Kalim said in muted awe, even as he glanced around at the bedroom, surveying the folders scattered about the desk and the bookshelf built into the right-hand wall of the bedroom, "do you remember anything about it?"
"Very little," Robo replied after what Kalim almost imagined to be an awkward pause, "my memory circuits from that era have degraded. Most of my memory-files were recorded during this past century."
"That makes sense," Kalim nodded, his bright blue eyes clouded in sudden thought as he walked to the desk, rolling the chair aside and flipping through the loose folders and pages, "the electro-magnetic pulse from Lavos fried a lot of machinery. Still, that you're around after all this time...are there any other RY-series robots in the military?"
"No," Robo whistled in reply, "but I do have an RY-counterpart working on the central continent named Atropos, who's assisting one the civilian archeological digs. Are you familiar with the reptite ruins?"
"I've read about them," Kalim answered as he continued shuffling through the print-outs and diagrams, "they date from more than 65 million years ago, and a lot of anthropologists think they were created by an advanced race older than humans, maybe descended from reptiles."
"Until the ice age ended their civilization," Robo chirped, "and gave humans a chance to build our civilization instead. Still, I can't help but wonder if there was some way for both our worlds to have survived..."
"I guess we'll never know," Kalim muttered as he set the pages down and then suddenly looked up from the desk, "where are Belthasar's books?"
"Books," Robo beeped curiously.
"Belthasar always writes down his notes in paper books, with quills that he made himself. He was famous at the institute for it, he kept volumes of books with all his thoughts and notes written down in them. But they're not here, these are all just technical reports."
"Perhaps," Robo replied, "Belthasar took those books with him?"
"I don't think so," Kalim answered, thoughtfully tapping the corner of one beige folder against the surface of the metal desk, "the files he left behind all contain theories and experimental results. If he was going to take his research with him, why leave these papers behind?"
"It is also possible," the plump golden robot chirped quietly, "that someone else may have taken both Belthasar and his writings."
"Maybe," Kalim replied, his voice still lowered in thought, "but then there's the same question," he glanced up from the desk to the smooth metal ceiling, and the almost-microscopic speakers and microphones scattered over the ceiling like a rash of tiny black dots.
"FATE," he called out into the air in a loud clear voice, and he heard the small beeps and whirs of the Chronopolis computer directing part of its attention to his room, "when was the first time, after the disappearance of Belthasar, that his online research files were accessed?"
"Belthasar's online files," FATE's melodic feminine voice replied calmly through the speaker-embedded ceiling, "were last accessed on February 19th, 2398, at 1247 hours."
"Which is several hours after he failed to show up for his shift," Kalim nodded to Robo, then raised his voice, "who accessed them?"
"General Sharl, General Taryn, Special Investigator Jereth..."
"That's enough," Kalim interrupted the computer, "were any of the files accessed between the approximate time of Belthasar's disappearance, and the beginning of the investigation on his disappearance?"
"Negative," FATE answered.
"I think," Kalim said as he strained his mind, rubbing the back of his neck as he glanced about the room, "that whatever led to his disappearance, it didn't relate to his research at all. The books he kept might have been taken because they contained clues about what happened, not because of their scientific value. That's why the research files were left untouched."
"Then finding those books," Robo answered with a nod, the tiny electric motors within his neck giving a small hum at the sudden motion, "would be a big help in finding out what happened to Belthasar."
"Exactly," Kalim nodded back, and then spoke up, "FATE, transfer all of Belthasar's online research files to my own inbox," he paused and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to recall the baffling string of codes Tessik had given him an hour before, "authorization code alpha-36, delta-3b."
"Authorization confirmed," FATE's voice replied, "all of the previous curator's online research have been transferred to Colonel Skuld's inbox."
"FATE," Kalim called out with slight, amiable exasperation, "Kalim is fine."
"Acknowledged," the computer answered, "Colonel Kalim Skuld has been reidentified as Kalim."
"It is almost time," Robo said, and Kalim turned back around, "for the orientation meeting."
"Right," Kalim nodded, then tilted his head curiously as both he and the brass-plated robot turned to leave the empty bedroom, "why does FATE keep calling me Colonel anyway? I'm not enlisted and I've never even been in the military before..."
"Colonel," Robo answered cheerfully, "is an honorary rank you hold as the curator and project-director of Chronopolis. It's necessary since the project is under military jurisdiction, but do not worry," the robot gave a soft digitized chuckle, "nobody will expect you to lead any wars."
* * *
A group of people sat in either side of a large viewing screen built into the floor of the conference room, the surface of the screen a few inches below the rest of the metallic floor and the viewscreen itself almost fifteen feet across, dominating the whole room. A thin pink bar of flourescent light illuminated each side of the black transparent screen, and Kalim glanced up from the flat screen to the twin rows of small cobalt-blue desks lining the left and right sides of the display, each chair covered in black leather cushions and facing the large screen on the floor.
He looked sheepishly about the desks and finally noticed an empty spot on the end of the right-hand row of seats, stepping gingerly around the back of the desks as he made his way to the empty chair. He looked around at the staff members that had taken their seats, but he only recognized Alissa, now dressed in a white lab-coat but still wearing her ponytail, and still dressed in the slacks and shirt that worn on the landing platform earlier, sitting in the desk opposite his own; Robo stood by the wall of flashing control panels on the far side of the room, and all the others, a mixture of humans and animal-like mystics, were completely new to him.
"Everybody's here," Robo chirped and Alissa stood silently up from her desk, striding across the room to the line of keyboards and switches, giving a quick glance to Kalim as she stood at the front of the room.
"Kalim Skuld," she nodded her head once to him, then looked back at the group, "this is the senior staff of the El Nido Project, the lead scientists of our physics, genetics, exobiology, and engineering divisions, and I'm the head of the medical and biology staff. Since I'm sure you've read the briefs on all the staff," Kalim tried to give a polite smile to the group, totally oblivious to even their names, "we'll get started on the orientation.
"This is the Sea of El Nido," she reached her left hand behind her and, without looking back, she tapped a few buttons. The darkened monitor on the floor suddenly lit up, casting a soft sky-blue glow across the room. Kalim peered over his desk to see a huge map of the El Nido Sea covering the floor, the image divided into sections by a grid of thin green lines; except for a few rocks and coral outcroppings, the sea was completely empty.
"As it looked prior to the project's formation," Alissa continued, "four years ago. Since then, we've terraformed several islands within the El Nido sea, including the island of Chronopolis itself. There are four other islands in the El Nido project.
"The fire-elemental island," she said as she tapped another, and the small red island in the center of the map began blinking. Kalim studied the image more closely; the steep crimson walls of a volcano rose almost straight up from the shore, so that, except for a few patches of forest around the base of the cliffs, the volcano itself formed most of the island.
"The yellow-elemental island," she said as another island north of the red island began to blink. Even at the aerial scale of the map, he could make out a thin ring of rugged mountains surrounding a small pit of sand. Beyond that, the island looked completely lifeless, a desert.
"The water-elemental island," and a third island, as far south below the central fire-island as the desert island was north, began to blink; this one looked by far the most pleasant of the three, with a crystal pool of water in the middle, surrounded by lush tropical forests on a staggered ring of hills rising toward a central peak overlooking the northern shore.
"The black-elemental island," and with another tap of the button, a fourth island, in the far southeastern corner, began to blink. This island seemed to be carved out of pink glassy coral that rose from the smooth stone ground into rounded hills and rocky plateaus pitted with shadowy mouth-like caves. It seemed forbidding, mystical...almost haunted...
"Each of these islands," Alissa finished, stepping away from the control panel to stand at the edge of the map, "was terraformed over specific geological points according to Belthasar's elemental theory."
"Tessik mentioned that theory too," Kalim asked curiously, looking at the map and then back up at the young woman, who seemed far more comfortable now at the head of the room than she had outside, "what is it?"
"Are you familiar," she asked him, "with the Gaea theory?"
"The theory that the planet itself is a living entity," he nodded, "and that all living things are a part of its own life-cycle."
"It's not a theory anymore," Alessa replied and she stepped back to the panel to tap another button, "Belthasar proved that Gaea is real."
A new image flashed across the screen and Kalim looked down at the floor at a diagram of the planet itself, divided into cross-sections to show the thin outer crust, the thick dark mantle and the fiery inner core of the planet. Four winding ribbons of colorful energy looped and twisted in and out of the planet's surface, countless loops dipping down into the center of the planet and then rising back out through the crust.
"Each of these four lines represents a stream of elemental energy that weaves in and out of the planet like a river," she swept her hand avove the screen, "red is fire, blue's water, yellow's electricity and black's gravity. These energy streams flow throughout the planet, like the biological cycles of a living being. Just as the human body has circulatory and respiratory systems to carry nutrients and oxygen to every cell, the planet itself has energy streams that carry the four elemental energies across the world and maintain the balance of the climate."
"So these streams control the climate," Kalim asked thoughtfully, "and keep heat from building up by spreading fire-elemental energy across the whole planet. It also keeps the planet from getting too cold..."
"And they control thunderstorms, earthquakes, even gravity," Alessa finished his thought, "these four elements are literally the lifeblood of the planet itself--without them, life would be impossible on this world."
Kalim watched Alessa as she talked, her hands raised and making quick gestures with each point, keeping pace with the almost breathless speed of her speech. He wondered if she might have been a teacher or professor like him, but quickly decided otherwise; as much as she obviously enjoyed science, she seemed to almost be rushing through the lecture.
He glanced around at the rest of the scientists, whose faces varied between bushy-eyed men and taut-faced women to reptilian serpent-women and large furry beasts; nonetheless, all of them listened to Alessa and glanced down at the glowing diagram with polite interest. Kalim quickly realized, with a sudden flush of silent embarrassment, that all of them already knew all this, that the orientation was for his benefit alone.
"How do the islands you terraformed," he quickly focused back on the diagram, "relate to these energy-streams?"
Alessa took a step back toward the wall and with a single tap on the control panel, the image changed back to the map of the El Nido islands, now with colored dots glowing in the center of the four element islands, a blue dot over the water island, red over the volcano, yellow over the desert island, and black over the dark coral island.
"Each of the islands," she explained, gesturing to each one in turn, "matches a point where an elemental energy-stream pierces the surface of the planet, forming a kind of geyser of elemental energy. Belthasar figured out a method for detecting these hot-spots of energy, and we terraformed the islands over four element-points, to harness and amplify them.
"In a sense, each of the islands is an elemental energy-collector, and FATE constantly regulates each hot-spot and draws power from them; we've even developed technology based on storing and then re-directing elemental energy, such as the black-element graviton weapon you saw earlier."
"So is that," Kalim paused, trying to collect his thoughts. It was a vast amount to take in so quickly--the planet's alive, he reflected back over the briefing, and it has four elemental energies. Belthasar found a way to harness the flow of elemental energy and store it...
"Is that," he repeated himself, "the purpose of the project?"
He could understand why the general had been so worried about secrecy; such a discovery represented unimaginable power. With the right technology, they could redirect the flow of the planet's elemental energy--they could control the weather, trigger earthquakes, volcanoes. He didn't dare think what would happen if the Choras Alliance ever found out about the El Nido project, or learned how to control planetary elements...
"No," Alessa replied with a slightly smug half-smile, and he realized that she knew what he'd been thinking, "actually, the elements aren't the reason we're out here at all, they're just a tool we use."
"Then why," Kalim asked, his voice fading into self-doubt and confusion as he tried to make sense out of it. He had just learned that the El Nido project could tap into the life-force of the planet and control it; what could possibly be more important than that?
"The frozen flame," Alessa replied quietly, seeming to answer both his spoken query and the silent question that he'd asked himself, and he noticed that the sprightly voice she'd used had lowered into a soft hushed tone.
"What's that," he asked, remembering the ominous report on the shuttle.
"It is," she paused, searching for the right words, "the power of Lavos."
Kalim's gut instinctively wrenched inward and he felt his breath catch in his throat at the name. He'd seen the pictures in school, had read about the day that the sky turned black, that a rain of fire poured across the whole world, shattering the city-domes and toppling the skyscrapes.
Like every child who learned about the Day of Lavos in history class, he'd had nightmares of the titanic spiky orb rising out of the depths of the earth, and even the pictures of the creature evoked a primal, inborn fear in humans that reason alone could never fully explain.
It felt, for lack of any better explanation, like staring into the face of God--and realizing that God is a predator, and that there is no place for you in the universe, no reason for your life except to be devoured. Nobody talked about that impression, even after so many centuries, but everyone felt it, and the name of Lavos had long since become almost unspeakable.
"How," he managed to ask after a moment of reeling silence.
"It'll be easier to show you," Alissa nodded to Robo and the automaton, who had previously stood silent during the presentation, quickly tapped a few buttons on the back panel, the map-screen growing dark again, the flourescent lights sweeping across the ceiling and blinding Kalim for an instant.
"Send a message to the monitoring team," he heard her say to Robo, "we're going to the core chamber."
* * *
"So there are four elements," Kalim asked aloud as the group walked through the cobalt-blue metal hallway, past the sealed electronic laboratory doors, and crowded into the large glass elevator that tunneled up and down through the core of the Chronopolis research center, the huge oddly-shaped tower he'd seen outside when the shuttle landed.
"Belthasar believes so," Alissa replied quickly as she led the way.
"But he was open to the possibility of other elements," another voice, a thin raspy voice that sounded as though it were speaking through a mouthful of gravel, interrupted, and Kalim turned his head sideways to find one of the scientists striding alongside him, a short, stone-gray, gargoyle-like beast whose gleaming fangs, short flurttering leathery wings and sharp claws belied the look of calm intelligence in its small black eyes.
"Grimlak," the creature nodded with an imp-like smile to Kalim, "head of the genetics department. As I was saying," even as he spoke, everyone had pushed their way into the elevator and Kalim felt his stomach jerk a little as the elevator began its descent into the depths of the facility, "Alissa is a wonderful biologist, but her comparisions of the planet's elemental energy to vital systems like blood and oxygen is a little misleading."
"How so," Kalim tilted his head slightly, aware of the barely-audible, but clearly exasperated, sigh from Alissa over his shoulder.
"There is a harmony, a musical quality to the elements that such vital systems lack. They compliment each other like musical notes. It's a little bit like DNA itself, with adenine and thynine binding together into harmony with guanine and cytosine to form the helix..."
Kalim suddenly understood Alissa's exasperation; Grimlak seemed to be a poet, a dreamer and artist who'd become a scientist to explore the beauty of the world. Kalim had never understood that philosophy; the universe simply was what it was, and he thought it seemed unprofessional to try to impose values like beauty and harmony onto science. Still, the mystics had their own way of thinking, and they could be as ingenuous as any human.
"So the elements," he asked, "are like music?"
"Right," the gargoyle nodded, "but they're incomplete. The fire and water elemental forces, for example, merge completely with one another to produce a third force, like notes blending into a chord. But the yellow and black elements don't blend with each other at all."
"So there might be two more elements that they WOULD blend with?"
"At least, and all the complete elements could merge together into a single harmony. The four elements we know about don't do that at all, so there must be more elements that we don't know about."
"We're here," Robo's digitized voice chirped as the elevator slowed beneath Kalim's feet. He hadn't thought about it during the conversation, but they had practically raced through the elevator shaft the whole way down; as far as he could guess, this new floor must be deep below sea-level, perhaps just a few feet from the ocean bed.
"We're now at the base of the island," Alissa called out as the group poured out between the opening elevator doors. They stepped out onto a long metal bridge spanning a gleaming concave pit that seemed to stretch forward for miles, as far as he could see. Huge cables stretched out like serpents from the sides of the bowl-shaped floor to connect to the walls of a huge round tower that reached up into the shadowy heights of the circular vault; the bridge led to a small sealed doorway in the middle of the tower.
"That tower," Robo beeped as he stepped beside Kalim, who stood staring at the gleaming spire, "contains the frozen flame. This is actually the same spot that the flame was first found. We built the tower around the flame and pumped out all the seawater so we could set up the lab around it; the city and the other islands were constructed more than a year later."
"Why didn't you simply move the flame," Kalim asked the robot, still trying to figure out what Alissa had meant about the flame being the power of Lavos, and vaguely recalling a report he'd read on his way to El Nido, about a mining team trying to move the flame when it was discovered.
"Do you remember the island in the southwest corner of the map," Robo asked as they walked down the bridge toward the tower, Alissa gliding a few steps ahead of the group as she talked quickly and forcefully with the inner tower's staff through a small handheld communicator.
Now that Kalim thought about it, he did remember a fifth island in the far southwest corner, a round patch of misty forest rising along steep rocky walls out of the ocean. He even remembered seeing it from the shuttle, and he simply nodded to the golden-shelled robot, wondering why nobody had mentioned that island during the briefing on El Nido.
"An undersea mining team found the flame hovering above the ocean floor six years ago and tried to hoist it to the surface. Their disturbance caused a temporal shock-wave that obliterated the mining rig and killed most of its crew in seconds. Once the flame had become dormant again, an entirely new island had appeared in the southwest corner."
"Where did it come from?"
"We believe that it's a patch of land torn out of its original era by the temporal disturbance," Robo answered, "that island has become known as Wingapede Isle, since it's the source of the wingapedes--and the most recent fossils of wingapedes date more than 65 million years ago."
"A prehistoric jungle," Kalim whispered to himself. The creature he'd seen outside was a relic from the dawn of time, dragged into the present by the power of the "frozen flame," whatever that meant. No wonder they'd built the lab around the flame, he thought, if simply trying to lift it out of the ocean had pulled a prehistoric forest out of the past...
Two hulking black robots stood on either side of the closed silver door and Alissa stepped into a blue glowing circle on the floor to the left of the door, pressing her left palm against a square glass plate built into the wall beside the door. A wide triangular sheet of faint laser-light swept out from the wall-mounted security scanner, down from her forehead to her ankles, then back up to her turquoise eyes, as everyone else waited.
"Analyzing," a synthetic female voice said over the seemingly-invisible intercome system, this one sounding just slightly more distorted, deeper than the voice he'd heard in Belthasar's room, "please stand by."
They stood now at the end of the walkway, beneath the base of the round pillar that formed the flame's inner chamber, the gleaming steel walls of the arena-like chamber lit by a faint pulsing blue glow.
"Was it just me," he asked the RY-robot, "or did that voice sound a little different from FATE's usual voice?"
"The frozen flame," Robo chirped, "seems to have an interesting effect on the technology this close to its core. After the lab was completed, the tower's security system would only grant access to Belthasar, who it called the Arbiter. Once he disappeared, though, it restored access to the senior staff of Chronopolis. We still haven't figured out why that happened."
"You're saying the flame," Kalim asked, his sapphire-blue eyes wide in surprise, "can somehow manipulate the hardware surrounding it?"
"Only the security system within the containment tower, and it seems to have gone dormant. The rest of the center is unaffected."
Who in their right mind, Kalim found himself wondering, would want to study something that could hack into computers, rip islands out of the past, destroy ships in seconds...something that held the power of Lavos...
"Analysis complete," the computerized voice suddenly called out over the speakers, and he looked back up, instantly forgetting his momentary doubt as the door suddenly slid open to reveal a soft golden glow within the tower, "security level confirmed, access granted."
The group stepped through the door, one after another, and Kalim gasped at the sight of the inner chamber. The slate-gray walls of the chamber rose up from the floor like a vast wide bowl and then straightened into the inner walls of the round tower, shooting miles above them toward the surface of the artificial island. A wide ring of metal catwalks stretched around the tower over their heads, ladders scattered around the edge of the laboratory leading up from the ground level of the room up onto the hanging catwalk.
The same gigantic cables that Kalim had seen plugged into the tower's outer walls stretched through the heights of the vault, connecting to huge needle-like laser projectors that hung from the inner walls on every side of the tower. Dozens of the thick spiky machines all pointed inward from every angle, pointing toward the center of the tower, almost a hundred feet over Kalim's head, and the hundreds of questions and mysteries that had been buzzing through his mind faded into awed silence as he looked up...
Countless beams of yellow light poured into a huge transparent golden orb hovering high above the laboratory, almost filling the tower; whether the flickering globe was made of glass, or if it was an energy bubble, he had no way of telling. The long silver needles of the laser-projectors pierced the shell of the bubble, firing the beams into a smaller globe of crimson light floating in the center of the large globe.
A huge pedastal rose up from the floor within the bottom of the larger yellow globe, and a gigantic robotic arm, nearly fifty feet tall, stretched up through both the golden shell and the smaller crimson orb, three claw-like prongs surrounding the object in the center of the inner sphere, the target of all the steady laser beams fired into the center of the two orbs. Kalim stared up at it, a brilliant yellow shape that looked, more than anything else, like a miniature star, casting the lab in a deep golden glow.
His first impulse was to twist away from the light, to keep the blinding glow from burning his eyes--but he gradually noticed that the light didn't hurt him. He instead found himself staring deeper into the steady amber glow. It seemed ancient, beautiful beyond any words, like the light of creation itself. He heard himself speaking, his words sounding dazed...
"What," he asked the whole room, nobody in particular, "is it?"
"The outer shell," he heard Tessik's voice answer, "is the elemental energy field that FATE uses to counter the flame's energy. The inner shell is the focused energy of the flame itself, which is contained by the laser beams. The glowing object in the center is the frozen flame."
"No," Kalim glanced around to find Tessik monitoring the controls on the pedastal that formed the base of the vast outer shell, "I mean," and he paused, his mind flooded by the light, "what IS it?"
"It's the power of Lavos," Alissa replied as she turned back from a group of technicians along one of the workstations lining the outer walls, beneath the catwalk, "more than three hundred years ago the creature we call Lavos emerged from the core of our world, destroying many of our cities and threatening to annihilate our whole planet. To this day, we still don't know exactly who or what the 'gate-travellers' that defeated it were, where they came from, or what their motives were."
"This," she said after a moment's pause, "is the essence of what emerged from the world's core almost four centuries ago."
Kalim found his gaze drawn from her face back to the warm glow within the energy-shells; he knew the horror that Lavos's form awakened in people, everyone did, and yet the golden light seemed gentle, soothing. He shook his head and made himself look back down at the scientists.
"How is that possible?"
"After the destruction of Lavos," he heard Alissa's voice answering, "scientists searched its shell, only to find it mostly empty--whatever organs the creature might have had, they must have been vaporized during its death throes. But they measured a trace of energy within the shell unlike anything they'd ever known--a form of energy that warps the fabric of time around it. We've come to call it 'anti-entropic energy' since then.
"The frozen flame," she continued, "is pure anti-entropic energy, the same energy that Lavos emitted. And it seems to be infinite."
"Even Lavos," Kalim muttered as he stared into the light, "wasn't infinitely powerful..."
"No," a slight male voice answered, one he hadn't heard before, and Kalim noticed one of the head scientists from the meeting stepping forward from the group, a short man with thin brown hair and glasses.
"I'm the head of the physics department," he introduced himself awkwardly before continuing "the frozen flame is a seemingly infinite source of energy, enough to have condensed into a physical shape.
"Although Lavos was killed in this reality," he continued, "there are an infinite number of parallel timelines where it is still alive. The energy fields of all those alternate-world Lavos have bled through the dimensions and mixed with each other to create a single energy-field.
"Just as you can see the sun even through a thin curtain, so the energy of Lavos can warp spacetime and bleed into the worlds where Lavos itself doesn't exist. The frozen flame is that energy."
"So it's an echo of Lavos," Kalim repeated softly.
"An echo of every Lavos," the physicist replied, "that exists on every alternate version of our world. It's their combined life-forces, mixed like different colors of paint into one spot, here in the Sea of El Nido."
"Why here?"
"Because in all the parallel versions of our world, this is where Lavos resides. The frozen flame is the sum of all the energy they emit, piercing the barrier between timelines and creating a nexus of energy."
Kalim looked back up, tilting his head back over his shoulders, to gaze into the heart of the flame; the pulsing glow filled his eyes, casting a dim yellow glow across his pupils as he found his gaze drawn deeper by the gentle warmth of the golden light. He felt the light of a thousand worlds pouring into his blue eyes, his mind filled with the faint humming song of countless Lavos stretched through infinite timelines, all of it pouring silently through the dimensional window of the frozen flame.
He tried to imagine the energy of all the different worlds converging within the light of the flame, tried to calculate the sum totals of all those wave-functions, but his thoughts died away into a wordless throbbing warmth, flooded by the hypnotic flicker of the amber glow filling the center of the elemental containment field. All of it seemed insignificant: the elements, the project, the explanations, none of it mattered compared to the light of the flame, to the voice calling him deeper into the light...
Kalim suddenly found himself alone in the middle of a blizzard; icy winds swept around him and he turned left and right, looking through the blue void and quickly finding the frozen flame floating before him. It hovered a few feet away, a jagged thing of streaked crimson and orange light, wavy arms sprouting from its core, where red eyes stared out at him through the frozen air...
His mind reeled, the world seeming to tilt and swim for a moment--and then he saw computer screens of the core-chamber exploding, the ring-shaped catwalk crashing into the ground, the glowing containment spheres vanishing. The blood-red light of the frozen flame poured into the winding halls of Chronopolis like a river of twilight, people screaming and vanishing, the island itself fading away into an empty howling abyss.
A silent apparition emerged from the darkness like a pale ghost drifting through the night...
She hung frozen alive within a shaft of crystal rock, clad in long robes that had long since faded into plain white fabric, her hair bleached of its color by a near-eternity of darkness. A thin whistling music filled his ears, a hollow melody that sent a shiver down his spine. A long thin crack slowly ran down the pillar, a dark line running down the front of the clear column, down the side of her face. She looked beautiful and young, barely older than a teenager, and yet ancient, her closed eyes etched with ageless wisdom.
The crack widened slightly. She slowly began to open her eyes, a dark beautiful madness within her sockets that seemed to fill his being. He saw the madness in her eyes, the loneliness, her hatred for the world that she'd watched and envied for so many millenia. He also saw her hunger, the aching, gnawing emptiness that a thousand worlds couldn't sate.
She opened her dark eyes and stared at him. The emptiness and madness of her gaze bored into his soul, infecting him, drowning his thoughts--and Kalim suddenly screamed in panic.
"Kalim...Kalim...Kalim!"
He felt something hard and angular slam into his lower back and he looked wildly around, engulfed by darkness. Voices and wailing alarms filled his ears, then subsided into calm murmering tones, as someone said his name over and over again.
Kalim quickly realized that his eyes were closed and he opened them to find himself leaning against one of the control panels on the back wall of the core-chamber. Tessik, Alissa and Robo peered curiously at him, the other leading scientists standing in a ring around him behind the first three, while the remaining technicians continued monitoring the flame from the digital work-stations scattered along the outer walls.
"What," he asked weakly, still blinking against the flickering golden light of the containment spheres as he slowly began to realize that nothing had changed, that the flame was as stable as ever, "what happened?"
"You were looking up at the flame," Alissa answered slowly, "when you seemed to go into a trance for a few seconds. Do you have any medical condition, like epilepsy, that could cause siezures?"
"No," Kalim shook his head, still dazed, "no, I don't..."
"There was an unusually large spike," Tessik said in a calm, almost monotonous voice, "in the flame's energy emissions for approximately half a second, but FATE was able to counter the increase almost immediately."
"I thought the flame was contained," Kalim asked as he began to regain his senses.
"It is," Tessik replied firmly, "but the emissions are so erratic that we have to match them by constantly adjusting the elemental field. FATE predicts and counters the flame's patterns, much like," Tessik paused for just an instant before speaking, "like playing a game of chess."
"I saw something," Kalim said softly, as the rest of the scientists began to relax and resumed their own conversations, "when the flame's energy surged, I guess. It was," he paused, trying to remember the flood of images and feelings and finding that they'd already begun to fade away like half-forgotten dreams, "darkness, the flame...someone was there..."
"Interesting," Robo whistled and chirped in reply as Kalim shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, "there was only one other person who reacted to the frozen flame's energy with such visions."
"Who?"
"The previous curator," Robo answered with a curious tilt of his head, "Belthasar."