Chapter 29 – The Athena Machine
Rapid, light footfalls marked Chrono's passage over the bride linking the north and south ends of the desert province, not once abating to check the progress of the hungry mob of Nu creatures behind him feasting on the dead from the battlefield. The bridge stretched from the fortress over a wide, deep chasm through which ran the Yellow River many hundreds of yards below, smooth, calm, and reflective like a plate of glass installed at the floor of a canyon, a lonely crack nestled in the center of a desolate world peeping through to the other side as if offering a porthole to someplace more lively.
Nothing lay on the other side of the river; no roads or buildings or signs of life interrupted endless miles of sand and rock and wind extending beyond the horizon in three directions, untouched by what civilization even this land could boast. What evidence of life there might have been in the past had shriveled and died under the merciless desert sun, its bones bleached and then buried by the onslaught of the waves of sand propelled in a slow march by centuries of wind; it was a place where even death was unwelcome, signs of its presence swept under the rug until they finally disappeared, forever.
The last sign of life, of death, of anything, then ,was the tower in the middle of the bridge, rising from the glossy depths of the water below up through the masonry of the bridge itself and extending upwards, a stony hand reaching for heaven in supplication, grasping at the last hope of avoiding the sea of nothingness beyond the far riverbank. Around the tower, the gloomy yellow of the dusty air yielded for a dull red glow emanating from the tower itself. Its appearance was familiar even to Chrono.
When he reached it, he found himself stopping to catch his breath.
Paem joined Chrono. "This is where we hide," she informed him. "The western arm of the Himmelkreuz. The Yellow Tower. If we use the metaphor of it being a fountain of knowledge, in this place it becomes an oasis. Whatever we call it, the Nus cannot come inside."
The same lock as before responded in the same way to the same motion of Paem's staff; she held it in front of her, a flash of red light erupted from its tip, and with a monstrous creaking sound, the stone doors at the foot of the tower swung open, the party stepped inside, and the doors closed behind them with a crash, sealing out the light and the threat of the ravenous Nus. Paem dispelled the resulting darkness with a tap of her staff against the floor that triggered a system of lamps embedded in the walls to switch on and bathe the room in pale red, the center of the room and exits enjoying more light than the corners.
Paem led Chrono and Coppelia to one of the dark corners and rapped on the wall with her staff, and then a stone slab slid aside, revealing a winding stairwell leading both up and down.
Coppelia tapped Paem on the shoulder. "Is it not correct that we will now ask the Himmelkreuz supercomputer of the whereabouts of Miss Orchid? If the ability of the computer to predict the future is limited, it may still be of use if Miss Orchid is somewhere amidst the carnage outside."
Paem began descending the stairs, but Coppelia caught her arm before she made three steps. "Miss Paem," she said, "we went upwards on our previous visit to a Himmelkreuz tower. Should we not take the same route this time?"
"These towers are similar," Paem answered, "but they are not the same. Here, we need to go down."
Down they went. Down a flight of stairs, and then ten flights, and then what seemed like hundreds, Chrono, Coppelia, and Paem climbed down and down and down, the stairs never changing, the wall around the stairwell never changing, the light from the walls never changing, and nobody speaking until long after the door through which they entered the stairwell disappeared above them.
The low visibility and limited room to maneuver left Chrono feeling somewhat vulnerable, so he refused to allow himself to relax as he followed Paem farther and farther into the pit. His pace steady, he made sure he kept his breath deep and slow as he went, not letting his nerves get the better of him. Still, he found his hand straying to the hilt of his sword now and then.
His grip on the sword tightened when he heard a rattling noise. Looking behind him, he saw nothing directly, but out of the corner of his eye he though he caught a glimpse of a rock falling down the middle of the stairwell shaft. He pointed this out to Paem.
She stopped briefly and sniffed the air, but then she continued. "Just a rat," she said matter-of-factly.
Their descent continued as before for a short time, but it was interrupted again by another noise, this one a whistling sound that seemed to come from above them, approaching quickly. It passed through the same trajectory as the rock, falling straight down the middle of the shaft. This time, Chrono stared directly at it as it passed, the high pitch of the noise flipping to something much lower as it passed them.
Although he caught only a split second glance at the falling object, Chrono thought it looked vaguely humanoid. He turned his gaze to Paem, but she shrugged and continued walking.
"Just a rat," she repeated.
No other noises or sights broke the monotony of the rest of the trip down the stairs, but Chrono noticed that Coppelia had shifted to her left, placing her farther out along the radius of a cross section of the well as they followed the stairs in a clockwise circle downward.
The bottom of the long stairwell held no surprises. The stairs hit a stone floor in a small, round room with a door at one side. The endless circling had destroyed Chrono's sense of direction, so he had no idea in which compass direction the door faced; he could only follow as Paem opened it the same way she opened all doors in Himmelkreuz towers.
The other side of the door led to a hallway with a low, arched ceiling and walls that curved first left and then right, putting a strict limit on how far ahead Chrono could see and blocking much of the available light. Familiar red lights still shone through the walls in places, but each stretch of the hallway was only exposed to the nearby lights because of the twists and turns, unlike in the stairwell, where nothing obstructed light from traveling down the central shaft. As a result, this stretch of the path was much, much darker than any before it.
At the end of the winding road there was another door, and beyond that, a large, well-lit room.
Chrono found himself somewhat surprised that there was light in the room that was not red, but what surprised him more was the machine in the middle of the floor: a bulky, metal contraption brimming with wires and tubes and blue glowing buttons and viewscreens and keyboards and a padded chair in the center and a glass shell in the back housing an extremely large chunk of glowing Dreamstone.
The chair in the center had restraints on its arms and, above it, a metal cap with wire protruding from its top and running into the body of the machine behind it. Paem sat here, fastening the restraints on her left arm and pulling the cap onto her head and announcing, "This is where I will get my answered."
"Answers to what?" said Chrono.
"Every question that concerns us now," said Paem. "Orchid, the invasion, everything. This machine can help us."
"It is different from the mechanism used before," said Coppelia. "Yet, it still uses Dreamstone."
"Correct," said Paem. "The North Tower operates through spinning rings lining its towers, which are lined with Dreamstone. It can read the rings with a beam of light and then move the wisdom to a receptacle more easily read. This one, obviously, works differently. I will demonstrate this Athena Machine for you."
Paem slid her free arm down at her side and pulled a switch jutting out from the side of the chair, and the machine's lights began to flicker, its tubes hissed, and a humming sound spread from the glass shell.
"Ask me a question, Chrono!" Paem shouted over the racket. "Anything you want to know about me!"
Chrono thought for a second and then yelled back, "Where were you born?"
Paem smiled, clearly pleased with the question. "I was born in this land, though not in the Western Province," she said.
As she said it, the machine hummed louder, the Dreamstone glowed slightly brighter, and a panel of blue lights lit up on the side.
"See?" she said. "It can confirm the truth of what I said. The Dreamstone here is different from the Dreamstone in the North, but it works in much the same way. It can search what it knows about me and confirm what I want to find out from it. In this test, I have it telling me something I already know to confirm the truth. Easy, isn't it?"
"Indeed," said Coppelia. "This might be able to tell us where Miss Orchid is."
"You won't know until you try," said Paem. She pushed the cap off her head, slipped her left arm out of the restrain, and hopped down out of the chair.
"Ah," said commented while waving her arms cheerfully, "being around the Athena Machine makes me feel young and refreshed!"
"But you're still hungry," Chrono muttered to himself.
"What?" said Paem. "I didn't hear you."
"N-nothing," said Chrono. "Just a thought I had. Nothing important."
"If you say so," said Paem.
"I am ready," said Coppelia, who had already sat in the chair. She motioned for Paem to cue the machine's startup procedure. Paem fastened the cap to Coppelia's head, pressed a button on top of the cap, and flipped the same switch as before, and the machine whirred to life once more.
"Tell me, Coppelia," she said, "why you are searching for Orchid."
"It is my duty," said Coppelia. "That is all I can say for now."
The machine hummed loudly and glowed blue. Paem looked looked over at the lighting panel and then back at Coppelia.
"Do you believe she is nearby now?" she asked.
"I do believe as you say," said Coppelia. "At the least, I believe it is possible, and if it is possible, then I must do everything in my power to find her."
The Athena Machine let out a raucous grinding noise, and the lighting panel flashed red.
"The machine says that you are mistaken," said Paem. "It usually knows best, so maybe the rumors of your Orchid being here were false."
"It would appear so." Coppelia sounded extremely disappointed.
"Please," said Paem, "step out of the machine so we can test Chrono. Maybe it can glean something from a search of his past, present, and future."
A sullen Coppelia detached her arm restraints, slid out of the chair, and trudged over to Paem's side. She watched as Chrono took his turn in the chair. Once again, Paem helped him with the arm restrains, attached the metal cap, hit a button on the cap, and flipped a switch at the side of the machine, and once again, it came to life.
"Are you the Hero of Time?" Paem asked before Chrono could even get comfortable.
"I suppose so," said Chrono. "I don't like thinking of myself as such, but it's something I hear from time to time from Nadia and Lucca and some others. I guess so, then."
The machine's response was one of blue light and humming, not red light and clanking. The content of the question and the suddenness with which Paem asked it left Chrono slightly dazed, but the relief at getting the less noisy response from the machine comforted him somewhat for some reason. He gulped in a deep breath before Paem could volley another question at him.
Paem giggled slightly at his discomfort. "I apologize for being pushy, Chrono," she said. "I just needed to get the question in which you were in the right state of mind to answer it. It's my job, you know. I have to find things out, and it's actually very important to Lord Kuei to confirm that you actually are the Hero of Time. It's not like there aren't counterfeits out there, as well as other heroes. You're not the first to get yourself lost here without dying first, you know."
"So I'm not dead! I knew it," said Chrono, and the machine jolted him with a flash of red and a clank.
"I'm... what?" said Chrono, confused by the response and more than a little frightened.
"It's reacting to your statement of belief," said Paem. "You said you knew it, but that was most likely false. Most people who wind up here have no idea if they are dead or not, and the machine read your certainty as false."
"I see, so I'm not dead," said Chrono, and the blue light resumed. An extremely pleasant feeling welled up in his chest, as he at least had at least one answer to one small question about his journey. Whatever else happened, he was certain that he was not dead, which made sense, as he could not remember dying.
Paem notice his change of countenance and smiled at him. "This should be relaxing for you. So, let's try something else. You're here to find someone named Nadia, right?"
"Yes," said Chrono. "I am searching for her. More than anything, I want to find her again. I was taken from her in the middle of our wedding ceremony, though I have yet to find out why."
Throughout Chrono's answer, the Athena Machine hummed happily and shone blue.
"You've never met Crow or his minions before?" asked Paem.
"Of course not," said Chrono. "I mean, I never met them before we encountered them at the tower."
The Athena Machine continued to hum.
"And you met Coppelia in a cave north of the home of Lord Kuei, correct?"
"Yes," said Chrono. "I met here while we were both lost in the Jinling Caverns."
More blue from the machine confirmed Chrono's answer.
"Do you think there is any chance of finding your Nadia here, or do you really want a chance to find your way home?"
"I would like to go home. I doubt Nadia would be here, though I have certainly seen stranger things. Nothing here makes complete sense to me."
"The Athena Machine agrees with you. I should like to know what could be stranger than finding your lost love in the lost land Beyond Time, but if that were impossible, the machine would have told me. Curious."
"The universe is a funny place," said Chrono, "and at times I can't help but think I was meant to see some of the funniest sides of it."
"That I believe," said Paem. "The perspective on history for those here is a bit broad. I envy those like you who can see so many major events up close. But enough of that. I need to find out more. We haven't really learned anything other than that Coppelia's Orchid is not here. I've confirmed a couple of interesting facts, but nothing that you two did not already know."
Paem tuned away for a minute, her attention on the Athena Machine's panels of buttons and switches and assorted other control devices that remained untouched, and as if pondering further uses for the machine, she walked to one of the larger control panels, tapped it in a few places, and turned back to Chrono.
"Think of Nadia for a minute," she said. "Think as clearly as you can of exactly what enters your mind when you imagine her name. Then look at the far wall."
The lights dimmed. Then they all went out, including those on the walls. The only remaining light came from the Dreamstone in the back of the machine, and even it dimmed as the glass surrounding it turned opaque. Then the wall on the far side of the room lit up, solid and blue, from a beam of light projected from the top of the Athena Machine.
Chrono stared at the light, momentarily forgetting to think of Nadia. Once he shifted his thoughts to his beloved, he saw her, not just in his mind, but on the far wall. He saw her in a long, white dress, with lacy sleeves puffed above her shoulders, a silk band about the middle, and the finest an ornately sewn copy of the royal crest of Guardia adorning the side, almost too small to be seen by anyone who did not know it was there. Chrono should not have known of this had he kept to the tradition of avoiding the bride before the beginning of the wedding, but as with so many other traditions, he and Nadia had ignored it in favor of a a fully costumed pre-wedding trip around the world in the Wings of Time, which Lucca had never gotten around to dismantling.
Chrono stared at the face of the image in front of him, at the tiny, perfect nose in the middle, the huge, deep, innocent eyes into which he had found himself lost the first time he saw them at the grounds of the Millennial Fair, before he even knew the name Marle, much less Nadia. He stared at her eyebrows, a strange thing for many to notice, but a feature he had long admired on her face. He watched her hair, tied up for the sake of formality but frayed in places, reminding him of the rebellious force of life deep within Nadia's personality, overriding formality whenever necessary He thought of her beautiful mouth, the same mouth out of which came the most sonorous voice he had ever encountered, a voice the mere memory of which could lull him to sleep at night, easing his mind even in the most dangerous of situations. Below that, her chin, sharp and bony and young, and then her neck, curved and smooth, like that of a swan. Below her neck, he saw her pendant hanging on her necklace, the artifact that set off that set off his very first adventure. Seeing it in front of him instead of just in his mind left him with a longing deep inside, a desire to be home with his love, a desire so strong he almost burst out of the hand restraints and ran over to the wall, though he knew if he did so, the image would vanish.
The image then changed. The formal dress vanished, replaced by her light blue casual outfit, the one she had worn when he first saw her. In fact, everything in the image became as things were when Chrono first met Nadia. The plain blue background turned into the lush, colorful marketplace with the vendors selling food and candy, the drinking contest booth, the man with the lost lunch, the clearing to the side where Gato battled fairgoers for Silver Points, the ominous Telepod in the back, and of course, the pendant itself falling onto the ground as Chrono and Nadia collided. On the screen, Chrono helped Nadia up and made sure she was okay, then he helped her locate her pendant. Once they found it, she suggested he show her around the Millennial Fair, and there began the most important relationship Chrono would ever have. Right there on the screen, he saw his reason for living, the person who kept him going in the worst of times and kept him grounded in the best of times: Nadia, his love that had endured death, his love that could survive the End of Time and the end of the world, everything from the trials of the Masamune to the final battle with Lavos, his love that continued even in the Darkness Beyond Time.
Chrono's eyes grew watery.
And with a loud crash, the glass behind him, the glass housing the chunk of Dreamstone, shattered into a thousand pieces, and the demons Pain and Passion leaped into the middle of the room in between Chrono and his friends.