I understood just how accurate calling it an Experience truly was. I couldn’t wait to tell Richard about it, he’d flip. This was a real life version of that holodeck thing in that old vid series he used to make me watch with him as a kid. I could not only see the buildings, but fucking touch them thanks to the sensory gloves I wore. There was sound, too, of course, and even scents. It was incredible. One moment we were standing in a vast cavern of a room and the next, we were inside a bustling city in a cavern, which had its own simulated night sky.
What was really weird, though, was it looked eerily similar to human cities back on Earth, from the second half of the twenty first century. I told Pilar so and he nodded.
“Convergent evolution,” he said. “It makes sense.”
“Well, there are some differences,” I admitted. “For example, most human buildings did not have the elevators on the outside.” I pointed at a twelve story building nearby to illustrate my point.
“That was an interesting design choice made popular by an architect by the name of Jemel,” he informed me. “The same guy that put garden spaces in the middle of the buildings.” He led me inside the structure I’d pointed to and I saw what he meant. In the middle of the lobby was an atrium surrounded by glass. It reached upwards, bisecting the floors above it until it reached the top of the building.”
“The artificial sky wasn’t just for show,” Pilar said. “It’s light nourished the plants and helped trigger vitamin production within the body.”
“Humans need sunlight for similar reasons. Not enough light and we can’t get enough Vitamin D easily,” I replied.
He looked concerned at this bit of information. “Have you felt unwell? It’s been several days now with you outside only under darkness.”
“I’m fine,” I reassured him. “I’ll need to schedule a bit of sunshine, but more to make sure it doesn’t trigger a condition known as SAD. It makes us, well, sad and depressed I guess would be the simplest way to explain it.”
“Make sure that you do.”
“Kleptyr halnbrunik,” an omega said and I realized that this construct of a man long dead sensed me.
“He said excuse me,” Pilar translated, so I stepped aside so he could move past, watching as he marched over to a desk in the lobby and began speaking animatedly to the omega working there.
Yep, this was just like that holodeck thing. It wasn’t quite as interactive though, but Pilar said that the age of the recording had a lot to do with that.
Two days later, after the recon team reported humans were indeed in residence, we were given clearance to join the team visiting the city itself. It was eerie, seeing it alive in person, but so different.
“There’s got to be more than a hundred people there,” I hissed, looking down from our vantage point.
“A hundred and thirty-two, including children,” Miljack confirmed, his face grim. “Most of them are confined to that building.” He pointed and my heart sank. Ironically, it was the very same one Pilar and I had gone in, where I’d spoken to the digital ghost of a man.
“Get ready,” Pilar told me.
I nodded. I knew what the plan was, having been debriefed. Half of my deputies were here with me, the other half remaining behind with Richard. Richard’s team was preparing space for us to process the people we removed and brought back.
The news that there were children and omegas in apparent captivity had angered me. Is this what had happened to those two omegas? Had they died here and been dumped far away? Or had they run away, sought shelter, and died where we found them? I hoped we’d find the answers during questioning.
“I know it seems a little scary,” I reassured my deputies, but honestly, it’s safe. They won’t drop you.”
“We’ll go first,” Pilar said. “Then they’ll see.”
I nodded. “Okay, everybody pair up.”
Each of my men quickly found a partner, standing ready for the Hunter they were with to perform a Summoning. We’d have to do it in waves so the bats dropping off one team could respond to another Summons and fly to take another pair down.
I stood before Pilar, gazing into his eyes letting him see the trust I felt. I raised my arms, relaxing my shoulders. He raised his own and opened his mouth, calling out with that soft warble I’d heard before. I knew there was more sound I couldn’t hear, but that was okay. The bats could and even here, inside the mountain, they responded. I figured they probably lived inside the cavern somewhere.
They grabbed onto us and lifted us into the air. I heard gasps from the men we soon left behind as the bats flew us out and then down, gently depositing us onto the roof of the building. I understood how they felt; it had been the same for me the very first time I’d traveled via Summoning. In fact, it astonished me whenever I stopped to think about how fast my life had changed and in such a short period of time. If anyone had told me this would be my new normal just two weeks ago, I’d have thought they’d been sipping too much homemade hooch and it had pickled their brain. But here we were, and I watched as my guys raised their arms as instructed by their Hunter partners. Then they were away, responding to a call too soft for me to hear, landing softly on the rooftop to join us. Pilar tilted his head, listening to something in the comm inside his ear.
“No one noticed us,” he murmured.
“Weren’t that many people outside,” I replied. “It’s the middle of the night for us and I bet they keep a regular daytime schedule so they can work the fields and all with the sun to light everything.”
Plar said nothing aloud, merely nodding.
“Still, you’d think the guards patrolling the street would think to look up,” I added. It was sloppy of them not to, but I was glad they hadn’t, or they might have seen us. The artificial night sky was still semi-functional hundreds of years later, so there was a chance that as we came down, one of us might go through a patch of starlight. The moon I’d seen in the Experience was absent, this representation obviously having it in a position that was burnt out, the bots not having yet repaired it for some reason.
Moments later, dozens of Hunters landed on the roof, accompanied by my deputies. It was show time.