Cracked Codex

  AERIX

  In all the time I’ve spent in caves, excavating the history that is so often overlooked or misinterpreted, I have never seen a more impressive library.

  “Got lot’sa books down here,” The Time Echo said hollowly.

  Darrell called back to us. “A lot of the info is already uploaded to the data logs within the Preservation Project databases, which are joined with those of the A.I.D.”

  The receptionist had led us down a set of stairs along one of the back walls of the lobby. I had asked him about information on a few of the creatures we had encountered, he answered a few questions before perking up and claiming he had a better way of getting us this knowledge. There were A.I.D. servers set up on most floors that could be used to update a nearly endless pool of data on various demoryns and levels.

  The stairway opened up into a large, cavernous room, with old dusty shelves that held various scrolls, books, and binders. I was thoroughly impressed. My personal library at home was not nearly as big as this and most of the information was inscribed on stone, so it lacked the convenience this repository had. It was a bit odd, the things I got jealous over.

  “Why is that you call me Quartz?” The scion of Eternium asked.

  “You specialize in Time Concepts, and quartz is used to make watches.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.”

  “I had already settled for calling Aushen by Opal because the dragon breath opal appears in red and blue.”

  “A bit odd, that habit of yours.”

  “Better than going insane.”

  “Yeah, there’s no escaping that with people like us,” Quartz joked.

  Afterward, Quartz and I were brought through so many aisles and turns that if not for my heightened senses at lower depths, we would have lost Darrell in the maze. He periodically looked around as if an unwelcome stalker was watching him.

  “I really am not a fan of all this dust,” Quartz complained for about the eighth time since we arrived here.

  “Cope,” I said nonchalantly.

  “Here we are,” I heard Darrell say with a hint of relief. “This one hasn’t been turned on in a while, it seems.”

  “Aushen would’ve had a laugh at that sentence,” Quartz muttered.

  I was about to ask what, when I pulled a glowing rock, I called “Lumian” from my bag and illuminated the black box in front of me. It was much too complicated for me to make any sense of despite the clear length of its existence. Rusting metal plating and decrepit paint took away from what must have once been a very sleek device. The server was supposedly still functional, but Darrell was struggling to bring it online.

  “I think you should help him,” I whispered to Quartz, who still managed to rock the goth girl look even with the limited articles of clothing available. She had acquired some black work shoes, and a pair of dark gray jeans held up by a double-looped studded belt. She wore driving gloves and a black shirt with torn sleeves which she left untucked.

  Quartz cracked her knuckles, turning her hands outward. “Right you are.”

  I expected her to have some particular ritual for influencing technology around her but apparently, she wasn’t in the mood for a spectacle.

  “Wakey, wakey.” Quartz clapped her hands lazily, everything lit up at once.

  Darrell jumped back, “I did it! Hah! I knew it wasn’t completely hopeless. I mean I am pretty good-”

  He faltered when he turned and saw Quartz with her hands up. “Never mind.”

  “So, this’ll give us the access to the digital archives through our phones and whatnot?” I checked, just to make sure I understood clearly.

  “If the tech is still functional that should be the case.” Darrell leaned into the monitor and frowned. “I need a login. I haven’t used this thing more than a few times; I don’t have a clue how to get into the system.”

  I stifled a laugh and looked at Quartz with apologetic eyes.

  “You lot are bloody hopeless.” She sighed, and pulled a string on her backpack, a glossy purple laptop slid from the bottom and into Quartz’s other hand. She spun it onto the nearby desk, knocking down an antique stack of papers.

  She flipped open the computer and began clicking away at it rapidly. “Initiate breachware.”

  The monitor turned bright red and an emblem that resembled a battering ram appeared in black. Quartz pressed some more keys in a sequence too fast for my eyes to trace. “Grab the black cord from the side pocket of my backpack, will you.”

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  With the Echo of Time and Technology, shuffling and swaying as she typed, I had some difficulty reaching into the pocket on her bag. She had refused to take it off. When I did finally manage to reach into the pocket, I pulled out the wrong wire several times and had to dig deep to find the cable she had described. It was tedious, but eventually I found what we were looking for. The cord was extremely odd, both ends of metal and plastic shifted and contracted, seeming to fit no particular place.

  “It’s a universal plug,” Quartz told me, her face still buried in her device. "Attach it to the server and pass me the other end. Anywhere should work."

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Darrell ended up filling me in. “She means It’s a cable that will fit in any port.”

  “That makes sense, I use very little technology where I live so I’m not as familiarized with the terminology.”

  "Why is that?"

  "I live in a vast web of cave systems that have very poor cell service, it's why there's crystal growth on my face, because I heal my wounds with gems. It's also the reason I'm so tall; like plants, my body grew at a quicker rate to try and reach the sun. The amethyst is from an explosion that I was in, overtime it will smooth over and match the color of the rest of my skin," I told the receptionist.

  “Your kind is… intriguing.” Darrell appeared as though he had been prepared to use a much harsher vocabulary.

  “Yep,” I returned tepidly.

  A hollow bang sounded from the desk Quartz was working at, followed by a chorus of sighs and grumbling. I examined the girl thoroughly, while she pressed keys at variance, quite enthralled with the laptop.

  A question popped into my mind. “So you’re Nitish but most of your shows were in Remkaria. How come?”

  “Who told you about that?” The rhythm of her swaying stuttered.

  “Lapis’ wife seemed very familiar with you and she’s based in Remkaria as of now.”

  “My folks left Unity a generation ago,” she explained. “Sector One’s where I’ve been holed up most my life.”

  The Kamikaze place? “Isn’t that where the attacks happened?”

  “Yup, even took out my girlfriend.” Her typing slowed. “She was in New York City for an internship at the time. Found her buried in the remains of the city after word of the attack made it my way.”

  “Who exactly orchestrated that whole thing? Do they know why?”

  “The Silent Church. The same ‘Silencers’ from the Celestial War. Apparently it was a terrorist attack targeting echoes, but if that were true I’m sure there’re better ways to kill echoes without taking out the normies there as well.”

  “What about the rest of your family? Did they make it through okay?”

  “They were out in Unity visiting relatives. So, there was no one to stop me from stumbling about in the rubble looking for Lacy. Found her in a pile of plane parts all banged up and the ground beneath me gave way.”

  “It’s impressive that you survived a sinkhole,” I told her. While it WAS impressive, something about it wasn’t adding up.

  “Well Eternium ascended me just before I hit the ground. Left me with some words that probably came off the back of a fortune slip. Plugged a paragraph in my brain chattin about, ‘Only those with the burden of loss can bear the burden of time and those with the darkest pasts will see the light in the future.’ After that I passed out because me bones were all mashed together inside me.”

  “There shouldn’t have been any sinkholes in Sector one…” I mused aloud.

  “I found these nice disks down under, so there’s that,” chimed the Echo of Time, clearly unaware of my suspicions.

  That couldn’t be right. I’ve mapped out most of the subterranean areas of Remkaria and some of the Sub Pole. The ground should have been more than stable in those regions for the next few decades at least. Someone would have had to manually blow open the ground to cause such a huge collapse.

  I hadn’t noticed Quartz snapping her fingers in my face, “We’ve got lots to do, you forget?”

  “Yeah, duh,” I confirmed.

  “Darrell’s gone back upstairs; left me with this card an’ said we can look for some scrap metal in the boiler room. A.I.D. is down guarding the door, so we need his clearance card to get by, then I can get the material to make some repairs on the server terminal. Got all that?”

  “Maybe, I dunno.”

  “Good enough,” Quartz sniffed and walked off.

  I kept pace with the black-clad girl while trying to avoid smacking my head against lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling. Quartz had brought up the cat while we walked.

  “You hear about Valuni?” She asked with appeal.

  I desperately searched the recesses of my memory but all I could recall is some ancient queen I found buried in a cave one time and a temple to Bast that was collapsed into a ravine beneath the Nile. It was a futile attempt.

  “I don’t remember any Valuni.”

  “Who’s surprised? Anyway, ‘parently Aushen and Fadabiea found this cat, it’s got like, telepathy and future sight type shit, dunnit? And get this, its entire reason for bothering them was to serve Blu coz ‘is patron’s sacred animal is a cat.”

  “Who’d you hear this from,” I said distractedly.

  “Mate, we’ve got phones now.” She turned to me with a look of pity.

  I raised a finger and started to speak.

  “Don’t you focken say it,” Quartz articulated irritably.

  I pressed my lips together and continued behind The Ambassador of Advancement, I began fiddling with gems from my satchel while Quartz hummed some song from the 21st century. It’s not particularly uncommon for people to listen to older musicians, echo or human. With the revolution of AI combined with the greed of the people in the economy there has been truly little manmade music as of late, so we mostly try to keep the old songs alive.

  There was a guard stationed several meters from the door like Darrell had warned us. He gave us no trouble when we showed him the access card and waved us by. Although I heard him say something into his radio after he thought we were out of earshot, which added to my feeling of caution.

  At the end of the wall, a door came into view through the measly lighting, it was labelled “Off Limits.” Quartz slowed to a stop and apparently thought it necessary to remind me why we were here once more and point out the conditions of the boiler room.

  I confessed I had forgotten.