Free Crash Flux 1: Welcome To The Machine by Kevin Battleson Page A

dedicated to long forgotten forces of nature, like wind, sunlight, the moon and the sky.  A portal linked this realm to the corrupt world below, a cesspool of betrayal and deceit, a mass of confusion, blood, and death.
    Towards the end of the room, was a throne, large, angular, with sharp edges.  Silver Spiders seemingly formed out of nothingness and crawled across its surface, melting back into the chair as if they had never existed.  To each side of the throne, two pedestals with large violet orbs that glowed dimly in the violet black lighting of the room.  Sitting in the throne, Raydin thought there was another statue, nearly identical to the one he had seen earlier, only this one was smaller and far more elaborate, and was wearing clothes over her torso.  The statue moved, and Raydin saw that it was not a statue at all, but a living creature, with silver skin, that moved with graceful delicate motions that would have been impossible for a machine.  Her chest moved up and down, and he could see her breath mist in the freezing cold air encompassing the chamber.  
    She spoke.  “Have him turn away as I change.”
    The guard spun Raydin around, pointing his stunner at him menacingly.  Raydin caught a glimpse of her reflection on a large shield mounted near the doorway entrance.  Cables fell from the ceiling, which she gripped with her upper arms.  The snake body fell away as her torso lifted and separated from her lower half.  The lower arms were apparently attached to a curved rear plate that extended from the serpentine frame, and a pair of mechanical legs and hips extended forward from a hidden compartment under the throne.  She lifted her torso onto the bipedal frame beneath her.  Man and machine merged, and she steadied herself long enough to take a few steps forward and let go of the cables.  The serpentine body retracted back behind the throne, and the guard turned him around.  He stood facing a smiling, silver woman.
    “You are in a lot of trouble,” she said, “you’re lucky I found you before the Keta did.”
    Raydin said, “You’re not going to turn us in?”
    “No,” she said, “I find it far more amusing leave you in this awkward set of circumstances.”
    Raydin said, “Won’t you get in trouble?  It is hard to imagine that they do not know about this place.”
    “Oh, they know.  But they indulge me.  I provide them with a prototype for their utopian folly.  In return, they grant me the leeway they would a spoiled child.”  She turned around and waved her hand over one of the orbs.  It displayed a model version of some puritan heaven, where every man and woman had silver wings and white, flowing robes, a civilization built upon the wisps of clouds.  “Haven View is no myth.  We invented the legends surrounding this place, and monitored those who took an interest.  Of course, we have to have a filtering process, so we created a program that compares peoples' monitored behaviors against those the Keta consider ideal.  Every week we have a lottery.  Those that are selected wind up here.  The mysterious circumstances under which those selected disappear and adds to the mysticism surrounding this place.”
    “Its complete non-sense, of course.  Once people are inside the system, they are at the complete mercy of the Keta’s machinations.  Peoples' imperfections stack over time, and constantly censoring peoples' reality causes mental instability.  We have the technology to monitor their thoughts, their behaviors, their every waking moment while inside the machine.  The harder the Keta push, the harder the mind pushes back.”
    She waved her hand over one of the orbs.  “In fact, we even monitor their dreams.”  Images flickered across the orb.  Violent fantasies played out before him, images of men killing other men, scenes of carnal sexuality, and other, more disturbing things, terrifying images and fleeting sounds that sent shivers down Raydin’s spine.  “Could