Free The Desolate Guardians by Matt Dymerski

seemed in a rare open mood. "There's
nobody in your life?"
    "My hours don't really allow for much
socializing," I told her, running through my own personal
rationalizations. "I bet they chose me for this job because I was
already a loner who stayed up all night. And, I figured, why not
get paid to do it?"
    "Then why do you want to escape?" she asked,
beginning to walk again.
    That was a strange question. "Well… I don't
wanna die."
    "If there's nobody in your life, and you're a
loner anyway, what's the difference between being trapped and being
free? You were in that room all the time either way - the only
thing that's changed is that you've become aware of your walls.
You're safe in there. Why do you want to leave?"
    A deep pang of worry and sadness curled up in
me. "Why are you saying these things?"
    "Strange things happen to people that don't
have something to care about," she replied. "I didn't have a
purpose for a long time, and I'm not proud of the person I was, or
the things I did… but I did find something to care about again. I
have someone to take care of. I would do anything - anything - to keep him safe. Do you understand?"
    The protective element in her voice made me
guess that the subject in question was her son, if she had one… but
I wasn't quite sure what she was asking. "I just want to help."
    She climbed across the long expanse of a
flatbed railcar as she asked the million dollar question.
"Why?"
    I thought back on all my time spent browsing
the Internet and working late nights at the office. That first day
of training, bright and sunlit, still shined in my memory. I
remembered what that poor freezing man on the mountain had said: I've still got warm sun and bright beaches and memories of you
in my head, but I'll never have those sensations again. "Honestly?" I realized aloud. "It's because I'm lonely. This empty
server room is my world. Nobody on the Internet knows who I am, or
cares. It's more than that, though. The entire way people live now
seems… driven by outrage, and money, and being offended, and
tribalism, and hating the other guy. Even if I was out there, and
part of all that, it would still be empty for me. Life feels…
hollow somehow… and I just want to be part of something real. "
    "That's a very human feeling," she said
quietly, approaching what looked like a control station. Jutting up
from concrete, the metal kiosks held enough controls to rival
pictures I'd seen of an airplane cockpit. Beside the kiosks sat an
odd piece of circular metal with four jutting rods. She studied it
for a moment, lifting the two-foot-wide object up with both hands,
and then placed it back down. Looking over and out, she gazed at
the center platform of the dome. "This looks like part of the metal
surrounding that device."
    I zoomed in on the dodecahedron on the
central platform, and, indeed, it looked like there was a gap at
the top for the curious sculpture, where it would fit in perfectly
with the surrounding chrome latticework.
    "Can you figure out what that device is?" she
asked.
    "One second." Moving through files, I found
what looked like another control interface. This one wasn't
integrated with the system, however. It was a separate series of
programs with much more basic controls. My enthusiasm dropped as I
realized what was sitting idly out there on that platform, and I
instinctively resorted to dumb Internet humor. "Someone set us up
the bomb…"
    "What?"
    I sheepishly got a hold of myself. "Um, it's
the bomb. The same kind that broke Jonathan's world."
    "Who?"
    "Oh, right. You'd already run off. Jonathan
was - is - the guy whose eye camera I was looking
through."
    She froze as she realized what I was saying.
" That's a dimensional fracture bomb? "
    "Yes. That’s not what they call it, though,
in the file. It doesn't look like it was supposed to do that."
    "Obviously," she replied, backing away from
the consoles around her. "Why's it sitting out there? Were they
trying to send it somewhere?"
    I