Free The Desolate Guardians by Matt Dymerski Page A

read over the logs that had been left in
the accompanying folders. "Looks like… they sent one through
before. It went to…" The realization brought a slight bitterness
within me. "The outer shell - Jonathan's world. That's all I can
tell. It looks like they gave up, after seeing what happened, and
this one was just loaded on the platform much later by automatic -"
I froze.
    The dome's lights shifted to bright white,
and a hum buzzed in over the stream.
    She looked back and forth wildly. " What'd
you do? "
    "Nothing!" I shouted back, frantic. "A ton of
this stuff is automatic. I didn't even - I mean, I did, I accessed
the interface, but - it's turning on!" I stared in horror as the
central platform of the gigantic metal whirlpool began ever so
slowly rotating.
    I heard her voice rise to an uncommon tone of
emergency. "Where's it pointed?"
    "Where's what pointed?!" I asked, panicking.
Was my meddling going to destroy someone's reality?
    "The destination!" she shouted. "Where's it
going?"
    Of course! I stared at the process files.
"It's pointed at the inner reality, the last place they went…"
    "Tell me how to turn it off," she ordered,
her tone determined.
    "I don't -" I already knew I couldn't turn
off the automated process without the proper passwords, but I
quickly did a few key word searches for off and shut
down and terminate … "That thing! That metal thing! The
circle with the four rods! You have to put it in the top. That's
the mechanical failsafe - it can't go off if that's in!"
    Before I was even finished speaking, she
picked it up with both hands and began running… straight onto the
first metal ring, which was picking up speed. In seconds, she was
judging her jump to the next ring, which was moving at a different
speed…
    It was eight tenths of a mile to the center,
and the files said the whole process took four minutes. How much
time had we wasted talking? I did some calculations, and… with a
sinking feeling, I realized: she would never make it.
    Watching her leap from ring to ring, falling
once or twice at each abrupt change in speed, a wave of despair
passed over me. I hadn't been able to help anyone I'd read
about or talked to, I'd screwed up and cost Jonathan an eye, and
now this? I had the paralyzing sense I was about to watch
this woman die… and her son, or whoever it was she cared so deeply
for, would be left on their own… because of me.
    Before I even knew what I was doing, the
crane nearest her was moving. Two bars crossed high above the
machinery, supporting the crane on its own mobile platform, and I
sent it at top speed after her. The two perpendicular beams moved
across open space on my map of the facility, chasing her heat
signature.
    I thought, as I got closer, that she might
actually make it… until the inner rings began descending. The
entire system of rings shifted and dropped slowly, their vortex
configuration deepening. She stumbled, fell, and bounced down three
rings, before grunting in pain at the sudden shift in velocity on
her new inner ring - this one only a few feet wide, with a rising
curved wall of metal on one side and a steepening drop on the
other.
    From my perspective on the map, she was
whirling around at incredible speed, and the camera in her headset
was no help. Did the crane have a camera? It did. Turning it on and
using that one, I slowly lowered the claw.
    Come on… how many videogames had I
played during my existence? This was just like any other Flash game
with a simple setup and devilishly difficult to master controls… it
just happened to have a life on the line, and possibly a
reality.
    She whipped past.
    I waited.
    She whipped past.
    I waited.
    She whipped past - and I lowered the
claw.
    Despite herself, she screamed once as she
impacted the metal on the next go around. Still, she clung to the
deactivation rods and forced out an order as the tines closed
around her. "Get me up there!"
    I'd only intended to get her out and save
her, and we had less than