Anomalous Readings and Other Worlds: The Art of Misdirection

Published Jun 6, 2022, 10:36:08 PM UTC | Last updated Oct 24, 2022, 9:24:07 PM | Total Chapters 5

Story Summary

Standby. Still finagling with Writing Beta. Just when you think you have things figured out...

 

Nikola the Synth is being transported from the testing grounds on Attaraxia to the biosphere ship The Epitome when his transport ship is rocked with an anomaly in time and space.

 

Nikola, Agent Gray, Arroyo, Reggae, Malachi, and Zeb (c) me

Alpha (c) Nataku

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Chapter 2: The Art of Misdirection

The Art of Misdirection

According to his scans, the jungle was a mighty entity that stretched on and on to the north, east, and west of their current position. While his communication link with the Hub had been severed, his built-in systems were still operating as usual, including his environmental scans. The density of the trees played with it a little bit, but it provided what he hoped was a fairly accurate picture of where they were.

 

He had a growing sense of unease the longer they were surrounded by giants.

 

To their south - the direction they were heading - it seemed the trees thinned out and gave way to rolling grasslands or meadows. His scans didn’t specify which, only that it was more open and less densely planted. Soon, he would be able to take flight in the sky of the unknown planet. The thought thrilled him. He’d only been allowed in the skies of biosphere ships and designated zones of Attaraxia, none of which were adequately sized for his wingspan. He’d get up into the air, get cruising, and then land again.

 

Not that he thought Agent Gray would enjoy the experience as much as he would.

 

“What are your experiences with unexpected landings on foreign planets?” he asked, because while cataloging all of the unique flora and surprisingly dwindling fauna on their trek was fascinating, it was too quiet for him. He could multitask.

 

Agent Gray sat back on his shoulders, a barely noticeable weight. “Unexpected landings tend to not be a good thing.”

 

“What’s the first thing your team would do once stranded?” he asked as he picked his way over a fast flowing stream.

 

“Try to establish communication with someone offworld. After that - or failing that - we would set up a perimeter. Never know what might come to investigate the lost tourists,” she said.

 

He sent out a ping. It returned with no answer.

 

“We failed to establish communication,” he said. “We also failed to set up a perimeter.”

 

“Different circumstances. You have to be able to adapt.”

 

He paused on the ridge of a fallen tree. The jungle fell quiet. The insects that had been droning previously ceased and the whoops and hollers of mammals in the boughs disappeared. Either instinct or a buried program told him the quiet and dwindling fauna was a bad sign. The three antennae on his skull stood up as he requested another scan, but with less distance and more height.

 

Warning. Large lifeform closing in. Six o’clock. One hundred and fifty-five meters and descending.

 

“We have a bogie,” he warned.

 

He broke into a run, trusting Agent Gray to hold on tightly. Birds shot out of the underbrush before his feet crushed their hiding spots and several fungus snapped off their stalks in his wake. Vaguely he heard Agent Gray colorfully cursing him in a variety of languages, but his attention was on the other side of the canopy.

 

He could sense it now. Hear the wingbeats. Glimpse the fierce airborne shape. See the shadow on the ground - the shadow that overtook him and pulled ahead. It vanished in a break in the trees.

 

The mechanics in his legs and spine allowed him a smooth ninety degree redirect around the slight clearing.

 

Leaves and branches exploded downward in a splintery shower into the clearing, the explosive display being accompanied by an ear splitting screech. He made to run around the creature to where he would hopefully be able to get airborne himself, but halted abruptly. His eyes locked onto the other creature’s eyes.

 

It was like him. An avian as large as he was. Perhaps a different variant, but close enough.

 

The engineers in the lab had always been unspecific when asked about his base DNA. Large avian located on accident had been the usual explanation. And yet, here was another like him. Slender neck, considerable wingspan, sturdy legs, primary and secondary tails, big skull with a razor sharp beak.

 

He’d found his species.

 

“Quit staring, Synth, we’ve gotta go!” Agent Gray kicked him.

 

The other bird transfixed him with its glittering feathers that were the deepest of reds. Long ones swished around its neck as it rounded on him and the tail feathers similar to his arced through the air like a fan of blood. His scans told him it was a female, purely organic, with a heightened blood pressure and heart rate.

 

“Trespasser!” she yelled at him.

 

He slid behind a tree, startled by the ferocity of her voice, but still too mesmerized to run.

 

“First that featherball and now you,” she growled, hooked beak glinting in the light as she tipped her head and took a step toward him. “The other guy was too fast through the trees, kept too low to the ground like a coward. But you’re too big to do that.”

 

“Nikola!”

 

Agent Gray’s use of his name tore him from his daze. Similar to him or not, this was clearly an aggressive creature intent on ousting trespassers from her territory. He leapt away from the beak that suddenly lunged at him.

 

“Keep your head down, Agent,” he urged and sprinted as fast as his legs would carry him. 

 

His sheer size made sprinting a challenge on a good day, nevermind in an enclosed jungle. He settled for a loping gallop, his large strides eating up the ground in a dizzying blur. The crash of trees behind him spiked his own vitals. She was gaining. Perhaps if he didn’t have a human with him, it wouldn’t have been so terrifying. He could ‘take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’, as one of the engineers had been fond of saying, but Agent Gray was human and while not helpless, was definitely vulnerable against creatures of such size.

 

He glided briefly over a fallen tree and resumed running.

 

“Come back here and fight me like a proper Stryx!”

 

“I’m not a Stryx,” he called back without taking his eyes off the uneven path being mapped out in his mind’s eye. It was still over a kilometer to the open grassland.

 

A branch heaved behind him and fell with a boom.

 

“Then you’re the biggest chicken I’ve ever seen in more ways than one.”

 

“I was created in a lab,” he said. He wasn’t even sure why he was bothering. She didn’t seem interested in who or what he was.

 

The crashing stopped.

 

“And I was created by the gods for this exact purpose.”

 

“Synth, watch your six!” Agent Gray yelled.

 

He hit the dirt and the other bird streaked overhead, her outstretched talons slashing through the air where his head had been moments ago.

 

He inhaled sharply. “Seems a few still believe in their gods.”

 

“If you don’t get out of here, I might have to start praying to one.” Agent Gray tugged urgently on his feathers. “Come on, Synth. The two of you are too big to have a rumble in the jungle.”

 

“And you’re quite fragile,” he agreed and peeled away, putting more trees between him and the other bird.

 

“That’s not what - three o’clock!”

 

His defense system picked up on the incoming strike half a second before it impacted. Time seemed to slow. The system went through multiple countermeasures, calculating the likely success of each one. Ten percent. Not good. Thirty-two percent. Not great. Forty-five percent. Better. Seventy-eight percent. Perfect.

 

He threw his wing up directly into the other bird’s face. The shaft structures in his flight feathers went rigid on command and didn’t have as much give as she was probably expecting feathers to have. The force of it knocked her off course. Not by much, though. Her talons tore through the flesh on the left side of his chest, sending him staggering sideways while she careened to the ground several trees away.

 

He blinked at the ground.

 

Warning. Damage detected. Vital systems intact. Mechanics functional. Cauterizing flesh wound.

 

He grimaced as the bleeding scores across his lower neck and ribcage sizzled and the scent of seared flesh registered on his sensory array.

 

“...answer me! Are you okay? Nikola?”

 

He shook his head, unaware that Agent Gray had been speaking to him.

 

“I am quite fine, Agent. Surface damage only,” he said.

 

He pivoted to face the other bird who had regained her footing. She glared at him across the dappled lighting breaking through the canopy.

 

“What are you?” she questioned in disgust.

 

He glanced at the silver bones peeking out from under his teal and gray feathers where she had tried to tear him asunder.

 

“I told you. I was engineered in a lab. Techno-organic,” he said. “A pseudo-synthetic lifeform. What are you? Who are you?”

 

“A monster made for war. Flesh and blood, pulsing with fury,” she hissed. “I am Alpha.”

 

Her minute body movements triggered his defense system. She was getting prepared to launch at him again.

 

Engage weapons?

 

“No,” he whispered.

 

He spread his wings and crouched.

 

Flight inadvisable. Weapon engagement recommended.

 

He sprang into the air with a powerful downward push of his wings. Alpha landed below him and angled her head upward, one eye burning at him as she lifted off, too. He pushed off a tree and twisted to fit between the next two, but only just. Flying in the clear skies of Attaraxia hadn’t prepared him for the numerous obstacles he now faced.

 

Weapon engagement recommended. Deploy sonar dissonance?

 

That would leave two bodies in its wake. Alpha’s and Agent Gray’s. Why he had been engineered with such a destructive force built-in was beyond him. Or not really. Synths had been built for defense reasons, possibly for war.

 

Maybe he and Alpha weren’t so different.

 

“Synth, you have a plan?” Agent Gray questioned.

 

“Other than dodging trees and not letting you die?” he asked as he braced against a mossy tree with his feet and shoved off.

 

Alpha dug her talons in a moment later, effectively stapling one of his tail feathers to the tree and yanking it out. He winced. More warnings popped up on his HUD, mad at him for taking damage he wasn’t used to and for not heeding their advice.

 

“Yeah, other than that!” Agent Gray yelled. “We’re going to have to pull a disappearing act here soon or they won’t know where to start looking for our bodies.”

 

Sonar dissonance highly recommended.

 

He narrowed his eyes. A disappearing act. An idea popped into his head.

 

“Do you think she believes in magic?” he asked.

 

“Do I what?”

 

He swerved around two trees growing closely together while Alpha tucked her wings and shot through them expertly.

 

“Think she believes in magic?” he repeated.

 

“I know people who still think radio waves are magic,” Agent Gray responded. “She thinks she was created by gods, so sure, why not. What’re you thinking?”

 

“I’m thinking I would like to show her a magic trick,” he said.

 ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- 

Alpha alighted on a branch, sucking in lungfuls of air and sweeping her eyes over every piece of foliage high up in the trees. The strange Gryph had managed to vanish into thin air on her through a curtain of vines, but he couldn’t have gotten far. He didn’t know the jungle like she did.

 

With a keen eye, she spotted a shape that was amiss in the uppermost boughs of one of the trees. The grayish teal feathers and black mottling blended in with the shadows cast on the bark, but the coppery strips were too bright. Her eyes flashed in excitement. Royal or not, that Gryph was hers.

 

She dropped off her branch and spread her wings, canted the edges up steeply, and came screaming up at the Gryph at top speed.

 

He slipped off the branch and around the back of the tree. Her talons narrowly missed his wing.

 

“You can’t hide forever, metal freak,” she said. She sprang from the branch and curved around the edge of the tree.

 

He was already gone.

 

She landed on a branch that swayed under her weight. Held her breath to hear. Pushed the sound of her thrumming heart out of the way. The rush of a breeze through the jungle and the hum of insects filled her ears. Nothing big enough to be worth her time was moving anywhere nearby. She scowled.

 

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” she said.

 

A flicker of movement to her left sent her flying again.

 

The Gryph had upped his game considerably in the last ten minutes. She would close in on him, he would pull off an impossible turn, she would drop on him from above, he would hang back at the last moment. She might have been impressed if he wasn’t being a total idiot flying around in circles.

 

She flipped around and came speeding around the tree in the opposite direction with her feet outstretched to meet him head-on. He kept flying right toward her. With an unholy scream, she plunged her talons straight into his face.

 

The Gryph passed right through her.

 

Her heart skipped a beat and she scrambled to get a foothold on the branches she crashed into. She whipped around. The Gryph hung in the air eerily with no wingbeats.

 

“I told you, I’m not like you,” he said, his voice coming from every direction.

 

“A specter,” she hissed.

 

Though, she wouldn’t think she would have been able to injure a specter as she had earlier. She stared harder. This Gryph’s chest wasn’t ripped open. He was whole.

 

“Perhaps,” he said.

 

“Or perhaps there is more than one of us,” his voice said from another direction.

 

Another Gryph - but it was the same Gryph - sat perched on a branch to her right.

 

“Or maybe you’ve lost your mind,” a third Gryph - still the same one - said from behind her.

 

She whirled around and swiped at the Gryph behind her, her wing talons sailing straight through him. He didn’t feel cold or solid or like anything at all.

 

“What magic is this?” she questioned the three Gryphs.

 

“The magic of technology,” all three said in unison.

 

She roared in frustration and tore through all three of them in quick succession. On the last one she noticed bands of light seemingly emanating from the ground up. She snapped her head down.

 

The Gryph snuck through the underbrush on the jungle floor, attempting to make a quick getaway.

 

She dove.

 

“Got you this time!”

 

She passed right through the fourth Gryph.

 

Dirt and ferns erupted around her in a brown and green wave. She cursed everything from the ground to the sky to the Gryph to the gods as she spun around and raised her wings.

 

Creeaaakkkk!

 

A widow maker leaning against the tree whose root she stood on groaned and began to topple. She ducked her head. It ruffled her feathers as it landed behind her with a puff of dirt and splinters.

 

“I believe they also call it misdirection, or stage magic.”

 

She lunged toward the Gryph - one that must have been the real one because his chest had the bloody marks from her - and was pulled up short. She craned her head around. The widow maker had smashed her tail feathers underneath it.

 

“Magic won’t save you when I get loose!” she howled and tugged on her trapped feathers and primary tail.

 

The Gryph had the audacity to not look scared.

 

“I have more tricks up my sleeve than you may care to know,” he said, and took off through the jungle, leaving her to stew over her defeat.

 

She vowed she would sink her talons into him one day and find out exactly what he looked like on the inside.

 ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- 

“So what are you now, a magician?” Agent Gray asked.

 

Nikola shook himself from the exhilaration of flying above the canopy now that the murderous bird was no longer hunting them. With no narrow gaps between the trees to impede him or blood curdling screaming following him, it was like soaring on silk above the jungle.

 

“I suppose I could be a magician, but so could anyone with a radio if presented to the right audience. A person who counts cards could also be passed off as a magician if you don’t know how it’s done,” he said.

 

“Who have you met that counts cards?”

 

“One of the techs in the lab enjoyed playing poker with one of the lawyers of the company,” he said. “They both counted cards. It was rather amusing to watch them try to outdo each other.”

 

“And where did you learn about stage magic? I don’t think that’s part of standard Synth education.”

 

“Same lawyer. He could pull coins out of children’s ears,” he said.

 

“That’s called sleight of hand, not stage magic.”

 

“Yes, but he introduced me to a performer who was putting on shows on The Manhattan for a time,” he explained. The sunlight warmed his back and the expansive view put his heart at ease while he recalled some more pleasant days of his youth. “He could saw people in half and make vehicles disappear.”

 

“You realize those are all illusions, right?”

 

“Of course. That’s what makes them fascinating to me. Someone had to be smart enough to rig things to appear mysterious to the naked eye, and it was a challenge to figure some of his tricks out. The lawyer told me not to tell anyone, though, or it would spoil it.”

 

“So was the hologram thing and voice throwing in his show?”

 

“No,” he said. He cracked a grin. “That was of my own making. Perhaps I could perform for the residents of The Epitome when we return?”

 

“People might be too used to holograms back home to be awed by them.”

 

He sighed. “Yes, I suppose you could be right. And they don’t want a magician, they want a creature-turned-machine to protect them.”

 

Agent Gray hesitantly patted his neck. “You’re more than a creature or a machine, Nikola.”

 

He nodded, a warmth spreading in his chest rather than on his back. He liked it when she used his name, even if Synth didn’t bother him. Something about using his name made it feel like she saw him as an individual and not a test tube baby with a barcode. Then again, calling him Nikola was far easier than RA7-0012. 

 

The ping on his sensors flushed that feeling out and replaced it with a wary sense of dread. Not again.

 

“We have a bogie incoming at one o’clock,” he said.

 

Agent Gray stiffened.

 

The bogie, as it turned out, was a mess of silver and tan feathers with an Attaraxian riding on its back.

 

“We come in peace!”

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