The Great Escape
Poe had just taken a dive. Just as she settled back on the ring, the skies shook, the strings strung. A sheet of chrome spread over the sky, melting into the strings, blotting out the dark howling emptiness of forever beyond the strings. "I've never seen anything like this," Poe zapped.
The chrome sheet pressed into their world until the strings began to bend inward, convex to concave. It pressed on to the sphere. Slowly the strings spun along the skyline until the horizon had past.
The sparks instinctively collected together, all convening on the third ring. “What do you think that was?” Ivy asked.
“I’ve never even heard about anything…” Poe trailed off. The vortex at the center had ceased. There was no undulating color whirlpool, no nebulous energy ocean. It was a dark powerless nothing. She felt a pain in her middle. She dove for the center, she did not meet the Non. There was no pull inside the first ring. There was simply a dark spongy barrier. She emerged as she'd entered. Ivy asked, "Poe, you alright?"
Poe’s siblings knew something was wrong, but they were not as sensitive as she had become in her overcharged state. The strings of the sky seemed unusually slack yet their undulation appeared unusually muted.
"The strings have been broken, my Other is out," zapped Poe
“You are sure?” Neya wondered out loud. She’d had a bad feeling herself, but couldn’t quite intuit the reason for it.
"I feel sick with forever, and the center wouldn't even take me when I gave up. Can't you feel it?" Poe winced.
"I don't feel right, but I didn't know what to think," Ivy answered.
"We have to find our Others or we'll never meet the Non," Poe announced. “If I can’t get into the center, then I’m going out through the strings.” The sparks gathered their courage and prepared to launch themselves into the strings. Just as they were going to attack, the chrome disc reentered their horizon. It was actually Ivy who'd noticed the chrome appear again, and had cautioned Poe to wait for it. As always, Poe was ready to take the dive no matter what the risk. The three of them dove together. They melted into the sheet fluid.
The static was getting to Gat again. He felt himself growing uncontrollably angry. The tip of his dendrite was beginning to spark without his conscious force of will. His deep purple dendrite flickered with golden light at its tip. He prowled around his ring collecting his fury in preparation for an attack.
As he circled he witnessed the Non flurry with a force that was uniquely his Other’s. It was as if phantom mandibles were reaching out from the center trying to grab at him. The fingers ignored his siblings, honing in on him with channeled intuition. Gat was too powerful. He generated a force of static around himself that deflected the appendages.
Obviously his other was diving close to the Non. The pull was unmistakable. An uncharged spark would have been susceptible to its draw. But he wore a coat of static heavy enough to protect him from its power. Though it lapped at his shell, his center did not waver. It pulled detritus from him in strips of sparkling slough as he moved decidedly away from its suction.
He moved one ring out, just out of reach. As he settled on the fourth ring, a strange snap echoed in the distance unlike anything he’d ever heard before.
From the horizon a pinch in the strings, covered by chrome, arose on the line like the rise of a hotspot. But hotspots were different. This chrome sky was something altogether new, it was like a baroque disk, as if a sheet of silver had pressed itself into the strings and broken or bent through. He didn't know what this chrome sky was, but he didn't care. It looked like a way out of the strings. With immortality on the horizon he would take the dive. He prepared his blade and his stat, dove straight at the knot, and swung. It shivered with a ripple and swallowed him whole. Gat melted into the chrome and sped off through a maze of turns in a silver tunnel. Tevye and Neya thought, and double thought, the chrome was nearing the far horizon. The time for thinking was up. They dove.
Neya led Tevye, keeping an eye out for him. They could make out Gat’s energy trail in the path ahead. In truth, the space they were moving through was not so much a tunnel as a lane bordered on all sides by different walls. The strip was wide enough that perhaps 5 sparks could ride side by side. It was taller than it was wide. On one side of the strip was an impenetrable blue gel, enwrapping the other dimensions was darkness, a black coating that was completely resistant. There was nowhere to go except forward, so they pressed on.
The lane curved inward, then suddenly opened up into a massive silver field. It was an enormous cylinder of conductive silver. Its breadth was greater than hundreds of ring spaces combined. Gat circled out in expanding spirals until he reached a skin to the silver. There was no barrier between the skin and space. Only a tension that gat could cut easily with his dagger. He ripped through and pushed out into black space. Gat’s stat shot sparks into the cylinder, teasing the other sparks as he stood on the very skin he’d just cut through looking out into space. Neya pushed through the silver field until she reached his stat and pushed through its skin to stand beside him. Tevye was close behind.
Looking out there was pure freedom. Darkness spread infinitely outward behind the horizon of the cylinder. It was both beautiful and horrifying. Now that the moment had truly arrived, were they ready to become immortals? Gat looked ahead of the cylinder upon which they stood and noted that it changed form again. He wondered what was better, and what would be more interesting. Did he want to dive into the blackness of space or did he want to explore this new environ?
“What do you think?” Neya asked. Should we keep on a path for a bit and see what’s up ahead?” Gat realized Neya was on the same page.
“Let’s just get some perspective on things from a bit higher up,” Gat suggested.
They floated up off the outside of the cylinder using their stats for propulsion. Beyond the cylinder was a massive metallic form as far as they could see. It was far too massive to conceive of. The only thing that was clear was that the topography beyond was not nearly as circular, it was a gnarly jagged landscape that continued on into the horizon.
As they considered their options a flicker of lights sprouted underfoot. They felt what was happening before they saw it. Poe, Sid and then Ivy, riding so close that they were nearly on top of one another broke from the cylinder and stood within diving distance from Neya, Gat and Tevye. They were all quickly being drawn toward one another.
The magnitude of the situation was not lost on Gat. He dropped down, tapped his stat once on the shell of the cylinder than propelled himself away from Poe. Rather than risk a chase through empty space he contorted himself in order to flip back down toward the jagged landscape below. As he approached he realized it was actually a tangle of various tubes and sheets. He didn’t have time to plan where to hit, he only hoped that wherever it was, that he wouldn’t get blocked. He was in luck. He melted into the material and disappeared from view.
The tunnel Gat now found himself in was a true tube. The mercury substance that Gat moved through was lubricated with a fog of static that Gat absorbed into his dermis. His stat cut a wake through it as he rode. Balls of light sped toward him. They came at him so fast that he instinctively flinched out of their way. Had he taken the time he probably would have stood his ground and slammed the balls of energy. But instead, he dove to avoid them. Gat saw a new set of particles racing toward him. He placed himself in alignment, swelled his orbs, and awaited the impact. The rush tingled so good. He shivered with pleasure.
As disoriented as Poe was by forever sickness, she did not respond fast enough. It took her an instant before she dove after Gat. As soon as she entered the mercury tube she was slammed by particles of light. They pounded her in a rhythmic cadence in measures of eight beats with varying spans of silence between. She had to wait until a long pause before she was able to extract herself from their onslaught.
Sid, not at the age of overcharge, felt a little less urgency to meet his other quite yet. He knew that there might come a time, soon perhaps, where he would regret it, but right now he was reluctant. He stood paralyzed, in sheer awe of what he was witnessing. This was perhaps the first time in Spark history that something like this had actually happened. He was going to savor it. He looked Neya up and down with a mixture of longing and repulsion. Suddenly, Sid realized that he was being drawn toward Neya with a rapid acceleration that he had not anticipated.
The two younger sparks, Ivy and Tevye, were being drawn to each other by sheer physics, both too weak to fight the pull, but not yet emotionally ready to really internalize the attraction.
Neya grabbed Tevye and flung him with all her might in the direction Gat had disappeared. Tevye melted into the ground as soon as he hit. He entered a silver tunnel foggy with electric residue. Ahead a golden switched forked off onto three distinct paths. He tried to sense his way for Gat, feeling for the subtle wake Gat had left in the original band but he could not pick up on Gat’s presence at all. He was scared to choose. He feared losing his sibs.
A sudden flood poured toward Tevye. He was swept up in its torrent and forced down a channel. The rush jammed him into an alcove. For a second Tevye felt the enclosure tighten up around him, then it spat him out with more force than that with which he’d entered. He floundered through the tsunami, battered by several more circuts. A series of sensations overwhelmed him. He was compressed, stretched, contained and exploded in a sequence so accelerated he nearly lost the capacity to track what was happening. Finally the rush ceased and he came to rest in a quiet tube. Behind him a gate clicked.
He sensed before trying that he was not going to be able to open it and go back. He lay motionless a while trying to recover his bearings. Still disoriented, but needing to know whether he was in fact blocked from returning, he pressed against the gate. It would not budge. This was a one way road.
Neya was now so close to Sid that she could nearly reach him with a limb. She charged both dendrites to form brilliant dagger tips then whipped them together. The resulting shockwave flipped her backwards away from Sid, sending her tumbling into space. She then turned around to face the darkness and wacked her daggers over her crown, this time sending her down toward her sibs.
Neya hit the ground and melted into it. Tunnels extended of platinum, gold and copper woven into a complex labyrinth. She could not spot either of her siblings. There were so many different threads that the options for where they might have gone felt infinite. She waited as a barrage of particles raced past, banging their way down the vast unchartable distance. She listened as the hot dots reverberated with their own unique tones. How can I send a message? she wondered. She tried tapping on the shell of the tunnel with a dagger but it responded with a flat and muted thud. Intent on calling out to her siblings in order to bring everyone together she went looking for something with better resonance.
As Sid and Ivy hovered above the skin of the cylinder the thing began to move away from them. It retreated into an enclosure so massive they could only see its imposing darkness as it swallowed up the land their kind had ventured into. Sid took a page from his Other’s playbook. He grabbed Ivy with one arm and flung her toward the retreating land mass.
For its size it moved with unbelievable speed. Ivy tumbled after it just as an even more colossal enclosure swallowed up the entire continent. The gate was nearly closed. Alone in the darkness, Sid suddenly felt a fear unlike any he’d ever known. He set himself perpendicular to the receding realm, head first into the massive jaws, and revved his stat with all the energy that he could generate. It propelled him with such unmitigated force that he went into a tailspin and pounded himself against the walls of the gate on his way through. He ricocheted wildly inside the space until he made contact with solid ground.
The substance Sid had collided with was a tarry black goo. It was not at all fluid like the silver substance he had so easily moved through before. He was held fast in it. His stat was stuck on the outside while the entirety of his body was suspended by the dark gum. He tried to rev his stat to propel himself through it but the ooze just disbursed the force. The more he revved the more drained he felt. The more he struggled the weaker he became. He was completely submerged. With a rising sense of despair he tried to push his way back toward his stat. Nothing. He panicked. He spun his stat frantically to try to push forward in a single urgent lunge. He did not budge. He lashed out in a fury of spasms before collapsing.
