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Dark Halo: Chronicles of Fright (part 03)
Posted By: Wado<wyamauchi@msn.com>
Date: 26 February 2003, 8:17 am
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Prologue to Soffish of Terror
“Found soffish,” it said on the subject line of the email -- I thought it was just another prank or some fan requesting information about the famed soffish. One, two years, had it really been that long since soffish disappeared? I sure did miss soffish. In the email body was simply, “Meet me at the Underground, midnight tonight, I’ll be dressed as Cortana. -VII.”
The timing couldn’t have been better; we had just gone Dev complete on a long awaited port of Halo. I was in a festive mood but everyone else had gone home for the night. A little mystery and excitement was just what the doctor ordered.
It turns out that the Underground was a local dance club, mainly for the younger generation, but I could still blend into the place, bust a move or two.
I headed there decked out like John Belushi in the Blues Brothers. I kept the suit in my car trunk, just for such occasions, including the dark sunglasses.
When I arrived there, I had no problem fitting in with the crowd; it was a costume party. I looked around, there were some barely dressed ladies wearing feathery masks and leather lingerie. However, no sign of anyone dressed like Cortana.
The place was packed and dark, I gave up on wearing the sunglasses and started to mingle among the crowd. I looked at my watch and saw it was 2 minutes past midnight. Jeez, I felt really stupid; maybe someone was just playing a joke on me. I was ready to leave the club when I saw her. There must have been some kind of black light in the place because the strips on her jump suit glowed. She was the spitting image of Cortana and she was sexy, very sexy. I forgot all about why I was there.
As I approached her I could see her eyes flash red. I thought, “Wow, what a great job on the special effects.”
She spotted me quickly and we met halfway across the dance floor. I said, “Hey Seven, what’s a hot babe like you doing in a place like this?”
She smiled and said, “So you think I’m hot.” She laughed and then said, “Don’t call me Seven, call me Cortana and I’ll call you John. Got it?”
Oh I got it most definitely; she was into that role-playing stuff, only I wasn’t dressed like a John. “Wouldn’t I be Jake? The costume, the Blues Brothers?”
To which she replied, “Don’t be silly John. I have a very important mission for you.”
“And what mission is that?” I said snidely.
“I need you to reunify your the Index into my Core.”
“And then what?” I said nervously, I hadn’t expected her to be so explicit. Maybe this John thing was something completely different.
She smiled for a moment and then told me, “And then you will see soffish.”
“Soffish?” I blurted out, I had totally forgot about soffish. I asked, “Where is soffish?”
With her alluring crimson lips she whispered, “Follow me, John.”
As I followed close behind her, I was pretty sure she was wearing nothing, nothing at all under her thin costume and glowing stripes. She led me to the back rooms. The place stank of smoke and sweat; I almost gagged on the stench. Also, it was very hard to see, and for about a minute I walked forward only guided by her hand and voice, what a sweet voice it was too.
We finally reached a place where the air was dry and cool except for a warm breeze that blew across my face. I could breath again.
Under the dim light of this place I saw a table with something large on top of it. I didn’t want to touch it, but she gestured for me to examine it. Perhaps soffish was inside it.
It felt hard on the outside but soft like pillows on the inside. I could see through it like it was made of glass. As I felt around, though, the shape bothered me. It was slightly longer than I am tall and a bit wider than I am wide.
I began to realize that it was a coffin. “What the hell is this?” I demanded.
“Why do you hesitate to do what you have already done?” she replied.
I should have seen this coming -- It had all been a setup. The next thing I know, two big hulking guys came out of nowhere and grabbed me. They were dressed in dark cloaks. I fought back, but their arms were like steel. I looked at them as best I could in the dim light. Shadowy, dark and cloaked figures, they reminded me of ONI Spooks.
They kept chanting something, what was it? I can’t recall but it wasn’t anything in English and there were drums beating in the background.
I said to her, “You have to be one sick-minded person if you get your kicks from luring me here and then start quoting lines out of a video game.”
“Oh really, and I suppose you think that soffish is your friend?” she hissed back.
I didn’t know what to do, I told her, “Enough games, tell me what you want.”
Oh the answer she gave me still puts chills down my spine. She had such an evil grin on her face as she said, “I’m your biggest and sickest fan, love. Your games make me feel tingly all over and now I’m going to give you the chance to live your own fantasy. The fantasy you gave all of us. How you ask, well I’m going to freeze you for five hundred years -- When you wake up you will be at the time of Halo. There’s no need to thank me; the pale look on your face is thanks enough. Oh, and John, here is a soffish, just like I promised.” She placed soffish in my jacket pocket.
I was speechless. They forced me into the coffin and pushed me through a doorway. It was very cold, I felt the ice travel through my veins. The air was thinning; my head felt light, and my body felt so heavy. I pounded on that coffin lid and shouted for help -- None came, I was buried alive.
I must have passed out soon after that. I don’t remember anything from that point on until I was awakened, 450 years later...
Soffish of Terror
In the darkness there are voices. “We have stable vital signs” ... “Nice work. Crewman, he’s beginning to come to” ... “Thank you sir.”
Groggy eyed, a man in a black business suit lays prone on a padded table. People in environmental suits surround him. They keep poking him and shining things into his eyes. This lasts several minutes and then one of them says, “Welcome back John, it’s a miracle that we could bring you back after you drifted in Slipstream space for all these years.”
The man on the table asks, “What hospital is this and why are you calling me John?”
Another man in an environmental suit answers, “This isn’t a hospital, this is the USC science installation, Janus. We picked you up in Slipstream, floating in a strange cryo-tube. You may have suffered some memory loss due to the freezing process; but it should all start to come back to you soon. Oh we found your ID with you. Says you are one John Seven. These documents indicate that you were frozen 450 years ago as part of an experiment by a 21st century organization known as the Seventh Column.”
The man on the table stares blankly at the ceiling for several seconds, then he asks, “How long did you say?”
“John, the date is June 22, 2552.”
A sudden rage came over the man. “That bitch Cortana, she really did it. My family, everyone I know is dead, oh my God.” The man struggled to get up but he felt very weak and the strain was too much for him. After a moment he flopped back down on the table.
“Don’t worry John, we will take care of you,” said a crewman as he injected something into John’s neck.
“What did you inject into me?” the man said, but before the last word was spoken, he was unconscious again.
In his slumber, the man, now known as John Seven, cannot hear the nearby discussion.
“Captain Libru, this is him isn’t it. John Seven is the Omega Man.”
“Yes crewman, we have come fully circle. He who created us must now be destroyed.”
“So soon sir? He is our father.”
“No, of course not right away crewman, he will be shown the future that he created and a last meal, then we will destroy him so that this future can never be undone. Now I will wake him.”
Captain Libru, still in his environmental suit, enters the room with John Seven. “John, wake up John,” he said.
The man’s eyes open to see a tall person looking over him. The figure was still blurry to the man. “Who are you?” asked the man.
“Captain Libru of the USC,” replied Libru. “It is an honor to finally meet you John Seven.
“My name isn’t John Seven,” said the man. “My name is...”
“Do not insult us human, the title John Seven is a legend, you are our father,” Libru said with conviction.
“What, father, legend?”
“Do you really think I care what humans called you?” said Libru. “You are John Seven to us and that is all that is important. Petty human values are worthless here. You have no idea do you?”
“So you are not human,” said the man, “then what are you and how can I be your father?”
“You are what you are and this is what I am.” Captain Libru then removes his helmet to reveal not the face of a human, but something familiar and yet completely different -- Half the face of a man and the other half the body of soffish. Like a tropical fish with brownish and white patches, eyes of a fish, protruding lips and nose like a human, and scaly skin with fins on the top and sides. In all, Libru was a frightening and horrid alien creature.
The man cowers away. “Uh, argh! What are you? Get away from me you freak!”
“You are the only freak around here human,” stated Libru. “John, you are the Omega man, the last human. Behold the future, the future you created, father!”
Libru held is arms apart and looked up. Above him, blast doors over windows opened to reveal a multi-colored universe, with small bluish and purple bubbles moving along the installation. Flashes of light simmered from far away and lit up the universe like warm weather lightning storms in the mist of a sunset. What the eyes could not see, the mind could. It was an awareness not of simple senses but of extraordinary perception.
The man could not help but to gaze at the wonder. From his viewpoint, it was clear not only that he was in a strange new dimension but also that the installation called Janus was a ring world.
“Is it not fantastic, father?” said Libru. “The wonders of Slipstream never seem to cease. We Sofmen, your sons, can exist in Slipstream and normal space.”
“Sofmen, that’s what you call your race? Why do you call me father?” asked the man.
“It all goes back to the beginning of the 21st century, a radical subgroup of the Seventh Column plotted to actually take over the world, the world of humans,” explained Libru, “and they were not nice humans. They were lead by an insane leader who went by the title of Cortana. Influenced by all things, something called a video game.”
“You aren’t serious, the Seventh Column was a bunch of gamers, I mean the plot to take over the world was a joke, humor, nothing more,” interjected the man. “You mean that this Cortana, who might have been the same Cortana that stuck me in cryo-sleep for 450 years, was really an evil mastermind that wanted to take over the world. This is way too bizarre, and besides you still haven’t explained why you call me father.”
“She was more than an evil mastermind, she was also a mad scientist,” responded Libru with a smirk. “She did more than freeze you, she propelled you into Slipstream. She had invented the first known working Slipstream portal using an array of unorthodox magnetic fields, soffish, and ancient alchemy she devised from exploring ruins found on Earth. The alignment of the stars and the planets, everything had to be carefully calculated for it to work. And when she opened the portal, the fusion began. You are the cause of the fusion, you are our father and Cortana is our mother.”
“Soffish, fusion? I don’t understand.”
“Yes, father, in normal space the Soffish are inanimate objects, but in Slipstream space, they are an intelligent and peaceful race,” replied Libru. “Cortana had managed to gather or steal all the soffish on Earth. When the portal opened, for that moment in time, the Soffish in Slipstream were tied to the inanimate soffish on Earth. Those humans that held soffish were fused with them, creating the Sofmen -- the master race.”
“Master race, what are you a bunch of Nazis?” said the man.
“Nazis? They were amateurs,” said Libru. “In Slipstream, the mind travels faster and further than in the normal confines of space. The Soffish were a psionic race and we the Sofmen retained those powers and brought them to Earth. Those humans that did not bend to our mind control easily, we played mental tricks on, bending their perceptions of reality with illusions, forever confusing them. And those few that could resist even that, we blasted with our minds until every neuron in their frail heads burst into tiny aneurysms. Then we ate them, feasted on their bodies. Genocide is for the dim witted, we did not wish the end of all humans, they were our cattle.”
“If humans are cattle, why are you telling me all this?”
“I tell you out of respect to our mother, Cortana,” said Libru. “She had much different ideas of the future, in many ways she was the fool. She hoped that you would enjoy a future of incredible human achievements. You might say she loved you John Seven, but what is love but simply infatuation mixed with the want for procreation? Besides the need to raise young human cubs, what is the use for these bonding emotions shared among humans? And procreation it was, but not human, but Sofmen.”
“So if I’m your father, I suppose I’m like your king or something.”
“Not at all father, you are food just like the rest.”
The man looked around, half expecting this all to be a joke and half scared out of his wits that maybe this was all real.
The door suddenly opened and a crewman entered the room with a tray full of food and a large glass of some liquid. He looked at Libru and it seemed that hey were in mental communication with each other. The crewman then placed the food down in front of the man. “Eat your last meal father,” said the crewman.
It was now or never, the man summoned all the strength he could muster and threw a tremendous right haymaker at Libru. In olden times, in stories long lost with the last humans, a punch like this comes only rarely if ever in one’s lifetime. Some say that mothers saving their babies have been known to lift up cars that they otherwise could never even budge. This was one such time, the man’s fist accelerated, a juggernaut, the unstoppable force, an arrow in flight. It would all be a happy ending, except for one slight problem -- the agile Sofman was no longer there, instead there was nothing but air. “Arrrrrgh,” cried the man as he missed and then spun around, then man slipped and fell flat onto his back.
“Fool!” shouted Libru. “We can read your thoughts, we know everything you are going to do before you do it. Your physical attacks are worthless against us. Now calm down and eat your last meal like a good cow. If you get too excited we will have to make jerky from your meat, that would be a shame, I haven’t tasted fresh pure-bred human in over 400 years.”
“Damn you to hell,” said the man as he jumped to his feet and ran for the open door. Slam! The man collided face first into the invisible force field that covered the door opening. “Arrrrgh,” gasped the man holding his smashed in face and rolling on the ground.
“Oh please God, make this all be a dream,” cried the man. His blood, sweat, and tears intermixed in puddles on the ground.
The man wakes up, he is in his bed back at his home. There is a tray of food on front of him with a single rose and a note. “Breakfast in bed,” smiled the man. “What a horrible dream I had. Thank God it was only a dream. Mmmmm, eggs Benedict, melon, strawberries, mimosa, and cinnamon rolls... what’s this note? ... Ouch! That hurt. Must have a cramp or something in my leg.”
The sheets of the man’s bed stain red. “What, I’m bleeding.”
Flashes of light change the room from his peaceful bedroom to inside a dark room surrounded by the fish-headed Sofmen and back again. All reality seems twisted, sunny bedroom, then cold and dark prison. The man snaps out of it, he is still aboard the Janus. Strapped down, his arms were just free enough from him to eat a tray of strange food before him. His leg is bleeding with a big bite mark in it.
“Fresh meat, I could not wait,” said a Sofman as he is pushed away by the others.
The man struggles and manages to knock the tray of food but nothing more. His bonds hold and the Sofmen hover over him impatiently. The man screams the high pitched shriek uttered only by a few when they near the moment of death.
“Your flesh will be tough,” said Libru who held one of the man’s arms, “but still delicious, there’s no need to wait for jerky, is there.” Libru takes a bite out of the man’s arm. The others follow, using sharp talons to cut away his clothing; a dozen bites rip into his limbs and torso.
The man, still conscious, whimpers and cries; he is a bloody mess being eaten alive. The man no longer knows what is real and what it not. All he feels is pain and suffering.
The man does not even realize that something is growing in his jacket pocket. A spilled glass from his tray of food has dropped onto the man and soaked into his jacket pocket. Something in his pocket is growing.
In a flash of psionic light, the Sofmen are blasted back. Rising up from the man is Soffish. A shield of psychic power protects the man, at least for the moment.
Soffish speaks to the man, “We cannot hold them off for long, listen carefully. We need your help to undo this future. We know you believe time travel to be impossible, but very long ago, before man was a glimmer in the creator’s eye, there were the Old Ones. They lived the science of paradox. They riddled that a thought transcends time. Now we must unravel the mystery and send a thought through time.”
The man doesn’t respond; the world is becoming darkness. In the mind’s eye, he sees nothing, he becomes nothing.
[Fade to black...]
Aftermath
I don’t really remember what exactly happened, but as I was following Cortana into the back rooms at the Underground, I had a change of heart. I ran out of that place like my pants were on fire. I called the police and kept running, I kept thinking someone was following me.
Well the police said they apprehended the lady calling herself Cortana. I guess she had quite a rap sheet on her, she’s going to the big house for a long time along with her cohorts.
Somehow my car ended up in Lake Washington, I don’t know how, and because I was gone for two days my significant other is really pissed at me, I’m going to be living in the doghouse now.
It might have all been worth it if I had only... oh... I never did find soffish. I guess the quest continues, but for now it’s another Monday and I’m riding the bus to work. At least with public transportation, I’m not alone. It’s just comforting for some reason to be among other people.
Hey, there’s something you don’t see very often, an electrical storm in the middle of winter. Life sure can be strange at times. I wonder if this isn’t all nothing more than a dream.
-- The End --
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