The other side of beyond, p.1
The Other Side of Beyond, page 1
part #2 of Mitch Mythic Series
Contents
title page
copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
about
Mitch Mythic
Book 2: The other side of beyond
By
Paul Ormond
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Paul Ormond
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright
owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: scarymonstermedia@gmail.com
FIRST EDITION
www.paulormondauthor.com
Cover art: Zack Drenski
To my family.
CHAPTER ONE
“WHY IS IT stalling?” Gaelin asked. The extruder head hovered over the mass of filament that had been slowing layering up from the bed surface. On the screen next to the 3d printer a progress bar indicated the process was 86 percent complete.
“There appears to be a problem with some of the data in the simulation,” Roger replied while he typed commands into the computer. “I’ll see if I can work around it but we may have to start all over.”
“If this file is corrupt, I’ll have Brad’s head on a platter. His stupid dark web contacts. I can’t believe how many boins this cost me,” Gaelin said through clenched teeth.
“Don’t panic, the program is still running,” Roger said as he hit the enter key. “There, I think I’ve fixed it. It wasn’t the simulation. I needed to adjust the printer’s calibration. The filament was being applied to quickly. I just slowed it down.”
They both stared hard at the sharp metal head and then let go a collective sigh of relief when the device resumed its rapid back and forth motion over the level surface.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” Gaelin asked as the printer whirred away.
“Well, according to Brad, these guys are legit,” Roger said as he lit a cigarette. “Some kind of Israeli or Russian connection. They found a way to unpack the algorithm and reapply it to all kinds of technology. I guess this kind of stuff doesn’t come cheap.”
“It should be free for everybody,” Gaelin said as he sat down and lit a cigarette of his own. “Odell Grimes sits in a jail cell and the most important technological development of our times is made illegal. There is no justice in this world, but that is about to change. If we can get this device to work the revolution we’ve all been working on will be just around the corner.”
“Not so fast there, true believer,” Roger said scornfully. “Without a reliable energy source this thing will be useless. Your dream of an open source world is entirely too far fetched, these types of things need an entire industry to back them up, not a bunch of creepy dudes hacking things in their grandmother’s basements. Just take a look at what happened to Tesla. He died penniless after trying to give the world free energy.”
“With that kind of attitude I have no idea why you are apart of this thing,” Gaelin said while he sat back in his chair.
“I’m just saying that it’s much better to get paid than to go to jail,” Roger said as he opened up an old bottle of Massblast sitting on the table.
“If you are only in it for the money, then why are you helping us at all?” Gaelin asked as he exhaled.
“Well, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history. Besides, if this works then they’ll be worth a fortune. Somebody just sold a Hi5 with inReal capability on Blackjest.ze for 1.5 billion boins, just think how much we can make off of this. That’s how you start a revolution, with good funding,” Roger said as he wiped some Massblast off of his chin.
“Fair enough, but this thing is not for sale,” Gaelin said. “In either case we’ll need to keep it under wraps until we’re sure about the energy source. If this gets out too soon the feds will sound the alarm and we’ll be joining Ol’ Mr. Grimes in ADX Florence”
“My feelings exactly,” Roger said. “They’ve got such a hard on for anything inReal related, it only adds to the whole conspiracy mess. If the map is correct we’ll be able to get underneath the site without too much difficulty, but there’s no telling what we might encounter when we’re down there.”
“What are you scared of the basilisk or something?” Gaelin said with a laugh. “We won’t be going anywhere near the source. From what I’ve gathered, there’s a whole network of caves underneath the city. Where we go in is miles away from the site. We’ll get in and get out without anybody noticing.”
“Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans,” Roger said cynically. “The government has locked that place up as tight they can. After what happened last year I’ll bet they have everything shut up like a fortress. There is no way you are getting in there undetected.”
“Well, I think I know who can help us out with that,” Gaelin said with a grin.
“Do you really think all of that stuff is true?” Roger asked with his eyes narrowed.
“If it isn’t true, then what actually happened in there? Everybody watched that video. Ol’ Mitch Mythic may be everybody’s favorite small town hero, but it’s the guy that nobody is paying attention to we need to be watching.” Gaelin said as he slid his chair over to another computer on a nearby desk. “I’ve been over it hundreds if not thousands of times. Everybody in the video can be accounted for in some way except for this guy.” Gaelin zoomed in on a face in a still screen from the now legendary Live MindHive Battle feed. The pixelated face of Drakon Trendago sat frozen on the computer screen.
“It just seems so far fetched, even in the context of this insane story” Roger said as he peered at the screen.
“Does it really? I’ve combed the internet for any tidbit of information on this guy and there isn’t anything. Birth certificates, registrations, school records, medical records, there’s nothing and in this day and age how is that even possible? The guy is in the most viewed live feed of all time and he is an enigma. Even if he had changed his identity we would have been able to find him with our facial recognition software,” Gaelin said while leaning back in his chair again.
“Anybody can change their identity. Maybe he had surgery or something,” Roger said skeptically.
“That’s true, but there has to be an original identity to change. We’ve been through the records. He’s not anywhere. I was able to find a complete list of the convention attendees and all of the MindHIve staff from a deep web contact and he doesn’t come up on anything,”
“Well, that doesn’t mean anything,” Roger said, cutting him off.
“Maybe, but it is an important point. The fact that we have an individual unaccountable by public records present at the one of the strangest events of the century has to start ringing alarm bells of some kind. And if he is what I think he is then he is the key to the whole puzzle,” Gaelin stared hard at the computer screen. “I know it seems completely bonkers, believe me, I get it. I’ve read some even crazier theories on the internet, but you’ve got to admit there is always a shred of truth to every rumor and I’m telling you, this guy ain’t from around here.”
“But even if he is what you say he is, what makes you think he can help us? It seems like a lot of work for a maybe,” Roger said between gulps of mass blast.
“Good question and I’ve got an even better answer. Message boards all over the place are filled with all kinds of ridiculous rooms filled with all kinds of ridiculous people. You know what I’m talking about: Bigfoot is a shapeshifter, DUMBs and everything else imaginable. I’m a fiend for that kind of stuff, always have been,” Gaelin said while he lit another cigarette. “I always join these chats and subscribe to every list. I set up my RapidMiner to look for any scripts that seemed unordinary or languages that were never used. For a while I only came across weird dialects and obvious hoaxes, but I kept refining the search until I finally hit pay dirt.” He slid his chair over to another computer and logged in to a simple looking chat room. “There are so many people out there claiming to be time travelers, or aliens or abductees, but RapidMiner kept sending me these really benign looking messages from chat rooms that seemed totally ordinary. I couldn’t quite understand it until I started looking at the html, and lo and behold, there in the code was a single strand of data, literally, the needle in the haystack. It was the weirdest thing. It doesn't look like anything, just binary data, but as I broke it down further and started seeing it in more of these inn ocuous messages I looked deeper into it,” Gaelin said as he typed in a few commands. “Here, check it out.”
Roger walked over and peered at the image on the screen. “I just see zeroes and ones,” He said as he sat back down and grabbed his bottle of Massblast.
“Exactly, and that’s all your supposed to see. Now I ran this code through every single analysis tool I could come across and everything came up empty. But then I started to get creative and I pumped it into a whole bunch of language apps. At first, I started getting all these things that looked just like total gobbly gook, but after breaking it down again and a bunch of trial and error a phrase began to appear: Chalthantar is calling,” Gaelin said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Roger asked, he seemed to be tiring of the story.
“Exactly. Now all of these messages connected to the code were really dumb and they didn’t really seem to be saying anything. They were these sort of flowery messages that were usually all about some kind of consciousness thing. But I started to get suspicious and began to pump these posts all into rapid miner and I started getting some interesting results. Then I got what looked like a name: Drakon.”
“Drakon? Are you sure it wasn’t Dragon,” Roger asked.
“Perhaps, but, what does Mitch call this guy in the video,” Gaelin asked with a knowing look in his eye.
“Drak, but that doesn’t mean anything. How do you even know it’s a name?” Roger said.
“Wait ’til you hear the rest of the message: Drakon, are you out there. Have you made progress with Crotchshot.”
“What, how do you know this is legit. You know what they say about a million chimpanzees and typewriters,” Roger said with a laugh.
“Ha, but those chimps didn’t have the tools I have to play with,” Gaelin said sharply.
Just then there was an audible bing from the 3d printer. They both sprang out of their chairs and bolted over to the machine. “Did it work,” Gaelin asked as he peered at the dark mass sitting on the bed surface.
“We need to run some diagnostics on it, but it seems to be legit. Let’s connect it to the prototype and see if we get a signal,” Roger said as he carefully extracted the object from the printer using a pair of tongs.
“Be careful, that’s state of the art military grade filament. The guy I bought it off of swore up and down that it’s some kind of alien tech, hence the hefty price tag,” Gaelin said.
“Yeah, I’m well aware of how much it costs, so why don’t you just give me some room. The last thing I want to do is trip over your massive foot,” Roger said as he walked carefully over to a sealed glass booth that housed a small apparatus. “Open the door, quickly, we don’t want to get any dust on this stuff.”
Gaelin reached forward and unlatched the door and Roger placed the object inside. He put down the tongs and reached over to a control panel and activated the robotic arm inside the case. “Let me just give the robot it’s commands and we’ll see if we can plug it in,” Roger said as he typed in several commands into the console. The robotic arm suddenly came to life and rotated itself to the roof of the case. It carefully lowered down and closed it’s three metallic fingers around the cube. After it secured the payload in its grasp, the arm rotated 180 degrees and it hovered over the large circular device in the centre of the case. It paused for a moment as it readjusted itself and then slowly lowered down into the black metal object. The arm came up empty handed and returned itself to its standby position in the corner of the case.
“What happened,” Gaelin asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s been properly inserted. Let’s check the computer and see if we can establish a signal,” Roger said as he turned to another panel and began to type in a series of commands. He hit the enter key and stepped back from the console. The entire makeshift lab was silent except for the whirring of some distant equipment. After several breathless moments a faint glow begin to emit from within the device.
“Oh my god, is that what I think it is?” Gaelin whispered.
“I think it is. Let’s just check and make sure,” Roger said as he returned to the computer. “We’ve got a connection. This is amazing. We don’t have enough juice, but it’s active.”
“Yessssss,” Gaelin shouted out and they both hugged each other. “I can’t believe we did it. That algorithm is unbelievable.”
“A 3d printed inReal device. I won’t be fully convinced until I’ve seen it operational, but if this guy is who you think he is then, there’s only one way to find out. Should we notify the team?” Roger asked.
“They’re on standby. I told them to be ready at a moments notice. We’ll need some time for recon and deployment, but we just need to pull the trigger,” Gaelin said while he rubbed his chin.
“Does Odell know about any of this?” Roger asked.
“Are you nuts, I wouldn’t risk the security of this project just to get his blessing. Besides, why wouldn’t he approve? This whole thing falls right into the Cells Manifesto: free information for everybody,” Gaelin said.
“All right, if you’re game, I’m game. Don’t you think he’s being watched though?” Roger asked.
“Like I said, we’ll need to do some recon in order to make sure everything is a go. How do you feel about camping out in the great outdoors?” Gaelin asked with a smile.
“I hear Kingsford is wonderful this time of year,” Roger said with a laugh.
CHAPTER TWO
MITCH LINED HIMSELF up in front of the goal. It was do or die, everything hung on this final shot. He knew what he wanted to do and he knew how to do it. All he had to do was put his thoughts into action. He took a big breath and slapped the puck towards the top left corner of the net. A glove shot out of nowhere and snatched the puck in mid air. “Game over. I win,” Drak said as he removed his goalie mask.
“You’ve got a pretty good glove hand. You would’ve been a great goalie if you knew how to skate,” Mitch said with a laugh.
“Not my fault. No ice where I come from,” Drak said flashing his famous grin.
It was a beautiful summer evening in Kingsford. The sunset lit up the clouds casting pink and orange hues across the sky. The two boys picked up the hockey net and carried it from Mitch’s driveway into the garage. They had to fight their way past a pile of cardboard boxes strewn haphazardly along the wall. “Just set it down here. It’s as good as anywhere,” Mitch said.
“Why does your Mother have so many of these things?” Drak asked in wonder.
“She’s like a hoarder or something,” Mitch said with a shrug.
“Why does she hoard such things? It all garbage,” Drak said bemused. “The people here do so many strange things and then everything get thrown away.”
“Oh, you’ve got a better way?” Mitch asked as a slight grin lit up his face. “Why don’t you start a podcast or a blog? You could call it “You’re doing it wrong with Drakon,” or something like that.”
“Don’t make joke. I serious. This planet in big trouble and it all your people fault,” Drak said with a stern face.
“Yeah everybody knows that. We’re all screwed, and it’s the end of the world and blah blah blah,” Mitch said egging Drak on.
“One day I leave this place, return to my home, away from you silly people. Sometime I wonder why I bothered saving you,” Drak said as they went back outside. Over head a large surveillance drone passed by noiselessly.
“I think I remember things a little differently,” Mitch said. “Wasn’t it me saving you?”
“But if I not come along in first place, no one here free,” Drak said. “Oh, it no use with you. If my plan work I can get out of here. Just need a few more pieces. It good thing I put out algorithm when I did. Now internet filled with eager beavers.”
“Eager beavers? Where did you hear that?” Mitch said with a laugh.
“People don't say this? I’m not native speaker. Give me break,” Drak said mockingly.
“Ha, you’ll figure it out. So, how’s this plan of yours going along anyway?” Mitch asked. “I’m actually a little afraid to ask.”
