1.06 What’s This Thing Do?

Chapter 6

“Adam, can you believe this?”

Michael was already rushing at me with his own helmet and vest over his lab coat, even though I’d only just taken a few steps of the copter. Meanwhile, Johnson and Reitlin stalked across the grassy field toward one of the camp tents, with Reitlin shooting me a glance that clearly stated, “Follow me.”

“Sorry, Michael, hang tight okay,” I called out to him before quickening my pace to match stride with the soldiers. Michael was left goldfishing it, as he was apt to do.

One of the military tents was indeed the destination, as Reitlin stopped in front of it and keyed a combination into a display pedestal outside the entrance. The device blinked green then chimed once, but that was it. Reitlin stepped back, apparently satisfied, and I was left being the one confused for once.

Within seconds the mylar door of the structure was unzipped and a large man stepped out. He was tall, roughly six-foot-two, with a decent amount of muscle. His steely eyes whisked over Reitlin and Johnson and landed on me.

“Pierce?” There was a bit of a lift to the word, but I couldn’t quite tell if he was saying my name as a question, or as a statement while being confused about my appearance. In the end, I guess either way didn’t really matter.

I gave a curt nod.

“Skinnier than I thought you’d be,” the Colonel continued on, his eyes moving to look at the Dungeon Rift floating a few dozen yards away instead. “Given the sheer size of the balls you must have packed into those slacks.”

“My family practice physician was always surprised as well.”

The Colonel’s eyes attacked me sideways for a moment, a sharp glare that would normally cut a man down in half. I simply stared back at him and waited. Eventually, a tiny curl formed at one side of his mouth and he scoffed.

“Welcome to the service Pierce. Reitlin, get him to the geek tent so we can start finding out some answers.” The Colonel said. And with that, he turned and quickly disappeared back inside the tent from where he came.

I wasn’t surprised, the military was just like an industry or corporation. At Veltech, the CEO’s, managers and supervisors expected the grunts to work while they wait on results, this was no different.

Within moments, I was brought to a new tent and shown inside where a small lab was already set up. Equipment, tables, and personnel littered the large interior. Dr. Branderton was already hoarding the coffee machine off to one side, and I could see the others on his team were clustered around a table already. Michael, Frank, Richard, Victoria, and Gwen, all were stood looking ridiculous in their white coats under military vests.

“Hey, what’s the situation?”

They all turned with scared expressions and dark bags already forming under their eyes. They looked like ghouls freshly risen from the graveyard, except they didn’t have dirt clinging to their bodies, for now.

“Oh Adam, thank god.” Victoria said.

“Can you believe this, man? Spatial rifts? Fucking… “, Richard gestured wildly with his hands, obviously fumbling for the right words, ”Fucking text messages from the universe. It’s crazy.”

“I feel you, there’s been a whole lot all at once, yeah?” I clapped Richard on the shoulder as I stepped closer to the table.

“That’s underselling it a lot,” Frank huffed.

“Can you make heads or tails of this Adam? We don’t know what is going on. And Branderton just keeps pouring coffee and rambling nonsense. That scary ass Colonel dude said we are soldiers now, threw us into a helicopter and we’ve been trying to figure this out ever since.” Gwen spoke quickly, to the point I was surprised she didn’t pass out from the lack of oxygen.

“Alright calm down, show me what we’ve got so far.”

The details around electromagnetic radiation decay, and spatial relativity, is really not as interesting as it pretends to be in those internet videos you’ve seen online. Trust me on that, so I will spare you the boring shit around this.

Let me just say that readings, measurements and minor experiments that the team and I did over the next couple hours showed that Dungeon Portals were about as ordinary as an STD-free preacher’s daughter. So, not ordinary at all.

Thermal energy, visual light, and various other frequencies of radiation were found and measured. Along with indications of some other, unidentified energy was being produced by the rift. That last bit you probably know as Mana. This wasn’t understood until weeks later, and we didn’t have a proper way to measure it until a couple months after that.

So, needless to say, we were basically wading ass deep into a mud pond and grasping at eels with our hands. Useless, vain attempts at trying to study the rift were conducted, all with practically nothing to show for it.

Our attempts at throwing objects or specimens inside yielded no results, as they never came back out. Even tying a string to a mouse and sending it in just vanished the mouse and cut the string at the point of contact with the rift.

After a few more hours, we basically had to accept that we weren’t going to get anything concrete, at least not for days. A conclusion that did not at all sit well with the military. They wanted answers, needed answers, and they needed them now.

Of course, I had learned later that at this exact same time, world leaders were off at some summit arguing and negotiating about what to do about the giant red rift that had appeared over the Atlantic Ocean. As that one was roughly two hundred feet high, and floating over some conjured dark black obsidian-like platform, it was hard to deny it existed.

This white rift we were studying at the time, was maybe ten feet tall, and had a much smaller platform beneath it. And, it was tucked deep into a forest inside controlled territory, so it was much easier to hide.

Much, much easier.

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Such Tutorial Dungeon Portals had already begun popping up all over the world in various countries already, something that the aforementioned world-leaders failed to speak up about. They were keeping secrets all around, even if the summit was to “share information and ensure the planet’s safety”.

Except if that interfered with their country gaining power, of course.

Again, greedy, corrupt, power hungry politicians all around. If not the world-leader themselves, the government that controlled them was hellbent on maintaining power. This was one of the reasons why I made the decisions that I did, especially once I got out of that damn nightmare that was this dungeon.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, Colonel Nieve made it very clear that we were going to figure out this thing one way or another. So before the sun was fully set, the team was geared up and standing in front of the portal.

“This is insane,” Gwen said from my left.

“We are going to be smashed into a singularity, I know it.” Micahel added.

“Doubtful. Could be a wormhole to some other inhabited planet maybe?” Richard said.

“An inhabited planet? Inhabited by what? Alien monsters that want to lay eggs in our stomach and burst out our chests?” Victoria groaned as she pulled at the vest strapped around her.

“That’s what you have us for, we will be going in to protect you while you work.” Johnson smiled at Victoria and lifted his rifle in his hands.

“Just don’t shoot anything until we know it’s hostile. Rules of engagement still apply.“ Corporal Mathews, a new member that I and the others were introduced to not so long ago, said from behind Johnson.