431: How Far Down?

Ziggurat #346

As the apparition was speaking, the glittering projection from the navigation sphere dissolved into a nebulous cloud before coalescing again into a mirror-like skin for the orb, in which a distorted view of the shuttle's interior was reflected back at them. Lamont looked past it at his spectral doppelganger, which was gazing at its projected cigarette, apparently lost in contemplation.

"So your civilization was entirely dependent on this—what did you call her? Nurturer Omega?" He prompted.

"We were the ensigns of her designs, her hands and feet, her attendants," the apparition answered. "We did our best to hold the society together in her absence, but it was too vast, too complex. The problems were too difficult for any but her intelligence."

"Serves you right," Constance said flatly. "You gotta stand on your own two feet, or not at all. That's what makes you human."

The specter looked at her sharply, tossing its cigarette away with a petulant flick of the wrist. "Is that what you lot have done? Stand on your own two feet? I've seen where you come from. Your planet was a wasteland that you couldn't wait to escape. You've rebuilt it, yes, but under what conditions? Competition, suspicion, mistrust. And now here you are at our doorstep, delivered here by a technology that you didn't produce and can't understand, without the slightest inkling of what you've stumbled into."

"When you put it that way," Lamont observed sarcastically, "I can see why you'd be so desperate to keep us around."

"You miss my point," the spectral doppelganger replied, turning toward him. "If anything, your sad situation proves that you're like us. That you need her as much as we do. It could well be that yours, after all, is the need to which she will finally respond."

Lamont was formulating another question when his helmet, like the one belonging to Constance, fell to the floor from its place beside him. The padded wall had loosened its grip, and the chrome navigation sphere was ascending to its nest. They had stopped. How far down had they gone? Were they beneath the surface of the moon now?

Lamont didn't know what he had expected to see when the doors snapped open, but he was nonetheless surprised. Beyond the threshold was an expanse of stars, threaded by tendrils of nebula. While he was reaching down to pick up his helmet, Constance burst recklessly out of the shuttle, taking several steps on the highly reflective black floor outside before turning incredulously back toward him. She had confirmed what he had suspected: That the space outside was not the void that it appeared to be. "What are we doing here?" She asked.

Following her outside the shuttle, Lamont had the same question. He felt tricked, despite the fact that the apparition had never actually said where they were going. Lamont had simply assumed that the shuttle was taking them farther down the length of the tower, but he could see now that they had instead returned to the dome at its very top.