The Desolate Guardians by Matt Dymerski Read Free Book Online Page A

else could I have done
but try? Welded shut doors, creatures outside the windows,
screaming on the phones, blocked air vents… there was a logic to
this situation, hovering somewhere just outside the grasp of my
current facts, but I couldn't quite reach it.
    Feeling strange and bitter, I decided to get
on with my other efforts, and I began looking into the situation in
the other realities as discreetly as I could. A few hours into that
work, my trigger searches popped up with a phrase that couldn't be
mistaken: purple slice .
    It was her. She had a laptop connected to a
decently functioning Internet, in a reality which seemed more or
less intact from what I could tell. Looking at the network map I'd
been building, she was currently in one of the inner realities of
the structure I was beginning to see emerge… and she'd posted
things, based on our short interaction, that would specifically
draw my attention. She already had a voice chat server set up.
    "Is it you?" she asked, noticing me logging
in.
    "Yes," I responded, excited to hear someone
else's voice - well, any voice that wasn't screaming.
    "That was fast."
    "Since we last talked, I found out I'm stuck
here."
    "You're stuck?" she asked, immediately
concerned.
    "I'm trapped in my office building. I can't
get out. There are weird slimy creatures outside… one ate a goddamn
bear… and the doors are welded shut."
    "Have you tried calling someone? Email?"
    "I can't figure out who to email, or who
would even believe me… and the phones just have screaming on
them."
    She sounded confused. "Screaming?"
    "Yeah, screaming. Men, women, even kids,
screaming in terror. All the time."
    "That sounds… odd."
    "Right? I think I triggered something, or
activated something, or maybe something terrible happened to the
world here just like so many others -"
    "What do you know?" she asked abruptly,
seizing on that mention.
    "I've started outlining our communication
infrastructure and all the networks it connects to. I've done it
based on connection speed, assuming there's some sort of distance
involved. It's turning into a map of sorts. It looks… well it's
like a map, honestly. Like I can tell you're in one of the inner
realities."
    "Really…" she responded, intrigued. "Can I
see this map?"
    "Sure, I'll send it to you." I guided her
through the technical details of accepting a file directly from me
on her old and crappy laptop. I was particularly proud of the file
I'd built. I'd made each reality into a circle, full of the most
relevant information I could find about each place, and then
arranged them the way I thought they might fit together. A
three-dimensional movable image wasn't technically accurate,
but it was the best representation of a four-dimensional structure
I could manage.
    "So there's the GLORWOC world, and there's
where they tested the dimensional fracture bomb… " She murmured for
a few moments inaudibly before speaking louder again. "And I've
been there, and there recently… there's an actual shape to
it."
    I studied the file on my end, too.
"Definitely. There are similarities between worlds that are close
together, and they get more different the further you go. The inner
realities seem decently well off, with actual functioning societies
and governments, but the further out you go, the more you see
struggles and issues. And on the outer shell…"
    "… nightmares," she said, completing my
sentence. "Nightmares, moving inward. Looking at these, I've been
consistently hitting the outer shell. I've been seeing the worst of
the worst on a regular basis."
    "That would make sense," I told her,
considering ideas I'd have thought impossible a month ago.
"Whatever this structure is - network and sphere of realities, both
- someone went through a ton of effort to build it. It wouldn't
have much point if there wasn't some sort of protection mechanism,
either natural or constructed."
    "Walls," she murmured. "They're walls."
    "Like a walled-off city…"
    "Yes. And the inner