An Unbound Soul

Not long after Harry had first fled to Erryn's world, Gregory Charles found himself staring at a video screen, mouth agape. His jaw remained slack for a few seconds once the short recording ended, after which he asked only, "How many?!"

His aide glanced at a clipboard. "Estimated to be in the region of one to two hundred thousand, and more are still forming."

The silence returned. The frozen image on the screen displayed a veritable ocean of mottled grey spheres, littering the floor of a vast, frozen cave. He could certainly believe there were a hundred thousand of the things, but... "And they're better than the monster cores we've been trading for. And they're just... there? They don't explode when touched or something?"

"Initial tests show we can draw an order of magnitude greater wattage from one than a monster core, but we have no data on longevity yet. And yes, they are just 'there', albeit 'there' is a region of Antarctica claimed by three separate sovereign states."

"We aren't even certain of the longevity of monster cores," sighed Gregory. "We're just extrapolating from the drop-off in their luminescence. But please tell me we're one of the three."

"We are."

"And no-one else knows about them yet?"

"No. To the best of our knowledge, no-one else has the ability to detect active wormholes from orbit, and we've not seen any other activity in the area."

"For now. We were lucky to have a research base so close by. And someone will certainly notice if we start shipping the things."

"If moved in large quantities, yes, discretion would be difficult."

"Move them to the research base, then bring them back on returning supply flights a small quantity at a time?"

"I couldn't possibly comment."

"I suppose not. Still... If these are the dungeon cores Peter informed us of, he could have at least mentioned the scale. If he hadn't told us, I'd assume it was invasion preparations, or some sort of attack."

"Perhaps he didn't know."

"Perhaps. What of microbial life in the cavern?"

The aide glanced back at his clipboard. "We haven't found anything exotic. The air passing through the wormhole appears sterile."

"Well, that's a relief, at least. If there was anything, we couldn't morally hold our tongues over the other two active wormholes."

"You think they're producing dungeon cores too?"

"Who knows? Given where they are, I hope not. We'll keep quiet about this for now, even to Peter and Harry. Stockpile as many as we can and hope the longevity holds up. Even if it does, we can't scale back official trades, or everyone will start wondering why, but... Well, we aren't really 'trading' in the first place. Power sources worth billions in exchange for... what have we spent so far on trade goods? Did we cross ten thousand yet?"

"I believe so. The amount publishers charge for some of those textbooks should be criminal."

Gregory grinned. "Oh, gods no. That would make us criminals too, given that we're selling them on for even more."

"If that's sorted," started the humourless aide, flipping a page on the clipboard without so much as a smile at Gregory's joke. "Next up is... the Law."

Gregory's grin immediately vanished. "Damn that planet. We might be robbing them blind, but they've still got some tricks up their sleeves. Why are you bringing it up, though? Was there a problem transporting the package?"

"Not at all. It has arrived at the research outpost, and can be delivered with a day's notice, assuming clear weather. I only mentioned it because of the discovery of the dungeon cores."

"Ah. I see. Now that we've discovered the supply of dungeon cores, we no longer need friendly relations with them, so we've lost our reason to delay. It's premature to make that call yet, prior to completing investigations on the properties of the dungeon cores. And we can expect the creation of them to cease, too, once the package is delivered. No... Harry said he's seen evidence that the Law remains ineffective for two years, so we'll give them a quarter of that. We'll stick to the original plan; if they haven't solved the problem on their end within six months, we'll solve it for them."

Decisions made, the pair moved to carry them out. And so things continued. Each contact with Erryn's world brought more worrying news; someone else had opened wormholes. The funding source for the original wormhole research turned out to be some sort of assumed alien. And then hell opened up. Almost literally.

The first moments were caught on CCTV, a camera uploading video via the internet, and hence surviving the destruction. It started with the hiss of static, as if a million untuned radios had been boosted to full volume at once. And then the landscape came apart.

The view would have been spectacular, had it been faked in some way. Special effects for a movie. Some sort of trickery. Even if it was real, but taking place in some uninhabited desert somewhere. It was knowing that there were people there that turned it from spectacle to horror, caught in the destruction as clumps of earth metres across broke away from the surface and rose gently into the air,

The camera—just outside the perfectly circular area of destruction—caught a few. Caught the screaming as their skin peeled off, disintegrating into dust. The silence as the air itself decayed, leaving them nothing to scream with. The writhing as their flesh boiled away, leaving clean skeletons behind. It was impossible to tell the exact point at which their suffering had been ended by death. And then even the bones became dust, and the dust became nothing. A sphere of utter annihilation, erasing all that it touched.

All. Even the bedrock wasn't spared. The sphere of destruction drilled down through the crust, and a pocket of magma below jumped at the chance of release. The camera had caught a few frames of red before the upload cut out.

"Well?" asked someone once the video stopped, but Gregory didn't hear who on account of being busy throwing up.

"It was a blatant attack," said someone else. "An act of war."

"But not against us."

"Can we sell that to our voters? That it was an act of defence against people who declared war on them?"

"Unlikely. We have no evidence who attacked first. Even Peter didn't claim an attack on our last communication; only that they were opening portals. Everyone will deny everything, hard, and half our media will probably start publishing articles about the barbarism of that other world and how we should subjugate it for their own good."

"Do we have any evidence that this was from Erryn's world? Yes, that wasn't any sort of weapon that exists in this world, but maybe the idiots just blew themselves up trying to weaponise a monster core."

The room fell into silence.

"From the way everyone on the defence committee suddenly looks shifty, may I assume we are also idiots who tried to weaponise a monster core?"

A voice sighed, before admitting, "We have, and that's not what happens. They just shatter without releasing energy. We haven't found any way of extracting energy at a higher rate."

"We'll give them a chance to justify themselves, but first, let's deal with the appointment of a new minister of extraterrestrial affairs."

Gregory, who'd finally recovered enough to rejoin proceedings, sighed. It was an obvious outcome; it had been his call to delay the delivery of that package, and give them a chance to solve the Law themselves, even after the discovery of the dungeon cores and the evidence that their longevity was at least as good as the monster cores.

And frankly, he'd appreciate handing off the workload to someone else. His hair had greyed more since Harry's first wormhole than it had over the rest of his life combined.

And so he suffered the indignity of demotion, thrown as a scapegoat to the media, as if he could have predicted an attack of any kind would be launched from a world brainwashed into being pacifistic to the point of self destruction, let alone one so spectacularly effective.

Peter was given the chance to defend his actions, but openly admitted being responsible. He claimed self defence, but offered no evidence for it. Gregory doubted it would have made an iota of difference if he had. The new minister was a xenophobe, plain and simple. With the energy supply secured, the other world had lost its attraction, and so he declared it time to cut it away.

Gregory didn't argue. Few people did. Once it became known that the other world was messing with the next generation, public opinion was firmly against them. No-one stopped to ask if the System was good or bad; all that mattered was that it wasn't under their control. It was an unfortunate fact that smoking parents were, in general, perfectly happy with their kids choking on second-hand smoke as long as it was the parent doing the smoking.

None of the officials present for the decision wanted to imagine what would happen if the media found out about the Law.

And so the package was delivered and... nothing happened. No change was observed in the children. The dungeon cores continued pouring in. Yet the complex equipment visible through the wormhole had been mostly destroyed.

"What happened?" asked someone uselessly, as if anyone else had any idea.

Of course, they all turned to Gregory as the resident expert.

"Don't look at me," he said.

"Was it a decoy? Was the thing we destroyed not the seat of the System?"

"Maybe it had backups."

"No, it wasn't completely destroyed. We need to try again, and quickly, before we face retaliation."

"Try again? Trying to ship a larger bomb than that discreetly will be tough."

"Then quit being discreet. We're trying to save the world here. Nuke the damn place."

The vote this time was a lot closer, but they'd already declared war. No-one wanted to be on the receiving end of what Peter had so ridiculously described as a supercharged toilet. Enough people felt that a decisive strike was their only hope of survival that the vote passed.

They didn't even get as far as loading the nuke onto a plane before the situation changed. The supply of new dungeon cores stopped, and the would-be bombers hesitated.

"Was there a period of inertia? Recheck the children."

They delayed, and while they waited, the System was rebuilt. The portal flickered and faded away before their eyes and children lost their special abilities. And then the entire cache of dungeon cores vanished, plucked cleanly out of existence as if taken by the hand of God.

An argument ensued.

Voices argued for the restoration of contact, to guarantee the supply of clean energy now that the dungeon cores had been lost. Others pointed out that the children had been disconnected so soon after the attack that they must have been able to disconnect them all along, and had chosen not to. A third group wanted to leave well enough alone, fearful of more reprisals if they re-established contact. Arguments reached a stalemate. No action was taken simply because no action was the default.

Gregory sided with the second group, suddenly feeling a lot less guilty over the bombing. After the attack on the System, the response had simply been too fast. And not only had they closed the portals and freed the children, but the dungeon cores had vanished too. But if they'd been able to cut Earth off all along, why hadn't they earlier? It was possible that the System itself made an automated response, but that didn't match what information they'd been given of it. Yet Peter was supposedly the only one on the other side capable of deceit. What was he planning with the dungeon cores? Worst case, they were a tool for bringing mana to Earth, and with it maybe the full System and Law.

Gregory prided himself on some ability to read people, but he hadn't exactly spent much time around Peter. Even less in person. But he hadn't seemed evil. Perhaps, in his view, he was trying to save Earth? Magic to heal and feed, the Law to ensure the healing and food got to everyone who needed it, and people stopped doing stupid things like starting wars. Hopefully, with Peter having backed off, they'd never find out.

And so things remained until the supply of monster cores ran out. Estimations of their longevity had been accurate, and energy could not be extracted from them forever. As ever, the world was in conflict; no longer over oil and gas, which were exhausted, but the metals needed for solar and renewables. Voices spoke of another option; a link to a world that could offer unlimited clean power. The dust was blown off the wormhole generator, and it was plugged back in.

It no longer worked. Each time the wormhole started to form, it shattered. They tried again and again, but with the experts trapped on the other side, no-one could locate the fault. That was only natural; there was no fault to locate. The issue was on the other side.

Despite the failure, the attempt was noticed. Other countries remembered their stolen data, and computing technology had advanced sufficiently to decrypt it in reasonable time. They began their own efforts, more wormhole generators built around the world over the following years, but none worked.

Gregory, old and retired, had a constant stream of visitors, but what aid did they expect him to offer? He had no idea how the wormhole generators worked. His job was to talk to people, and that was hard with the walls of two universes between him and the ones everyone wanted to talk to. It was vexing that he'd had access to a means of supplying the energy needs of the entire planet, and they'd lost it, but what could they have done differently? What country would trust another that was slowly assimilating their children? Under the circumstances, why would they believe that Peter was doing his best to help? Gregory still didn't believe it himself, or at least, didn't believe the form of that help was something they could accept.

Of course, Gregory had no knowledge of the System appointing administrators for itself. It did, however, occur to him that had Earth fallen under the Law, he wouldn't have been able to distrust Peter, despite all the signs, and thus they'd still have their unlimited supply of clean energy.

But all the what-ifs in the world wouldn't help. What had happened, happened and would stay happened. To have held it and lost it was a far larger pull on his mind than to have never had it in the first place. Regret was his constant companion through his final days.