Chapter Nineteen - When Darkness Falls
Project 86Chapter Nineteen – When Darkness Falls
“So, if I understood this correctly – you are attempting to create a machine that can enter people’s dreams and with that can treat people with various ailments and would even allow to converse with people in a coma and possibly cure them?”
“Yes exactly! This is what we have been trying to accomplish! And not just attempting, we have finally accomplished it,” Thomas exclaimed excitedly as the final explanation of the plans had settled in Seohyun’s mind.
“If you don’t mind me saying it all sounds very fantastical. Truthfully, quite unbelievable.”
Thomas Hwang kept grinning in apparent excitement, “That it does, it does and I don’t expect you to just take it my word for it, I can show you.”
“Show me what exactly?” Seohyun questioned him looking over at Saebyuk who looked a lot less confused than someone who would be hearing this for the first time. As expected she had met Thomas and knew about this beforehand.
“I can take you into a dream.”
“Take me… into a dream?”
Seohyun attempted to sound surprised. Not that she wasn’t surprised at least a little, however the events of the past week had already filled her in with lots of amazing and unbelievable information particularly related to the dream world that her shock was less prominent. As far as she figured, she had to be believably surprised or else they might figure out that she knew a lot more than she was letting on.
“Here, if you‘d follow me I can show you right away,” Thomas Hwang said as he walked past Seohyun and Saebyuk towards the conference room door while motioning the two to follow him.
They stepped out of the room Seohyun following Thomas and Luna, the former walking with hasty steps in his excitement while the latter walked with swaying hips and the elegance of a woman in control. She was the money and the government contact behind this whole operation after all, in the end Park Luna was in charge. Seohyun decided it was best to try asking more from her, possibly to get a better read on what exactly this was and how important was this to the financial backers.
“Have you seen the equipment in operation?” Seohyun asked as she synchronised her steps with Luna.
“I have, it is quite marvellous.”
“How do you know that it really works though? Have you tried it yourself?”
Luna peered to look at Seohyun side eyeing her, calculating and trying to figure out what this person asking questions was made of.
“No I haven’t tried it but I have faith in Thomas that it’s working, I’m paying for it after all. He explained it to me before, how the data they gather proves it all but you’d have to ask him for the details.”
“Of course, it must be quite something out of this world. Literally,” Seohyun replied getting a small chuckle from Luna, one that was hard to differentiate between genuine or fake.
They walked through an open section of the full glass panels that sectioned off the rings of the laboratory as it spiralled down to the centre. Everyone was in full buzz working on their individual tasks to help with the dream machine that Thomas had so eagerly talked about and which Seohyun had seen residing at the centre of the large laboratory when she had first been brought down to this bunker.
The machine could already be seen as they took the first steps down and it kept on growing in size as they neared it. It was truly a massive construction and Seohyun was in awe of the whole set up they had managed to build underground. All of this must have cost a fortune, a fortune that had been provided and funnelled in by Luna.
“Well there it is; your transport into the dream world!” Thomas exclaimed as they descended the final steps and now stood on the same level as the machine.
It towered at least ten metres with a width of approximately half of that. There were two large main cylinders that travelled the full height, the two of these stuck together. Wrapped around them were more pieces of steel and plastic bubbling out and cables and tubes from various heights of the main body snaking up around it into the ceiling of the lab taken somewhere beyond.
At the foot of the machine were two very large reclining seats with a helmet looking contraption hanging above it. These two seats were attached to the main body and more wires and cables ran from the bottom of it into a cable well, hiding them from view and preventing anyone from tripping on them. At the side of these seats were simple touch screens attached to rotary arms; clearly the controls to each individual seat.
To the left of the machine at the back was a huge array of screens and dials, a total of twelve screens from what Seohyun could count. Each screen showed a different view, most likely different data pertaining to the machine and it was manned by three people, each of them covering four screens of information.
Closer to the steps from which they had come on her left was a raised platform with a desk that also had a few screens on them and a rather luxurious looking office chair was behind it. Seohyun suspected this was Thomas’ seat and the command desk.
“Pretty impressive isn’t it?”
“Very…” Seohyun really was impressed with it. The undertaking to build such an elaborate underground laboratory and the impressive nature of the machine truly was something to marvel at.
Thomas Hwang moved up the raised platform behind his desk, Luna following him up. She took a few steps back further behind Thomas and was busy fiddling with her phone not long before picking up a phone call.
“Please, if you wouldn’t mind placing your bag and jacket onto that desk there and moving over to the seat,” Thomas motioned Seohyun towards the raised reclining chairs by the machine.
She hesitated. Everything was moving too fast. She hadn’t even agreed to go into the dream world, just followed him out to see the machine.
“I’m very honoured with the opportunity but I don’t think I have the stomach to try it out,” she replied as convincingly and sincerely as she could.
“Nonsense it’s perfectly safe. And how else would you actually truly know and believe that the machine works?”
“I would never presume Mr. Hwang would lie to me or his employees so I believe you when you say it truly can take you into the dream world.”
Thomas was getting increasingly frustrated. He was less of a people person after all, more of a scientist and he just wanted to get things over with.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how exactly does it work? As in what enables people to travel into the dream world with this machine?” Seohyun asked. She was trying to kill time and hopefully also manage to snake her way out of entering the machine. If she showed interest in the research and management of the project, if she could distance herself from a lowly employee that would be used as a test subject, then maybe she could skip this whole ordeal.
“Well how exactly it works is a bit too technical, but the basic principle is it siphons and harnesses the consciousness and dream connections of people, focusing it in this machine and then uses this energy to connect the intended recipient forcefully with the dream world. This allows us to enter the dream world in an awake state and when we so desire.”
“You siphon consciousness? From who exactly?”
“People in the city. There are millions of people up there and taking a little bit from each you can gather a huge amount of power. The machine of course takes everything around it so this laboratory, the whole office building actually, is shielded from the machines effects. Only people outside of this building are affected by it.”
There was a growing worry in Seohyun that whatever this siphoning was it couldn’t be good. It sounded very ominous and they were doing it to passerbies without their knowledge, without their consent. This didn’t sit well with her.
“What does it do to the people that get siphoned,” Seohyun asked with worry, her tone now more serious than before.
“Oh it’s mostly harmless, however in worst-“
Thomas stopped talking as he felt Luna’s hand on his shoulder. She had finished her phone call and was now holding her phone horizontally in her hand.
“Seohyun, what can you tell me about Sooyoung?”
Completely caught off guard Seohyun’s breathe hitched and her pupils dilated. A nervous tremor in her left hand gave away her sudden anxiety at the question but she forced it against her waist to stop it from shaking. How did Luna know about Sooyoung?
“I- I can tell you I don’t know anybody by that name.”
Her voice was too shaky. Luna could tell, Seohyun knew she could. Deep breathes. She needed to calm down and avoid revealing anything.
“Well that is certainly a shame. She would be invaluable to our research, wouldn’t she Thomas?”
“Definitely,” Thomas replied looking at Luna who nodded at him as she lifted her hand off his shoulder. He returned to look at Seohyun with completely different eyes. These were serious. Gone was the aloof and passionate scientist.
“As I was saying, the worst case scenario is that the machine doesn’t take evenly from a wide amount of people and focuses a little too much on one individual. In this case their connection to our waking world is severed and they go into a coma. Their consciousness on the other hand is stuck in the dream world.”
“They wha-…” Seohyun couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So all the hundreds if not thousands of coma patients are in their state because of you? The result of this machine?”
Seohyun’s shock and anger was palpable in her voice. The absolute inhumanity that these people were engaging in was unimaginable to her. Additionally she couldn’t believe that she had been working and helping a company like this. All the humanitarian aid work that they did was a sham to divert the attention from their real work; these secret projects. The presence and inclusion of a top ranking official from the Ministry of Defence helped with keeping it under the wraps as well.
“In simple terms, yes,” Park Luna rounded the table and walked to face Seohyun. Although she was shorter than the young woman the aura she exuded outdid any disadvantage that her short stature would incur on her charisma and sense of presence.
She turned the phone in her hand towards Seohyun. It had a live video feed and it didn’t take long for Seohyun to realize it was from the shrine. The long steep stone steps lined with stone lanterns covered partially with the overhanging trees. That was definitely the place. People in riot gear fully padded all around with helmets on and armed to the teeth were lounging about checking their weapons. How had they found the place? The video was coming from a head-cam of one of the strike team members.
“How did you…?”
“Find where it was? Dear little naïve Miss Seohyun, don’t you think we monitored all your activity in your work station? Don’t you think we would know exactly what it is you had been looking at including the location of the shrine? Deleting your browser history does little to hide the data, you know. You should have used your own phone to search for these things. And even then we would have been able to dig it out.”
Seohyun was dumbfounded and felt like an idiot. That was an extremely stupid mistake she had done. Of course back then she didn’t have any clue just how serious this all was and how high the stakes were. She couldn’t have known that some secret organization would be after them and use this knowledge against them. But then again it was company policy to not look at anything non-work related at work. If only she had been as strict as she usually was with rules none of this would have happened. She blamed herself. This was all her fault.
“You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your friend’s right? You know how anything can happen in these sting operations. So many accidents,” Luna stressed the final word before turning the phone back around. “So what will it be?”
Seohyun’s eyes were burning with fury and her gaze was piercing Luna. Had it been someone with less resolve they might have been taken aback by the anger in Seohyun’s eyes, however Luna wasn’t fazed in the slightest by this, instead a malicious smile was spreading to her lips as she held all the cards.
“I will get in the machine. Promise that none of them will be harmed.”
“You are in no position to negotiate. The more cooperative you are the more willing we might be to consider your proposal.”
Defeated, Seohyun placed her bag onto the side table and took her suit jacket off as had been requested. She turned around and walked over to the seat which was raised approximately a meter high. This required some climbing from her and with the assistance of the laboratory staff she was able to get up on to the seat.
It was moulded to fit a human more or less, but the weight of her body made her sink into the chair, the cushioning was made from some sort of memory foam making the seat a perfect fit for her. It was surprisingly comfortable and Seohyun found herself surprised that they had considered the comfort factor of the seat. Considering people would be sitting in them for hours on end it must have come up as an important factor in the development.
She saw Saebyuk walking past her to the other seat next to her; both of them would be travelling into the dream world. This was the worst possible outcome. However, she couldn’t risk her friends getting hurt, she had to follow through and do as told and trust that her friends and new acquaintances would be able to figure it out and make everything right.
The all but silent humming of the machine springing to life returned Seohyun’s thoughts to the present. The helmet contraption that hung above her lowered and it possessed nodes at the edges of the headband that was within the helmet. The headband came down and with the help of an extension arm secured itself on the front of Seohyun’s forehead and temples. As this action was completed the machine picked up a gear, the hum growing stronger.
“Connection established sir, clear signal from both.”
“Good, let’s start the process.”
The machine began to vibrate ever so slightly and more power was diverted into it as she felt a tiny tingling sensation at her temples. The stronger the tickle grew the hazier her eyesight was getting and she was drifting off to sleep. Seohyun tried to fight the feeling, she wanted to fight it off and do her best to struggle against her captors but to no avail. Sleep was taking her.
“In three, two, one…”
“Is she completely asleep?”
“Yes sir. However, there seems to be a problem.” Thomas Hwang looked up from his own screens at the lab technician, “What problem?”
“She… she is asleep, but she isn’t entering the dream world. She isn’t even dreaming.”
“What in- are you sure?” Thomas got out of his chair and walked over to the main dials and screens where a few other lab technicians had already gathered to see what their colleague was talking about.
“See this, she’s just asleep but she is making no connection to the dream world no matter how we probe her. Somehow she is actively resisting the probes.”
“How is that possible? Have we ever seen something like this before?”
“Never before sir.”
Thomas pulled back from the screens and took a deep breath. This was unusual, however it was known that some people had weaker connections to the dream world, or alternatively, had very strong connections to the present and so were difficult to get dreaming. But in the end they always would dream. Always.
“She is just probably very tied to our reality but I’m sure we can get her through. Saebyuk is in already correct?”
“Yes sir.”
“Fine, increase the power incrementally. The probe will eventually get through.”
He returned back to his seat to monitor the situation as the power of the machine increased. And with each use of the machine, each increase in power, they fed on the consciousness and connection to the dream world of the citizens above them. The longer they drew on this power the higher the likelihood of another person falling into a coma.
“Is something wrong?”
Luna, who had been standing further back once Seohyun had entered the machine had been observing everything from a distance but now appeared by Thomas’ side.
“She seems to have an unusually strong connection to reality. Some people do. But it isn’t a problem, with a little increase in the power of the machine we’ll get her going too.”
The humming of the lab grew stronger. At first it was the faintest of sounds, but with each increasing increment of power it grew steadily. Everyone was so accustomed to the noise that the increase went unheard, until they found themselves being barely able hear each other in regular conversation and were shouting to get their messages through.
“Sir, we are already reaching a power of seventy percent! No change!”
“Still no change?”
“No sir!”
“Give it more! It’ll go through, it has to!”
“Sir! There are tears forming in the fabric of the dream world and ours. There is visual of at least three on the outskirts of the city!”
“I said keep going damn it!”
“Thomas…”
“Not now Luna!”
“Why are you so insistent on her?”
“Cause she is our only way of getting Yoona. We need a hostage to exchange her for!”
“But isn’t there someth-…”
“What?!”
“Isn’t- …”
What had been a low hum of the machine at first was now a deafening vibration of the whole room. Every lab assistant and technician in this coliseum laboratory had turned to stare at the machine in the centre, as if to see this final gladiatorial bout between machine and woman.
Thomas and Luna were no longer able to hear each other’s words and it was then that Thomas felt the rough pull from his left where one of the assistants was trying to get his attention. He turned to look at him in frustration before focusing on what the assistant was pointing at on his screen. Seohyun was still resisting and the machine was now at full power, and then he noticed it. Seohyun’s mind was reflecting it back into the machine. It was going beyond capacity and would overload.
He jumped up shoving the assistant next to him out of the way with Luna taking a step back herself and he pounced off the platform making his way to the kill-switch.
“Shut it down now!” No sound could be heard coming from his mouth.
“For Heaven’s sake you need to shut it do-“
---
Sooyoung opened her eyes to see the roof of the shrine. She shot up from her lying position so fast that the hand that had been caressing her hair smacked her right in the forehead causing an audible sound. She turned around to see everyone in their cushions staring at her in confusion at the sudden awakening of Sooyoung.
“I’m so so so sorry!” Sunny apologised for her hand having hit Sooyoung’s forehead. The latter however didn’t seem to have noticed this at all as she stared wide eyed at everyone, still lost in her own world not really managing to focus.
“Sooyoung what’s wrong?” Jessica said her voice laced with concern.
Sooyoung finally focused on the voice speaking to her. Seeing Jessica’s concerned face pulled her back to reality and she managed to find the words she was looking for. “The dream world is collapsing.”
“What? Are you sure? How?!” Jessica started but before she could continue she was interrupted by Yuri.
“What is happening outside?”
Everyone’s gazes were now focused at what Yuri was pointing. Through the shrine rooms windows they could see the sunlight fading as if being overshadowed by something. Hyoyeon got up and walked over to the windows as Sunny helped Sooyoung back up. The whole crew followed to see the spectacle unfolding outside.
From their vantage point of the shrine they could see the grand scheme of events unfold. The bright sunshine that had been burning everyone that day was being swallowed up. It looked like a sunset that had been sped up, the bright blue sky and white clouds were rapidly painted in all the shades of yellow, orange and red as it appeared that the day was ending out of nowhere. At the same moment they heard a low rumble like the growling of an alligator, loud enough to shake their surroundings and the shrine itself. The air was now filled with the noise of glasses and plates hitting each other ringing like birds taking flight to escape a predator and every item not tied down to something shimmied across the surface they were on. The women had to grab onto each other or the wall for support as this ominous noise, like the mixture of a train engine and a ship’s horn ripped through their beings.
And that is when they saw the rip in the sky like the crack of a lightning. The rumbling ceased as black tendrils like writhing tentacles poured out of the rip before a pyre of black smoke shot down from the gaping wound in the sky. It was enlarging at an alarming rate and they noticed that other tears in the sky were forming further out in different directions. The black pyres struck the ground and immediately spread their thick pitch plume of smoke over the land moving at the speed of sound. Looking up from the racing plumes of smoke to their source in the rip revealed an ungodly sight; the sky was falling.
Taeyeon was snapping images of the events that transpired, her mind going into some form of autopilot to record everything. Yuri and Tiffany stood behind her both staring in abject terror at the darkness rapidly eating everything in its wake. Sunny having helped Sooyoung up squeezed her hand tighter at the sight, Sooyoung responding in kind and held onto her tighter.
Hyoyeon’s wonder and inaction was interrupted when she noticed that the blackness was reaching the edge of the mountain. It was almost here. She turned around and grabbed Jessica by the shoulders, who kept staring into the void and shoved her slightly deeper into the room to get her to move.
“Jessica! Emergency sanctification, we need it now!” This woke her up from her gaze and she turned around to move with Hyoyeon into the room as Sooyoung, dragging Sunny by the hand shouted, “Everyone get away from the window, we need to shelter-“
“It’s too late…” Taeyeon whimpered lowering her phone from her eyes as the void rushed in and swallowed them whole.
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